The VDSA project’s East India humid tropics component was launched on 20 February 2010 at NCAP, New Delhi. Dr HS Gupta, Director, IARI, New Delhi inaugurated the meeting. Dr BC Barah, Director, NCAP gave the introductory remarks and Dr Anjani Kumar, Senior Scientist representing NCAP presented the project overview. Representing ICRISAT’s Director General, Project Director Dr MCS Bantilan highlighted the importance of the collaboration among ICRISAT, IRRI, ICAR and other NARS partners in the project. She reiterated that under ICRISAT’s leadership, the project would strive to decrease the incidence and severity of absolute poverty in South Asia’s semi-arid and humid tropics by improving the availability of time series micro and meso data to enable evidence-based decision making. Project Coordinators VR Kiresur and P Parthasarathy Rao participated in the panel discussion on steps to tackle poverty through VDSA. Prior to the launch, an orientation meeting was organized at NCAP on 19 February 2010 for NCAP’s VDSA staff to enhance their capabilities in data collection and data entry.