Indian Farmers Method
Select the individual from the voters list. Once we selected the individual (who could be either male or female and of any age), we treated that house in which the selected person live as our selected household. So we used an indirect method of household selection, but ultimately selecting the household.
We interviewed that person in the selected household who is mainly engaged in agriculture. We assumed that we would get about 97-98 percent male in middle age or elderly in our sample who is mainly engaged in agriculture work.
To know the perception of women on agriculture we decided to interview one women in that household using a very short questionnaire. We also assume in most cases, we would interview middle age person, so we had a one page questionnaire to interview one young person in that family (age 18-22 either male or female).
We sampled 30 people from electoral roll in one village. Those 30 people were treated as 30 household once people were selected. If we visit someone's house and found out that a particular family does not depend upon agriculture, we did not conduct interview in that family. The criterion is that the family must be engaged in agriculture in some way. For this reason we sampled 30 people/ household so that we may meet about 20-22 families which are engaged in agriculture and we conducted interviews in those families.
The method used was survey research through face to face interview of the farmers. This study was spread over 18 major states with a randomly selected sample of 5480 farmers.
Training Workshop and Fieldwork
Training workshop was held in all eighteen states separately in presence of their state coordinator and supervisor. Training was imparted in their local language about survey research and the details of the questionnaires. In total in all 18 states there were approximately 280 investigators in the field who collected the data from the farmers. The field work has almost been completed in all the states. Presently Lokniti is the process of collecting data from across India.
The objective of this study is look at the following:
- Assess the condition of farmers and farmer households
- Find out the level of indebtedness of farmer households
- Look at the reasons for agrarian distress and farmer suicides
- Assess the effectiveness of government policies for farmers
- Look at the farming practices and preferences among farmers
- Find out farmer concerns and whether they differ from state to state
- Find out the political preferences and choices of farmers
- Gauge the level of awareness and acceptance of new farming techniques and crops
- Find out the attitudes and opinions of farmers on key issues related to farming
- Generate indicators on the status of farmers and farming in order to facilitate policy