Social safety net (SSN) programs have now become key public policy instruments by governments to mitigate the effects of the growing fuel, financial and food crises the world over.

Under the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on Market, Policy and Institutions, a planning workshop on the three-year project, “Impacts of Social Safety Net Program on Rural Livelihood in Semi-Arid Tropics (SAT) of India” was held at ICRISATPatancheru on18-19 December. The workshop aimed to analyze the impacts of major social safety net programs, particularly the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA), on select indicators of social outcomes.

Delivering the inaugural message, Dr Cynthia Bantilan, Director, Research Program on Markets, Institutions and Policies (RP-MIP), highlighted the need for a common understanding of the different components of project activities among the key partners, namely: Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Ahmedabad, Gujarat; SaciWATER (South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies), Hyderabad; University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru (UAS-B), Karnataka; and Alagappa University, Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu.

Dr Bantilan provided an overview of the project activities and their inter-linkages with other CRPs, emphasizing on the need for a better understanding of government programs, formal and informal institutions, and social safety net-related interventions across the semi-arid tropics of India and some parts of Africa.

In the next two years, the project will analyze the impacts of MGNREGA on key program objectives and outcomes of the CRP, particularly on labor participation in public works, real wage, and consumption and asset creation of smallholder farmers in 18 select villages in five states of India.

Dr Madhusudan Bhattarai of RP-MIP presented a three-year road map of the project objectives, methodologies and activities planned across sites. D Narasimha Reddy, Professor, SR Sankaran Chair, National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad, presented an overview of MGNREGA program activities across the states of India, and its influence on the dynamics of rural labor markets.

The participants critically reviewed and discussed the project’s research components, outputs, scope of assessment, methodologies, and the role and time of delivery of outputs, including inter-linkages of activities across partners.

Dr Uttam K Deb of RP-MIP presented an overview of social protection issues in the villages of the Village Dynamics in South Asia (VDSA) project, and explained the various modules of panel survey data that provide minute details on households, including governmental interventions. Drs N Nagaraj, Chanda Goodrich, Amarender Reddy, Nedumaran S, and VK Chopde of RP-MIP also presented their findings and research methodologies on various topics.