FORMAL AND INFORMAL SOCIAL PARTICIPATION AS RELATED TO DIFFUSION OF INFORMATION AND ADOPTION OF FARM PRACTICES IN A VILLAGE IN INDIA
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Date
1966
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Publisher
University of Agricultural Sciences GKVK, Bangalore
Abstract
This study emerged out of the critical food situation
in India, and the hope that knowledge of change
processes had for increasing food production. The problem
was to investigate the relationships between farmers' participation
in various social groups to their possession of
scientific information and adoption of new farm practices.
The village Mordevi in the Gujarat state was selected as
the research site for the purpose of collecting the data
because it resembled the average village in the state in
terms of crops grown, irrigation facilities, caste diversity,
distance from urban centers, organizational arrangements, and
supporting local crafts, skills and services.
All farmers who cultivated land in Mordevi were interviewed.
Supporting information was collected from the
private and governmental records. The social participatior
of farmers (independent variable), was operationalized into four different categories, (l) instrumental formal,
(2) instrumental informal, (3) expressive formal, and
(4) expressive informal. The adoption of farm practices and
possession of scientific information about farming were the
dependent variables. Appropriate operational measures were
devised for the measurement of each. The nested design of
analysis of variance and correlation coefficients were the
statistics applied to determine the relationship of social
participation to possession of scientific farm information
and adoption of farm practices. Parsons' action theory,
relevant to this study, served the theoretical framework for
formulating the hypotheses.
It was found that:
1. Instrumental formal participation of farmers was
positively related to their possession of scientific information
and adoption of farm practices, but instrumental
informal social participation of farmers did not show a consistent
positive relationship with either.
2. Expressive formal and informal social participation of
farmers was not positively related to their possession of
scientific farm information, but was positively related to
their adoption of farm practices. Within expressive social
participation of farmers, participation in caste activities was positively related to possession of scientific information
and adoption of farm practices.
3. The variables, farm size, years schooling, and caste
used.as intervening variables, were significantly related to
possession of scientific information and adoption of farm
practices, as originally assumed.
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No. of references 98