Marketing opportunities for future extension services based on perception of extension researchers and service providers towards ICTS

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are providing rural and agricultural stakeholders with the basic building blocks for improving communication, coordinating activities, gaining access to markets, improving trade, accessing information, facilitating the work of rural professionals (health care, etc.), and removing so much of the isolation that characterizes rural communities in the developing world. The effective deployment of such activities is very much dependent on the competency of the extension researchers and the extension service providers. This paper summarizes the results of a study on the perception of extension researchers and extension service providers towards the use of ICT sources in India. It studies the perceived constraints in the use of ICTs in extension service and various possibilities for the powerful deployment of ICTs in extension service particularly by the use of AGMARKNET (Agricultural and Marketing Information System Network) portal which has immense possibilities in the present agricultural context of India. AGMARKNET program plays a significant role for ushering in "market-led agricultural extension" in India which is highly scalable, planned through bottom-up process, and implemented through active involvement and collaboration of Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) in India. This faster development of the digital facilities in rural areas of India facilitates rural prosperity, rural empowerment, and a warehousing of all the database of the farmers which is a step towards digital inclusion to foster rural development and effective extension services for the betterment of the farming community. The paper concludes that a much broader and more carefully differentiated, approach to extension is required through the use of appropriate ICT tools.