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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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20211
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Subject: Extension Education × Author: BARUAH, BHANITA × End date: 2023 × Start date: 2020 × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    STUDY ON EFFECTIVENESS OF ICT BASED AGRO-MET ADVISORY SERVICES IN ADDRESSING INFORMATION NEEDS OF FARMERS IN DARRANG DISTRICT OF ASSAM
    (DRPCAU, PUSA, 2021) BARUAH, BHANITA; PRAKASH, SATYA
    Weather plays salient role in agriculture. No aspect of crop growth and development is devoid of weather. From sowing of seed to its growth, development, yield, incidence of pests and diseases, critical stages of water requirements, fertilizer requirement, weather has profound impact on crop. Even the quality of the produce after harvest and in storage depends on weather. Weather aberration may cause physical damage to the crop resulting in economic loss to farmers. The vagaries in weather can‘t be controlled, unlike other inputs and practices in agriculture. Agro-met advisory service holds the capacity to reduce the vulnerability of farmers to extreme weather and climate fluctuations when provided timely to farmers. As climate change is receiving increasing global attention, so does the use of weather related information in the field of agriculture. ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) recently, are considered easy, fast and convenient way to communicate and get prompt answers of respective problems. Incorporation of ICT in agro-met advisory services can help in boosting Indian Agriculture. The present study on effectiveness of agro-met advisory services was conducted in Darrang district of Assam. The district and the state are highly vulnerable to climate change. An ex-post facto research design was used in the study.100 beneficiary farmers of agro-met advisory services of KVK were selected randomly from 2 blocks of Darrang, 25 farmers each from 4 villages. In order to collect data from respondents, a structured interview schedule was prepared. The important statistical measures used to analyze the research data were frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, regression and garret ranking. The effectiveness of ICT based agro-met advisory services were measured by timeliness, utility, quality, satisfaction and ease of understanding of the information. Related social, personal and communication variable were taken as independent variable. The study revealed that for the attributes age, annual family income, experience in farming, mass media exposure, extension participation, extension contact, information seeking behavior majority of the respondents were falling under medium level. For rest of the attributes like gender (male dominated), family type (mostly nuclear family), educational status (majority had primary and high school level), social participation (large proportion were member in one organization), land holding (majority were marginal farmer) results were obtained. Among the ICT tools majority of the respondents used mobile phone, television and social media. Majority of the farmers had agro-meteorological information needs regarding precipitation, temperature, timings of various activities and adverse weather alert. It was found that majority of the respondent perceived the timeliness, quality, utility, satisfaction and ease of understanding to be of moderate level. Hence the overall effectiveness of the advisory services was moderate. Regression analysis of the dependent variable with independent variables revealed that three factors, experience in farming, educational qualification and ICT Tools used were found to be positively significant. The R2 value being 0.556 indicated that the predictors of the study embedded 55.6% of variance on the dependent variable i.e. effectiveness of agro-met advisory services and rest 44.4% variance was due to some other factors which were not included in the study. The study indicated that inability to update ICT expertise regularly, lack of updated information and poor network connectivity were the major constraints in the study locale.