Hyderabad, November 03: Seeking to improve the quantity and quality of village-based information for better decision-making, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in association with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), will be aiming at improving global understanding of the dynamics of rural poverty through the recently-launched Village Dynamics Studies (VDS) project.
The five-year project would be implemented by ICRISAT together with the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP) in the humid tropics of East India, said a release here today.
ICRISAT Director General William Dar, in a statement, said: “The purpose of this unique project is to decrease the incidence and severity of absolute poverty by markedly increasing the availability of time-series data at the district, household and individual levels.’’ Dar also emphasised that tracking poverty using the data to be collected by this project would further inform and advance policy dialogue for the drylands.
“Access to accurate data will shape future agricultural development strategies,’’ said Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of the foundation’s Agricultural Development Initiative, and added that the project would give a voice to the poor and inform programmes and policies that help farmers with small holdings lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.
According to Dr MCS Bantilan, the principal scientist of the project, this multidisciplinary study builds on the unique databases already developed and will add considerable value to them.
The said the project would draw on the best in the social sciences globally to conduct research on the most impoverished regions of the developing world, and serve as an example for other national programmes in developing countries.
–Agencies