eChapters

The term growth as applied to higher organisms such as animals commonly is concerned with increase in protoplasmic mass and does apply to reproduction or to increase in number. In microbiology the term refers to increase in the number of organisms. Bacteria increase in number by a process of simple binary fission. Each cell increase in size and redivide into two similar cells. Each of the divide cells may in turn divide to become two cells. Each division produces what is termed as new generation of cells, theoretically there are 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256 cells in the 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,& 9th generation, this is known as logarithmic growth – the population doubles with each successive generation. Under favourable conditions, bacteria produce generation within 15min. Under unfavourable conditions 24 hours of more may be needed for each generation. Generation time for E.coli is 17 to 20 minutes.

The Concept of ‘Clean Milk’ Production

Although milk is nature’s most ideal and perfect single food both for the newborn and the mature human beings, the possibility of it being a source of biological and chemical hazards cannot be excluded. In view of the immense dietary importance of milk, the need for production of safe, clean and wholesome milk is emphasized. The term ‘clean milk’ does not mean milk in which all visible dirt is absent or milk from which it has been removed; rather it does denote raw milk from healthy animals, that has been produced and handled under hygienic conditions; that contains only small number of harmless bacteria and that possesses a good keeping quality without being treated by heat. In other words, the unhygienic production of milk may lead to inferior keeping quality as a result of rapid microbial multiplication under favourable storage conditions apart from serving as a potential health hazard. These microorganisms cause the milk to sour quickly, putrefy and develop undesirable flavours, colour defects, ropiness and bitterness. On the other hand, the pathogenic microorganisms, which may gain entry through various sources, may cause many diseases to the consumers.

The significance of milk in human nutrition is now well established as it is considered as the best, ideal and complete food for all age groups. However, in spite of being so, milk can also serve as a potential vehicle for transmission of some diseases under certain circumstances. Moreover, by virtue of possessing almost all the essential nutritional factors, milk can also serve as an excellent culture and protective medium for certain microorganisms, which may include potential pathogens capable of causing serious health problems to the consumers. In this way, milk may serve not only as a vehicle of transmission of disease causing organisms, but it can also allow these pathogens to grow, multiply and produce certain toxic metabolites, thereby making itself an extremely vulnerable commodity from public health point of view.

Dairy equipment and utensils with which milk and milk products come into contact are the main sources of contamination in the products. By the use of effective equipment cleaning and sterilization methods on routine basis, milk of high bacteriological quality can be consistently produced. In composite milk plant, a variety of equipment and utensils are used. The use of stainless steel for the fabrication of dairy utensils and equipment provide highly polished and hard smooth surface that can be cleaned readily, apart from showing resistance to corrosive action of detergents and bactericidal solutions. Utmost care is taken to avoid dents and scratches, which could be the possible focal points of subsequent contamination. To overcome all these problems aluminium and stainless steel vessels and equipment present an ideal situation.

India

Milk legislation and regulations are designed to prevent fraud and adulteration. But they now cover many factors that affect sanitation and public health. Milk generally is classified into grades according to the care with which it is produced.

In Vedas the cow has been regarded as the mother of Rudras, the daughter of Vashu and the sister of Aditayas and also the use of cow ghee in religious ceremonies had been mentioned in Rig Veda and there is mention of the cow as “Kam Dhenu” in ancient writings. In Shiva temples are found the references of sculpture of “Nandi Bulls”. In Hindu mythology, the male buffalo thought to be the vehicle of the God of death “Yama” and also regarded as physical form of the demon Mahishasur, a symbol of inertia-”Tamas”.

Animal husbandry is an integral component of Indian agriculture supporting livelihood of more than two-third of the rural population. The livestock sector plays a significant role in supplementing family incomes and generating gainful employment in the rural sector, besides providing cheap nutritional food to millions of people. Livestock provides milk, egg, meat as nutritious food, draught power for agriculture, wool, fibre, manure and domestic fuel, hides & skin. In 2010-11, this sector contributed 121.84 million tonnes of milk, 63.02 billion eggs, 42.99 million kg wool, and 4.83 million tonnes of meat. Milk is the main output of livestock sector accounting around two third (67%) of the total output by livestock sector. Meat and egg share 17.5% and 3.6% of the value of livestock output. Livestock contributed 4% to the total GDP and 26% to the agricultural GDP in 2010-11. Livestock are the best insurance against the vagaries of nature like drought, famine and other natural calamities.

