e-ready Extensionist

        Information Communication Technologies is the buzz word of the decade and will continue for the coming decades. Be it the developed, developing or under developed worlds, everybody is for ICT application in all the sectors. But to put these information communication technologies into effectual function an individual, society, state and the country must be “e-ready”. The CSPP’s guide to E-Readiness defines an ‘e-ready’ community is one which has high-speed access in a competitive market; with constant access and application of ICTs in schools, government offices, businesses, healthcare facilities and homes; use privacy and online security; and government policies which are "favorable to promoting connectedness and use of the Network. e-readiness is the measure of the quality of country's information community technology (ICT) infrastructure and ability of its consumers, businesses and Government to use ICT for their benefit. The Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group defines a country as e-ready that is 'ready' for e-commerce, has free trade, industry self-regulation, ease of exports, and compliance with international standards and trade agreements. World Economic Forum Consultation Report on E-Readiness defines E-Readiness as the ability of the ICT networks to effectively adapt to the social and economic advancement.

        Since the concept of “e-readiness” is relatively new, it can be visualized at different levels. Because the dynamic nature of Information Communication Technologies force the end-users to always be updated with the latest developments. Otherwise the individual, Institution, the state or the nation will become nonexistent in the “readiness”. Hence an attempt has been made to define the concept of “e-readiness” at three levels (Individual, Institutional and National).

“Individual e-readiness” is the degree to which an individual is able to use and access the ICT tools and has the necessary skills to get himself/herself updated with the technological developments.  

“Institutional e-readiness” is the degree to which an institution possesses infrastructure, network accessibility, policy support and affordability to acquire and effectively utilize ICTs. Also it should possess sufficient skilled manpower to efficiently and effectively utilize the available ICT infrastructure.

“National e-readiness” is the degree to which a nation possesses necessary infrastructure, internetwork accessibility, affordability, policy support and the human resource with necessary skills to acquire, access, utilize ICTs.

        People in Indian villages might be unaware of the word computer, but with increasing usage of PCs in urban areas in the last few years, India has reached 58th position in the world on e-readiness ranking for the year 2009, reports PTI. e-readiness is the measure of the quality of country's information community technology (ICT) infrastructure and ability of its consumers, businesses and Government to use ICT for their benefit. Indian Government launched National Knowledge Network at an outlay of 5,990 crore, to interconnect all universities, libraries, laboratories, hospitals and agricultural institutions to enable them to share data and resources over high speed information network. Also, the Government is planning to connect all village panchayats through broadband internet connection in three years.

The government is making every effort to make the country e-ready, but at the same time there should be reciprocation from the target group also. There should be participation from the community and community should make efforts to be media literate.

e-Ready Agricultural Extensionist

        An important aspect of converging ICTs with agricultural extension is the complete transformation of the organizational set ups working towards reaching farm communities through e-ready extension service providers. Broad basing the agricultural extension education activities with e-ready extension educationists, development of farming system research and extension, location specific modules of extension content, marketled extension, sustainable agricultural development, participatory research, Geographic Information Systems for coordination among the stakeholders etc., are some of the numerous areas where e-ready manpower can play an important role. The pre-requisite for incorporating ICTs in Agricultural development is e-ready extension scientists. The e-readiness of extension service provider can take care of wide range of information needs of target communities, thus transforming the “extension service provider” as “e-ready Knowledge worker”. The emergence of e-ready knowledge worker in place of extension service will augment the process of bringing in desirable changes which in turn yields the desired result “Holistic Development”

 At this juncture there is need to have the understanding of differences between the Extension Educationist and Extension Service Provider. Many times we consider both terms as synonymous. There is lot of difference between the same.

Extension Educationist: is a person with the background of agriculture and allied sciences and provides the knowledge and skills of extension and communication tools and techniques to the Extension Service Providers at regular intervals to bring the desirable changes in the behavior of Extension Service Providers.

Extension Service Provider: is a person with the background of agriculture and allied sciences who is serving a public or private institution and meant for dissemination of the technological advances to the intended communities and institutions based on needs after acquiring the extension and communication tools and techniques from Extension Educationist. In the similar way we need to develop e-ready extension educationsit and e-ready extension service provider.

An “e-ready extensionist” is an extension educationist who is able to afford and access the ICT tools and techniques and has the necessary skills to get himself/herself updated with the communication technological developments along with necessary agricultural technologies. And an “e-ready Extension Service Provider”: is a person with the background of agriculture and allied sciences who is serving a public or private institution and meant for dissemination of the technological advances to the intended communities and institutions based on needs and is able to afford and access the ICT tools and techniques and has the necessary skills to get himself/herself updated with the communication technological developments.

Conclusion

      As it is evident from the experiments on computer literacy for low or illiterate communities (the average time for gaining familiarity with basics (Win 95) - 2 weeks, time taken to transact data on wireless - 3 sittings, time taken to gain preliminary knowledge of HTML - 1 week, word 97 - 2 days, power Point 97 - 1 week and use of Win 95 keyboard for Tamil Fonts - 10 days) the extensionists can become e-ready in the shortest possible time but the perquisites are affordability, network accessibility, policy support and necessary skills to acquire the same. The efforts of knowledge economy can develop e-ready extension professionals in the shortest possible time. e-ready extension professional can deliver better services with accountability to the target communities. It can wipe out the differences between the reached and unreached. At last, e-readiness is a state of mind if you wish; you will be e-ready.

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Basavaprabhu Jirli, Department of Extension Education, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Baranasi – 221 005,bjirli@gmail.com