The flood-prone and exceptionally fertile plains of the northern Indian state of Bihar constitute the perfect setting to experiment with digital climate adaptation. Since the promotion of “climate-smart villages”, a concept pioneered in 2011 CGIAR and compounded the Modi’s government launch of “Digital India” in 2015, Bihar can be considered as a laboratory for climate services and digital adaptation. Ranging from farm activities (“farming as a service”, Malik 2023) to important poverty reduction schemes like the MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), the synergy between adaptation and the digital has become pervasive.
In our exploratory fieldwork, Dr Vidya Pancholi carried out a comprehensive mapping of the organisations and entities that are currently active in digitalisation in both farm and non-farm sectors in the capital city of Patna, and in four administrative blocks Gurua (Gaya), Mohanpur (Gaya), Pusa (Samastipur), and Mahant-Maniyari (Muzaffarpur).
Our aim is to investigate how users and communities engage with, co-design, employ, and resist such applications and understand how digital adaptation contributes to reshaping knowledge and power relations in a society where land ownership, access to employment, resources and technologies are deeply fraught along the lines of caste, gender, and ethnicity.
Pictures Vidya Pancholi