International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
Abstract
The Village Dynamics in South Asia (VDSA) Project of
the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-
Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) supported by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation (BMGF) has chosen 42 villages as part
of the project. These villages – 18 in the semi-arid tropics
(SAT) of peninsular India, 12 in the Humid Tropics of
East India and 12 in Bangladesh – were selected based
on certain relevant characteristics to track rural poverty
in household and village economies in the region, to
provide the most efficient way to understand the farming
systems in rural areas, and to identify the socioeconomic
constraints faced by the farming community. In the
SAT region, 18 villages spread across 9 districts in 5
states were identified for the study. Of these, 6 were
chosen way back in 1975 under the erstwhile Village
Level Studies (VLS) project of the Economics Program
of ICRISAT, while 12 new villages were included in the
expanded VDSA project during 2009. Belladamadugu
is one of these 12 new villages
