The Rural Agricultural Work Experience (RAWE) programme is a flagship activity for the final year B.Sc. (Ag.) students during their seventh semester. Building self-confidence in the agricultural graduates by honing their professional skills is the key objective of introducing RAWE under the aegis of STUDENT READY programme by ICAR.
During the village visits, one farmer was assigned to each group of ten students. RAWE visits provided a wonderful opportunity to interact with the farmers, rediscover the farmers and come up with the innovative solutions. Besides acquiring first hand field experience, the RAWE modules was designed to bring about a positive transformation in the students’ outlook, personality, traits, managerial and entrepreneurial skills.
Students experienced grass root problems of the farmers and learned to so RAWE helped the students primarily to understand the rural situations, status of agricultural technologies adopted by farmers, prioritize the farmer’s problems and to develop skills & attitude of working with farm families for overall development in rural area. RAWE included general orientation and on campus training by different faculty members followed by village attachment. Subject specific faculty members guided the students on different RAWE interventions.
Technology and globalization are ushering an era of unprecedented change. The need and pressure for change and innovation in agricultural and allied sector is no exception. Agriculture sector holds immense employment opportunities. To enrich the practical knowledge of the students, Agro Industrial Attachment has been made mandatory for students for a maximum period of up to three weeks by ICAR.
Students were advised to select from the following Agro based Industries - seed/sapling production, pesticides- insecticides, post-harvests processing, value addition, agri-finance institutions, dairy, poultry, etc. In this training, students studied a problem in industrial perspective and submitted the reports to the universities. Under AIA students learned about general information about the Agro-Industry , nature of business , brief history of the firm , licensing and other legal aspects of the firm.
Furthermore they were well equipped with the knowledge of structure, functioning, objective and mandates of the industry, various processing units and hands-on trainings under supervision of industry staff, level of employment generated by the industry and skill development in all crucial tasks of the industry. At last students were asked for documentation of the activities, prepare and submit a report on the tasks performed by the students, performance evaluation, appraisal and ranking of students.
