Profile of KVK Trainees in Tamil Nadu

Krishi Vigyan Kendra is a Government of India funded Indian Council of Agricultural Research Project implemented at district level for enhancing the productivity and livelihood through scientific extension works. Realising the importance of technology dissemination in the changing scenario of food and nutritional security, ICAR intervened in a big way. All the first line extension projects were merged and brought under single umbrella of KVK system. The major emphasis was to enhance the production and productivity as well as to generate household income and employment of farming community. KVK trains the farmers to update their knowledge and skills in modern agricultural technologies and assessing the profile of KVK trainees is of paramount importance with the help of schedule developed specially for the purpose and hence the present article discuss their profile of KVK trainees.


INTRODUCTION
Among the developing countries, India had an early lead in the matter of training. In an agricultural country like India, farmers training is a laborious task and requires a heavy investment in training infrastructure to reach most of the farmers on a regular basis. The ICAR has established a major programme of krishi vigyan kendra or farm science centre as innovative institution for vocational training for farmers and field level extension functionaries. It should be recognized that agriculture varies from one area to another, even from one field to another. Training programme therefore, should be fitted to the local conditions. The KVKs are composite training institutions. They deal with all agricultural subjects including home science. The experiences support that with the limited subject matter specialists / scientists provided in these kendras, the massive demand for training the farmers and farm women are not being met. Both for quality as well as quantity it has been emphasized to link each discipline of the KVK to its respective discipline of the department of host institution either SAUs or the ICAR research institutes.
It is a fact that farmers are well experienced in their area of work and know their problems well. They should be handled by expert group of personnel drawn from diverse fields. It has also been suggested to use experienced subject matter specialists / scientists of the allied institutions as resource persons wherever necessary. The association of the progressive farmers is also recommended for this purpose, so that the KVK programmes could have multiplier effect. It is necessary to know as to how far these ideas have been incorporated in the day to day working of the KVKs. Based on the above it is also necessary to throw some light on the training management pattern in KVKs in order to formulate training strategies because "training is an intellectual investment".
Large number of training programmes were imparted for the benefit of farmers every year with enormous expenditure, despite the training management pattern and their impact were considered with least interest.
Past research studies conducted on training pertaining to the impact of the training programmes on the use of extension methods, follow-up, knowledge gained by farmers, individual improvement due to training and organizational performance.
All those studies were sporadic attempts concerning specific areas. Even these attempts have not been made in respect of KVKs except by two committees namely High Level Evaluation Committee (1980) and FAO / ICAR Consultancy Mission on KVKs (1987) who have put forth their findings and recommendations. Hence, this research is focused on assessing the profile of KVK trainees.
Based on the above views and need for the critical analysis on the training management pattern in KVKs, a pioneering attempt was made to understand the functioning and assessing the profile of KVK trainees in Tamilnadu with the following specific objective. 1) To assess the profile of KVK trainees

Locale of the study
Tamilnadu state was purposively selected for the study as the researcher belongs to the same state.

Trainees sample
All the training activities have been focused on the trainees. In order to give equal representation to TNAU, TANUVAS and NGO's, it was decided to select one KVK from each.
Accordingly KVK-Virudhunagar (TNAU), KVK-Kancheepuram (TANUVAS) and KVK-Theni (NGO) were selected. It was decided to cover 60 trainees as a sample and hence 20 trainees from each KVK who had participated in a structured training programme with the duration of 3 days and above were selected, and is presented in table 3. Finding and discussion Trainees are also important key individuals in the training process, it is required to have a clear understanding of their profile also. Hence, the profile of trainees was studied on the characteristics namely age, sex, training undergone, type of training programme attended, training needs, perception about the training programme, utilization of training in back home situation and satisfaction from the training. The results have been discussed in this section.

Age
It was taken as the chronological age of the trainees. Based on that, trainees were classified into young, middle and old age categories. The distribution of trainees under these categories is shown in table 1. Morethan half of the trainees were young followed by middle aged category. A small per cent of trainees were in the age category of more than 51 and above. The distribution of trainees according to their age showed that 96.67 per cent were young to middle age. This may be due to the fact that majority programmes have been focused towards youth for self employment / income generation.

Sex
The trainees were grouped as per their sex and the data is presented in table 2. It was found that 58.33 per cent of male trainees who had participated above 3 days training programme was more compared to female (41.67 per cent). The participation of women was low due to long duration on campus training programmes as it is difficult for them to spare time to attend and stay in the campus and mostly they attended home science programme.

Training undergone
The trainees exposure towards number of trainings was considered and presented in the table 3. Majority (75.00 per cent) of the trainees attended only one training followed by 15.00 per cent two and 10.00 per cent more than three trainings.

