Type : Other Article
Salpriya Seby, M.J. Mercykutty and R. Sendilkumar
The major challenge faced by Kerala State is to achieve sustainable rice production for ensuring food security and<br />attaining adequate income to the farmers. Decentralized planning is an approach to balanced development and<br />reduction of regional disparities. The distinctiveness of Kerala’s decentralization is that, it has formularized a<br />participatory framework with inbuilt social accountability measures to take in citizen’s involvement in local<br />planning and governance in harmony with the national and regional policies. In this context, the present study was<br />conducted in Adat grama panchayat in Puzhakal block of Thrissur district, Kerala. It is one of the major rice<br />cultivating panchayats in the district and has about 3,000 acres of kole paddy fields. The panchayat has successfully<br />launched itself on the organic path to farming and set a model for panchayats elsewhere in the State. Thirty<br />beneficiaries of various paddy promotion programmes were randomly selected. The study intended to analyse the<br />perception of beneficiaries on effectiveness of paddy promotion programmes implemented under decentralized<br />planning as well as the constraints experienced. For analyzing the perception and constraints perception index<br />and Garett ranking technique were employed respectively. The respondents had good perception on effectiveness<br />of paddy promotion programmes implemented under decentralized planning. They had high perception on<br />institutional support aspect. The constraint analysis pointed out that human resource constraint as the major<br />difficulty while practicing the intervention. Appropriate intervention in this area can be made cent per cent<br />successful by overcoming this lacunae. Based on the research findings some suggestions are put forth.
Keyword: Perception on effectiveness; Paddy promotion programmes; Decentralized planning; Constraints