: Effectiveness Of Information And Communication Technology In Hill Agriculture: A Case Study

Abstract

For all round development of agriculture, the communication process deserves its significant role as in case of social, economic, religious, political and educational development. Farming is an ancient occupation. If the farming may be recognized only as a factory of producing the food grains there is no difference between the ancient time and modern time farming. According to the economics, for other productions there are needed factors as land, labour, money and management which are still in the present and were in the past also. Now, what is the modern farming? The modern farming is that in which the person adopts the latest new methods of farming based on science for the agricultural production. Thus for the modern agriculture there is need of one more factor and this factor is the latest knowledge. Thus, in the modern agriculture for the agricultural production along with the four factors one more factor of the latest knowledge (fifth) has been added. The question arises from where this new knowledge may be achieved? The first need is that to create the new knowledge and the second need is to send this latest knowledge to the farmers. More than three-fourths of total population of Uttarakhand depends on agriculture for their livelihood. The economy is predominantly dependent on mountain agriculture, however, the land holdings are small and fragmented, and irrigation facilities limited. Soil and water conservation is another issue for inclusive development. As a result, the majority of the rural population in the hills either survives on subsistence agriculture or migrates to other parts of the country for employment. The state faces the challenge of promoting livelihoods to retain people through local employment and income generation and to enhance their quality of life. The success of agricultural development programmes in developing countries largely depends on the nature and extent of use of communication media in mobilization of people for development. The planners in developing countries realize that the development of agriculture could be hastened with the effective use of communication media. A wide variety of communication technologies are available for diffusion of innovations / information to Indian farmers. For effective communication / information the basic ingredients are purpose of communication, information / innovations to be communicated, methods to be employed, end users and response or reaction of the users. ICTs are emerging as a powerful tool for gender empowerment in a developing country like India. The new tools and techniques are evolving and the implications are clearly visible in a global scale but the level of dissemination of ICT in hills is very low. No doubt, communication media created a greater awareness among farmers thus contributing a lot to our “food self-sufficiency status” of nowadays. In the present investigation the status and usage of communication media by hill farmers and the kind of communication media to enhance their agricultural knowledge were incorporated. Communication media methods in agricultural information dissemination generally, are useful in reaching a wide listeners at a very fast rate. To a large extent, communication media serve as a authentic instrument for information dissemination in agriculture.