Issues on Indian Extension System to Combat Consequences of Climate Change

Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Indian agriculture faces the dual challenge of feeding a billion people in a changing climatic and economic scenario. Even it is the main source of livelihood for almost 60% of the country’s total population. The impacts of climate change on agriculture will be severely felt in India as noted by different scientists. It has been projected that under the scenario of a 2.5°C to 4.9°C temperature rise, rice yields will drop by 32%-40% and wheat yields by 41%-52%. This would cause GDP to fall by 1.8%-3.4%. India has to be concerned about the impacts of climate change due several factors. Its large population depends on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture and forestry for livelihoods. Agriculture is facing ecological and economical challenges. The major effects can be generalized as changes in the geographical limits to agriculture, changes in crop yields and impacts on agricultural system. A range of adaptation strategies make the opportunity to improve the agriculture management in the context of climate change for sustainable development towards the climate resilient pathways. India has made significant achievement in agriculture by increasing food production by four folds during last six decades. Among many drivers to accomplish this task, the policy, research and extension support have played crucial role. Public extension played a major role in ushering green revolution in Indian agriculture. However, considering the varied agro-ecological situations under which farmers operate besides variations in the resource base of farmers, the extension system envisaged to achieve desired growth in agricultural sector has to be pluralistic in nature and hence multiplicity of extension systems are operating in India. Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is an apex body at the national level that supports research and extension activities to evolve effective Transfer of Technology (TOT) models mainly through KVKs. The State Agricultural Universities also contemplates to develop extension models suitable to take up transfer of technology besides implementing the models evolved by ICAR system. In country like India where Agro-climatic zones widely differ besides significant variation in socioeconomic status of farmers’, uniform extension service is not the panacea for all the regions. It was realized that public extension system will have to be placed in new decentralized institutional arrangements which are demand driven, farmeraccountable, bottom-up and have farming system approach.