Beyond COVID-19 – Rebuilding Rural Livelihoods

As India grapples with the pandemic, MSSRF stands with farming and fishing communities in seven states, with who we have worked for over three decades, for evidence-based, environmentally sustainable, livelihood generating, and gender-sensitive development.

Our foremost concern has been increasing awareness of hygiene and sanitation and taking this key message through partners to our areas of work. Our years of communication experience has enabled us to react rapidly and innovatively at all our field sites.

The lockdown and the downturn in economic activity has hit rural communities hard. Relief to families deprived suddenly of livelihoods and incomes has been difficult to deliver, with major gaps in coverage as well as in appropriate nutrition. Uncertainty of what is permitted under lockdown, lack of clarity as administrative guidelines are fine-tuned and genuine fear of infection, have all contributed to slowing down the pace of the rural economy. The disruption of value chains that are crucial to enable market access to crops and fish produce has been staggering for small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers and fisher-folk.

Access to markets has become a major safety issue as well, as some wholesale and retail markets to which farmers and fisher-folk take their produce are potential centres of infection. If local supply chains have to benefit small producers, they also have to be sanitised and safe.

MSSRF seeks your support to act effectively in this crisis.

Action, going beyond relief, that provides the means to restore and enhance livelihoods and incomes even while learning to live with a virus that is likely to be with us for some time. We seek to meet this challenge with the right kinds of intervention, informed by our experience, expertise and values, towards lessons for larger, scalable initiatives from these interventions.

Our actions will be centred around the following themes: