1. The design of the Andhra Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Project
Shifting the focus of development efforts from resources and products to people and their livelihood outcomes lies at the heart of the sustainable livelihoods approach. This 'people-centredness' reflects the thinking of development practitioners world-wide over the past two decades. In the case of DFID support to Indian watershed programmes, this shift has changed the way in which watershed development is perceived and implemented in at least two Indian States. This is a brief account of how the Andhra Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Project (APRLP) has managed to draw on both the SL approach and Government of India watershed programme guidelines to make watershed development more people-centred.

APRLP deviates from conventional watershed development projects in that the programme:

• does not confine itself to land-based development issues. In adopting a livelihoods perspective, the project positively encourages the flexibility required for local people to prioritise interventions. Activities may include viable non-agrarian activities;
• positively builds upon, and strengthens, existing self-help initiatives, such as the State-wide women's self-help movement, in order to develop novel non-land-based livelihood interventions;
• emphasises the importance of capacity building of primary and secondary stakeholders - even those outside DFID-funded watersheds - in conferring greater control of the development process and providing funding for this;
• addresses macro-level constraints, such as the land-based development focus of the programme and associated bias in budgetary provision, through advocacy for pro-poor approaches and policy changes. Strengthening the sectoral policy environment in Andhra Pradesh was recognised during the project appraisal stage as essential if rural development programmes were to be made more effective; and
• has been flexible enough to satisfy both the Government of Andhra Pradesh's (GoAP's) and DFID's pro-poor focus, conferring a greater potential for sustainability on the project.

The present form of the APRLP owes its existence to two strands of development thinking that ran in parallel: watershed development and sustainable livelihoods approaches.