Satisfaction Levels of Farmers in Dhemaji Hut-The Atmanirbhar Dhemaji

Abstract

Kisan Mela (Farmers’ Fair) is an organized educational activity for involving and educating farmers by bringing together the farmers, scientists, extension workers, input agencies, developmental departments and non-governmental agencies on agriculture and allied aspects at a Research Station or an agriculturally important educational centre or a public field of convenience. These are being organized from time to time by different agricultural institutes throughout the year to create awareness among the farmers and farm women about new technologies in agricultural and allied subjects developed by researchers from central and state agricultural and allied research centres, state agricultural universities and some private sector institutions. The present study was conducted in the Dhemaji Hut- The Atmanirbhar Dhemaji, a Kisan mela cum exhibition programme, organized by the Dhemaji district administration, Assam in collaboration with Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Dhemaji, Assam Agricultural University, Simen Chapori, Assam on 11th to 13th January 2024. Two hundred forty respondents were selected randomly and interviewed personally with the help of pre-tested, semi-structured interview schedule. They were interviewed to know about their personal details, their satisfaction level with the Kisan mela, their views on different components of the event, any constraints they faced during the mela. The data recorded were analyzed using frequency and percentage. The findings revealed that majority of farmers and farm women were satisfied about the location of the venue (1st), the behavior of different mela organizing persons (2nd) and the timing of the event (3rd). Among the constraints perceived by the respondents, 38.33% found no constraint in any form while 37.50% reported ‘lack of sanitary facility’ as the major constraint in the mela. With sufficient numbers of toilets and proper arrangement for regular cleaning of the same during mela period in future may be the solution to such problem. Some other constraints recorded from farmers’ perspectives were non-availability of quality seeds, high price of products/ seeds, disturbance in routine work in agriculture fields, cost of transportation and provision for meals etc. It can be concluded that although the Kisan melas play a very effective role in the dissemination of information on agriculture and allied subjects, they must be updated each year based on the feedback received to catch more attention from the farmers and make it more effective.