Extension and Advisory Services for Climate-resilient Agriculture in India: A Critical Narrative Review of Institutional Models and Evidence

Abstract

Indian agriculture remains predominantly rain-fed and smallholder in character, exposing a large share of the farming population to intensifying temperature, rainfall and extreme-event risk. Extension and advisory services are widely presented as the principal mechanism through which climate science, adaptive technologies and risk-management practices reach farm households, yet the institutional landscape delivering this function in India is unusually fragmented, spanning a pluralistic public extension system, agrometeorological advisory services, technology demonstration programmes anchored in Krishi Vigyan Kendras, and a rapidly expanding set of digital and non-governmental delivery channels. This review synthesises and critically evaluates the peer-reviewed evidence on how these advisory mechanisms function, interact and perform in supporting climate-resilient agriculture in India. Rather than cataloguing individual studies, the review develops an integrated thematic synthesis addressing the historical evolution of extension architecture, the operation and reach of agrometeorological advisory services, the performance of digital and information and communication technology-mediated extension, the contribution of Krishi Vigyan Kendra-based technology demonstration under the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture programme, the behavioural and socio-economic determinants of advisory uptake, and the persistence of gendered and other inequities in access. Across these themes, the evidence indicates that advisory exposure is consistently associated with measurable gains in adoption, yield stability or income, but that the underlying evidence base is dominated by cross-sectional, self-reported and geographically concentrated studies, with credible counterfactual designs remaining comparatively rare. Institutional coordination across the parallel delivery mechanisms is weakly documented, and evidence specifically addressing women farmers, tenant cultivators and the most climate-vulnerable districts remains thin relative to the scale of the underlying policy investment. The review identifies methodological and substantive research priorities, including longitudinal and quasi-experimental evaluation of advisory convergence models, and offers a measured assessment of what the existing evidence can and cannot support regarding the capacity of advisory services to underpin climate resilience at scale.