Title
 Efficient Implementation of  Agri-insurance Schemes by  Piggybacking eSagu System

Authors
 G. Syamasundar Reddy and P. Krishna Reddy
 Media Lab Asia Project
 International Institute of Information Technology, 
 Gachibowli, Hyderabad, India
 E-mail: pkreddy ET iiit.ac.in

Reference:
  G.Shyamasudar Reddy and P.Krishna Reddy, Efficient Implementation of Agri-insurance Schemes 
  by Piggybacking eSagu System, Third National Workshop on "ICT and Agriculture: From Potential
  to Prosperity in a Global Perspective", IAITA and DA-IICT, Ahmedabad, India, 15-16, June 2006. 

Abstract

 Timely agro-advisory service and efficient risk mitigation mechanisms can provide stable income
 to the farmers. To provide timely agro-advisory service, e-Sagu system has been developed by 
 IIIT-Hyderabad and Media Lab Asia. It  is an IT-based personalized agro-advisory  system which 
 is being developed   to provide high-quality  personalized (farm-specific) agricultural  expert
 advice  to each and every  farm in a timely manner at the farmer's door-step without farmer asking
 a question.  The results show that significant benefits have flown to the farmers in terms of 
 reduced inputs and enhanced yield.   Regarding risk mitigation, the agri-insurance schemes around 
 the world whether an advanced or a developing nation like India are suffering due to catastrophic 
 losses, covariate risks, asymmetric information and lack of quality data. These problems may pose 
 a serious threat to the survival of the implementing agencies unless the there is an effective 
 monitoring system in place, with enough man power and robust infrastructure. In this paper we 
 explain how agri-insurance schemes can be effectively implemented on top of  eSagu system. The 
 agri-insurance scheme can be  very cost-effective as it can use resources and processes of  eSagu 
 system. Also, as eSagu provides quality and reliable data at farm level,   the problem of asymmetric 
 information can be effectively hedged. Most important, eSagu  also improves the performance of  formal 
 risk mitigation mechanisms through farm-specific  agro-advisory and monitoring system. 

Key Words: 
 eSagu, agri-insurance,   ICTs  for rural development, ICTs  for agriculture, ICTs  for insurance, 
 Personalized agro-advisory.