Type of training programme attended
The trainees participation in the subject matter areas and as per the duration of the training course was considered and presented in table 4. The results indicate in the table 51 that 70.00 per cent of trainees attended one day training programmes in crop production followed by 66.66 per cent in horticulture (vegetable production). The per cent of trainees who attended one day training programmes in animal husbandary and home science was equal i.e. 30.00 per cent. The trainees who attended 3-5 days training programmes was found to be less i.e. 16.66 per cent in crop production and home science and only 3.33 per cent in horticulture (vegetable production). Long duration training was attended by four trainees in crop production area.
Irrespective of the subjects matter of the training, one day training was attended by more number of trainees which indicates their preferences towards such programmes, as it could be possible for them to back home on the same day and attend their field activities from next day.

Training needs of trainees
Identification of training need is an important indicator of training management pattern. The responses of trainees on the training needs are presented in table 5. Majority of the trainees (78.34 per cent) expressed their need for training as observed from this table.

Area of training needed
The area of training in which trainees expressed their need was assessed by specifying the field of the subject and presented in the table 6. The table 6 reveals that 40.00 per cent trainees expressed their training need in horticulture and vegetable production followed by 36.66 per cent and 28.33 per cent in income generating activities and home science / food processing respectively. Very less per cent of trainees need training in animal husbandry and crop production i.e. 13.33 per cent and 8.33 per cent respectively. Training on vegetable production was most preferred area as observed. In the recent days importance placed on vegetable consumption has been in increasing trend. Also observed for vegetables is also more in the neighbouring southern status. Marketing is not a problem and hence such preference. During off season, the farmers wants to engage in activities which brings substantial income for their family.
Processing and preservation of fruits and vegetables is gaining importance as its add value to the products. Also it could be possible to establish such units at their home level. Hence, such an out come. Duration of the training programme needed by the trainees The trainees willingness as per the duration of training was measured and data is presented in the table 7. Long duration on campus training was preferred by majority of the trainees (73.33 per cent) followed by 23.33 per cent need short duration on campus training programmes.
Only two trainees preferred one day off campus programmes. Any training programme to be purposeful and effective must be tailored to suit the needs of the trainees. Before a training programme is designed, it is imperative to assess the training needs. The perusal of data in table  5 shows almost 80.00 per cent of trainees indicated their need for training. Regarding the areas, horticulture and vegetable production followed by income generating activities was exposed. To gain indepth knowledge they want long duration training for their development.

Perception about the training programme
Trainees perception about the training programme indicates whether the subject matter specialists had organized the programme effectively or not. It was studied on three components namely training methods, boarding and lodging facilities and reading material supplied during the training. The results are discussed in table 8 to 11. Training methods Responses of trainees perception on the training methods were recorded and presented in table 8. It is disclosed from the table that extension talk (48.30 per cent), skill demonstration (43.33 per cent), group discussion (25.00 per cent) and exercise (8.33 per cent) were the training methods in the order of preference of the trainees. Nine training programmes of 3 to 5 days duration, one from each KVK was observed during the data collection. Trainees of these programmes were interviewed and their responses were inferred. Perception about training programme was studied under various aspects like training methods, boarding and lodging facilities, relevancy of reading material. It was indicated by most of the trainees that extension talk as the best training method which helped in improving their knowledge followed by skill demonstration for skill improvement. Perception about reading material supplied during training programme The trainees perception on relevancy of reading material was measured on three point continuum and data is presented in table 9.  It could be generalized that the boarding facilities were rated from good to very good by 61.66 per cent of the trainees. However, trainees on poor food was also noticed. It is not hard to over come this response, may be followed accordingly. Perception about lodging facilities provided to the trainees Perception on lodging facilities was measured on a three point continuum namely very good, good and poor and trainees were grouped according to their frequency and percentage and data is presented in table 11. Poor lodging facilities was expressed by 45.00 per cent of the trainees followed by good (41.66 per cent) and very good (13.34 per cent). Boarding facilities was relatively better than lodging. In this report, insufficient lodging facilities was observed earlier. This response reflect the same.

CONCLUSION
Nearly 50.00 per cent of trainees were in the age category of 35 years and most of the trainees (58.33 per cent) who participated in the training programme observed under study were male. Maximum trainees (75.00 per cent) had undergone only one training organized by KVKs and majority of trainees (70.00 per cent) had attended only one day training in crop production.
Training needs of almost 78.00 per cent of trainees had been assessed by KVKsubject matter specialists. More trainees (40.00 per cent) need training in horticulture / vegetable production followed by income generating activities. Most of trainees (73.33 per cent) preferred the long duration on campus training programme.
Nearly 48.00 per cent of trainees found extension talk as the best training method which helped in improving their knowledge.Reading material supplied during training was found to be fairly relevant by nearly 51.00 per cent of trainees. Boarding facilities were found poor by nearly 38.00 per cent of trainees.
A look into the study of the training programme, it is heartening to note that the trainees had shown an overall satisfaction and high regard for the KVK training, the subject matter specialists, the facilities etc.