Student READY

Four essential component of Agriculture Education are:

Knowledge	what to do
Skill	how to do
Ability	how to simplify and convert functional skill in useful form
Experiences	how to minimize losses and increase efficiency

Student READY was launched by Hon'ble Prime Minister on 25 July 2015.

It is conceptualized to reorient graduates of Agriculture and allied subjects for ensuring and assuring employability and to develop entrepreneurs for emerging knowledge intensive agriculture by articulating knowledge, skill, ability and experiences. The stipend rates have enhanced to Rs 3000/ student/ month for a maximum of 6 months under student READY (RAWE). In the disciplines of Dairy Technology, Food Technology and Agricultural Engineering, there will be in-plant training in place of RAWE. The students of Veterinary Science discipline will undergo internship training at hospitals.

Student READY program is introduced in fourth year of undergraduate education in the following subjects:

Agriculture
Agriculture Engineering
Bio Technology
Dairy Technology
Fisheries
Food Technology
Forestry
Horticulture
Home Science (now Community Science)
Sericulture

Five components of student READY are:

Experiential Learning with business mode
Hands-on training (HOT)/ Skill development training i.e. Experiential Learning without business mode
Rural Awareness Work Experience (RAWE)
Internship/ In Plant Training/ Industrial attachment
Students Projects

Experiential Learning with business mode

Experiential Learning (EL) with business mode helps the student to develop competence, capability, capacity building, acquiring skills, expertise, and confidence to start their own enterprise and turn job creators instead of job seekers. This is a step forward for “Earn while Learn” concept. Experiential Learning is an important module for high quality professional competence and practical work experience in real life situation to Graduates. The module with entrepreneurial orientation of production and production to consumption pattern is expected to facilitate producing Job Providers rather than Job Seekers. The EL provides the students an excellent opportunity to develop analytical and entrepreneurial skills, and knowledge through meaningful hands on experience, confidence in their ability to design and execute project work. The main objectives of EL are:

To promote professional skills and knowledge through meaningful hands on experience.
To build confidence and to work in project mode.
To acquire enterprise management capabilities.

Rural Agricultural Work Experience (RAWE)

The Rural Agricultural Work Experience (RAWE) provides exposure to agricultural students to the natural setting of the village situations, work with the farm families, identify their problems and make use of various extension tools for transferring the latest agricultural technologies. The students also get opportunity to study the various on-going schemes related to agriculture and rural development and participate in their implementation. The students were given rigorous orientation and familiarization on various issues and problems expected on farmers’ field and hence gain competence and confidence for solving problems related to agriculture and allied sciences. It has been implemented in adopted villages under the supervision of scientists. Activities focused on intensive observations/ analysis of socio-economic and technological profile of the farm families in rural areas, participatory extension approach and acquaintance with farming situations, farm practices and interaction with progressive farmers. Soil testing has become the integral part of RAWE. This helps orient our agricultural graduates for participation in various rural developmental programme. The students also gained first hand information on industries during attachment with identified agro based industries.

The stipend rates have been enhanced of Rs 3000/ student/ month for a maximum of 6 months for the village/ rural training under student READY programme.

In Plant Training (IPT)/ Industrial Attachment

Technology and globalization are ushering an era of unprecedented change. The need and pressure for change and innovation is immense. To enrich the practical knowledge of the students, in-plant training is mandatory. In this training, students will have to study a problem in industrial perspective and submit the reports to the university. Such in-plant trainings will provide an industrial exposure to the students as well as to develop their career in the high tech industrial requirements. In-Plant training is meant to correlate theory and actual practices in the industries with the following objectives:

To expose the students to Industrial environment, this cannot be simulated in the university.
To familiarize the students with various Materials, Machines, Processes, Products and their applications along with relevant aspects of shop management.
To make the students understand the psychology of the workers, and approach to problems along with the practices followed at factory
To make the students understand the scope, functions and job responsibility-ties in various departments of an organization.
Exposure to various aspects of entrepreneurship during the program period.

Students Projects

There are number of students interested for higher education and study abroad. Keeping in view their future requirement a component of Student Project is placed to understand and identify problems of his/ her interest and field, experimental set up, taking observation and writing and documentation in the form of thesis. Project work provides several opportunities to students to learn various aspects that cannot be taught in a class room or laboratory. In order to provide such opportunities to the graduates of agricultural science, Students Project is proposed as one of the components of the Student READY. It may be adopted based on the interest of student and expertise and facilities available with the College.The Students Project is proposed with the following objectives:

To impart analytical skills and capability to work independently.
To conceptualize, design and implement the proposed work plan.
Learn to work as a team- sharing work amongst a group, and learn leadership
Learn to solve a problem through all its stages by understanding and applying project management skills.
Learn to do various implementations, fabrication, testing and trouble shooting.
Learn communication report writing skills.

All the above mentioned components are interactive and are conceptualized for building skills in project development and execution, decision-making, individual and team coordination, approach to problem solving, accounting, quality control, marketing and resolving conflicts, etc. with end to end approach. It is observed that this programme is quite useful and beneficial to the students/ graduates in gaining the competency for entrepreneurship, in building confidence, skill and acquire Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK) of the locality and thereby, preparing the pass-out graduates for self-employment. This programme will play the key role in overall personality development of our coming Agricultural Graduates. It is believed that ICAR efforts will help in improvement of Agriculture Education and sustainable development of the rural India.

The students gained practical experience in farmers’ field situations. They created awareness among farmers about recent innovations in agriculture and allied sciences. A real life like situation is found through RAWE where gained first hand information about ITKs, get an exposure of traditional culture, customs, rituals, etc., learn to adjust in the village situation.

