CL Laxmipathi Gowda, V Ramanatha Rao, SV Raghuram Shetty, MJ Vasudeva Rao,
P Parthasarathy Rao, DM Hegde, SA Angadi, and Paul Quek
The authors are all Global Experts with Global Research for Development Support Ventures (GRSV), with the first four being the co-founders of GRSV. The authors would like to acknowledge a deep debt to Dr Arun Balamatti for providing the impetus for this article with his blurb (see Reference to it in the first paragraph); they would also like to acknowledge the editorial guidance and help received from Dr DR Mohan Raj.
This brief note is a follow-up to the Blog titled, “The burden of being a KVK” (https://www.aesanetwork.org/blog-182-the-burden-of-being-a-kvk/#:~:text=Although%20structurally%20the%20KVKs%20are,development%20departments%2C%20and%20the%20media)by Dr Arun Balamatti, who worked as the Head of one of the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) in India. It discusses how India can maximize the benefits to be derived from the KVKs.
The Initial and Transitory Roles of KVKs
Set up as a project by the Government of India’s Planning Commission in 1974, the KVKs will be celebrating their Golden Jubilee in 2024. There are 732 KVKs at present in the country (almost one KVK per district). The KVKs were introduced as vocational training centres for agriculture and allied activities, and they were fully funded by the Government of India through the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The KVKs were initially meant to be training centres for Extension personnel; subsequently, their mandate was extended to the training of farmers (including women and youth) on the skills and technologies required for different agricultural activities.
A major challenge for agricultural research and development is that agronomic practices are location specific, and the need to adapt the technologies to specific, but diverse, agro-climatic zones. Hence, the KVKs were mandated to undertake technology assessment and refinement and organize “frontline” demonstrations to validate the location specificity of new technologies; consequently, skill development became a low priority for the KVKs. However, the metamorphosis of the KVKs from being skill-training centres to becoming technology assessment centres does not find any documentation in the public domain. Thus, despite their involvement in agricultural development with a pivotal mediatory role between the scientists and farmers, the KVKs have not been given the identity, recognition, and dignity that they deserve.
The KVKs are expected to be a bridge between the R&D institutions and the farmer in the lab-to-land continuum. For this role to happen, the KVKs need to be accepted as partners by both the research institutes and the extension agencies, but there is no formal mechanism or structure at present to facilitate this role. Neither the state agricultural universities (SAUs) nor the ICAR institutes consider the technology assessments carried out by KVKs as research, and they do not involve the KVKs in their applied research deliberations. On the other hand, the KVKs are overburdened with implementing various state and central government schemes, including campaigns, workshops, and training events, thereby jeopardizing their main role.
The KVKs are hosted by different institutions such as SAUs (69%), NGOs (14%), ICAR institutes (9%), and other state development agencies (5%). Hence, their roles and responsibilities differ, and their impacts are also influenced by the hosting institutions. The Agricultural Technology Application and Research Institute (ATARI), the zonal coordinating unit of the ICAR, seems helpless when the KVKs become subservient to different host institutes. ATARIs are also understaffed and are overloaded with administrative roles, thus compromising on their crucial technical support to the KVKs, especially in capacity building and in updating the KVK staff on recent developments.
What Ails the Current KVK System
Despite the lofty goals and objectives for which the KVKs were established, there are many issues as to why KVKs are not able to deliver the expected impact. They can be summarized as follows:
- As already stated, the KVK’s roles and responsibilities often get distracted by the host institutions such as SAUs, ICAR Institutes, and NGOs, and hence the KVK-deliverables and impact are influenced by the host institutions.
- KVKs are being compelled to organize events to popularize the various central and state government schemes, by mobilizing groups of farmers, tasks that the KVKs were not intended to perform.
- The KVK staff are drawn by SAUs for teaching and research, thus ignoring the main purpose of the KVKs, although this can be seen as an opportunity for the KVK staff to update themselves.
- In many instances, KVKs are understaffed, with posts lying vacant for a long time, leading to a heavy load on the existing staff.
