India sidelines Big Tech in push for farming cloud, goes open source instead
The nation's government has long sought to modernize its farming sector and spent several years pursuing a plan called AgriStack that it hoped – with help from the likes of Microsoft, Cisco, and AWS – would give farmers tools to better manage their affairs. India subsidizes its farmers in various ways and AgriStack would have required them to share information such as the composition of their soil to determine eligibility for some payments.
After some vigorous protests – some quelled with internet shutdowns – the Modi government scrapped AgriStack, but promised to revisit the concept. A revised vision emerged yesterday during finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman's speech introducing India's 2023 budget. "Digital public infrastructure for agriculture will be built as an open source, open standard and interoperable public good," Sitharaman declared."This will enable inclusive, farmer-centric solutions through relevant information services for crop planning and health, improved access to farm inputs, credit, and insurance, help for crop estimation, market intelligence, and support for growth of agri-tech industry and start-ups.
India is very keen on open source public goods – it has already developed and operates the Aadhaar identity system, Unified Payments Interface digital payments platform, and the
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