India’s livestock sector is one of the largest in the world and dairy farming is the single largest contributor to country’s GDP, apart from being the biggest source of employment. India has 56.7 per cent of world’s buffaloes. Buffalo genetic resource greatly helps the countries to assess their strengths and potential to harness the nature’s gift and India is fortunate in terms of having largest buffalo population, huge buffalo germplasm diversity (13 recognized plus 14 distinct population groups) and the world renowned buffalo breeds: Murrah, Banni, Jaffrabadi and Nili-Ravi.

Breeds are the result of the hundreds of years of natural selection and evolution. They are adapted to tropical climate and diseases and perform reasonably well even with low quality of feed and fodder. India has agrarian economy, with majority of population dependent on agriculture. India is a mega diversity hub of different livestock breeds. There are 10 buffalo breeds, 30 cattle breeds, 42 sheep breeds, 20 goat breeds, and 18 poultry breeds contributing significantly to GDP of the country. Despite our vast population of different species, there is a need for conservation of breeds. Conservation is the management of human use of the biosphere, so that it may yield the maximum sustainable benefits to the present generation, as well as maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generation.

India, the progenitor of the present day chicken, is a vast country having varying climatic zones such as the high altitude Himalayan regions, the Indo-Gangatic plains, the Deccan plateau in the south and hot and humid coastal areas. Although, no exact data is available, factual information suggest that poultry raising in this sub continent is as old as its civilization. Owing to the long widespread chicken raising in the vast territory of this country and manifold ecological niches at different places, many native breeds were evolved over the years some of the documented breeds and ecotypes are Aseel, Ankaleshwar, Busra, Brown Desi, Chittagong, Daothigir, Denki,  Ghagus,  Haringhatta black, Kadakanath,  Kalasthi, Kashamir faverolla,  Miri,  Naked neck, Frizzle, Punjab brown, Tellichery, Titri, Teni and Nicobari.

Camels across the world are reared for milk, meat, draught, race and tourism. They are distributed in the African, Arabian and south Asian countries.  Apart from this, a feral population exists in Australia and recent reports indicate that a few animals of the species are also being reared in Europe. The world camel population shows an increasing trend with 12.92 m in 1961 to  24.68 m in 2010 producing 0.38 m tonnes of meat and 2.36 m tonnes of milk per annum.  The top 20 camel rearing countries produce both milk and meat with the exception of India and Pakistan as per FAO. Contrary to this, the research articles and news reports indicate that the species in the two south Asian countries too produce both milk and meat.

India has vast animal genetic resources with a wide variety of indigenous farm animal breeds. These breeds have evolved over generations to adapt to specific agro-climatic and socio-economic needs of the people. Many number of these breeds are now subjected to fast genetic degradation and dilution because of unplanned and indiscriminate breeding and introduction of exotic germplasm.

Domestic animal diversity in developing countries is embedded in traditional farming and pastoral communities who manage their livestock according to their Indigenous Technological Knowledge (ITK) and in tune with local ecological constraints.

Abiotic Environment

The physical or abiotic environment includes all those physical and non-living chemical aspects, which exert an influence on living organisms. The abiotic components are soil, water, air and energy from various sources. These provide both habitation and raw material for the synthesis of organic food.

6.1 Biodiversity

Biodiversity means biological diversity. It measures the variety of the earth’s animal, plant and microbial species; of genetic difference within species and of the ecosystems that support the species in its widest. Biodiversity is virtually synonymous with “life on earth”, this word was coined in 1985. Biodiversity is the degree of variety in nature and not nature itself.

To a layman, wasteland is a piece of land, which is lying uninhabited or uncultivated. These lands are also commonly perceived to produce much less than their potential. Depleted of the green cover and productivity, such lands are often in a critical condition. Broadly, wastelands may be defined as land where the production of biomass is less than its optimum ‘productivity. Wasteland also refers to lands, which are economically unproductive, ecologically unstable and subject to environmental deterioration.

In November 1992 a document entitled Warning to Humanity was released, signed by 1500 scientists from around the world, including 99 Nobel laureates, and the Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The document stated that “human beings and the natural world are on a collision course,” which “may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.”

