The presentation is about the legendary Indian agricultural documentary series, Krishi Darshan. It talks about its history, content, impact, etc.

1. Krishi Darshan
and its Impact
By Aniket Singh Chauhan

2. Agenda
• What is Krishi Darshan?
• History
• Why Krishi Darshan?
• What is Shown in Krishi Darshan?
• Do Farmers like Krishi Darshan?
• Summary
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3. What is Krishi Darshan?
Krishi Darshan is a Government of India-aided
broadcast program focused on agricultural
communities around the country. The programme
includes issues like weather reports, Agri-market
situation, government policies. The project was
started on January 26, 1967, as a 20-minute
programme on DD National twice a week.
However with time, the programme has increased
its broadcast time to 2 hours and airs five times a
week on DD Kisan.
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4. History
As India, under the leadership of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was
preparing for the Green Revolution a need for better communication channels
between the government as well as the farmers was felt. However, the nation
was still trying hard to shake off its colonial legacies and therefore far-flung
areas were far from the reach of the administration. In such times, the Congress-
led government took a bold step and introduced Krishi Darshan, a television
program for farmers.
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5. The project named Krishi Darshan was then initiated on January 26,
1966 for communicating agricultural information to the farmers on
experimental basis for the 80-selected village of the union territory of
Delhi through community viewing of television and further
discussions among themselves experiments were successful and
that there was substantial gain in the information regarding
agricultural practices.
The Scheme also envisaged providing 30 minutes of regional
agricultural programme five days a week, back to back with, “Krishi
Darshan Programme” through the eighteen regional Kendra of
Doordarshan.
These programmes were repeated through respective regional
satellite channels of Doordarshan. Besides 30 minutes, morning
hour’s national agricultural programme for 6 days a week was
proposed to telecast on DD National channel in the morning
and 5-days in evening a week. The content of Krishi Darshan
Programme was created with the collaboration of Ministry
of Agriculture, Ministry of Information and Broadcast
and the Government of India; under the Mass Media
Support to Agriculture Extension Scheme.
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6. Why Krishi Darshan?
India is still a majorly agricultural-based nation;
wherein over 60% of her population are directly
or indirectly dependent on this sector. At
present India is the second-largest agricultural
producer in the world and food shortages are a
distant dystopian thought. However, this wasn’t
the case during the first decades post our
independence.
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7. The 1950s saw massive food shortages in the country. The populace was forced to cut
down on food and the country had to import food, much to its embarrassment. However, the
late 1960s saw massive changes under the effort of Green Revolution. With the help of
technology, the country started its journey from a food-importing to a food-exporting nation.
The green revolution too was aided by Krishi Darshan. The reason being that the
government had to convince the farmers to adopt new seeds and fertilizers. As most of the
farmers weren’t literate, visuals were the best method to impart knowledge and Krishi
Darshan scored massively.
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8. “If agriculture goes wrong,
nothing else will have a
chance to go right in the
country."
MS Swaminathan
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9. What is shown in Krishi
Darshan?
• Weather, Water and Soil Reports
• Usage of Machinery and new Machinery in the market
• Success Stories
• Seed Varieties
• Farming Supplies availability
• Good Practices in Farming
• Framer-related advertorials
• APMC Mandi timings and rates
• Cropping Patters
• Advisory (Helpline 1800-180-155)
• Market Demands and situation
• Information on Import and Export patterns
Being wholly dedicated towards farmers, Krishi
Darshan puts special emphasis on regionality of
the programs, i.e., usage of local
languages/dialects, local hosts, regional stories,
etc. Apart from that Krishi Darshan also plays a
vital role in spreading awareness about
government policies, helplines, services and
institutes; it also is used to propagate good
practices in farming and resource management.
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10. Do Farmers like Krishi
Darshan?
In various surveys around the nation, the following
statistics have been seen: -
• 66.67% of the Farmers have favourable attitude
towards Krishi Darshan. For them the program
helps them in new technologies, weather and
farming warnings as well as new crops. (Namita
Shukla and S Mohapatra, 2017)
• Around 54 % rural television viewers, viewed
television programs for the sake of education
which is why Krishi Darshan has such high
approval ratings. (Gupta and Sangha, 1980)
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11. • Pachauri N.K. (1988), reported that the majority of respondents’ watched Krishi Darshan
Programme all four day in a week. This can attributed to the high relevance rate as well
as the regionality of the content.
• The old respondents, illiterates, small landholders and the respondents who had low
mass media exposure watched more than the respondents who were young, literate, big
landholders moreover, high mass media exposure.
• A study of 100 farmers conducted in 1979 revealed that large and medium holding
farmers viewed Doordarshan programs more than small & marginal farmers. Lack in
formal education does not come in the way of education of Doordarshan for farm
instruction programs, twenty minutes duration of farm telecast found to be suitable for
the farmers. (Reddy, 1986)
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12. • Another study in the purposely selected district of the Kurnool, Andhra
Pradesh found that majority of the respondents (80.77%) expressed that
agricultural programs (like KD) were very useful to them. The 93.27 % of
respondent viewed the farm telecast with an intention of getting information
and improved method cultivation. It was also observed that majority of the
respondents adopted new practices in accordance with Krishi Darshan
because they felt that they were more economical. (Reddy 1976)
• A study on only selected 100 adult TV owners in the Amritsar district of
Punjab and concluded that the rural TV viewers were more aware about these
developmental programs, which were telecasted more frequently and vice-
versa. (Sanga, 1979)
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13. Summary
Krishi Darshan has come a long way from its
nascent stages to the longest running
broadcast program in the world. It has
certainly induced a lot of beneficial changes
in the agricultural sector, however, it still
remains a question whether its wings only
spread to the green revolution states or has
it reached the last farmer still.
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14. Thank You
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