Book of Extended summaries ISDA

International Conference on Reimagining Rainfed Agro-ecosystems: Challenges &
Opportunities during 22-24, December 2022 at ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad
for International Development, United Kingdom, broadened the perspective towards livelihood
betterment and partnerships to include the non-governmental organizations in a project mode.
Such a partnership was also instrumental in creating an innovative community-based institution
viz., salah samithi, that helped better acceptance of technologies, facilitation of smoother
project delivery and implementation and save time of scientists (Rama Rao et al., 2007). The
multi-institutional collaboration broadened further in the ICAR’s National Agricultural
Innovation Project that included the private sector players. Thus, a well-planned multiinstitutional
project enabled implementation of interventions in the areas of productivity
enhancement largely supported by research organizations, better natural resource management
through building community-based organizations facilitated by NGOs and strengthening
market linkages and information dissemination by the private sector players. The results were
visible in the form of higher productivity and incomes and better and more equitable use of
natural resources. One of the key interventions of such an effort was creation of local water
users’ association that led to more efficient and equitable groundwater utilisation (Rama Rao
et al., 2017). These experiences with institutional innovations were taken forwarded in the
technology demonstration component of the ‘National Innovations in Climate Resilient
Agriculture’ where in multiple village-based institutions were created to enable making and
implement decisions on technology adoption (Srinivasa Rao et al., 2016). Such institutions
include village climate risk management committee, custom hiring centre, seed bank, fodder
bank that help deal with multiple dimensions of impacts of climate change and variability.
However, not all such institutional interventions are equally effective in all locations and a
comprehensive explanation to such variable performance is a question to be addressed invoking
tools of social and economics science tools.
Conclusion
Sustainable agricultural development is increasingly complex and challenging. Efforts towards
more sustainable agriculture warrants institutional interventions in terms of how different
institutions work together in a complementary manner and creation of community-based
organizations that help shorten research and adoption lags. However, it is important to
understand the factors that facilitate or constrain effectiveness of such institutional
interventions.
Average time spent by scientists in dealing with community with and without ‘salah
samithi’
Phase of the
project
Without Salah
Samithi
With Salah samithi t value p value
Early 5.97 (0.81) 5.83 (0.96) 0.41 0.68
Mid 4.1 (0.51) 2.30 (0.56) 9.22