In a recent effort to facilitate the agricultural development in rural India, an innovative voice-based information service, Avaaj Otalo ("voice porch"), was launched by UC Berkeley, Stanford, IBM, and Development Support Center (DSC) in Gujarat, India. In this voice-based forum, participating...

In recent years, I.T.C. Limited (hereafter ITC) developed the "e-Choupals" to the rural areas of India. In this new business model, ITC reaches implicit agreements with some farmers (inside the network) that they can sell the products directly to ITC at the market price in the local market, but...