ROLE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT: A STUDY OF NABARANGPUR DISTRICT

Today India is passing through the phase of communication revolution, which has brought about a significant growth of media in mass communication. It has become an important part of development initiatives in health, nutrition, agriculture, family planning, education, community economy and world empowerment. The present study aims to study the agriculture development with the emergence of the new communication technology. The study is being undertaken to know how agriculture development is possible through an effective communication tools that is ICT (Information and Communication Technology). ICT includes communication device or application, encompassing cellular phones, computer, internet and network hardware and software, satellite systems and so on, as well as the various services and applications associated with them, such as videoconferencing and distance learning. ICTs are often used in areas like education, agriculture, health care, or libraries. Therefore, the present investigation was undertaken to study about how the use of ICT helps in agricultural development in rural areas. For the present study for knowing the use of ICT among the farmers, Nabarangpur district of Odisha is being chosen. As a sample the Raighar Block of the district was chosen to know the use of technology among the farmers. The sample of the study is 170 comprising of locals farmers of Raighar, seeds company’s agents and ICT experts, selected with a simple random sampling methods, randomly with an age group from 20 years to 55 years. The data were collected through a structured with simultaneous observation of responses from the sample. Data were analysed with different statistical measures through percentage and frequency of the data.