उद्यमिता विकास में केवीके की भूमिका
Indian agriculture has witnessed phenomenal growth during last four decades with manifold increase in production of major commodities like food grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs and fish. As a result, the per capita availability of important food items has increased despite of increasing population. The ratio of agricultural land to agricultural population has shrunk to 0.3 ha per person in India as compared to 11.0 ha per person in developed countries.
The resources are getting marginalized and there is tremendous pressure on natural resources with divergence of agricultural land and water towards industrial, urban and non-agriculture sector. Food security is one of the major concerns. It is estimated that India’s population during the last three and half decades have increased from 551 million to 1122 million, which implied that the country had to feed double the population.
Food security is attached to national sovereignty and thus, agriculture sector has to gain strength and vision to uphold the national concern. Knowledge and technology empowerment of farmers is the key to achieve the food security.
Krishi Vigyan Kendras are the front line extension centers in the country and plays an important role in faster dissemination of latest technologies for transforming national agriculture system. Apart, KVKs impart need-based and skill oriented trainings to improve the economic status of farmers especially rural youth and farm women.
Encouraging them by providing more opportunities to earn income has proved to be a significant contribution to the achievement of development outcomes. KVK provides training not only in agriculture and allied sectors but also in other areas of income-generating activities that increases the income of farm families.
Capacity development of farmers and extension personnel to update their knowledge and skills in modern agricultural technologies and enterprises is key for successful entrepreneurship development. KVK is the only institution at the district level in India for technological backstopping in agriculture and allied sectors. All KVKs are envisaged to reduce the time lag between generation of technology at the research institution and its application to the location specific farmer fields for increasing production, productivity and net farm income on a sustained basis.
India presently has the largest youth population of 356 million between age group of 10-24 years in the world and almost half of this population (nearly 200 million) live in the rural areas.
Realizing the importance of rural youth in agricultural development especially from the point of view of livelihood security and regular income flow, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research through its Agricultural Extension Division is implementing many flagship programmes like ARYA, Skill trainings, development of farmer producer organizations etc. with emphasis on entrepreneurship development.
KVKs are developing farmer entrepreneurs to help in technology transfer through farmer-farmer extension apart helping rural youth in gaining self employment. The well established KVK farms and KVK adopted villages across the country could be used as Agro tourism sites for income generation as well as for demonstrating technologies for further experiential learning among farmers.
KVKs can tap funds available from various government schemes/NABARD /Agricultural Skill Council of India for skill & entrepreneurship development in rural areas as well as generate a part of their resources from the sale of planting materials and other produce from their farms, funding relationship with NGOs, and national and international organizations.
Lot more needs to be done to achieve the convergence between ATMA and KVK (as envisaged under the joint circular) operational. There might be some success stories, wherein, the proposed changes like quarterly joint meetings, earmarking of funds to KVKs, visit of ATMA staff to the cluster villages of KVKs and ATMA sponsorship for Technology Weeks (being organized by KVKs) are achieved successfully, which may be shared for wider replication in other districts.
A project entitled “Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture (ARYA)” is operational since 2015-16 in 25 States through Krishi Vigyan Kendras and one district from each State is participating.
The aim of the project is to attract and empower the rural youth to take up various agricultural and allied sector enterprises for sustainable income and gainful employment in the selected districts. Under the project, rural youth are identified and oriented towards entrepreneurial skill development and establishment of micro-enterprise units in the areas like apiary, mushroom, seed processing, poultry, dairy, piggery, goatry, carp-hatchery, vermi-compost etc with objectives
- To attract and empower the Youth in Rural Areas to take up various Agriculture, allied and service sector enterprises for sustainable income and gainful employment in selected districts.
- To enable the Farm Youth to establish network groups to take up resource and capital intensive activities like processing, value addition and marketing.
- To demonstrate functional linkage with different institutions and stakeholders for convergence of opportunities available under various schemes/program for sustainable development of youth.
To create interest and confidence among rural youth in agriculture, there is need to make agriculture more profitable. Retaining youth in agriculture and making agriculture more profitable are thus, big challenges. There is a continuous increase in migration of rural youth to urban areas. On the other hand, small holdings are on the rise which possesses challenge to food security for increasing population.
KVKs are putting emphasis on entrepreneurship development in sectors like mushroom cultivation, poultry, lac cultivation pig farming, bee keeping, fishery, goat farming, broiler duck farming, value addition. nursery management etc. and more than 5000 entrepreneurs have been successfully incubated in various sectors after capacity building and technical backstopping.
Initiatives on skill development and entrepreneurship across the country have been highly fragmented and constrained by poor knowledge and limited skill-sets of on-ground community service providers reflecting inadequate capacity. A vast majority of rural producers are unable to transition to high-value commodities.
The skilling landscape in India has undergone massive change in the past five years with revised strategies and models such as the creation of a separate Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. In addition, schemes of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) for skilling India have been rolled out.
The National Rural Livelihood Programme (NRLM) provides significant support to the institutional building of community institutions in rural/ tribal areas, while the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) as a subcomponent of NRLM focuses on capacity building of rural women concentrating on entrepreneurship development. KVKs have been playing a significant role directly or indirectly in this skill oriented programmes of various agencies. National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) was set-up as a public–private partnership to stimulate private sector participation in the Indian skill development sector.
Agriculture skill council of India also works towards capacity building by bridging gaps and upgrading skills of farmers, wage workers, self-employed & extension workers engaged in organized / unorganized segments of Agriculture & Allied Sectors. Skill Training of Rural Youth (STRY) is aimed at imparting skill-based training to rural youth on agri-based vocational areas in agriculture & allied areas to promote employment of rural areas and for creation of skilled manpower to perform farm and non-farm operations.
KVKs across the country have been engaged to impart skill trainings on various agri and allied sectors under ASCI. Overall more than 730 training partners and 510 industry partners are associated with ASCI which imparted skill trainings to more than 1335000 farmers in various farm and non-farm sectors. Majority of these trainees are pursuing self entrepreneurships for livelihood after successful completion of the qualification pack.
The concept of FPOs has been envisaged to ascertain that the farmers should think like an entrepreneur. In the past 40 years, the share of smallholder and landless farmers has surged to around 86 per cent, underscoring the need for better bargaining power through collectivization and the concept of FPOs was born. Several schemes such as the Formation and promotion of 10000 FPOs’ were launched by the government to transform the precarious livelihoods of the smallholder farmers. FPOs can be instrumental in providing a platform for farmers to congregate, exchange knowledge, and collaborate on farming.
According to publicly available sources, there are around 15,000 FPOs registered, which are promoted by various government and non-governmental entities across India including KVKs. The successful ones are exhibiting traits that are labelled as ‘entrepreneurial thinking’ which involves being open to new ideas, experimenting with new processes, and trying out new products. This can be achieved only by proper technical backstopping and capacity building where KVKs are playing important role and making a positive impact on the livelihoods of farming community.