A Review of Literature and Life
Over the past three weeks, since I was thrown into the day-to-day life of ICRISAT, I’ve slowly settled into a consistent schedule — filling my days with evening walks, chai, reading, and meetings. As packing my bags for Andhra Pradesh inches nearer, I’ve gotten to reflect and learn about the research process while preparing for the field visit on July 2nd.
In just two weeks, I will be driving seven hours to the district of Anantapur in the bordering state of Andhra Pradesh. This fieldwork will encompass all the research I’ve been doing this summer. It’ll allow me to interview and collect first-hand conversations on the effects of accelerated benefits for different actors in the agricultural value chain. This starts with the farmers and agricultural laborers, producers, farmer producer organization (FPO) members, board directors of the FPO federation, retailers, all the way to the consumers.
For such an all-encompassing project that needs to be completed in eight weeks, one of my biggest challenges has been generating the right questions to ask when I get into focus group discussions. Before thinking about any of this, I first had to organize my overarching research question, molding it to fit within the goals of the project. What’s the difference between “impact” and “effect” in my title? Well, an impact usually refers to a long-term project; I was told at ICRISAT that this generally entails studying crop varieties for 5 to even 10-year periods. Hence, I changed my word choice and swapped “impact” for “effect” instead. What types of effects are you trying to study? I decided that, since many of my questions are focusing on the objectives of the initial Walmart intervention, I need to highlight the socio-economic and nutritional ones first.
The focus group discussions (FGDs), likely 6 to 12 people in total, can only be up to an hour. Therefore, I have to squeeze out all of the juice from every question and answer. To help, I’ve been finding qualitative and quantitative ways to state my questions, ensuring they can be translated into Telugu, and chronologically ordering each one to fit the specific value-chain actors. I’m interested to see how the discussion dynamics work as I’ll be using the help of another faculty member at ICRISAT to translate the questions. What might seem like a simple question and answer might get lost in the three-step translation process we have to follow. In short, with our limited time, he can only give me summaries of what each person is saying — attempting to concentrate a two-minute response into a few sentences. Diving into this process has opened my eyes to the specificity needed to generate functional questions catered to each audience. I’m excited to see how participants respond in the field and gauge whether we prepared for their interpretations correctly.
Another skill that I’m grateful to get a taste of is organizing a systematic review of literature. At the beginning of my paper, I have to kick it off with an abstract, introduction, background to the 2018 project, and a short literature review. I had to use my overarching question to hunt for the right keywords while using sources like EBSCO (Thanks NSLI-Y for the free access), JSTOR, Google Scholar, and more. I’ve been trying to find the right sources on Anantapur, then on India, and even at an international level. Using all three scopes and reviewing sources on nutrition, empowerment, and entrepreneurship for women and rural communities has helped me find ~30 sources directly tied to my study. However, I learned that that’s nothing compared to what many of the researchers at ICRISAT are doing. Sitting right across from me in the student intern room is a researcher with her PhD in agricultural economics. Currently, she is working on a 300+ source systematic review! I would love to learn the process about how to even start such an intensive project, so Dr. Padmaja informed me there is a CGIAR training program happening this fall that I could apply for to learn more (And maybe even publish a climate change review by the end to show my growth).
While I wasn’t able to leave campus due to a sickness that took Riya and me out this weekend, looking back, I’m happy with the work that I’ve been able to accomplish. My research paper is now sitting at a neat 16 pages filled with my questions, methodology, acknowledgments, introductory information, and pieces of literature review outline. Over the next week, I want to try and use the resources I have around me to prepare for Anantapur. I hope to meet new researchers around the department, hear about their research, and discover the cool things happening around me.
When I’m not in the intern room, I’ve taken to reading my book and going on long walks around campus. If there was one word to describe campus it would be “serene.” Despite the bustle of the city, ICRISAT feels like a hidden, serene bubble of peacocks, plants, and research. It feels like time moves slower as I turn the corner to walk along the 1-mile road adjacent to the red soil fields. If I’m lucky enough, I can time the walks just right, so I catch a glimpse of the sunset before it dips below the trees. The shades of red, orange, and pink light up the post-rainfall sky.
I remember that my June SAT, which feels like about a century ago, included a study discussing how you hear the noises deemed as “background noise” louder than the noises that you are supposed to deem important, even though they are the same pitch. I think I’ve begun to feel that here, too. As I doze off to sleep, I can hear the buses and honks from the outside city, serving as a sweet reminder that I’m halfway across the world even in a hypnagogic state. While I left for my trip still buzzing from the standardized test, it feels like nothing about my weeks are standardized anymore. The day might be a typical 8 am to 4:30 pm, but it’s filled with little lessons and adventures throughout. Every moment that catches me off guard reminds me how grateful I am to be here.
I’ll catch up with you soon,
Zara
