Improving rural livelihoods in India

This collaborative project, Sustaining and Improving Rural Livelihoods through Adaptive Approaches to Land, Soil Nutrient and Water Management, covers three geographically distinct but thematically related research projects in India. The specialties and skills of the institutes in each pilot area—the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, the National Institute of Hydrology in Roorkee, and the Center for Water Resources Development and Management in Kozhikode—have been combined with WAT’s systems analytical expertise for this work [1].

In 2015, essential field data and spatial information from the chosen pilot areas, the Kozhikode district in Kerala, the Tikamgarh district in India’s water-scarce Bundelkhand region, and the Gujarat region, were exchanged between the institutions and nutrient accounting methods and strategies were discussed. The results of this work will be fed into a decision-support system, which can then be scaled up and applied to other areas.

Figure 1. Land equipped with irrigation (left) and soil suitability for maize cultivation (right) in Gujarat

Last edited: 09 March 2016