As part of the GRTA-CHIRAG project, a study was conducted to explore the experiences of migrant workers from Chakai (Bihar) to four different states - Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. This study unveiled the systematic neglect of the workers triggered by the pandemic. The research was conducted jointly by University of East Anglia Professor Nitya Rao and PRADAN's Nivedita Narain, Shuvajit Chakraborty, Arundhita Bhanjdeo and Ayesha Pattnaik and published in the European Journal of Development Research (EJDR). Click here to read the paper. The findings of the study were also published in an academic blog published in the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI). Click here to read the blog and tell us what you think.

“They all pinned me down, grabbed my arms and legs so I was unable to move and shaved my head while I kept screaming and begging them to let me go.”

Vinitika Lal writes a blog using a critical incident methodology to capture change actions witnessed during a recent witch-hunting episode in Jharkhand, as narrated by key people involved in it. The blog also presents the research questions being considered and the possible directions for the research to explore, Click here to read the blog.

Gautam Bisht shares the experiences and challenges in developing a culturally responsive curriculum on sustainable food systems under the GRTA-CHIRAG project. He shares that not just school textbooks, but also development agencies often fail to integrate their programs on health and food sustainability with what is referred to by concepts like ‘indigenous’, ‘local’, ‘traditional’, ‘cultural’ or ‘community knowledge’. Hence, the starting point of the curriculum being designed by the team in the project is the gap between school learning and community life, specific to the subject domain of health, food and environmental science in the rural Santhal context of south Bihar.

To read Gautam’s blog and the snippets of a culturally responsive curriculum, click here

Siddharth Panda is a Research Associate working in the IKEA-PRIDE project. In this blog, Siddharth explores an approach to agriculture which synthesizes principles of agroecology and state-of-the art technology while simultaneously taking a systems approach to better understand the problem at hand. He uses his experiences from the ongoing project on regenerative agriculture in five blocks of Jharkhand to build his argument the proposed approach.

To read Siddharth’s blog, click here  

TIGR2ESS project: After conducting interviews with the Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), and transcribing the data, currently the team is engaged in pre-analysis activities. Additionally, community youth from Chakai were trained and engaged as interviewers to conduct a tab-based Household survey. The survey was recently completed, and the team is now involved in cleaning and sorting the data.

 IKEA-PRIDE project: The Ikea-pride project aims at monitoring the changes in bio-physical characteristics and farmer practices due to the introduction of Regenerative agriculture. The team has been monitoring changes in precipitation, temperature and land use over the past 5 years through Geospatial technology. Soil quality parameters are being quantified through laboratory testing of soil samples collected in the month of October from all 5 intervention sites.

 Gender Responsive Organisations for Women (GROW) project: Data collection in the grow project has resumed post lockdown break. We are collecting change stories from the block resource persons and the CLF Social Action Committee (SAC) members using critical incident method. We are also restarting the pre and post training data collection for the various training interventions.

Shreya Sinha and Nivedita Narain's abstract titled Resilience as process: The case of rural migrants in eastern India has been accepted for presentation at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) panel on ‘Rural transformations, social vulnerability, and visions for the future in the shadow of COVID-19’. This is supported by the TIGR2ESS research project, and the panel is part of the annual AAG conference, to be held virtually in Seattle, USA in April 2021.

The journal paper published in EJDR was in news where Business Standard and various other media platforms reported the findings from that study. Additionally, snippets from the study and experiences of conducting the study were also published in platforms like Village Square by some of our team members (above picture on the left). The picture on the right is a screenshot of an Instagram status put by the Bollywood actor, Priyanka Chopra, mentioning Lahanti Club, a community youth collective engaged in the GRTA-CHIRAG project.