Plants require altogether 17 essential elements to nourish themselves and to complete their reproduction and life cycle. Among them nine elements are required in large amounts for their growth, the so called macro nutrients like C, H, O, N, P, K, Ca Mg and S.  The former three elements (C, H and O) are available to the plants through air and water over which we have relatively little control either in their application rates or uptake into plant system.

Nanotechnology is a field of study which deals with materials at nano-scale like nanometer which is one billionth of a meter (1 nm = 10-9 meter). At nano-scale, physics, chemistry and biology converge towards the same principles and tools. Nanotechnology is domain in science and technology, which is multidisciplinary in nature and any scientist, engineer, medical doctor can do research on nanotechnology. Presently, it is more of a science and less of a technology because of a lack of proper tools for studying the properties of nano-material. Nano-particles (NPs) are materials that are small enough to fall within the nanometric range, with at least one of their dimensions being less than a hundred nanometres. This reduction in size brings about significant changes in their physical properties with respect to those observed in bulk materials. The presence of naturally occurring NPs is implicated in interplanetary and interstellar space (Hochella Jr, 2002) as well as our earth in which life from the beginning has evolved in their presence (Becker and Reitmeijer, 2006). Currently it is observed that NPs can be synthesized from many biological organisms including plants.

Nutrient supply is one of the major inputs for agricultural crop production in a sustainable manner. The factor productivity of inputs especially the fertilizers in agriculture was found to be in a declining phase during the last four decades. This had a detrimental effect on annual compound growth rate of major crops as wells on soil quality. The current status of nutrient use efficiency in different cropping system is low in case of major macro nutrients likes Nitrogen (30-50%) and Phosphorus (15-20%). Because 50-70% of the nitrogen applied using conventional fertilizers, with particle size dimensions greater than 100 nm, is lost to the soil due to leaching, nutrient utilization efficiency (NUE) by plants is low. Attempts to increase the NUE in conventional fertilizer formulations have thus far resulted in little success. On the other hand, the emerging nano strategies indicate that, due to the high surface area to volume ratio, nano fertilizers are expected to be far more effective than even polymer-coated conventional slow-release fertilizers. In this context, nanotechnology offers an important role in improving the nutrient use efficiency of agricultural systems.

World population is expected to cross 8.5 billion by 2025 and it will be a gigantic task to produce enough to meet the future food demand by growing same set of crop varieties on anticipated reduced area. Most of the land that could be brought under cropping has been utilized with exception of some land in Sub-Saharan Africa and South America (Borlaug and Doswell, 1993). Therefore, it is warranted to produce more from less land, less water and less inputs which can be achieved by enhancing the efficiency of production system by devising more efficient crop management practices and developing input use efficient cultivars.

Introduction

Use of FYM, crop residues, leaf fall, root deposition etc. has been part and parcel in agriculture. These material undergoes microbial decay over the time slowly and the major portion of it finds way back to the atmosphere. Not only that, residue burning traditionally provides a fast way to clear the agricultural field of residual biomass, facilitating further land preparation and planting. However, in addition to the loss of valuable biomass and nutrients, biomass burning leads to release of toxic gases including GHGs.

According to Planning Commission Report (2014), India generates about 62 million tons of municipal solid wastes (MSW) every year from urban cities. There has been a significant increase in municipal solid waste generation in India in the last few decades. This is largely due to rapid population growth and economic development in the country (Annepu, 2012). Solid waste management (SWM) has become a major environmental issue because of serious environmental implications like global warming (through green house gases emission) and contamination of toxic pollutants (like heavy metals) in surface and groundwater bodies. Solid waste management is one of the essential services to be provided by municipal authorities in the country to keep urban areas clean. Out of total waste generated in India, only 12.45% waste is scientifically processed and rest is disposed in open dumps (CPCB Report, 2013). Although, incineration of solid wastes is being followed in many places for energy production, composting is considered most environment friendly method of SWM as it promotes recycling of nutrients in crop production.

A new analytical technique called inductively coupled plasma emission spectroscopy has been used for simultaneous multi element analysis of biological materials and soils (Hou and Jones 2000; Wikipedia, 2010; Bradford and Cook, 1997). This technique offers advantages over AAS and other multi-element methods because matrix problems are eliminated or minimized through use of the high temperature argon plasma. Apart from multi- element capability at all concentration levels, plasmas are noted for relative freedom from chemical and ionization interferences that are common with AAS, and detection limits are equal to or better than AAS, depending on the element to be analyzed. Elements such as Al, P, S and B, which are either poorly measured at low concentrations or not possible by AAS, are readily determined with higher sensitivity by ICP.

