Role and perceived quality of services of agro-advisory agents in Nadia district, West Bengal

In rural India the farmers seek information from different agro-advisory agents. This list includes different public advisory agents of state government line departments and private sector like input dealers, university and ICAR or NGOs. Among these input dealers play a vital role in disseminating advisory roles in the villages. In the present study these agents were grouped into two broad types as agri-input dealers and other cosmopolite sources and an attempt was made to find out the advisory roles of these agents and to assess the quality of such advisory services as perceived by the farmers in Nadia district of West Bengal. The study revealed that although the quality of the advice of input dealers and other cosmopolite sources were at par with each other but the role performed by input dealers was significantly lower than others. However the observations suggested that the input dealers were more concerned in serving the farmers on those aspects with which their products for sale were associated.