The main aim of the project is to sharply increase the availability of relevant data for decision-making on development issues to reduce impoverishment in poverty-laden regions in the semi-arid and humid tropics of South Asia. Three complementary objectives contribute to the project's vision:

Objective 1:	Enhance the availability of reliable household-, individual-, and field-specific, high-frequency, time series data in purposively selected villages in the semi-arid and humid tropics of South Asia;
Objective 2:	Increase the availability of updated and expanded meso level (eg district-level) agricultural data in India and Bangladesh;
Objective 3:	Nurture policy analysis and strengthen capacity building to fully exploit the data collected and assembled in objectives 1 and 2.

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This multi-disciplinary study builds on the unique databases already developed, thereby adding considerable value to them. It provides a distinctive social science laboratory to address contemporary issues related to institutional, policy and technological changes and their past and potential to benefit the poor. It also allows for innovative quantitative and qualitative analyses of rural poverty that offers new insights into producing a forward looking and policy-oriented knowledge base and decision support system.

The three objectives will be achieved through the following activities:

• The gathering of longitudinal data on households, individuals, and fields in 42 selected villages in years 1-5 of the project
• The assembly of secondary agricultural meso level data into an integrated base that is updated in time, expanded in coverage, extended in geographic area, and decentralized in level of aggregation
• The timely analysis of the data gathered and assembled in objectives 1 and 2, complemented by the conduct of workshops on time series and panel data collection and analysis the implementation of a small competitive grants program to support special purpose studies by regional social and agro-biological scientists in the study villages the dissemination of policy briefs and the holding of an annual conference on Village Dynamics in South Asia.

Outcomes are harder to identify in this project than in many agricultural projects that focus on technology generation and adoption. Outcomes can be viewed at two levels:

• The use of data by researchers for analysis that results in draft publications, and
• The use of research results by decision makers to change to more favorable pro-poor policies, to block the implementation of policy changes that would hurt the poor, and to change research resource allocations in programmatic investments that favor the poor.