CESS to get fund from JTT for new research unit

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad-based Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), with financial support from the Jamsetji Tata Trust (JTT), is establishing the Research Unit for Livelihoods and Natural Resources (RULNR), an initiative exclusively for conducting fundamental and applied research on human livelihoods and natural resources.

JTT has sanctioned an amount of Rs 9 crore to CESS for setting up the unit and undertaking research activities. 'Though the funding is for a span of five years, JTT's association with CESS in this regard is likely to extend beyond this period,' former director of CESS and chairman of Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, S Mahendra Dev, told newspersons here on Tuesday.

In the first five years, Dev said, RULNR would focus on river basins, forest and dry land. The research will be carried out individually and in collaboration with leading academic as well as development practitioners working in the area of livelihoods and natural resource management. The research output of the unit will be disseminated to the public through periodic workshops, seminars and publications.

Besides influencing the policy at the government level, according to Dev, the main objective of RULNR is to create a centre of excellence in the field of human livelihoods and natural resources.

It is also expected to influence future research activities in this area through capacity building (of young scholars) in the form of doctoral fellowships. To begin with, the unit will have a professor, four each readers and lecturers apart from three doctoral fellows.