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Agriculture is the backbone of Indian economy. In this changing World scenario, agriculture is taking a new shape and expanding its scope beyond the limits of mere crop cultivation and animal husbandry for livelihood of rural population. Activities like diversification, value addition, precision farming, high tech agriculture, agripreneurship, global marketing, organic farming, etc. are gradually getting due attention of people involved in redefining agriculture. Agripreneurship is a strategy that can lead to economic self-sufficiency of rural people. Agripreneurship can generate employment opportunities in the primary sector, reduce migration to urban areas and can help in making villages self sufficient. Despite of several efforts to promote entrepreneurship in rural areas, rural agripreneurs are very few in number because even though agripreneurs start entrepreneurial venture assuming high risk, they soon give up due to various constraints. So, a study was conducted on agripreneurs of Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand using case study method to identify various constraints faced by rural agripreneurs. It was found that majority of agripreneurs faced technical constraints while establishing or running the enterprise followed by marketing constraints. Other than these constraints, there were psychological constraints, socio- cultural constraints, information related constraints, financial constraints, administrative constraints and managerial constraints which were faced by the agripreneurs in running the enterprise smoothly. The agripreneurs should be provided with the trainings to overcome these constraints being faced by them.

ICT can be used reasonably in transferring the modern agricultural technologies to the farmers. ICT has many applications in agricultural extension most especially in accessing required information and knowledge. Hence, the present investigation was carried out in Jabalpur, Patan, Sihora and Panagar Blocks of Jabalpur District of Madhya Pradesh. The main objective of the study was to analyse the relationship between selected profile characteristics of farmers and impact of Krishinet Portal. A total of 280 respondents were purposively selected for the study through simple random technique. The results of the study shown that majority of the respondents (48.57%) were middle aged (38-51 years), educated upto higher secondary level (24.64%), had medium family size (51.79%), had lower income (Rs. 33000 to 55000 p.a.) (38.22%), had small (2.5 to 5 acre) land holding (43.57%), had medium information seeking behavior (58.21%), had positive attitude towards KGK (61.78%), had positive attitude towards ICT (69.29%), had medium innovativeness (52.14%) and medium economic motivation (62.50%). The relationship between selected profile characteristics and impact of Krishinet portal indicated that education, annual income, operational land holding, information seeking behavior, attitude towards KGK and attitude towards ICT were positively significantly related, which means the respondents who is more educated, more annual income, large size of operational land holding, high information seeking behavior, positive attitude towards KGK and positive attitude towards ICT, getting more benefit from use of Krishinet portal.

Innovations play an important role in increasing food production and optimizing resource utilization by farmers. Despite herculean extension efforts, there is still a wide gap between agricultural technologies developed at research institutions and their adoption by farmers. Often, innovations are rejected by the farmers after initial adoption due to several reasons. Hence, this study was undertaken to find out the reasons behind the discontinuance of agricultural innovations. The study was carried out in U.S. Nagar district of Uttarakhand. Five agricultural innovations viz. direct seeding of rice, application of bioagents, mushroom cultivation, polyhouse cultivation and nutritional gardening were selected for the study. For data collection, 89 farmers were interviewed by the researcher using a pretested schedule. The findings revealed that major reasons for discontinuance of agricultural innovations were non-availability of inputs (68.57%), lack of extension agency contact/support (51.42%), lack of interest (37.14%), engagement in other activities (28.57%), cumbersome operation & maintenance (28.57%) and lack of training (22.85%).

About half of India’s population is supported by agriculture. Development of any nation depends primarily on the role played by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship development among rural people is increasingly being recognized as a means of overall development of rural community. Small and medium scale agri-enterprises play an important role in creating employment opportunities in rural area. Beekeeping is one such remunerative agri-enterprise. At global level honey production from India is very small; among the states Tamil Nadu stands rank second in honey production. Hence, the present study was undertaken with the following objectives; to assess the entrepreneurial potential of beekeepers in Kanniyakumari district. It has nine blocks and village having maximum number of beekeepers was selected from each block. In the next stage of sampling, 50 per cent beekeepers from each village were selected using simple random sampling. Thus, a sample of 213 respondents was selected for data collection using a pretested interview schedule. On the basis of the findings it is concluded that majority of the beekeepers had high level of economic motivation, need for achievement and risk taking ability. On the other hand, it was found that majority of the respondents had only medium level of innovativeness and self-confidence. Overall entrepreneurial potential of majority of the beekeepers was high.

Part 5: IT in the Public Sector; International audience; Information is considered as a prerequisite for development in today’s world. This belief has led to several measures to make information freely available to the citizens. Use of ICTs for development is a step in that direction, as they are expected to make communication more democratic and easy, leading to developmental outcomes. It is estimated that 60% of all ICT projects in Asia are located in India. Many players - national and state governments, private business organizations and civil society groups are engaged in their implementation. Despite huge investments, studies indicate that the developmental use of such projects is very low. ICTs for development projects have been studied using diverse tools and theories. Failure has been attributed to several factors including various types of barriers, faulty institutions, and technology related issues. This paper places analysis on ICTD projects within the context of CPR (Common Pool Resources) studies. In recent years, the definition of CPR has been expanded to include information as “new commons” and robust institutions are deemed essential for survival of all CPRs. In this paper, ICT based development projects have been interpreted as CPR institutions and CPR design principles have been used to explain the functioning of two ICTD projects. Both these studies were carried out in the state of Uttarakahnd, India and analysis is confined to use of agricultural information by the farming community.

India’s National Agricultural Policy lays emphasis on the use of IT for achieving rapid development of the sector. In line with this mandate, the Ministry of Agriculture is implementing a number of e-agriculture initiatives at the national and state levels. These schemes focus mainly on developing web based applications, data warehousing, strengthening IT infrastructure and making information more accessible to the farmers to facilitate decision making.An underlying assumption behind policy statements is that the use of ICTs can solve the perennial problem of information deficit faced by farmers in India. Further, it has been argued that ICTs can significantly reduce costs incurred, enhance market participation and spur commercialization of agriculture. This, in turn, is likely to shift farm households from traditional self sufficiency goals towards profit and income oriented decision making. This paper describes the use of ICTs (especially mobile phones) by marginal and small farmers as a factor of productivity and market availability. The study was conducted in the state of Uttarakhand, India. Four hill districts from the state were selected for the study. In-depth interviews were conducted with farmers from eight villages spread across these four districts. It was found that lack of policy interventions, nature of produce, role of the buyer and trust and social norms limits the advantage that can be derived from use of ICTs. In this context, farmers are not able to leverage ICTs for additional information and transform it into tangible benefits in the form of increased income or enhanced productivity.