Learnings from SRI Upscaling Experience in Bihar, Tripura and Odisha

Despite showing positive results over a decade by millions of farmers across India, System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and now called as System of Crop Intensification (SCI) has not received adequate appreciation through upscaling and investments policy. SRI however, was featured as an innovation to be up scaled in the 12th Five Year Plan. Recently, It has been considered as one of the technologies to increase the production under Niti Ayog’s policy paper (2017) on doubling farmers income. The schemes like SAGY, NFSM, NRLM, etc. also promote SRI as one of the agriculture based livelihood enhancement techniques. Some of the states have been on forefront to adopt SRI in their government schemes and diverted the funds from existing schemes for SRI demonstration, promotions, training, upscaling, etc. The strategy in each state differs in the way civil societies, research institutes, academics, etc. played a role in promotion of SRI. Based on the differential approaches used by states, rainfed conditions and experience of promotion for almost a decade, three case study states, Bihar, Odisha and Tripura were chosen for this analysis. The learning from each state has been drawn to understand - factors instrumental in upscaling and success, reasons of de-adaptation and accordingly recommendation are drawn.