CRITERION III: RESEARCH, CONSULTANCY AND EXTENSION 3.1 Promotion of Research
B. MSME Scheme for Business Incubation
3.6 Extension Activities and Institutional Social Responsibility (ISR)
3.6.1 How does the university sensitize its faculty and students on its Institutional Social Responsibilities?
List the social outreach programmes which have created an impact on students’ campus experience during the last four years.
The Institute give equal importance to research, education and extension. Since its inception at Pusa (Bihar) in 1905, the Institute is actively involved in extension and educate the farmers of the region. This is evident from the fact that famous Pusa Wheat (NP series) varieties then developed by the Institute became very popular amongst the farmers. This state of affairs continued even after shifting of the Institute to its present location in New Delhi in 1936. The IARI started its extension activities in a formal and modest way through its Intensive Cultivation Scheme in Delhi territory during 1949-50. Since then, a number of innovative extension approaches and methodologies have been experimented and developed, which subsequently became the basis and forerunner for many extension programmes and activities in the country. The concepts of seed village production unit and national demonstration took shape in 1965.
Krishi Vigyan Mela and mini-kit demonstration (1972), Integrated Area Development Programmes, Operational Research Projects (1975-76), Lab-to-Land Programme (1979), Integrated Whole Village Agricultural Development Programme (1985), Single Window System, and Farmer to- Farmer Quality Seed Programme (1986), etc. were initiated by the Institute for effective linkages between the research Institute and the development departments to transfer technologies generated by scientists. The Division of Agricultural Extension has played greater emphasis on training the farmers in package of practices, credit, storage and marketing aspects. In recent years, two innovative models of technology transfer viz., IARI-Post Office model and IARI-Rakra model have attained great successes. The Division, through its CATAT and ATIC units, imparts training, provide advice and technical information to the extension workers and farmers, and also develops and distributes folders, pamphlets and other extension literature.
The Publication Unit of IARI also caters to the needs of technical and extension publications. The Joint Director (Extension) and the Extension Council (EC) monitor and guide the extension programme of the Institute. The Students of the School of Social Studies actively interact with farmers and other stakeholders during the course work as well as surveys for their research work.
3.6.2 How does the university promote university-neighbourhood network and student engagement, contributing to the holistic development of students and sustained community development?
The students are taken to the field visit to the satellite villages of the Institute located around Delhi. All the students participate in the annual Krishi Mela organized by the Institute.
3.6.3 How does the university promote the participation of the students and faculty in extension activities including participation in NSS, NCC, YRC and other National/International programmes?
The Institute does not have a formal NSS or NCC.
3.6.4 Give details of social surveys, research or extension work, if any, undertaken by the university to ensure social justice and empower the underprivileged and the most vulnerable sections of society?
Many of the M.Sc. and Ph.D. research work carried out my M.Sc. and Ph.D. students of the School of Social Sciences involves social surveys of farmers, rural youth and women. Based on the feedback received, several training programmes are being organized every year to the farmers, rural youth and women.
Further, the feedback is given to the Institute research system for development of technologies for improving the rural livelihood, agricultural production and farm profit. Some of the achievements are:
• Conceptualization of national demonstration project; system of single window delivery of services;
development of seed village and farmer-to-farmer seed exchange system and rural social centre for cooperative societies.
• Identification of stages of need and deliberation in adoption decision process in addition to conventional five stages of awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption.
• Standardization of various psychological scales of measurement including the famous socio-economic status and risk orientation constructs.
• Development of fourteen training modules on managerial skills for enhancing effectiveness of extension professionals and organizations.
• Identification of appropriate extension methods, communication system and media mix for credible dissemination of information and technology. Findings that non-institutional sources are more important at initial stages of adoption, while institutional information sources are more important at later stages of adoption have been highly beneficial for devising extension strategies.
• Development of expert system of extension for strengthening computer-aided information services related to crop management for farmers and other end users.
• Socio-economic assessment of Bt cotton cultivation in India
• Action research on dynamics of gender empowerment; group behaviour and mobilization of farmers and farm women; development and functioning of SHGs; assessment and promotion of ergonomically designed drudgery reducing technologies; adoption of viable income generating farm & non-farm based enterprises; and farming system development.
• Through action research, entrepreneurship development modules were developed for rural youth to enhance the employment and income generation opportunities and usher in social-economic stability and prosperity in rural areas.
• Validation of indigenous technological knowledge was carried out through farmer participatory on- farm experimentation and criteria based ranking technique, which empowered farmers for grassroots experimentation, creativity and valuing local wisdom.
• Through conduction of series of training programmes for master trainers, the Division contributed immensely towards capacity building of extension professionals.
• Researches taken up in the new areas like scientific productivity and creativity; organizational climate;
socio-economic assessment of Tawa and Narmada Sagar dams and modern farm technologies;
evaluation of extension systems; simulation of adoption behaviour; media research; evaluation and impact of development programmes (ATMA, Watershed, NREGA); axiomatic theory building; ICT application for development; rural livelihood security; gender empowerment; risk, perception and adaptation related to climate change; have broadened the horizon of extension research and scaled up the methodologies.
• National extension programme for networking and sharing of strengths in agricultural technologies with state agricultural universities has led to significant impact in wider diffusion of proven technologies and problem solving.
• IARI - Civil organizations partnership based extension has resulted in wider assessment, dissemination and upscaling of viable technologies at a speedy rate.
• IARI - Post office linked extension has proven time and cost-effective mechanism for dissemination of improved seeds and cultivation practices among farmers.
• Cyber extension has led to information accessibility and informed decision making among farmers.
3.6.5 Does the university have a mechanism to track the students’ involvement in various social movements / activities which promote citizenship roles?
The Institute has Alumni association which track the students. IARI alumni have occupied prominent positions both nationally and internationally. Some of the prestigious positions occupied by the alumni include the position of Member, Planning Commission; Director General, ICAR and Secretary, Department of Agricultural Research and Education; Deputy Director General, ICAR; Assistant Director General, ICAR; Chairman, Union Public Service Commission; Chairman, Agricultural Scientists
Recruitment Board; Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India; Director, Indian Agricultural Research Institute; and Vice Chancellors of several State Agricultural Universities/Deemed- to-be universities/central universities. Internationally, IARI alumni have occupied senior positions in the CGIAR Institutions, other foreign R&D organizations and institutions and foreign universities.
List of some IARI alumni who occupied prominent positions in international institutions
• Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, Director General, IRRI
• Dr. R.S. Paroda, DDG, ICARDA, Syria and Chairman, GFAR
• Dr. D. Jha, Research Fellow, IFPRI, Washington, DC
• Dr. Ratan Lal, Professor, Ohio State University, USA
• Dr. N.C. Pant, Director, Commonwealth Institute of Entomology, London
• Dr. B.R. Subbarao, Entomologist, Common Wealth Institute of Entomology, London, UK
• Prof. Ajay Man Singh, Director, National Production Research Institute, University of West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica (WI)
• Dr. M. Malipatil, Agriculture Australia, Australia
• Dr. Z.R. Khan, ICICE, Nairobi
• Dr. M. Prasanna, CIMMYT, Nairobi
• Dr. H.C. Sharma, ICRISAT, Hyderabad
• Dr. Pritam Singh, Specialist of Insect Artificial Diets, New Zealand
• Dr. Ulagaraj, Eminent Entomologist, Florida, USA
• Dr. D. Bastia, Professor, Duke Medical Collage, USA
• Dr. H.K. Jain, DDG, ISNAR, Netherlands
• Dr. R.P. Singh, ICRISAT, Canada
• Dr. R.P. Thakur, ICRISAT, Canada
• Dr. S.D. Singh, ICRISAT, Canada
• Dr. Suresh Pandey, ICRISAT, Canada
• Dr. J.P. Singh, ICRISAT, Kenya
• Dr. M.C. Saxena, ICARDA, Allepo, Syria
3.6.6 Bearing in mind the objectives and expected outcomes of the extension activities organized by the university, how did they complement students’ academic learning experience? Specify the values inculcated and skills learnt.
Most students are exposed to the field problems faced by the farmers during various extension activities, Krishi Mela, study survey, etc. This helps them to understand real-life problems and design research project to address these problems.
3.6.7 How does the university ensure the involvement of the community in its outreach activities and contribute to community development? Give details of the initiatives of the university which have encouraged community participation in its activities.
