Food Security Atlas Of RURAL MAHARASHTRA - WFP Remote ...

AcknowledgementsThe preparation of food security atlases for eight states would not have been possible without thejoint efforts of various organizations, individuals and government officials. The primary input forconstruction of the indices as well as formulation of appropriate indicators is reliable disaggregatedsub-state level data, which was collected, collated and mined from secondary sources as well asbased on information made available by various state departments and ministries. We wish to thankall of them for their support and assistance. We are grateful to the Department for InternationalDevelopment (DFID) for funding the project through the Global Institutional Support Grant to WFP.The Chairperson of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG), Prof. Abhijit Sen, Member, PlanningCommission and other members of the TAG deserve a special mention for all the deliberations in themeetings held and their expert advice to the research team from time to time. Many of them werealso available at short notice to help us resolve problems, provide solutions and show the wayforward. We wish to thank them all for their cooperation and support.We would like to thank Mr. Michael Sheinkman, WFP Senior Regional Programme Adviser forVulnerability Analysis and Mapping in WFP’s Regional Bureau at Bangkok for his presentation andparticipation at some of the state consultations.The smooth execution of this project would not have been feasible without constant support andinspiration from Prof. Alakh N. Sharma, Director, IHD. We wish to thank him for his cooperation,ideas and discussions held during the entire period of the project.We would like to thank Ms. Mihoko Tamamura, the current Representative and Country Director ofWFP – India, Mr. Dominique Frankefort, Former Deputy Country Director and Mr. GianPietro Bordignon,Former Representative and Country Director and for their encouragement at every stage.We wish to also acknowledge the research and data support received from many individuals in thecourse of the project period. These include Ms. Piyali Das, who undertook the literature reviewduring the initial phase of the project; and Mr. Pinaki Joddar and Mr. Balwant Singh Mehta, who veryably mined large data sets of the NSSO for extracting relevant information and provided additionalresearch inputs. Dr. Ramashray Singh collected district-level data for Maharashtra from thegovernment offices at Mumbai.The support received from IHD administration needs to be acknowledged, especially Mr. PremChandra, Ms. Jyoti Girish, Ms. Madhavi Chauhan, Ms. Nidhi Sharma, Mr. Sanjay Kumar and Mr.Phalguni Singh. Mr. S.P. Sharma undertook all the typing and pagesetting work and Ms. ShashikalaMenon did the copyediting. We wish to thank all of them. We thank Mr. Yatinder Bisht for designing,Mr. Nitin Chauhan for formatting, and S P Printech for printing support.– IHD and WFP Research Teamix