What is the perspective of FAO on the livelihoods issue in the South Asian region?
Basically the idea of livelihoods is to look at various aspects that need to come together to improve the well being of the rural households. The idea of livelihoods is to get away from compartmentalisation, where we look at different pieces of the household s consumption and income activities as standalones. Our strength is looking at social assets, family assets and human capital; bring them all together and make them work towards the improvement of livelihoods. From our point of view, to a large extent, we will be focussing on the vulnerabilities of different livelihoods and will try to focus on what might lead to them. In the case of South Asia, where you have a lot of information on poverty and malnutrition, it is good to have a characterisation based on household vulnerabilities. This helps in arriving at workable strategies. Are there any major initiatives being undertaken currently in India and Bhutan? At the moment there is a project on characterization of livelihoods groups i
