Rikin Gandhi: Fields of Dreams

Rikin Gandhi: Fields of Dreams


Rikin Gandhi, 29, CEO, Digital Green
Rikin
An aerospace engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a licenced private pilot, who was accepted to the US Air Force, he now finds himself a hero among the farmers in India. Moved to see that most of them have little access to better farming techniques, Gandhi, who is based in Delhi, decided to use his handycam as a tool for social networking. The method was simple: the farmers record their problems, solutions and success stories and the Bangalore-based Digital Green, an NGO headed by Gandhi, ensures these videos reach those who need them most. Although video has been tried many times in agriculture extension before, the Digital Green system differs from previous work by using cost-realistic technologies, like pocket video cameras and pico projectors. "We keep the videos localised in terms of language, socio-economic background of the audience," Gandhi says. Digital Green, which received a $3-million grant for three years from the Gates Foundation, has covered over 300 villages and aided over 17,000 farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
The Journey: Born and raised in the US, he "reverse-migrated" to India to help start a bio-diesel venture in Maharashtra, which later failed. "He is a rare person who is using his knowledge and skill to improve the human condition," says Magsaysay Award-winner Deep Joshi.
The Mission: To expand to 200 villages in the next six months, 400 additional villages in a year, and 600 more in the next 18 months.
The Challenge: To ensure that extension officers and field staff are visiting remote locations.
The Muse: Astronauts "who are the perfect blend of brains and brawn."
The Mentors: Farmers in India. "They do the hard work to give India the second highest farm output in the world."


PROJECTS

Digital Green
09/18/2006 – present 
Digital Green builds and deploys information and communication technology to amplify the effectiveness of agricultural development efforts. The unique components of the Digital Green system include (1) a participatory process for local video production, (2) a human-mediated instruction model for video dissemination and training, (3) a hardware and software technology platform for exchanging data in areas with limited Internet and electrical grid connectivity, and (4) an iterative model to progressively better address the needs and interests of the community with analytical tools and interactive phone-based feedback channels. Digital Green has been shown to be at least ten times as effective, per dollar spent, in increasing the take up of sustainable agricultural practices by farmers compared to traditional approaches to agriculture extension. Thus far, the Digital Green network has connected over 1,100 villages in India and Ethiopia, produced over 2,000 videos, and reaches more than 85,000 farmers every week.
Project Website »

BIOGRAPHY

Rikin Gandhi is chief executive officer of Digital Green. Rikin’s interests include sustainable agriculture and technology for socioeconomic development. He co-founded Digital Green as a research project in Microsoft Research India’s Technology for Emerging Markets group and now leads the spin-off of Digital Green that works to amplify the effectiveness of agricultural development in South Asia and Africa. Rikin is a licensed private pilot and received patents for linguistic search algorithms that he helped develop at Oracle. He has a master's in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

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