The South Asia Initiative addresses several of such issues by using a three-pronged strategy consisting of the following components:

1. Policy Analysis and Advisory Network for South Asia (PAANSA): A network of agricultural policymakers, advisors, and analysts in South Asia has been established for more effective policy dialogue. Issues of high importance such as food security and poverty alleviation are being addressed.
2. Applied Research: Key experts from each member country are undertaking high quality collaborative research on critical policy issues facing the food, agriculture, and natural resource sectors of the region.
3. Capacity Strengthening: Through collaborative research, training and exchange programs with local institutions, NGOs, and the private sector, IFPRI is strengthening local capacity so that applied policy research can be carried out on a continuing basis.

Policy Analysis and Advisory Network for South Asia (PAANSA)

Developing consensus through policy dialogue among researchers, policy advisors, and policymakers is important to move the policy reform agenda towards agriculture development and poverty alleviation. The Policy Analysis and Advisory Network for South Asia (PAANSA) is accomplishing this objective through a two-layer network:

• In the first layer, within each country, there is a group of selected resource persons who have been closely associated with policy making as direct policy makers, policy advisors, or policy researchers. This group meets to discuss the priority policy issues for the country concerned, identify how and who can undertake relevant research on those issues, how they would like to share and disseminate their research findings, and how that can make a difference in the policies of the country. IFPRI's effort in this is to facilitate the "bottom up" process.
• In the second layer, the leaders of these country groups (Chairpersons or coordinators) meet at the regional level to share the research findings of critical issues in each country. They also exchange their experiences in carrying out economic reforms, and how these reforms are affecting the growth of agriculture and people below the poverty line. This interaction is expected to bring valuable lessons to the table that they can learn from each other in carrying out the reform process further.

IFPRI has a long history of working with policy institutions in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan over the past twenty-five years. The new initiative has been expanded to cover other countries of the region namely, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The members of the proposed network focus on:

• Developing priorities for policy research that need to be undertaken in agriculture and rural development with a view to reducing poverty;
• Conducting and reviewing the research results that IFPRI and proposed collaborating institutions are undertaking; and
• Communicating through policy exchange workshops within countries and in the region to share their experience in policy making with others.

PAANSA delegates are addressing selected issues such as the effects of economic reforms (particularly trade liberalization) on food security, both at national and household levels. The issues of food security were high on the agenda during our initial interaction with policy makers in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. Other important research issues identified by PAANSA delegates are: diversification of agriculture to high-value products and agro-processing; water resource management; agricultural technology, including biotechnology; and institutional issues in market reform and national resource management.

At the country level, however, the priority issues differ, ranging from the need to ensure environmental protection along with food security (as in Bhutan) to policies pertaining to pricing, stocking and distribution of food grains under the government control (as in India). IFPRI's effort is to facilitate the prioritization process by the group of experts in each country, focusing on the short and long-term concerns, and the emerging challenges of the region. IFPRI is working with respective governments and other stakeholders to identify their priorities and supply them with the likely outcomes of their policy choices through quality research.

Information on sound policy research is fundamental for promoting policy dialogue. Hence, IFPRI is carrying out applied research studies with collaborating institutions based on the priorities identified. Research consists of collection and analysis of data, development of new methodologies, and training and exchange programs.

There are four main characteristics in carrying out such research:

• Identify key problems in each country and/or region;
• Ensure that the policy issues identified are relevant to current decision making;
• Undertake quality research with local collaborators on those key issues; and
• Communicate these issues to policymakers for the implementation of vital policy recommendations.

In order to increase the capacity for policy analysis and implementation, two sets of capacity strengthening activities have been initiated under this component. The first set involves the exchange of researchers between IFPRI and collaborating institutions. An explicit objective is to bring collaborators to IFPRI for extended research visits, to conduct these studies jointly with IFPRI staff, and improve the level of analytical collaboration. As on September 2004, IFPRI has hosted approximately 29 visiting scholars from South Asia and plans to increase the numbers as collaboration deepens.

The second set of capacity strengthening activities involves training workshops for strengthening policy analysis and policy communication capacity. In selected countries, IFPRI holds training programs not only for collaborators, but also for a wider audience on certain tools of applied policy research. University educators involved in teaching and training policy courses also attend these workshops in order to impact similar analytical training to the new generation of students. As on September 2004, IFPRI has organized 3 training workshops.

In addition to the thematic and methodological training workshops, policy researchers are being trained in specific policy communication skills in preparing policy briefs for the decision makers and for the media. This is expected to increase the impact of their research by translating key results into government policies, and will be imparted as part of the final dissemination workshop at the end of the policy research program.

The capacity strengthening component of the project corresponds with the research program and derives its contents from the issues, methods and results of the research studies.

In order to widely disseminate policy research findings, IFPRI communicates its research to different stakeholders through policy dialogues, media and publications. Key elements of the communication strategy include: publications - which include detailed research reports from research studies; knowledge management - development of a web page on the Internet; media - a special effort is being made to establish linkages with the local and regional media; and policy seminars and research dissemination workshops - a series of seminars and workshops are being carried out where research results are presented in the countries where the studies are undertaken.