Agricultural Knowledge Information System (AKIS) in Cooch Behar District of West Bengal: the Actors and their Inter-linkage with Respect to Agricultural Knowledge and Information Communication

Author: Golam Torab Ali, Subhrajyoti Panda and P.K. Pal

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Abstract

Agricultural Knowledge Information System (AKIS) is a network of actors in a platform of innovation who are complementary to each other and make contributions towards innovation. The effectiveness and success of an AKIS depends upon the meaningful participation of these actors in this system, the way they are linked with this system and the nature of relationship created by their linkage. The study was undertaken in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal, India to explore the actors involved in generation and dissemination of agricultural knowledge and information and inter-linkage among them. Linkage strength measures the quantitative achievement of an actor on total number of dimensions of linkage established in an AKIS, whether, linkage diversity lights on the qualitative expansion of linkage built by an actor over all other actors playing in that AKIS. There are very few studies conducted on AKIS and it was great challenge for the investigator to mobilize the officials to col

Keywords

AKIS, Actors, Linkage Diversity, Linkage Strength, Cooch Behar

Conclusion

Cooch Behar, a northern district in the state of West Bengal in India is having the actors in the broad bands of public, private, autonomous, individual and nongovernment organisations in its AKIS platform and are interlinked satisfactorily to produce a pluralistic system of extension. Among the five broad dimensions of linkage as policy and administrative dimension, research dimension, extension dimension, resource dimension and service dimension, the actors are interlinked with each other although not with every dimensions. The linkage diversity (average value=0.80 for the district), which tells about the density of the linkage matrix reflects that the linkage network is substantially dense among the AKIS actors in the district, although the strength of linkage is rather weak (average strength value = 0.183 for the district). The study can be conducted to find out the linkages between different state organisations for delivery of agricultural information to the farm

References

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How to cite this article

Ali, G.T., Panda, S. and Pal, P.K. (2021). Agricultural Knowledge Information System (AKIS) in Cooch Behar District of West Bengal: the Actors and their Inter-linkage with Respect to Agricultural Knowledge and Information Communication. Biological Forum