Internet based intervention in the form of ITC-promoted e-Choupals is leading to empowerment of farmers. Because of e-choupals, a growing section of the farming community has the benefit of real-time information on anything from weather to best agricultural practices to commodity prices, here and abroad.

Irrespective of the size of land holding, a farmer within an e-Choupal zone will enjoy the fruits of "power of scale", which "virtual clustering" offers. There are 2,100 e-Choupals covering over a million farmers in MP, Karnataka, AP and UP today.

ITC hopes to install e-Choupals in the 100,000 villages in five years. As this e-initiative gathers pace, there will be paradigm shift in Indian agriculture.

ITC’s interface does cover tobacco growers but more of that later. Its agri-export portfolio also includes commodities like soyabeans, rice, coffee and marine products.

ITC extends to producers these commodities logistical and risk management support through its e-infrastructure. Whether coffee or aqua products, ITC acts as bridge between growers and consumers, ensuring in the process best value for farmers. ITC’s work needs to be supplement by other corporates engaged in agri-business.

As for tobacco, ITC has worked hand in hand with farmers and Central Tobacco Research Institute to constantly upgrade cigarette grade tobacco and introduce distinctive grades. The triangular collaboration has created a niche for Indian leaf tobacco in the world market.

ITC could lift tobacco exports by over 18 per cent in the year to March 2003 in a world oversupply situation and when competitors like Brazil and Argentina enjoyed advantages of currency devaluation. This is testimony to significant quality improvement of Indian leaf tobacco.

The quality campaign runs parallel to productivity improvement through use of high-yielding tobacco varieties and ideal package of agronomic practices. In model farms, productivity gain is as much as 70 per cent with growers getting at least 50 per cent more in selling price.

In parallel to e-Choupals are Pogaku Vedika in the west Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh and Tambaku Vedika in tobacco growing villages in Karnataka. Though built on the e-choupal model, Pogaku Vedika and Tambaku Vedika are tailormade e-portals for tobacco farmers.

The result of joint efforts by Tobacco Board and ITC, these go one step beyond e-Choupals in providing customised information to individual tobacco growers. Information is in Telegu and Kannada, ranging from farm practices to curing (an area of cost and wood fuel saving) and grading practices.

The tobacco e-initiative gives farmers constant access to world and local tobacco auction prices. The objective, keeping grower’s interest in forefront, should be maximisation of economic value per unit of consumption.

This becomes possible if tobacco consumption is in the form of cigarettes. The government earns more revenue this way. Tobacco when consumed as cigarettes yields 30 time higher revenue to the exchequer than when used otherwise.

The global pattern shows 90 per cent of tobacco being consumed in cigarette form, but over 85 per cent of tobacco is used in India in non-cigarette forms. Discriminatory taxation is leading people to consume tobacco in low value formats like bidis.

While "regulation of tobacco consumption and communication" has led to fall in cigarette sales, overall tobacco consumption in India has risen, begging a review of regulatory and taxation policies.

Indian farmers also suffer owing to high volume of cigarettes being smuggled into the country. Industry estimates cigarette smuggling is growing at annual rate of over 20 per cent, with the exchequer losing nothing less that Rs 1,000 crore a year in tax revenue.

At the end of the day, Indian farmers can only hope to prosper only if they find that the local demand for high quality cigarette leaf tobacco is growing. Cigarette smuggling acts as a deterrent.