ABSTRACT. I explore transformative social innovation in agriculture through a particular case of agroecological innovation, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in India. Insights from social innovation theory that emphasize the roles of social movements and the reengagement of vulnerable populations in societal transformation can help reinstate the missing "social" dimension in current discourses on innovation in India. India has a rich and vibrant tradition of social innovation wherein vulnerable communities have engaged in collective experimentation. This is often missed in official or formal accounts. Social innovations such as SRI can help recreate these possibilities for change from outside the mainstream due to newer opportunities that networks present in the twentyfirst century. I show how local and international networks led by Civil Society Organizations have reinterpreted and reconstructed game-changing macrotrends in agriculture. This has enabled the articulation and translation of an alternative paradigm for sustainable transitions within agriculture from outside formal research channels. These social innovations, however, encounter stiff opposition from established actors in agricultural research systems. Newer heterogeneous networks, as witnessed in SRI, provide opportunities for researchers within hierarchical research systems to explore, experiment, and create newer norms of engagement with Civil Society Organizations and farmers. I emphasize valuing and embedding diversity of practices and institutions at an early stage to enable systems to be more resilient and adaptable in sustainable transitions.
Nearly two decades after sanitation was identified as a global priority under the Millennium Development Goals, more than 4 billion people still lack access to safely managed sanitation and two-thirds of all human waste generated remains unsafely disposed. While the Sustainable Development Goals include ambitious targets for sanitation coverage, the current pace of progress will bring us far short of these aims. Despite sanitation's economic promise of 9-fold investment returns and numerous cross-sectoral benefits --from girls' education to environmental health --realizing universal and sustainable sanitation access is proving to be an elusive task.Over the past 20 years, sanitation research has grown broader in scope and deeper in complexity through diverse disciplinary approaches. Originally, sanitation research was entirely focused on containing fecal waste and preventing diarrheal diseases --placed squarely in the domain of environmental engineering and public health. However, the literature on sanitation has since expanded into economics, urban planning, cultural studies, gender studies, and beyond. While this diversity has extended the scope of traditional sanitation research, adding richness to our understanding of this complex topic, it has also rendered the term "sanitation" more nebulous. Such diverse perspectives have led to myriad, and even contradictory, definitions of what sanitation is, what it does, and what it is good for. As a result, we find that ideas about the designated functions of sanitation systems and the priorities of sanitation policy vary widely among academics, policymakers, NGOs, and community members.We review the full range of disciplines that now houses sanitation research with the goal of understanding the overlaps and disparities among and between these perspectives. Our review:(1) examines and systematically summarizes the interdisciplinary conversation around sanitation;(2) facilitates within-disciplinary understanding of cross-disciplinary definitions and priorities; and (3) recommends a more complete framework for sanitation for decision makers as well as for future research. Our aim for this work is to help those in the sanitation sector avoid the pitfalls and disciplinary silos that contributed to the failure to meet the Millennium Development Goals for sanitation as well as the current shortcomings in meeting SDG 6.2.
India's flagship program on sanitation and hygiene – the Swachh Bharat Mission – aims to eliminate open defecation and to manage urban waste for a ‘Clean India’. The emptying of toilet pits and the transport of waste are as critical as more toilets are for sustainable sanitation. In unsewered cities of the global South, these services are mainly provided by privately run cleaning trucks. We find that the physical and social mechanisms through which these services are organized are virtually invisible in national fecal sludge and waste management policies. Based on a rich ethnography of cleaning trucks in Bangalore, India, we show that trucking operations dispose of sludge in ways that harm both public health and the environment, and that the caste composition of sanitation work helps to keep it invisible from officials and the public. We draw on the concept of the social role of disgust to explain the seen-and-unseen nature of these trucks. ‘Seeing’ sludge management as it is practiced is essential for understanding how the sanitary city is being produced and for the success of future sanitation reforms. This article has been made Open Access thanks to the generous support of a global network of libraries as part of the Knowledge Unlatched Select initiative.
Scores of assessments of the impacts of agricultural research have been carried out over the years. However, few appear to have been used to improve decision making and the effectiveness of research programmes. The Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC) Initiative emerged within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), with the goal of strengthening learning from experience and using lessons to improve pro-poor innovation. It is testing approaches for expanding the contributions of impact assessment and evaluation to learning, decision making and improvement. I N T RO D U C T I O N
Amongst public policies for poverty reduction there has been a renewed thrust on enhancing rural livelihoods in recent times. This article situates current mission based livelihood programmes in India within the larger context of livelihoods discourse in the last two decades in development studies. This article revisits the literature on livelihoods and the Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA). A critical review of SLA suggests a welcome focus in public policies on perspectives and institutions of the poor. However, operationalizing, implementing and evaluating SLAs present several challenges. A review of implementation of livelihood schemes in India is presented with suggestions for a dialogue between SLA frameworks and implementation studies literature in public policies. India presents an interesting opportunity for academics to shift the discourse from poverty and employment as key themes to an engagement on livelihoods as a frame that hitherto has largely remained a practitioner led discourse.
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