Research

Assaying Telangana’s rice and millet based agri-food systems from a climate smart agriculture perspective (2020-2023)Telangana has made remarkable progress in developing its irrigation potential, thus transforming from a rainfed, drought region to irrigated agriculture. Along with that, area under paddy has also drastically increased in the state. The crop area expansion also had a lot of research and policy support. Millets, on the other hand, had seen gradual decrease in consumption as well as area under production, though it had one been a staple crop of the region. Policies like Public Distribution System has also favoured production of rice and recently, cereals. While millets have been promoted for their climate resilient nature, input efficiency, and nutrition content, the crop area hasn’t expanded significantly. In this context, this research helps to develop an in-depth understanding of the two production systems from a climate smart agriculture perspective, and interpret it from an analytical lens to distinctly identify the production systems and strengths and gaps within.

Exploring the Current Practices in Research Assessment within Indian Academia (2022)This project is initiating a discussion on research assessment criteria of Indian research and funding institutions through multiple workshops with the major stakeholders of the Indian research ecosystem. By initiating debates over the strengths and weaknesses of current assessment practices, the workshops will help institutions build robust, flexible research assessment frameworks.

A Micro-Level Study on Dimensions of Emerging Livelihood Pattern of Rural Tribal Youth in Tripura (2016)For the tribes of Tripura, transformed land use pattern have led to major restructuring in their occupational pattern. Under this pretext, the research was conducted in four TTAADC villages from Dhalai and Gomati districts of Triura to understand the occupational pattern of rural tribal youth in the light of their spatial distribution. For primary survey, 184 respondents were selected through multi-stage sampling as per differential resource endowment status, age group category, and gender criteria as well. Major findings indicated that livelihood portfolio was more diversified for resource poor youth compared to their older age counterparts. No gender disaggregated difference was observed in socio-economic and socio-personal characteristics of the youth respondents across the study areas. Low risk bearing ability, absence of veterinary facilities, non-remunerative agricultural sector, inadequacy in vocational skill enhancement through organized training, and reduced mobility and migration to cities for occupational purposes specifically for women were the major constraints identified.

Social media for agricultural extension and advisory services: A global survey (2015)In a world where social media is going to shape the way people interact, share information, form opinions and also lead individual and collective actions, ignoring it is not something that the development sector can afford to do,especially for agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS), whose primary element is communication. GFRAS Global survey on use of social media in agricultural extension and advisory services conducted online across 60 countries and 226 respondents provided interesting results. Face book was found to be the most popular social media platform used by AEAS actors. The major activity on social media was searching for news and events and sharing information. A major impeding factor for social media use was the lack of authenticity of information shared online. Social construction of information (development and publication of information socially by the users) was considered as the most important feature of social media and the respondents believed social media can play an important role in bridging the gap between stakeholders in Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS). To quote one respondent, ‟SM is not only a tool for reaching large audiences; it is also an opportunity to develop relationships.”

Social Media for Agricultural Communication: Fab or Fad?” (2015)Communication has undoubtedly been an integral part of agriculture. Many communication media have been tried and tested in agriculture since printing arrived and social media is a new addition to the list. It has caught up very fast and within 14 years it has been taken up by 28 per cent of global population and nine per cent of Indian population. To understand how social media is being used by agricultural professionals, a survey was conducted among the students and teaching staff of College of Post Graduate Studies, Umiam, scientists and project assistants from Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Research Centre for North East Hill Region, Umaim and KrishiVigyan Kendra, RiBhoi. The objective of the survey was to understand their social media participation and to ascertain their opinion about use of social media in agvocacy. Facebook was the most preferred platform among the respondents and social media was deemed to be highly useful for extension personnel, agripreneurs, agricultural product marketers and researchers. But major drawbacks in social media use for agvocacy were low participation of farmers and professionals, untapped potential by agricultural professionals and authenticity of information shared. But with proper moderation and judicious use, social media can prove to be a very important platform for agvocacy for all agricultural stakeholders

Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) in System of Rice Intensification in Tripura (2013)To gain self-sufficiency in its principle food grain rice, Tripura state of North East India has been relying on System of Rice intensification (SRI) for past seven years. In the state, SRI has become a mass movement with full participation of research organizations, public extension system, local decentralized administrative units, the farmers and their collectives and media to create awareness. So the study was conducted in the state to understand the actors and factors of the innovation systems in SRI that has contributed in making SRI a success in the state and its implications in the state and the country. Since its up-scaling in farmers’ field in 2006-’07 till 2011-’12, SRI has been gaining momentum in the state with efforts from all the stakeholders and assistance from the right policies. The actors in the SRI innovation systems has played various roles according to their type of organization and has taken up action accordingly to achieve their targets set in SRI expansion in the state. While Department of Agriculture (DoA) has been a key player in the SRI innovation systems in the state, the unique role had been played by the local administrative units, the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in creating mass awareness about SRI and providing assistance in development of the cultivators. All the actors had a good information network. The AIS in SRI in Tripura had its own weaknesses like farmers were more the receiver of technology than innovators; media being an isolate, and policies like MGNREGS having a negative impact on the income of SRI farmers through high labour cost or unavailability of labour. But an increased interaction among the actors, especially the DoA, PRIs and farmers, can easily overcome these problems. Integration of stakeholders has promoted knowledge management, sharing, and learning in SRI innovation systems in the state which can be effectively applied in other crops and sectors in the state and the country.

Mobiles for mobilizing Agricultural Extension in India (2012)India has increasingly growing number of active ‘netizens’ in the world and one of the fastest growing internet market. Mobile phones have taken the country by storm and within 16 years of its introduction it became the second largest market in the world after China. This huge potential for communication can never be ignored in agriculture where one of the biggest problems is the gap in extension-farmer linkage. With increased dependency, mobile phone is becoming a common communication platform of the world, especially agriculture. An important measure taken by the apex agricultural institution of the country ICAR is the Kisan Mobile Advisory Services (KMAS) through all the KVKs. The service was first started in Zone VIII and soon replicated all over the country. In the case study conducted on KMAS by KVK-EKH, around 100 farmers are receiving the service as of 2012 and the list is upgraded very frequently. It has been observed that even though a significant number of farmers are functionally illiterate, mobile phone in farming has been regarded as useful by the majority. Another interesting fact revealed is that though many of the households do not have TV or radio, every one of the contacted farmers has mobile phones. To ascertain the impact of the messages was difficult as they were recently introduced but the initiative was welcomed by farmers which waves a green flag for ICTs particularly mobile interventions in this part of the country.