- KVKs are being considered as Extension agencies, while their role was restricted specifically to “frontline” Extension. There are a maximum of 6 Subject Matter Specialists in each of the KVKs. Once they are drawn into mainstream Extension work by the hosting institutions, they are quite likely to compromise on their core disciplinary activity; a small team is anyway highly inadequate if they are to undertake the job of Extension workers.
- There is reduced morale and a lack of career-growth opportunities for KVK staff. KVKs are seen as places not meant for the meritorious; they are treated as ‘temporary parking places’ until one gets employed either by the SAUs or the ICAR institutes.
- Overall, the KVKs lack the basic ingredients for good performance, such as pride in their job performance, motivation, professional commitment, and zeal for career development.
Looking Ahead
Considerable planning and resources have gone into establishing and running the KVKs. Despite the constraints listed above, several KVKs have delivered appreciable service to the farming community, and they have brought credit to the hosting institutions and the ICAR. Therefore, we cannot just wish them away and dismantle them. What is needed is urgent attention to the KVK system; remedial measures need to be put in place to strengthen the KVKs so that they can further enhance the roles and responsibilities for which they were established.
A comprehensive and more thorough analysis would be required to provide specific remedial measures. But, in the interim, we tag the following issues that need to be considered in improving the performance of KVKs (Some of these also find a place in Dr Balamatti’s blog cited earlier, and what we highlight here can be read as an endorsement of his suggestions):
- The primarily issue is the institutional identity of KVKs in the R&D system: the KVKs, irrespective of their host institutions, must be treated on par with the ICAR institutes.
- The technology assessment role of the KVKs must be revisited given their positioning in the national R&D structure.
- Policymakers should recognize and support the all-important role of assessing the location-specificity of agricultural technologies. KVKs should devote themselves exclusively to assessing the appropriate technologies developed by researchers from the public, private, and NGO institutes, based on the demands and needs of the local farming communities.
- There is a need to ensure dynamic opportunities for technological and knowledge-based up-gradation for KVK staff. A proper strategy to enable this, along with the necessary finances and human resources, should be put in place.
- Considering that KVKs are required to perform the critical function of technology assessment, KVK staff should get the autonomy and resources (both financial and staff) to develop a successful network between the different actors involved.
- Since KVKs are expected to be the windows to the farmers for frontline technologies, the demand for expertise is varied (involving agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, forestry, and fisheries), and appropriate staffing needs to be ensured. Depending on the location, some amount of prioritization among these different disciplines may be necessary, as it will not be possible to provide all those different types of experts at every location. The pooling of expertise available in the region could provide a solution that benefits all stakeholders.
- There is a need to assess conflicts among different extension systems (public sector, private, and NGOs), and to ensure that the farmers can access the correct technology, irrespective of who provides it.
- The activities of KVKs should converge with other extension agencies in the district/region. To enable this, the KVKs should be invited to district-level extension planning meetings. Doing so will also enable proper utilization of the expertise that KVKs have to offer, rather than working in isolation.
- The SAUs and ICAR institutes should not consider KVKs as competitors for funds, but as partners in their lab-to-land efforts. ICAR and SAU researchers need to involve the concerned KVKs from the planning stage and revise the plans as needed. They should also share information on new technologies and training methods with the KVK staff.
- Despite staff shortages, the demand for the services of KVK staff is very high. Much of the time of KVK staff is spent on organizing events to popularize the central and state government programs, and not on technology assessment and transfer. This issue needs to be addressed effectively.
- Morale of the KVK staff is low and efforts must be made to urgently improve this. The feeling in their minds that they are neither here (i.e., research) nor there (i.e., extension) must be removed. Due credit must be given to the KVKs, and to the concerned staff involved in executing the project activities.
- In assessing the impact of KVKs, besides the direct benefit to farmers exposed to the extension activity of KVKs, its spill-over effects to other farmers or pockets of the district/region needs to be documented.
In conclusion, the KVKs have an important role to play in implementing the national development strategies for agriculture, which would cover both crop production—including its processing for value addition—and associated activities, such as animal husbandry, beekeeping, poultry, etc. A renewed and robust institutional structure, along with more effective management, is urgently needed, so that the KVKs are enabled to play the active role that has been envisaged for them in the development of India’s agriculture.