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are a must. A Rural Business Centre, located in a school and using the skill of their staff and students will be an ideal solution. Not only will the farmers get the services, but the school will be serving the community and through this, make its education more relevant. A computer, STD/Fax or electronic mail for both the giver and user, I expect, will be self-sufficient. Availability of daily market rates before booking agri-produce to the Mandai will be welcome to all. If the cost is distributed over the whole farmer community, it will not amount to much. Operations like a milk collection centre, have to keep daily records of the milk collection of each account holder (producer), its fat and SNF/or lactometer reading. Spreadsheet application will not only make this easy and fast but will also be able to generate reports about their interpretation and plans for the future. An average centre can have over 500 account holders and an average of 10 litres one milk per account. Therefore, an average dairy will net Rs. 30,000 per day (@ Rs. 6/ litre) and will pay the Business Centre Rs. 60 per day for all the entries. This itself may use about 4-6 hours of time per day. Most farmers have no record of their farm operations. Even when they do the same crop again and again, they have no data for comparison of their own earlier experience, leave alone that of others. If we make a separate data-base for each farmer, he will be able to learn from his own experience and that of others. Unlike the dairy records, which are maintained now, farm records will be a new activity, but first we shall have to convince the farmers of the usefulness of the same. But this is part of the industrial culture; that only through analysis of your performance data, can you control costs and improve performance. In the absence of the requisite skills with the farmer, the Rural Business Centre can do it for him. Rural Development Through Education System 238
