This case study is about the impact of e-Choupals of the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) on

decision-making ability of farmers related to agricultural practices. ITC started e-Choupal

initiative in the year 2000 from Bhopal as a step to remove the intermediaries and connect the
farmers directly to the mandi to make the operations more transparent. ITC started with just six
Choupals and as on May 2007 reached more than 4 million farmers in about 40000 villages
through more than 6500 Choupals in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra,
Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. The e-Choupal provides various tangible and intangible
benefits to the farmers. The tangible benefits include the agricultural inputs such as seeds,
fertilizers, and pesticides, and the intangible benefits include information regarding weather,
advance farming techniques, and other techniques to boost the per hectare productivity.

The primary objective of this case is to empirically validate the impact of the ITC's e-
Choupal initiative on improving farmer's decision-making process in agricultural practices. So, a
research project is carried out to find the impact of ITC's e-Choupal initiative in empowering
Indian farmers. The study population consists of the set of all farmers who could get involved
with ITC through purchasing agricultural input, selling harvest, and accessing information from
ITC's e-Choupal. The sampling frame consists of 28 villages from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar
Pradesh. For getting a diversified sample, the listings of farmers who are associated with ITC's e-
Choupal from different sanchalaks, the owners and managers of Internet kiosks, were stratified
as per land size and year of association. In this way, 280 farmers were contacted for
questionnaire survey.

The data has been collected by resorting to the questionnaire survey method. In addition
to the demographic information of the respondents, 18 single item questions were used to
gather response on the 18 decision-making aspects of farming process after and before
association with ITC's e-Choupal. The questionnaire was personally administered to farmers and
their responses were recorded. The response rate was found to be 89% as 248 filled-in
questionnaires were received back from the respondents. After elimination of questionnaires,
wherein excessive amount of data were missing, 244 responses were left with. The mean value
(from the survey) of several benefits received and ability to take decisions related to agricultural
practices presently and before association with ITC is given the following table:

Mean before
Current
Agricultural Practices Association
Mean
with ITC
Timely price-related information regarding market price of
produce before selling it 4.18 1.87
Determination of what crop to grow and when to plant and
harvest 4.51 4.32
Profitable crop choices 4.47 4.14
Good quality seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides 4.52 3.42
Use more modern farm implements 3.77 2.64
Assessing expert opinion frequently regarding improved
modern agricultural practices 3.07 1.91
Safe storing of agricultural products 4.15 3.32
Weather forecast 3.61 2.48
Farming methods specific to each crop and region 4 3.19