Intervention of NGOs and ICTs in Mainstreaming Indian Farm Women in Agriculture

Abstract

Agriculture sector employees are nearly 80% of all economically active women in India; 33% of agricultural labour force and 48% are self-employed farmers. As youth are migrating to urban places, to meet the demand of current and future population mainstreaming of women in agriculture is the need of hour. Farm women play an important role in Indian agriculture. Empowering farm women is a multi-dimensional task. If women farmers in developing countries like India, have equal access to productive resources as men, their productivity can be enhanced by 20-30 percent and agricultural production could be raised by 2.5-4.0 percent. To enrich women digitally, association of capacity-building partners such as Non-Governmental Organizations and ICT initiatives plays a vital role. Collaboration of NGOs and ICT for digitalized outreach of customized timely information to farm women helps in their multidimensional empowerment.