Coordinate, communicate, follow-up” – This was the crux of the message delivered to stakeholders during the Village Dynamics Studies in South Asia (VDSA) project harmonization workshop organized at Golkonda Resorts, Gandipet, from 13-15 September.

The project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), aims to decrease the incidence and severity of absolute poverty in South Asia’s semi-arid and humid tropics by markedly increasing the availability of time-series district, household, individual, and field-level data.

The workshop aimed to achieve a “meeting of minds” among the project’s stakeholders and create a common understanding of project activities in terms of impacting policy – both short-term and long-term – and steps forward towards achieving impacts across the three regions of South Asia (semi-arid tropics of India, humid tropics of East India, and tropics and subtropical region of Bangladesh).

The presentations by staff aimed at prioritizing cross-cutting issues, clearing regional differences, agreeing upon revised and updated workplans and harmonizing methodology and survey approaches. The workshop also tackled the issue of mutually agreed upon production of research outputs, dissemination and reporting strategy, and fostering strategic partnerships with other stakeholders in each of the regions.

BMGF program officer with DG of ICRISAT	Gender group working together in the VDSA harmonization workshop

The project team was inspired and challenged as Director for RP-Markets, Institutions and Policies (MIP) Dr Cynthia Bantilan, Prof Ramesh Chand, resource persons Drs SS Acharya and Wijaya Nguyen emphasized the need to keep in mind the outcome and impact of the VDSA project. On prioritization of core research activities and agenda, rather than just communicating what VDSA can offer, the team was encouraged to go beyond the “supply driven” model to a “demand driven” model by simply asking decision-makers: “what do you need?” This was considered an important entry point into policy debates, and the importance of this logic was very well articulated and elaborated by Prof SS Acharya.

Playing moderators, Tuu-Van Nguyen and Cynthia Bantilan emphasized the need for multidisciplinary research in the project activities. The team was encouraged to cross disciplinary boundaries. The discussions also outlined the tasks ahead for harmonization considering the diversity of issues and keeping in mind the need to nurture creativity and innovation.

The VDSA project staff from ICRISAT (Cynthia Bantilan, Uttam Kumar Deb, Madhusudan Bhattarai, P Parthasarathy Rao, Anjani Kumar, Chanda Gurung Goodrich, R Padmaja, Lalmani Pandey, N Nagaraj, VK Chopde, GD Nageshwar Rao, K Kavitha, GV Anupama, Kaushik Basu, Soumitra Pramanik, Elias Khan, Ravichand, Byjesh and E Jagadeesh); East India (Ramesh Chand, Usha Rani Ahuja, Rajni Jain, Prabhakar Nanda, RKP Singh and Mukesh Kumar Sinha); and Bangladesh (Humnath Bhandari and Alamgir Chowdhury) attended, apart from Tuu-Van Nguyen, SS Acharya and Wijaya Jayatilaka.