C Shambhu Prasad

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 report published by the WWF India and the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar  documents the history of the practice of SRI in India in the last few years and presents some of the institutional changes and challenges that SRI throws up. SRI is a fascinating case of rural innovation that has been developed outside the formal rice research establishment both in India and the rest of the world.

SRI is an agroecological innovation that emerged as a civil society innovation and has since captured the imagination of thousands of farmers across the world, including India.