The study was conducted in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu state. It was decided to select the top three enterprises wherein more number of SHGs were involved in farming and allied activities. Accordingly two SHGs involved in paddy cultivation, two SHGs involved in dairy management and two SHGs involved in mushroom cultivation were selected based on the maximum loan utilized in the respective income generating activities. Thus, finally six SHGs comprising of 120 SHG members were selected as sample for the study. The response on perceived usefulness of the training on these technologies was obtained from the Self-Help Group women respondents as either useful or not useful. The percentage analysis was used to analyse the data. The subject matter areas of training programme should be tailor made for SHG women focused on income generating programmes, as most of the respondents perceived the training on income generation programme as not useful. The other subject matter areas need to be revised and updated to make it highly useful for the SHG women members.

Rural Agricultural Work Experience Programme (RAWE) is offered in final year of the B.Sc. (Agri) degree programme which includes training, demonstration, observation, practice and participation in purposeful activities and to orient agricultural graduates for participation in various rural developmental programme. This experiential system in agricultural education has a strong potential to prepare a better agricultural technocrats with high level of skill in combination with the modern outlook and management capacity. This study was conducted with the objectives to know the students perception on RAWE Programme of GBPUA&T, Pantnagar; find out the profile of students and its relationship with their perception and to seek suggestions from students for effective implementation. The data was collected from 40 students of College of Agriculture, GBPUA&T, Pantnagar by using pre structured interview schedule. The findings revealed that majority of the students belonged to Urban background. More than half per cent of students had parents with Intermediate level followed by Graduate level and Post Graduate level. Some of the students belong to families with annual income of over 2 lakh/annum (high category). At GBPUA&T, Pantnagar, majority had medium OGPA. Cent Per cent students were using mobile phone followed by television. The Perception of the students regarding extent of achievement of RAWE is to understand rural institutions, socio economic conditions of farmers, adoption patterns and adoption gaps, farmers’ problems, farming systems and farming, improvement in diagnostic skills, provided practical training in crop production, improved communication skills, improved leadership qualities, provided opportunity to work with various Agri based institutions, developed confidence and professional competence to solve field problems. The suggestions for improvement of RAWE by students are the Time for each module in RAWE to be increased, stipend should be increased, and University should increase its credibility and accessibility among farmers.

The present paper attempts to analyse the health status of Muslim women compared to Hindu women across states in India and it also assesses the change in their health status over time. In India 74 per cent of Hindu women and 75 per cent of Muslim women have better health facility. The states like Kerala, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir had the higher proportion of Hindu women whereas Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan had the higher percentage of Muslim women having better health facilities. In contrary, the states like Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand had the worst health status of Muslim as well as Hindu women.

The present study was conducted to study the effective market promotional activities of Rashtriya chemical & fertilizer ltd. in Anand, Vadodara and Bharuch districts of Gujarat. Result was found that fertilizer distribution happens to the farmers through co-operatives (70%), company’s outlet (20%), agro service centre (6%) and Private Dealer (4%). The study reveals that following promotional activity is used by all existing companies in the Gujarat region of our study and mostly soil fertility test (36%) is carried out and rest are seminar (15%), slide show (2%), consistency discount (14%), quantity discount (16), farmers training (8%), rural development (2%), and social responsibility (7%). The study reveals that RCF using lots of promotional activity in Anand, Vadodara and Bharuch district. As analysed, only soil fertility testing is mostly used by all companies, but remaining promotional activities are not much in use as well as not adopted by the farmers. A total of 80 farmers and 40 dealers have been surveyed in this study. Data has been collected through a structured questionnaire adopted in this project entitled. Market survey of fertilizer in different districts will help Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd. to know the promotional activity done by RCF, and to find out different competitors engaging in promotional activity for fertilizer in Anand, Vadodara & Bharuch district available in market.

Indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) is the basic knowledge of rural people for social upliftment of small and marginal farmers which provide sufficient information that may help in decision making procedures. Rural communities have vast and diverse technical expertise’s of several aspects and make them capable to adopt these ITKs on the basis on their necessity to make suitable solution of various local agricultural and socio-cultural problems in managing agricultural activities. ITKs help and co-operate the rural villagers to identify the disease problems in field crops, vegetables, fruits and livestock, their management through their capabilities as evidenced by their ancestors. These practices are largely attributed upon farmers’ assumptions, economical profitability, farmers’ agreement, indig enous traditional sound knowledge, and effective/reliable outcomes. Indigenous Technical Knowledge is the local knowledge that is unique to a given society. ITK is the experienced based knowledge of a given population. There is no systematic record to describe what they are, what they do and how they can be changed, their operations, and their applications. Villagers in rural areas are more interested to adopt ITKs because of having enough agricultural tools to achieve recent agricultural as well as social developments of rural communities. They can easily adopt the traditional knowledge of agricultural operations that they had learnt since long time from their ancestors to meet national food security of the present generations. A number of ITKs are also occasionally used by the farmers in rural region of India, Out of them, some very popular ones are discussed herewith the general arguments. Hence, there is immense pressure on the people to collect, preserve, validate and adopt ITKs so as to reduce dependence on external inputs, to reduce the cost of cultivation and to propagate eco-friendly agriculture.