Putting farmers first: How Bharat-VISTAAR turns digital infrastructure into real-world decisions for Indian agriculture

The Government of India’s launch of Bharat-VISTAAR (Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources) marks a significant evolution in India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for agriculture. By integrating the national AgriStack with the scientific Package of Practices developed by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and other research organisations Bharat-VISTAAR moves beyond a conventional information portal to become a foundational system for decision-ready, climate-resilient agriculture.

Farmers today face compound and cascading risks—erratic rainfall, droughts and floods, heat stress, pest and disease outbreaks, soil degradation, and increasingly volatile markets. For making farming resilient, and Bharat-VISTAAR to be transformative, it must convert integrated data into anticipatory, human-centered action at the farm and community level.

At the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), we see this as the critical next step: complementing the government’s digital backbone with intelligence layers that interpret risk, prioritise response, and support decisions before losses occur. This is where innovations such as SukhaRakshak AI—an AI-enabled climate and water risk advisory system can play a catalytic role.

From data integration to decision-ready intelligence

India’s agricultural challenge has never been the absence of data, but its fragmentation across institutions, scales, and formats. Bharat-VISTAAR addresses this by federating farmer identity, crop practices, and institutional knowledge. The next frontier is translating this integrated data into actionable intelligence that accounts for timing, uncertainty, and farmer capacity.

By combining earth-observation indicators, weather and climate forecasts, hydrological signals, and digitised contingency plans, intelligence systems such as SukhaRakshak AI enable anticipatory decision-making across multiple risks. Rather than responding to shocks after impacts are visible, farmers and governments can adjust cropping choices, water management, input use, and financial instruments ahead of critical thresholds—shifting agriculture from crisis response to risk management.

Making advanced analytics accessible and equitable

For DPI to be effective, it must be accessible to those it is designed to serve. Advanced analytics and AI models risk becoming exclusionary if they remain opaque or language restricted. Human-centered design therefore becomes a policy requirement.

Leveraging Google Gemini, SukhaRakshak AI delivers climate and production risk insights in 22 Indian languages, converting complex signals into locally relevant, practical and actionable guidance. Farmers receive advisories that are contextual to their crops, soils, and seasonal conditions—whether the risk is moisture stress, heat exposure, delayed monsoon onset, or flood-related crop damage. This approach demystifies AI, strengthens trust, and complements extension systems rather than replacing them.

Consolidating risk management into a single operational framework

Through the ICAR–IWMI and CGIAR Climate Action partnership, Bharat-VISTAAR enables a human-centered, multi-risk agricultural risk management system that integrates climate, water, production, and market risks into a single operational framework.

By linking continuous monitoring and early warning (for droughts, floods, heat stress, pests, and rainfall variability) with vulnerability and exposure analytics, the platform supports anticipatory, targeted decision-making rather than reactive relief. These risk insights are operationalised through digitised contingency pathways—crop and water advisories, input and credit adjustments, insurance and social protection triggers, and public investment prioritisation—delivered in locally relevant languages and formats.

When augmented by intelligence layers such as SukhaRakshak AI, Bharat-VISTAAR moves from a data-integration platform to a decision-ready public infrastructure, ensuring that digital systems translate into timely action, reduced losses, and improved livelihood resilience for farmers.

Enabling a new role for the private sector

Bharat-VISTAAR also creates the conditions for a more responsible and impact-oriented role for the private sector. With credible, high-resolution risk intelligence, insurers, agri-finance institutions, and input providers can move beyond generic products toward risk-responsive, bundled solutions.

IWMI’s experience with bundled insurance, credit, advisory, and stress tolerant seed packages demonstrate how risk triggers can activate coordinated support—insurance payouts aligned with agronomic advice and access to appropriate inputs. Bharat-VISTAAR provides the national DPI backbone needed to scale such models while maintaining public oversight and farmer protection.

From digital systems to human resilience

As Bharat-VISTAAR is rolled out, its success should not be measured by the number of datasets integrated or dashboards deployed, but by decisions improved, losses avoided, and livelihoods protected. Technology is the enabler; resilience is the outcome.

By combining the Government of India’s digital infrastructure with institutions such as IWMI that specialise in climate, water, and risk intelligence, Bharat-VISTAAR can evolve from a data platform into a decision-ready public good—one that ensures farmers receive the right information, at the right time, in the right form, for the risks they actually face. In doing so, India moves closer to an agricultural future where uncertainty is anticipated, support is timely, and no farmer is left to face climate and production risks alone.

The authors work with International Water Management Institute.

Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth