Fatalistic approach compounded by apathy of stakeholders hinder implementation of robust agricultural marketing information systems.
Trust is among the most significant absentee among the four principal stakeholders (peasants, government officers, private vendors and traders), says Ranjan Vaidya, who recently completed his doctorate at the University of Auckland.
The subject of his thesis was, ‘Major issues in the implementation of agricultural marketing information systems in developing countries.’
The University had granted him an International Doctoral Scholarship to pursue his research and obtain a doctorate.
His thesis provides documentary evidence of the practices of the stakeholders and argues that four mechanisms to foster trust among them. They incorporate four systems including Commodity Information, Stakeholder Accreditation, Transaction Feedback and Stakeholder Security.
His study reportedly employs a novel method of French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, considering the major issues in implementing agricultural marketing information systems in India.
He has studied the habitus and practices of the major stakeholder groups using a critical form of enquiry and highlighted the challenges posed by stakeholder practices to the successful implementation of information systems in developing countries.
The Indian experience
“This research aimed at understanding the reasons for the high failure rate of Information & Communications Technology (ICT) projects in developing countries like India. I examined the case study of an Indian Agricultural Marketing Board that implemented an ICT project to connect the market,” Mr Vaidya said.
Poverty of honesty, sincerity, efficiency and hegemony were other factors that prevented the successful implementation of ICT in these countries,” he said and suggested a number of ICT based solutions to resolve the issues.
Professor Michael Myers and Dr Lesley Gardner of the University of Auckland supervised Dr Vaidya’s work.
He is currently working at the University’s Business School.
“My future research interest includes development of methodologies for assessing the stability of themes in qualitative research, and doing critical reflection in information systems research,” he said.
Dr Vaidya had obtained a doctorate in Information Systems earlier.
Before joining the doctoral programme at the University, he was working at the Centre for Electronic Governance, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and the Indian Institute of Forest Management.
He was involved in e-governance impact assessment studies, as well as evaluation studies of forestry schemes of Government of India.
