The VASAT approach is premised on creating a viable blend of three different trends in development: international and national agricultural research that leads to the creation and validation of useful knowledge in all areas relating to drought mitigation and management (this includes validated information on indigenous practices as well);

Applications of modern information and communication technologies in rural development (ICT4D) which is fast emerging as a key trend in development research.

The Open Distance Learning paradigm that aims at education of masses of people in a highly flexible manner; it needs to be creatively adapted to suit the requirements of individuals who have little or no exposure to the class room milieu.

Our approach is to blend them to develop a novel program of extension communication and education that will help build more effective linkages between large numbers of rural women and men and expert organizations across national or regional boundaries. This we believe will provide the basis for a customizable, mass education process that is built on rapid-delivery techniques.

We try to present these components as the three strands of a  Triple Helix  where each strand is “in touch” with the other two strands at all the points. The diagram of the triple helix on this page is from an Open Access publication of the Indian Academy of Sciences (author: T Ramasamy).

The Triple Helix has been used on a few occasions in the past as well as recently to represent unconventional interactions across well-defined boundaries. The triple helix was the structure of the DNA proposed by Linus Pauling which was invalidated by the discovery of the double helical structure of the DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick. It is significant that all the three individuals won the Nobel Prize in different years. The proposal of the triple helix structure of collagen molecule by G N Ramachandran and G G Kartha has been validated and there are now some scientific papers that describe DNA triple helix (an example can be found in http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/BBS/whatis/DNAtriple_gr.html).