Rural Agriculture Work Experience Programme in Agriculture College: A Study in Tarai Region of Uttarakhand

Abstract

Agricultural education is evolving in a very rapid manner to meet the needs of the society. RAWE (Rural Agriculture Work Experience) was introduced in the Agricultural Universities mainly to bring overall improvement in quality of life of rural families. This programme is offered in final year of the B.Sc. (Agri) degree programme which includes training, demonstration, observation, practice and participation in purposeful activities and to orient agricultural graduates for participation in various rural developmental programme. This pioneer study about RAWE was undertaken to study the perception of RAWE programme by the students and to know the constraints of students for effective conduct of RAWE. The data was collected from 40 students of College of Agriculture, GBPUA&T, Pantnagar by using semi-structured interview schedule. The findings revealed that majority of the students belonged to urban background. More than half per cent of students had parents with Intermediate level followed by Graduate level and Post Graduate level. Some of the students belong to families with annual income of over 2 lakh/annum (high category). At GBPUA&T, Pantnagar, majority had medium OGPA. Cent Per cent students were using mobile phone followed by television. A great majority of students read newspaper followed by magazine. It can be observed that majority of the students were fully agreed that RAWE programme had helped them to get familiar with rural people followed by RAWE had helped them to understand village situations. The Perception of the students regarding extent of achievement of RAWE is  to understand rural institutions, socio economic conditions of farmers, adoption patterns and adoption gaps, farmers’ problems, farming systems and farming, improvement in diagnostic skills, provided practical training in crop production, improved communication skills, improved leadership qualities, provided opportunity to work with various Agri based institutions, developed confidence and professional competence to solve field problems. The suggestions for improvement of RAWE by students are the Time for each module in RAWE to be increased, stipend should be increased, University should increase its credibility and accessibility among farmers.