Effectiveness of The Farmers’ Groups in Punjab Sanatombi K.H.*, Kaur Lakhwinder, Kalra R.K. Department of Extension Education, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India *Corresponding author email id: sana_rakpam@yahoo.com
Online published on 19 February, 2019. Abstract Farmers’ are the pillars of agriculture, without whom nothing can be made possible, but though they are indispensable in any agriculture and allied activities, their importance is more observable when they work together in an organized group with a common goal and interest among them. Their performance becomes more pronounced when they form themselves into a group known as the farmers’ groups or the farmers’ organizations. When farmers work together in groups, important new skills are developed within the hamlets, like technical skills, managerial skills, problem solving, economic cooperative, bookkeeping, verbal expression and grassroots democracy, which all help the rural society to develop more quickly economically, socially, and politically (Nguyet, 2002). Many studies have been undertaken on Self Help Groups (SHGs) but hardly on the Farmers’ groups working for the agricultural development. Thus, it is of utmost importance to find out the factors which leads to more effectiveness of the farmers’ group and hence the present study was undertaken to find out the effectiveness of farmers’ groups in Punjab through a comparative study between the five functioning and five non functioning farmers’ groups in five selected districts of Punjab. It was found that group motivation, group leadership, interdependence of members, interpersonal trust and participation in group activities were the main factors which leads to the effective working of the groups. Also, capacity building of the members, maintaining complete group record and transparency among the members helped in proper functioning of the groups. Top Keywords Farmers’ group, Functional group, Non functional group, Functioning effectiveness index. Top |