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Paper short abstract

This paper examines a participatory data tool used by smallholder farmers in rural India to support equitable natural resource planning and distribution. It provides evidence for the resources, capacities, relational and institutional shifts that underpin equitable participation and outcomes.

Paper long abstract

While the promise of data and digital technologies as tools for agricultural productivity and poverty reduction is attractive, they are often disconnected from the needs of communities which are most vulnerable to their impacts. Against this backdrop, this paper presents evidence from a participatory data tool called Commons Connect that is being used by small holder farming communities in rural India. Commons Connect uses participatory methods to integrate geo-spatial data, local landscape knowledge and decision support systems in order to enable equitable planning and distribution of critical water assets such as ponds, wells and check dams at the local village councils. It centres the voices of the most marginalised farming communities and aims to strengthen their agency to participate in and improve accountability and equity in village planning processes.

Through the lens of Commons Connect, this paper will propose a vision for critical data infrastructures as spaces for democratic participation and engagement where local socio-ecological realities can be centred, data or algorithmic outputs can be contested, localised, and reframed, and communities retain can autonomy and control over decision making. By showing how these approaches de-centre tech and address structural inequalities, it will provide empirical evidence for the resources, capacities, relational and institutional shifts that underpin equitable participation and outcomes. Ultimately, it aims to show how community participation and co-creation offers one way to reclaim data and AI tools from narratives of control, data extraction and surveillance, grounding them instead in principles of equity, solidarity and justice.