“Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav”, is an innovative initiative that has been planned to promote the direct interface of scientists with the farmers to hasten the lab to land process. The objective of this scheme is to provide farmers with required information, knowledge and advisories on regular basis by adopting villages. In this initiative, 20,000 scientists of National Agricultural Research and Education System (NARES) will work by selecting villages. At Institute level, many groups of multidisciplinary scientists are constituted. Each group of scientists adopting 5 villages within a radius of 50-100 km. Under this scheme, scientists provide information to the farmers on technical and other related aspects in a time frame through personal visits or on telephone. They also monitor the process of adoption of agricultural technologies by the farmers.

A team of CRIDA scientists along with RAWEP students visited Peddarevelly village of Balanagar Mandal, Mahabubnagar District on 06th September,2022. A meeting with Sarpanch Smt.B.Narmada Linga Reddy, Agricultural Extension Officer Smt.Susmita, along with farmers held in Peddarevelly village Panchayat Office. Dr.K.S.Reddy, Principal Scientist (SWC) and team leader of the MGMG group briefed about the purpose of the visit to the villagers and activities to be taken up by the students for their RAWEP program. Accordingly, the students were introduced to the farmers for their village attachment training. After that, PRA exercise was carried out with the villagers' participation. Initially transect walk was done to identify the land use pattern, soil type, irrigation sources, types of vegetation and livestock in the village followed by history mapping. Major historical events in the village were identified with the help of elder members in the village through recall method. Later, social map, resource map, mobility map, seasonal calendar and Venn diagram were prepared by the students with the villagers' involvement. This exercise helped the students to identify the social structure, major resources available, social institutions, social interaction, seasonal variations with respect to cropping pattern and weather parameters as well as different organization and their interaction in the village. Mr.Shashikanth, Mr. Krishnayya, Mr.Abiram and Mr.Shiva were the key informants during the whole exercise. The team of scientists from ICAR-CRIDA Dr.V.Maruthi, Principal Scientist (Agronomy); Dr.P.K.Pankaj, Principal Scientist (LPM); Mr.N.Manikandan, Scientist (Agrometeorology) and Dr.CN Anshida Beevi, Scientist (Agricultural Extension) organized the program and facilitated the students to conduct PRA.