Analysis of the Networking Structure of Farm Women in a Social System

Farm women need different types of farm information due to higher engagements in agriculture. It is observed from various studies that majority of the farm women were under low social participation and cosmopoliteness level. So, on the basis of the findings, a study was conducted to identify the farm women participation, association and cosmopoliteness with different organisations and to analysis their networking structure in a social system. The study was conducted in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal with the help of expost facto research design. It was found from the study that majority of the farm women were associated with one organisation and regularly involved in self-help groups. It was found from the study that the panchayat office, nearest town, kisan mandi, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, nearest city and the post office play important roles for networking the farm women. *Address for correspondence: Mr. Ganesh Das Ph.D. Research Scholar E-mail:ganesh.ext@gmail.com INTRODUCTION A social network is a social structure comprising of different types of social actors, sets of dyadic ties and other social cooperation between actors. Chowdhury and Bose (2014) reported that social participation positively affects access to agricultural information by the farm women. Information is one of the most significant contributions for employment and communication networks assume a significant job in sharing this information in rural society. Productive progression of information identified with cultivating guarantees that social learning process in the network gets moving and brings about the adoption of innovations (Haldar et al. 2016). The social network works within and outside the social system and accepts a central activity in the resolution policy of the rural poor. Informal communities, in this sense, give a strategy of advantage willingness from those with whom one needs to position affiliation. It is based on the examination of instances of associations among people, associations, states, and such social components – both apparently and numerically (Jamali and Abolhassani 2006; Misra et al. 2014). With the developing volume of applied accurate works with Social Network Analysis (SNA), experts have found it reasonably successful in thinking about complex systems, be it characteristic or human-managed. The use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) is of explicit hugeness for structures depicted by a display of actors and better than average collection in their distribution of information (Scott and Carrington 2011; Misra et al. 2014). A social network gives a lot of strategies for dissecting the structure of entire social substances just as a collection of hypotheses clarifying the examples saw in these structures (Wasserman and Faust 1994). A communication network comprises of interconnected people who are connected by the deliberate series of information, and its investigation recognises the communication structure in the system (Rogers and Kincaid 1981). Rural women need different types of farm information due to higher engagements in agriculture. It was found from various studies that a larger part of the farmers and farm women had low and medium degree of social participation and cosmopoliteness (Nayak 1995; Deshmukh et al. 2003; Ajotikar 2006; Kikon 2010; Sunil and Manjula 2010; Waman 2010; Rudroju 2013; Haldar 2014; Nayak 2015; Rizal 2016; Dash 2017). Farm women network with large numbers of formal and informal organisations for training, information sharing, information seeking, information exchange, decision making, financial planning, extension programme, family planning, child care, educational 2 GANESH DAS AND SARTHAK CHOWDHURY J Soc Sci, 63(1-3): 1-8 (2020) development, health awareness, food processing, home management, nutritional development, social security and others purposes. But the mobility, involvement and contact of farm women may vary according to the type of organisation. So it is very important to know the strong social networking actor in a social system for diffusion agricultural information to the farm women in a short time. Hence a study was needed to analyse the networking structure of farm women in the social system for the diffusion of agricultural information. The objective of the study was to identify the farm women participation, association and cosmopoliteness with different organisations and to analysis their networking structure in a social system.