Constraints Faced by the Subject Matter Specialist of Selected Krishi Vigyan Kendras of Northern India

KVKs are playing an important role in the development of agriculture. Functioning of KVKs can further improve if the problems of SMSs would be properly addressed. Hence present study was conducted in the 20 KVKs of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, comprising of 97 SMSs. Questionnaire was prepared consisted of structured as well as open ended questions and dichotomous response was obtained. Data revealed that most of the respondents were male (63.9%), in middle category of age (49.5%), from Home Science discipline (18.6%), residing between 1 to 53 km distance (74.2%). life members of professional societies (81.4%), having doctorate education (63.9%), married (95.9%), having post graduate (58.1%) and serving spouse (76.3), rural background (57.7%), having nuclear families (51.6%), family occupation service (69.1%) and service experience of 1–11 years (55.0%). SMSs working in KVKs faced constraints which could be categorized in six major categories viz. technological constraints, administrative constraints, socio-economic constraints in relation to farmers, input/other material constraints, personal and other constraints. Whereas less posts of supporting staff, delay in recruitment of vacant posts, lack of incentive for working under hard conditions, too much reporting work, rivalries in the villages, labour shortage at farmer level, price fluctuations in crops other than paddy and wheat and untimely supply of various inputs/budget were the widely spread constraints as expressed by more than 70 per cent of the respondents. However lack of location specific technologies (69.1%), too much reporting work (85.6%), price fluctuations in crops other than paddy and wheat (95.9%), untimely supply of various inputs or budget (80.4%), lack of freedom to disagree with decisions taken by superiors (52.6%) and coterminus nature of the job in Himachal Pradesh (3.1%) were the main constraints in each category respectively. Among the suggestions taken from SMSs, keeping in view the manpower and facilities workload (due to mandated and other SAUs assignments) of KVKs should be critically balanced otherwise time availability for mandated activities will be badly affected, overlapping of activities of KVKs with that of line departments should be removed and KVKs should have freedom to be focussed primarily on the job for which they were created were considered as most relevant.