Divulging Magnitude of Perceptual Levels of Participants in National Dairy Mela (Fair) of India: A Farmers’ Perspective

A Likert-type perception scale was developed with 20 statements with Cronbach's alpha value of reliability being 0.85. The primary data were collected from 60 randomly selected farmers out of total 225 participants from Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi, states of India, during the 3 days event of Mela from February 25^th to 27^th, 2015. The findings indicate that the average monthly income per household of the participants was thrice than at all-India level average of monthly income per agricultural household. A total of 85% of the respondents had expressed their view that ‘the scorecard pro forma should be distributed among the farmers before the competition’ in order to bring more transparency in the judgment procedure. The results indicated that 43 (71.67%) respondents were having moderate to high perceptual level towards National Dairy Mela organised by ICAR-NDRI, India, which indicated respondents were roughly satisfied with the Mela. Only 20% were in favour of the statement ‘the decision of the Judges was biased and unjust’ but this doubt must be addressed on the priority basis. Variables such as herd size and milk production were highly associated with the perception level as the Pearson chi-square value for the test was highly significant. Apart from that annual family income, awards received by the participants, social participation, mass media exposure and extension contact parameters were also found to be associated with the perception level at 1% level of significance.