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Mobile is Transforming Indian Agriculture

posted on Sunday, September 05, 2010 12:16 AM

For decades Santosh Ostwal obsessed over an obscure problem: how to make it easier for Indian farmers to water their crops.

As a kid in 1981, Ostwal would watch his one-legged grandfather make the one-mile trek out to his fields to irrigate his land. It was arduous and repetitive; access to electricity and water was sporadic. Now an engineer, Ostwal has finally solved his grandfather’s problem with a phone-controlled water pump-starter called the Nano Ganesh. It’s an elegant example of how mobile phones are being used in the developing world in incredibly innovative ways.

Here’s how the Nano Ganesh works. A farmer purchases the device for between $12 and $268, depending on the model. The device is then connected both to a mobile phone and the electric water pump. Once it’s set up, the farmer just needs to call that phone and enter a code to get it going. No cell service? No problem. Ostwal also made a remote control. He claims the water, electricity and time savings can cover the cost of the device in 11 days.

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