Atmosphere serves as the medium through which pollutants are transported and dispersed. While being transported, the pollutants undergo chemical reactions, which may be lethal or scavenged by chemical or physical process/method. But it all exclusively depends upon the meteorological conditions (Lee et .al, 1994). Historic air pollution episodes reveal that atmospheric conditions influence the pollutant concentrations as well as their toxicity (Goldsmith & Friberg, 1976; Wichmann et.al, 1989 and Pope et.al, 1992). However, the location, duration of release, height as well as the pollutant concentrations are also important, which effect the secondary pollutant transformation under the influence of meteorological conditions, but the atmospheric behavior is independent of their sources (Holzworth, 1974).

Through the sharing of experience of developed countries, which faced the massive health problem due to vehicular pollution in the past and remedial measures adopted by them, it is needed to avoid mistakes made in the past and instead introduce effective measures for the future to reduce or confine the damage that has already been incurred. A progressive policy of motor vehicle emission control strategy, which may be more feasible/affordable, has to be adopted for solving immediate air pollution problems. Uncontrolled growth of vehicular fleet and its emission is taking place in the urban areas, which must be controlled/regulated in order to prevent future disaster. Because of economic development and speed of motorization expected over next decades this problem will become more vulnerable and even greater, If control measure are not adopted timely. It is suggested that planning must begin to provide alternatives to the motor vehicles and to reduce emission of the vehicles. The country without high capital resources will face challenging problems for evolving control strategy that will be acceptable both economically and socially.

Pollution is continuously increasing in India. To control ambient air pollution CPCB has prescribed National Ambient Air Quality Standards

True/False

Q.1.    Statistics in singular is used to denote a subject (branch) of science.
Q.2.    Statistics in plural is used to denote “data or methods”
Q.3.    Statistics is defined as a science of collection, compilation, analysis and interpretation of numerical data.
Q.4.    Statistics can be used for two major purposes: descriptive and infe-rential.

True/False

Q.1.    A set containing all possible outcome of a trial in a study is known as “Sample space”.
Q.2.    If we are interested in observing the blood type of a child born in a hospital then sample space may be a set S is of the form S = {A, B, AB, O}.
Q.3.    If outcomes are continuous in nature, the sample space is specified as an interval that contains all possible outcome values.
Q.4.    When the occurrence of one event excludes the occurrence of other events, the events are said to be “Mutually exclusive events”.
Q.5.    In case of testing the type of blood of a newly born baby in a hospital, the blood types A, B, AB, O or gender (male, female) are exclusive events.

1.    I deem it a singular honour to deliver Dr. Sen Memorial Lecture. Dr. Sen, who was both an administrator and a visionary, was instrumental for:

Synopsis

If the human being was born first, he or she needed food immediately to survive. Thereafter, human beings continued to need food and continued to eat food throughout his or her life. Hence, the relationship between human being and food is permanent and the requirement of food for the human being to be alive is everlasting. The paper provides the background, definition of right to food, and adequate food, historical events, legal perspectives, operational guidelines, and advances in its application and derives conclusion.

Bonsai culture is an important branch of Ornamental horticulture. History of Bonsai is very old dating back to many centuries in China where it originated, as most Chinese arts and from there it spread to Japan and became highly specialized.  In fact, bonsai culture is in the present day more known as Japanese than as a Chinese art.  In Japanese homes, there are plants which are hundreds of years old. This treasured art is passed from generation to generation in Japanese society.

The word Bonsai is a combination of two Japanese words, Bon (meaning shallow pan) and Sai (meaning plant) which can be interpreted as ‘Tray planting’.  The idea conveyed is that of a small beautiful tree growing in a container as in nature with all its parts performing their natural functions throughout the times.  The artistic look of plant in a miniature form maintained for many years is the prime criteria.  Bonsais are grown outdoors and are displayed in living room, as and when, needed.  They cannot be treated as house plants.

Though the extension education was originated as a “field approach” aimed to enhance the life quality of rural people, it has evolved into a scientific discipline that relies heavily on empirical research to develop and test its “field-oriented” approaches and methods. Since its birth, the extension research has passed through several phases and a range of research paradigms like community mobilisation, farmer participatory approaches, technology assessment and refinement, impact assessment, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) aided development, etc.

