Survey of Farmers, day1

I've never been in a Kisan Mela before, and definitely never surveyed people in Hindi/Marathi. So, it is something totally out of the way, something not normal and something not common in any aspect.

"This experience was going to be different" I had thought, and I wasn't wrong..

We first prepared our questionnaire, keeping in mind our objectives, the time limit, the results (in terms of validity and reliablity) and output (to get good data).

And we prepared this questionnaire in 3languages: English, Hindi and Marathi.

We prepared our stall at the destination alloted, and divided our group of 8 into a pair, one girl one boy, and after a pre-check of the whole mela, we decided to start our survey.

The pre-check was done to enjoy the mela, definitely, and to find the possible destinations where we would find our respondant(s).

After we went out as a pair, we first did pretesting on 2-3respondants per pair. This was done, in order to judge our questionnaire, whether it was framed well, if it led to any errors or mis-lead towards a wrong direction and so on...all in all, it was done so that we could make the necessary changes and get better data in lesser time.

Ofcourse, all of this is the theory part of it. Though we followed what I just mentioned, but we had to face a lot of difficulties. 

1. You cannot find the right respondants.

2. You get tired asking and searching for them.

3. Even if you do find them, they get impatient after sometime.

There's more, but I'll restrict myself.

We had a very hard time to find Rose and/or Gerbera respondants. I for once felt,  that they havn't turned up at the mela!!

After constantly asking people for hours, we could only get 15-20 respondants (the whole group) who actually qualified as our "respondants"...

Phew!!!!

Need I tell how delighted I was to question them?!

After the pre-testing, we made some changes and also realised how much a farmer wanted to tell. We felt our questions were not enough. We did not increase the number of questions as our objectives did not require it, but we kept our ears open to all the information.

Infact, while searching for the right respondants, we asked some basic questions to other farmers as well, who did not belong to the Rose Gerbera category, only because "we" were eager to hear more. 

We mostly found Sugarcane or Maize or Neem cultivators.

An interesting experience was, we introducing ourselves in Hindi and getting replies in English. Yes, flattering english from the farmers.

There were Big, Small, Rich, Poor, all types of farmers.

I'm eagerly waiting for the second day, and hoping to not only complete the target, but also gain more insights...I cherish and thank God for giving me such an invaluable opportunity.