Network Based Knowledge Management System in Indian Agricultural Extension

The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the last two decades has opened new avenues in knowledge management that could play important roles in sharing, exchanging and disseminating knowledge in all fields. India possesses a valuable agricultural knowledge and expertise but is not in structured electronic form that can be easily accessed. ICT allows exploiting to a greater extent on the wealth of information and knowledge available for Agriculture. This paper describes demerits of existing knowledge dissemination system (Extension System), exploiting ICT for knowledge management in agriculture and documentation of indigenous and new technologies, and their effective dissemination. This is a basic idea to build existing knowledge to electronic form (text, images, map, animation, audio and video), to strengthen, improve and propel the farming community by using the wealth of information and knowledge, and to establish strong functional linkages and consortia between agricultural researchers, extension workers, farmers, industrialists and decision makers.