The Revised ATMA Scheme provides for dedicated specialist and functionary support to take up training and extension initiatives at State, District and Block level. Besides this, improvement in extension outreach right down to the village level is expected to be achieved through Farmer Friend. The study mainly focused on farmer friend under ATMA scheme. The FF served as a vital link between extension system and farmers at village level (one for every two villages). The FF should be available in the village to advise on agriculture and allied activities. The FF  mobilized farmers’ groups and facilitate dissemination of information to such groups, individual farmers and farm women directly through one to one interaction individually or in groups and also by accessing information / services  on behalf of farmers as per need through Common Service Centres (CSC) / Kisan Call Centres (KCC). (Government of India, 2010).

Rice is a staple food for millions of people in the world, particularly in developing countries like India. The demand for rice is growing with ever increasing population. In India more than 70 per cent of the ground and surface water is being used for Agriculture and out of this 70 per cent is allocated to rice cultivation. Each kg of rice produced with irrigation requires 3000- 5000 litres of water (Anonymous, 2011). The demand of rice in India is increasing with increase in population and is expected to be 140 m.t. by 2025 (Pandey et al., 2008).

Groundnut is one of the main oilseed crop of India.Unlike many oilseeds, Groundnut can be consumed directly in various farms and hence now it is also being considered a supplementary food crops. In india groundnut is grown in an area of about 6.5 hectares with a production of  about 7 million tones of pods per annum (2007). It is one of the few crops that can be cultivated even on marginal lands under low input conditions. Unfortunately average productivity of groundnut in india is quite low (1000kg) compared to (USA-3000 kg/ha, China- 2600 kg/ha, Argentina-2100 kg/ha  and  Indonesia-1550 kg/ha).

Food security is an essential feature of a country’s independence and sustenance. Rapid growing population and increasing purchase capacity, both play an influential role on food security. The cultivation or agriculture has declined the world over, with India and Kerala being no exceptions mainly due to the lack of human resources to work with the soil. Uneconomic crop pricing, lack of social accreditation, poor and unstable income, insecurity to life and health etc. are the main factors which discourage the youngsters in our country from becoming ‘farmers’.

Distribution channels are behind every product and service that consumers and business buyers purchase everywhere. Product distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix. Usually, combination on institutions specializing in manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing and many other areas join force in Distribution channels. A Distribution channels are a set of inter-dependent organization involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption. Distribution channels decisions play a role of Strategic importance in the overall presence and success a company enjoys in the market palace.

Agricultural sector worldwide is faced with several serious challenges as follows the spiralling demand of food, declining agricultural productivity due to natural resources degradation and increasing competition in international markets. The new millennium throws up new challenges in the Indian agriculture sector that are different from those in the past. Continuous pressure of producing more food from the same land with shrinking natural resources and marketing the product is a tough task for farmers. Public agricultural extension system with a mandate and mission, beyond transfer of technology, is needed to develop the capacities of the farming community.

Climate change is a complex problem involving varied interactions between the environment, natural resources (land, crops, animals and water) and people. These interactions are likely to change the ecological and agricultural landscape, and therefore influence agricultural and animal production. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has dictated that global warming/climate change could lead to many environmental problems i.e., Drought, floods, crop and animal farming, food production, and health hazards etc. Agriculture is closely dependent on the endowment of natural resources and environmental conditions of soil and climate. India is divided into many agro—climatic zones depending upon rainfall, agriculture and soil fertility. The agro climatic conditions of India and the various other factors that largely determine the cropping patterns vary throughout the country. Warangal district falls into two agro climatic regions namely Southern Telangana Zone and North Telangana Zone.

The ICT enabled extension systems act as a key agent for changing current agrarian situation by improving access to information, sharing knowledge, providing incredible opportunities and enabling the empowerment of farming communities. In order to extend the benefits of ICT’s to the disorganized and disadvantaged farming sector, one of the road maps to achieve them are access of ICT’s to villagers through Mobile telephony.

Web-education Technology

“Educating the people through web” this process is called web-education. The World Wide Web provides new opportunities and hopeful future for distance education over the Internet and the distance education is becoming a widespread used for quite a long time through Newspapers, Radio and TV. Now-a-days mostly the World Wide Web (WWW) getting vital role in distance education, e-learning and distance learning since the networking technologies are emerging very rapidly in the media dominant era. The connectivity of the internet to different kind of people around the world is increasing steadily, like TV and Radio. The World Wide Web and other Internet–based collaborative modern communication technology tools have significantly enhanced the ability to train and educate people electronically.