Through village attachment, the students got the opportunity to understand the rural setting in relation to agriculture and got familiarized with the socio-economic conditions of the farmers their problems and constraints. Through Agro-industrial attachment, the students got exposure to Industrial environment, which cannot be simulated in the university. The students got hands on training on the processing of the commodities and exposure to production, human resource, financial and marketing management system of the industrial units. The students also got acquainted with the on-going extension and rural development programmes. Students learnt the techniques of data collection, tabulation, analysis, interpretation of results and preparation of reports, etc. Learning by doing is experienced by students during their attachment at different progressive farm of the state as part of RAWE programme. Such training boosted their confidence and knowledge level. Each and every minute of their stayed at the village/farm make them acquainted with farm management, problem faced in entrepreneurial work, etc which made them confident that most of the student can become entrepreneur if resources are available. The Horticulture/ Forestry Work Experiential Learning Programme is highly beneficial for skill development because in traditional teaching it could not be possible for development of end-to-end technical and managerial know how of a specific area. This will surely benefit us (students) to seek employment in agro-based industries. Training programme at various fisheries institutes outside the state (yiz, CIFNET, NIFPHATT, CIFT, CMFRI) was useful for students as they got the opportunity to perform and do various practical activities and have different exposure of fish processing industry, trawling and marine fisheries resources since it is not available in Chhattisgarh state as it is an inland state and there is no fish processing industry in the state. lncrease in time duration of these trainings can be more helpful. Internship to the students of Veterinary and Animal Sciences has been pivotal for the graduates to gain more experience and confidence in the abilities for animal practice, independently. In spite of four and a half years of intensive college training, the graduates are simply not prepared for clinical practice independently and under field conditions. Hence, internship helps to bridge such kind of gap and becomes indispensable. Similarly, under RHWE programme, the students of Home Science College made people aware of about the prevailing common problems like cleanliness, sanitation, safe environment, water pollution, energy conservation, preservation of cultural heritage, entrepreneurial activities, etc. They also guided farmers about ways to increase their income through small entrepreneurial activities in the villages. Besides disseminating information, the students also acquired knowledge about the livelihood of rural families.

The students got experience of major crops of various agro climatic zones in the state. This helped the students to gain confidence and practical knowledge about the theoretical aspects taught in the classroom. The students were able to develop communication skills through the organization of plant clinic camps/ transfer of technology camps/awareness camps. Most of the students have given their feedback that they can apply their entrepreneurship skill if resources are available.

Overall the student READY programme is rated as significant and helpful for overall development as fisheries professional before the completion of their degree programme. The students got exposure to various aspects of entrepreneurship during this period and in this way they acquired competence to establish their own entrepreneur. An exposure to different fields/ animals’ species /labs, kindles the interests of the students that help them in deciding the specializations they intend to pursue in different fields of veterinary and animal sciences. The experience shared by the students’ undergone RAWE programme is very enthusiastic and encouraging. This programme provided them an opportunity to identify the problems of villages in general and the farmers in particular, village attachment given them a clear vision of different problems of the village through Participatory Rural Approach (PRA). The RAWE students have done this exercise by their own under the supervision of expert faculty. Through this they understand the methodology of identification of problems of the village by doing their own. The solutions for these problems are found out through suggestions by the villagers and with the help of agriculture knowledge gained by the students during their education. The students get the more advantage of being attached with the centre and the SMS team for this programme.

Students also get exposure to the various constraint faced by the farmers and how they overcome it with their available resources. During RAWE programme students experience the advisory role as well as the bridge between the farmers and university. The various technologies developed by the university are tried by the students to adopt by the farmers where they were posted. The students also get the exposure in identifying problems, analysis of the situation, searching for appropriate solution and get the things done in expected manner. Their complete stay and study during RAWE programme helps them to prepare the report of every activity undertaken and to present the same in front of experts nominated for the assessment.

It has also been observed that the students have improved in their presentation, skill, knowledge and self-confidence after completion of such In-plant Training. The students are exposed and are being prepared for getting the jobs in Private and Public sector along with establishment of a unique enterprise.

Students also got the opportunity to design micro irrigation system for different crops on large areas. Students got opportunities to interact with farmers and to know the field level problems regarding micro irrigation. It is useful for the students to understand the rural situation, agricultural technologies adapted by the farmers, problems faced by the farmers. It helps to develop the skill and attitude of working with the farm families for the overall development in rural areas.

Attachment with agro-based industries is further a good exposure helping students to learn every aspects of business and develop entrepreneurial skills. Attachment with farmers through KVKs has helped us to understand the practical problems of formers to develop linkage between various stakeholders and farmers, to understand the actual constraints in technology adoption by farmers, etc.

The programme has given the opportunity to students to experience the field work activities and to review and analyze critically his/ her own work experience which will benefit them in future career. Thos also provides scope for practical exposure in the industry/ firm, institutions etc. Get opportunity to develop professionalism by working in concerned institutions, industry/ firm, health care facilities/ medical colleges, NGO, media etc. Gain self confidence and get opportunity to explore job avenues. Duration of In-Plant Training may be increase for more intense training and exposure. Received hands on training and developed skills about production, processing, marketing and economics of various agricultural. Horticultural, animal and fishery products. Experiential learning (EL)/ HOT is a very good opportunity, which really helped in developing confidence to become entrepreneurs. Marketing part of the cases semester period is ending before the products are ready for sale.

Hence, students are more satisfied with this one hand experience which developed their confidence for solving problems related to agriculture locally and selecting the agriculture and allied enterprises as a career.

The above information has been compiled based upon feedback from students

Student Ready Booklet