K.P. Timsina, Y.N. Ghimire, D. Gauchan, P.K. Sanjel, Y. Padhyoti & H.B. Bista

DOI

ABSTRACT

Nepal has adopted three tiers of governments namely federal, province and local from unitary governance structure with the endorsement of new constitution in September, 2015. This transformation in government and governance has apparently led to the need for transmuting functions and functionaries within the governments. Under this circumstance, re-orientation of three pillars of agriculture development namely research, extension and education system and their linkages need to be revised. The paper discussed on how agriculture research, extension and education system and their linkages should be in the changed context of federalism. The unitary linkages have been analyzed at four different thematic levels i.e. policy coordination followed by technology generation, verification and dissemination through the case study of vegetables sector in Nepal. The analysis has been done on how the research and development system has performed in unitary and new federal system of different countries. For the study, three workshops (one at provincial and two at federal level) and seventy key experts’ survey were carried out. It was found that, to make the linkage more effective in changed federal structural of Nepal, joint involvement of research, extension and education personals at different levels was necessary. Suggestion has been made on appropriate linkage model for Nepal to suit with newly adopted federal governance system. The proposed model guides how agricultural research, extension and education system could move coherently.

Keywords: Agricultural research, extension and education linkage, framework, technology generation and transfer, federal system and partnership