Sustainability issues have infused sanity in utilizing interventions without much damage to the environment. The wisdom of the practitioners, who had over generations developed their own eco-friendly practices, is being appreciated. Recent researches have aimed at documenting, rationalizing, and blending the Indigenous Knowledge with the so called Scientific or Western knowledge so as to take care of the sustainability issues. Many researchers have contributed to this pool of knowledge by documenting many of the technologies, crop wise, area wise and operation wise and so on.

The agricultural production is inherently a risky business characterized by seasonality; perishability and variability which make it susceptible to vagaries of climate and markets and thus farmers face a variety of agricultural risks. In response to these risks over a period of time, several risk management mechanisms have been evolved. Risk management strategies refer to ex-ante measures taken before such an event has taken place, whereas risk coping strategies are, ex-post strategies dealing with the consequences of the event (World Bank Report, 2005). Invariably, farmers use both ex-ante and ex-post strategies. It is interesting to note that so far agriculture risk management has been in terms of risk avoidance and risk reduction and mostly these risks are addressed at farm or production level. Currently there has been a shift in agriculture risk management from risk avoidance and risk reduction strategies to risk mitigation strategies. Similarly, there exist shifts from production to market orientation in agriculture. To understand this phenomenon involved, it is felt necessary to study the agricultural risk management behaviour farmers. Keeping this discussion as focal point, the study was conducted with an objective to assess risk management behaviour of farmers.

Plant mineral nutrition is a sub branch of plant physiology which addresses issues on uptake of elements that plant needs to absorb from air or water or soil to grow and to live. Besides function of nutrient elements in plants, it also includes deficiency symptoms and how to address deficiency symptoms in a plant. Plant mineral nutrition and mechanism of uptake has two major aspects:

Indian agriculture has grown over past 50 years from subsistence type of farming to a market surplus one with the present food grain production above 250 million tones (Fig. 1) which was only 50 million tones in 1950. At the same time the country has struggled over the years to meet the fertilizer requirement. More than 50 per cent fertilizer consumption is imported.

Introduction

Land serves as storage for water and nutrients for plants and other living organisms, but the land resources are limited. India has about 18% of world’s population and 15% of livestock population to be supported from only 2% geographical area and 1.5% of forest and pasture lands (Rao et al., 2015). The per capita availability of agricultural land has declined from 0.48 hectare in 1951 to 0.16 hectare in 1991 and is likely to decline further to 0.08 hectare in 2035. This decline in per capita land availability in the country is mostly on account of rising population (GOI, 2010). 

Trees rise towards the sky, beautiful symbol of Nature’s aspiration for light. Sri Aurobindo writes “When the sun sets and all become silent, sit down under a tree for a moment and put yourself into communication with Nature: you will feel rising from the earth, from below roots of the trees and mounting upwards and coursing through their fibres upto the highest outstretching branches, the aspiration of an intense love and longing, - a longing for something that brings light and gives happiness. There is a yearning so pure and intense that if you can feel the movement in the trees, your own being too will go up in an ardent prayer for the peace and light and love that are unmanifested here”.

The cultural history of India is associated with religious believes and any emphasis on arguments dealing with plant-man-God relationship appeals to people even today. This attitude prevails throughout India and many places of worship have continued to preserve in situ biodiversity of specific species of plants.

The present era is rightly termed as an “Information era”. Therefore, information and wide access to it is considered as wealth. People want adequate and authentic information as early as possible. In recent years, information delivery system has been changed from old ways to the modern ways. At the present time information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly being used as effective tool for reaching and delivering professional services among urban and rural communities. Yet the benefits of the information revolution are still much debated, particularly, in case of developing countries like India. There is a growing concern about the gap between the information “haves and have not’s”, which will continue to grow unless the developing countries acquire the infrastructure and resources to access these new ICTs.

What is Computer Network?

A computer network is a collection of computers and devices connected to each other. The network allows computers to communicate with each other and share resources and information. The Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA) designed “Advanced Research Projects Agency Network” (ARPANET) for the United States Department of Defence. It was the first computer network in the world in late 1960’s and early 1970’s