Examine the role of Digital Public Infrastructure in transforming service delivery in the agricultural sector, with reference to the Digital Agriculture Mission.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) refers to interoperable digital systems built as public goods. Extending the India Stack logic to farming, the Cabinet approved the Digital Agriculture Mission in September 2024 with an outlay of Rs. 2,817 crore (central share Rs. 1,940 crore) [1], with AgriStack as its farmer-centric DPI backbone [2].

Architecture of the agri-DPI

• Three foundational registries — Geo-Referenced Village Maps, Crop Sown Registry, Farmers Registry — all created and maintained by States/UTs [2].
• Each farmer receives a Farmer ID, an Aadhaar-like digital identity linking land, crops, livestock and fisheries; the registry also onboards tenants and sharecroppers [3].
• Companion components: Krishi Decision Support System and a Comprehensive Soil Fertility & Profile Map [2].

How it transforms service delivery

• Targeting and DBT: verified identity plus land-crop data enables seamless integration of PM-KISAN, PMFBY, MSP procurement, credit and input distribution, cutting exclusion and leakage [3].
• Speed in disaster relief: Maharashtra transferred over Rs. 14,000 crore to 89 lakh farmers for Kharif 2025 crop losses within five days using AgriStack [3].
• Procurement efficiency: Chhattisgarh institutionalised Farmer ID with Digital Crop Survey for MSP paddy procurement covering over 32 lakh farmers in one season [3].
• Scale achieved: over 9.20 crore Farmer IDs by March 2026, against a target of 11 crore by 2026-27 [3][2].

Constraints

• Federal coordination: as registries are State-owned, saturation depends on Centre-State alignment — the reason a National Workshop stressed AgriStack as a federated, interoperable infrastructure needing strong coordination [4]; 19 States have signed MoUs [2], leaving uneven coverage.
• Data governance: quality of underlying land records and privacy safeguards remain decisive for trust.

DPI converts agricultural welfare from paper-verified entitlement into presumptive, data-triggered delivery. Sustaining this requires universal registry saturation, cleaned-up land records under land-records modernisation, and privacy safeguards consistent with the right to privacy — so that AgriStack matures into a genuine public good advancing farmer welfare and SDG-2 on zero hunger.