Information Communication Technology in Rescue of Farming Community during COVID 19 Pandemic A Case of KVK, Ganjam I

A nationwide lock down was enforced in order to limit the spread of COVID-19 during the month of March 2020. Farmers are the most vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic. Majority of the poor people in our state rely on agriculture and allied activities for their livelihoods. Lockdowns – as an effective method of protection from the corona virus – had direct impact on farmers, migrant workers and the agriculture supply chain. At KVK, Ganjam-I, different ICT platforms are in use since long for disseminating the advisories. This study was carried out to examine the effectiveness of the information pertaining to Rice cultivation disseminated through Whats app and text messages during the Lockdown period. For the study 90 respondents (Rice growers=50, In-service Personnel=25 and Input Dealers=15) who are using mobile with Whats app. were selected by following purposive random sampling. The result obtained indicated that messages were having medium level of understanding for large majority (44%) of the members of Rice grower category, it was highly understandable for 80 and 53.33 percent respondents of In-service Personnel and Input Dealers category respectively. Messages were Needful & Timely for 64 percent of the Rice growers category and about 68 and 53.33 percent for In-service Personnel and Input Dealers respectively. As for as applicability of the messages are concerned the messages were fully applicable for about 40 percent of Rice growers category, whereas Medium & Partially applicability was reported by 16 & 24 percent of members respectively. It was also found that message was fully applicable for In-service Personnel (60%) and Input Dealers (53.33%). It was found that technology imposes high impact on 58 percent of Rice grower category, whereas 72 percent and 53.33 percent members of In-service Personnel and Input Dealers category reported technology impacted highly on them. A low impact was also reported ranging about 08-20% of among all categories. Over all it is evident from the study that the messages were effective for the farming community. Use of this type of ICT platforms should be encouraged for better visibility.