Suggesting a season's cropping plan for a smallholding

• A plot history in whatever form it already exists, including a paper register someone types up
• A weather and price feed for the district
• An extension officer or agronomist who puts the plan in front of the farmer and hears the answer

• Where the holding resolves to an identifiable cultivator — not where it is held by a company, an FPO or a trust, which have no Data Principal behind them — the plot record is that person's personal data. Section 4(1) then permits processing only for a lawful purpose and only on consent or one of the legitimate uses listed in section 7, and a plan produced for one season is not a standing licence to reuse the same holding's history for credit scoring, input marketing or sale to a buyer.
• A cropping plan is a decision input about the person farming, so section 8(3) requires the data to be complete, accurate and consistent where it is likely to be used to make a decision affecting them. A stale plot boundary or a mis-keyed sowing date does not produce an obviously wrong plan — it produces a plausible one for the wrong field.

Every claim on this page traces to one of these, on the date it was read.

• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (No. 22 of 2023) — most obligations commence 13 May 2027 under the DPDP Rules 2025 — s.8(3) · Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology · a rule · read 2026-09-01
• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (No. 22 of 2023) — most obligations commence 13 May 2027 under the DPDP Rules 2025 — s.8(3) · Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology · a rule · read 2026-09-01
• An Online Optimization-Based Decision Support Tool for Small Farmers in India: Learning in Non-stationary Environments (arXiv:2311.17277) · Tuxun Lu and Aviva Prins (arXiv preprint) · that this is done · read 2026-09-01