Usefulness of Mobile Phone Based Agro-advisories in Manipur, North Eastern India

Abstract

Mobile phones are the devices that can help to improve the livelihoods of rural people by getting much needed timely information to their fingertips at potentially low cost. Manipur is one of the North-Eastern states of India, covering an area of 22,327 sq km which nearly accounts for 0.7 per cent of the total land surface of India. The study was conducted in Bishnupur, Thoubal, Kakching, Imphal East and Imphal West districts of Manipur with 110 randomly selected respondents. It was observed that majority of the respondents (70.91%) perceived that mobile based agro-advisories were responsive in terms of timeliness of the messages and 73.64 per cent mentioned that the messages were highly relevant. In terms of the comprehension of massages, 98.18 per cent of respondents stated that massages were easy to understand, while 59.18 per cent observed that the messages were less technical and 83.64 per cent mentioned that the messages were in terms of message treatment and content adequacy. Mobile phone based agro-advisories was said to be more useful for weather forecasting by 83.64 per cent; followed by 82.73 per cent for plant protection measures; 80.91 per cent indicated that mobile advisories improved their knowledge about agriculture and allied sector as well as 80.00 per cent for fish health management. Majority of the respondents, that is, 68.18% had positive perception about mobile based agro- advisories, followed by 4.55 per cent with negative perception for the same services. Moreover, the inclusion of need based training component and convergence with different extension functionaries helped to develop an ICT based Stakeholder Interface in the field of agriculture in the region. This alternate extension system also helped to develop better rapport with the farmers and can be replicated in other hilly region of the world.