The research programmes in the social sciences school have been focused on economic and policy research on all issues related to agricultural technologies, and on transfer of the technologies to the farmers and industries. Currently, economic and policy research on technology assessment, public and private investment in agriculture, energy use in agriculture, rural non-farm employment, market reforms and FDI in retail, innovations in credit delivery and farmers access to institutional credit, plant variety protection and impact of changing trade regimes on agricultural exports are the major priority areas of research. The Agricultural
Extension and Technology Transfer programmes have concentrated on the demonstration and evaluation of the technologies and varieties developed by the Institute, and also on developing innovative models for technology transfer. Some of the priority areas include cyber extension, analysis of alternative extension models, constraints in adoption of improved technologies, entrepreneurship development, gender empowerment, and market-led extension. The other initiatives include frontline demonstrations, participatory seed production, training of farmers, farm women and rural youth, and collaboration with various agencies including farmers’ groups, ICAR institutes, SAUs and voluntary organizations, etc. Besides, on-farm testing, farm advisory services, publications, Single Window-Delivery System, Pusa Helpline, Pusa Agricom and Pusa Krishi Vigyan Mela are also of prime importance. These extension programmes resulted in enhancing entrepreneurship among rural youth, capacity building of self-help groups for gender empowerment and developing agricultural entrepreneurs in seed production.
Some examples of the activities which encouraged community participation during this year are given below:
The IARI Post Office Linkage Model designed and validated for effective outreach mechanism for frontline extension system, has been expanded in partnership with Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) in 55 districts of 14 states covering 110 branch offices. The prioritization of IARI technologies for agri-enterprise ventures in participatory mode revealed that farmers are keenly interested in protected cultivation, seed production, floriculture, bio-fertilisers and value addition of IARI technologies for commercial uptake.
The intervention on development of market led extension models/model villages through technology integration resulted in enhancing the productivity of different crops and income of farmers significantly through adoption of IARI technologies. For performance assessment of IARI varieties, a total of 163 demonstrations of wheat, palak, pea and lentil were conducted in these villages during Rabi 2014-15.
Under the National Extension Programme (NEP) in collaboration with selected ICAR institutes and SAUs, IARI varieties and technologies were disseminated through 306 demonstrations were conducted on wheat, mustard, lentil, chickpea, palak, pea, carrot, and brinjal in 15 locations during Rabi 2013-14.
During Kharif 2014, a total of 332 demonstrations of paddy, moong, pigeon pea, bajra, bottle gourd, tomato, chillies and okra covering an area of 103.72 ha were conducted. Under IARI-Voluntary organizations collaborative program (32 VO), a total of 1461 demonstrations covering an area of 432 hectares of IARI varieties were conducted in 26 locations. The Annual Pusa Krishi Vigyan Mela of the Institute was organized during March 10-12, 2015 on the theme “IARI Technologies for Inclusive Growth”.
Around 1 lakh visitors from different parts of the country including farmers, farm women, extension personnel, entrepreneurs, students, etc., visited the mela.
The Agricultural Technology Information Centre (ATIC) is effectively providing products, advisory services, technologies and information to the farmers and other stakeholders through a single window delivery system. The farmers are also given farm advise through Pusa helpline (011-25841670, 25846233, 25841039 and 25806300), Pusa Agricom (1800-11-8989), exhibitions, farm literatures and letters. A second level of kisan call centre (1800-180-1581) has also been established at ATIC to provide solutions to the problems/
queries of farmers of Delhi state. Demonstrations were also conducted in crop cafeteria, medicinal garden, nutrition garden and fruit orchard for showcasing the IARI technologies to the farmers.
The Institute’s KVK maintained to play a catalytic role in enhancing farm profitability, combating the problem of unemployment/underemployment and improving income of farmers, rural women and youth.
A total of 42 on-farm trials on different field/farm related aspects including animal husbandry were conducted during Kharif 2014. A total of 354 FLDs covering an area of 123.5ha on oilseeds, pulses, cereals and vegetable crops were conducted during Rabi 2013-14 and Kharif 2014 for dissemination of location specific crop technologies in the area. A total of 112 trainings were organized for target groups which benefitted 1518 male and 723 female participants. Extension initiatives such as field days, women in agriculture day, field visits, farm-advisory services, exhibitions, soil and water testing and publication of quarterly newsletters were also undertaken.
3.6.8 Give details of awards received by the institution for extension activities and/contributions to social/community development during the last four years.
The details are provided in the “Evaluation Report of the Departments”.