Correlates of Available Livelihood Options among Rural Youth in Hills of Uttarakhand State, India

Abstract

Uttarakhand state has an immense opportunity for agriculture-based livelihood options yet the out-migration has not reduced. One reason behind may be the lack of awareness among youth hence, a study was conducted to compile the possible agricultural occupation for the area and identify the level of awareness among the youth about these livelihood options. The young people of the study were found to have low level of awareness for majority of the ventures particularly for those not being practiced traditionally in the area. This paper discusses the relationship between profile characteristics of youth and their level of awareness. The data was collected through multistage sampling and analyzed using SPSS software. The results revealed that majority of the respondents were young, females, educated up to higher secondary level, and belonged to medium size family. Majority of the respondents belonged to farming background, were students and unmarried. All of them owned television and majority of them owned mobile phones. They had medium level of mass media exposure, information seeking behaviour and cosmopoliteness and low level of extension agency contact. Among the socio-economic, personal, communication characteristics; age, extension agency contact and information seeking behaviour had a significant positive correlation with awareness about selected livelihood options related to agriculture in hills of Uttarakhand. A communication strategy can be formulated to facilitate contact of extension agencies with youth and more number of need-based trainings should be initiated for youth.