Focus group discussions (FGD) serve as a useful research methodology to gather qualitative data on a specific topic of interest.  As the intern team working on the MNDA with ICRISAT, we are particularly interested in understanding how eating out behavior and packaged food consumption influence dietary diversity at the individual and household level. Over the…

After working in the tribal villages of Ronhe and Gopla in the Khunti district, we are now in a new district called Koderma. Koderma is in the north of Jharkhand, bordering the state of Bihar. We are continuing our work to determine the impact of AguaClara’s water purification system based on economic and health indicators. In Koderma, we…

I was cornered. The lady we were surveying held out a glass of water in one hand, as she held her child in the other. “Thank you, but I’ve had enough to drink,” I said smiling. I did not want to be impolite, so how else do you express gratitude universally? Smile. Apparently she took…

Few things made me happier this week than walking into a home and seeing hugs and hearing welcomes between old friends. This week in Dokur, a rural village that ICRISAT has been working with since 1975, I got to see that just about four times a day. Dora and I said goodbye to our other team…

Over the past one and a half weeks since our arrival in India, our team has been hard at work developing and fine-tuning our survey instruments. Building on the MNDA pilot completed by TCi interns last year, our team aims to expand the information collected about dietary diversity at the individual and household level and also gather…

One of the major constraints to dairy production in India, particularly in resource-poor, rural areas, is a lack of feed and fodder for livestock. Birthal and Jha (2005) estimate that feed scarcity is the most important constraint in the dairy industry, and accounts for nearly half of all losses in Indian dairy production. An expected deficit of…

I am working in the rural villages of Jharkhand as a TCi Intern this summer. Paired with TCi PhD Scholar Shiuli Vanaja, we will be looking at the economic and health impacts of the AguaClara water treatment technology. AguaClara is an engineering firm started by several Cornell alumni, and is supported by TCi. The technology is gravity powered and…

Anyone who has spent enough time around me (which sometimes might mean about five minutes) has been asked the question: “If you had to replace your fingers with any kind of utensil, what utensil would you choose?” This is one of many silly questions crafted by my brother, which I now use to get to know people….

“When I was young, I grew up on American food,” Mr. Sharma said. I looked up, smiling at the thought of Indians and Americans of the past sharing the same meals halfway around the world. He did not return it. His eyes filled with pain. “I was ashamed. It was shameful of us. Here we…

Jessica Ames is the Program Manager at TCi. This summer, she’ll be traveling across India to visit the TCi Summer Interns in their various field sites. When I was an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to enrich my education by spending time in other countries. Going to Honduras changed my life. It was a service…