Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN)

A civil society consultation was held on “Regenerating natural resources and rural livelihoods in rainfed areas of India” by WASSAN at Hyderabad in December 2010 to discuss priorities for the twelfth five year plan. The Planning Commission, Government of India has been steering the process of development in India by conceptualizing five year plans and had sought inputs from civil society organizations, activists groups, networks of CBOs / NGOs, donors and others for preparing an approach paper for twelfth plan.

The objective of the consultation workshop was to contribute to the process of defining broad contours of twelfth plan with a focus on rural livelihoods the thrust area being policy framework, funding support, institutional arrangements etc., by -

• Consolidating the lessons from good practices in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods in the country, that could be integrated in twelfth five year plan.
• Systematically articulating issues and concerns (bottlenecks) in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods, which could be addressed in the twelfth five year plan.

This page provides the link to the lead papers and presentations of the national workshop by ICAR, WASSAN and CSA on “New paradigm for rainfed farming: Support systems and incentives” in 2007.

This document by Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) and Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) deals with experiences with System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in Andhra Pradesh. The innovative system of growing rice SRI, with less water was initiated in the state of Andhra Pradesh drawing lessons from the experiences of the farmers in Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and in Indian states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. In the state, the progressive farmers, NGOs, Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU) and the State Department of Agriculture took active role in promoting this model of rice cultivation.