Influence of Profile Characteristics of Village Agricultural Workers on Role Performance in Odisha

Aim: To study the personal, psychological, communication and professional characteristics of Village Agricultural workers (VAWs).

Study Design: Analytical research design was adopted to use facts or information already available to make a critical evaluation

Place and Duration of Study: Nine districts of Odisha were randomly selected from major three revenue administrative divisions Cuttack, Berhampur and Sambalpur between first week of December 2019 to first week of February 2020.

Methodology: Village Agricultural Workers (VAWs) of Odisha state served as the population for the study. As many as 728 VAWs in the selected nine districts constituted the sampling frame. After the discussion with the experts and various limitations of the researcher, 40 per cent of the VAWs from the sampling frame were chosen for the study. Thus, the final sample size comprised of 292 (40% of 728) VAW respondents. The method of proportional allocation in stratified sampling procedure was adopted for the selection of respondents. VAWs from each selected district were selected randomly following proportional allocation. Based on the literature, a total of 14 characteristics were taken to document the profile of the Village Agricultural Workers (VAW) who were working in state agricultural department.

Results: The results indicated that most of the Village Agricultural workers (VAWs) were middle aged (73.63%), male (66.44%) had formal education up to intermediate level (72.94%). Professional characteristics revealed that almost four-fifths (79.80%) have service experience of 6-14 years and had medium level (74.32%) of training exposure. Most (57.19%) of the VAWs had area of jurisdiction under 9 to 36 villages and majority (87.67%) visiting 3 to 4 times a week. Study found that 78.08 percent of VAWs had high orientation towards extension profession with majority (74.32%) of VAWs perceiving neutral organizational climate in agricultural offices and 64.38 percent are having medium level of organizational commitment. Psychological characteristics revealed that 66.78 percent of VAWs have medium level of self-confidence with moderate job satisfaction (64.38%) and moderate leadership ability (79.11%). Communication characteristics of VAWs shows moderate level of Communication competence of VAWs (64.38%). Role performance analysis shows that majority of VAWs has medium (70.55%) level of role performance.

Conclusion: The analysis of these profile characteristics could be crucial in understanding efficiency of state department, agricultural offices and VAWs’ own individual career development. It could be crucial for policymakers in preparing appropriate interventions to enhance role performance of VAWS through training programs.