In the 21st century, the South Asian countries of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh are facing a convergence of agricultural stress and climate uncertainty. With more than 60% of their populations relying on agriculture and rural livelihoods, these countries are increasingly vulnerable to rising temperatures, unstable monsoons, and recurring floods and droughts. South Asia has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2023) as one of the most climate-vulnerable regions for agricultural decline. The socio-economic vulnerability of smallholder farmers is further enhanced by constrained access to adaptive technology, poorly developed infrastructure, and institutional Fragmentation. 

Agriculture is simultaneously the foundation of food security in the region and a key pillar for employment, social cohesion, and export revenues. Yet the effects of climate change are already emerging. Severe heatwaves in India are reducing wheat yields, unseasonal floods in Bangladesh are wrecking rice, and melting glaciers in Nepal are exposing irrigation channels dependent on mountain sources. They are interconnected pressures requiring a fundamental transformation of the management, investment, and technological support of farming systems in the region. The pressing stakes are especially crucial for regional resilience, youth employment prospects, and the sustainability of food systems.

Relevance of digital agriculture 

Digital agriculture offers a path towards farm practice transformation in addition to increased adaptive capacity and mitigation of extreme climate shocks. The strategy involves a package of tools from satellite-based weather forecasting to artificial intelligence-based diagnosis of pests, mobile-based market access platforms, precision irrigation equipment, and monitoring of the health of soil through cloud-based services. Deployed in a fair manner, these technologies can bridge information gaps, equip farmers with genuine sources of information, and enable rural masses to respond effectively to climatic shocks. 

India and Bangladesh are members of the Commonwealth, and Nepal is outside of this grouping. But the three countries have shared ecological, economic, and social situations that would necessitate cooperation. Regional forums such as BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) can provide a bridge for South-South cooperation in this context. The priority areas of BIMSTEC, agriculture, technology, poverty alleviation, and climate change, are all interconnected with the transition towards digital agriculture. This transition can enable cross-border exchange of agricultural information, coordination of digital infrastructure, and collaborative investment in research, education, and the use of technological solutions. With its platform, member states can collectively develop scalable, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable agricultural solutions.

Progress and Innovation: From Pilots to Platforms

Throughout South Asia, governments and private sector actors have made their first moves towards agricultural digitization. In India, the Ministry of Agriculture's crown jewel program, the electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM), links more than 1,400 agricultural markets across 22 states, allowing farmers to access longer trade chains and price information. Furthermore, agri-tech start-ups such as Farmonaut use satellite images to provide real-time information on soil moisture, crop stress, and fertilizer application, available through local language mobile apps. 

Bangladesh has also established strong call-center-based services like the Krishi Call Centre, which provides voice-based agronomic advisory on a 24/7 basis. Services like ACI Smart Farmer use weather information, crop guidance, and digital input order systems for smallholders. With the FAO's Digital Village Initiative, such tools are being scaled up to flood- and salinity-risk rural areas. Nepal, even without access to digital technology, has launched GeoKrishi, a government-endorsed platform that brings together agro-climatic zoning and individualized crop advice and pest alerts. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has initiated pilot projects for remote advisory systems as part of its Agriculture Modernization Project in hill and mountain regions. However, the use of this platform is still limited in remote areas where access to electricity and broadband is poor.

Digital Exclusion: Infrastructure, Access, and Inclusion Disparities

Though policy ambition is keen, digital agriculture favors wealthier farmers and networked geographies. There are significant infrastructure gaps across Nepal’s rural regions. As defined in the Digital Nepal Framework (2019), provinces like Karnali and Sudurpashchim face the lowest levels of internet penetration and digital service infrastructure. While initiatives have aimed to expand connectivity, digital agriculture tools such as advisory platforms remain largely absent in rural farming communities, where poor electricity access and mobile broadband coverage continue to limit outreach, where intensifying climate variability is leading to rising crop failures and driving rural migration. 

Mobile phone coverage is patchy in India's tribal states and Bangladesh's floodplains, and smartphone adoption in India is biased towards wealthier, male farmers (GSMA, 2022). Moreover, gender and literacy are key restraints. They are 41% less likely to access mobile internet than other categories, a gap which further widens their marginalization from farm-level decision-making as well as online financial services. Many platforms are not available in indigenous languages and are not designed to be used by low-literacy farmers, thus marginalizing excluded farmers and communities that rely on indigenous crops and farming systems. Most importantly, cultural and institutional incompatibilities also influence adoption. Tools are generally top-down-designed, without users. In indigenous farm villages and tribal areas, there is suspicion of externally driven technologies that are unaware of local rhythms and cropping patterns. Without local institutions of governance and participatory design, digital agriculture can entrench existing inequalities.

Strategic Roadmap to Equitable Digital Agriculture

To make digital agriculture work for resilience and equity, South Asia needs a synchronized policy change. Governments and donors need to start by promoting farmer-led co-design. Programs such as Digital Green, which employ community-generated videos in local languages, demonstrate that participatory knowledge sharing improves outcomes and trust.

Second, technology needs to be offline-capable, low-cost, and low-power. Solar-powered sensors, voice-based advice, and feature-phone support are more applicable to rural contexts than app or high-bandwidth platforms. Bangladesh's Krishi Call Centre and India's Kisan Call Centre can act as region-specific models. 

Third, SAARC and BIMSTEC must coordinate investment in collective data infrastructure, coordinated agro-climatic data sets, and capacity building. Cross-border development in the Ganges and Brahmaputra basins, ecologically interlinked regions, would be underpinned by collective forecasting and resource planning.

Fourth, climate finance needs to invest specifically in digital agriculture among smallholders. Just 1% of world climate funds currently go to smallholder adaptation, the Climate Policy Initiative (2023) tells us. South Asian governments need to connect their climate proposals with digital inclusion plans. 

Lastly, equity should be an observable outcome. Any digital agriculture activity should have gender reach metrics, indigenous user adoption, and language diversity. Government dashboards monitoring these metrics will help policymakers track inclusive transformation underway.

(The author is a PhD Scholar at Manipal University, Jaipur. Views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at madhavdhakal55@gmail.com)