Clientele Satisfaction of Extension Services Provided by KVKs of Meghalaya
Sao Evalwell Dkhar *
School of Social Sciences, College of Post Graduate Studies, Central Agricultural University (Imphal), Umiam, Meghalaya, India.
Loukham Devarani
School of Social Sciences, College of Post Graduate Studies, Central Agricultural University (Imphal), Umiam, Meghalaya, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) are very important organisations for promoting agricultural development at the district level through the various trainings and other development programmes they offer. One way of knowing how effective these KVKs are in catalysing district agricultural development is to study the clienteles’ satisfaction of the farmers involved with those KVKs. In this study, 150 farmers across five districts of Meghalaya were interviewed to study the clienteles’ satisfaction, it was found that the client farmers of the KVKs were highly satisfied with the outputs and services of the KVKs since the overall clienteles’ satisfaction index was found to be 76.49. The farmers however did express a few problems such as non-timely delivery of relevant inputs/services, lack of innovative need based technologies and the lack of relevant market information. There should be more initiatives from the KVKs to provide regular market information to the farmers through the use of ICTs. Development programmes should be delivered timely so that farmers can plan their farming activities accordingly and more effort should be given by the KVKs to increase participation of farmers in programme planning and execution to help develop innovative need based solutions in accordance to the farmers’ problems.
Keywords: KVK, clienteles’ satisfaction, agricultural organisations.