**4. Conclusions**

This study identified the key- and respective sub-concepts aimed at eliminating rural poverty in the developing economy. The CBOs are likely to allow the poor to overcome the social, financial, and economic exclusion responsible for perpetuating poverty. Social mobilisation and building institutions of the poor, including them in conventional financial institutions, the promotion of livelihood diversification, convergence with other development programmes, and social development are critical components designed to address the exclusion of the rural poor, eliminating their poverty and bringing them into the economic and social mainstream. The DAY-NRLM programme created the necessary implementation architecture, financial and managemen<sup>t</sup> systems, and a conducive environment for the CBO-led model for the promotion of livelihoods and poverty alleviation. The CBOs show potential for long-term sustainability, as the programme has generated large social capital in the form of CRPs and community cadres, and thus it is likely that they will be able to sustain and nurture the community institutions.

The pathways of approaching a circular economy are strongly connected with the existing social, economic, and political systems, which could vary for every country. The following are some recommendations for moving towards a circular economy: (i) introduction of e ffective policy measures in order to enhance productivity and e fficiency of resources; (ii) focus on research and development within enterprises to increase resource productivity and product longevity; (iii) strengthen education to raise awareness about use and limits of resources; (iv) change lifestyles to develop sustainable consumption behavior; and (v) improve communication between policymakers, communities, and businesses/industries.

Furthermore, this study also deals with the contribution of the OWA-FCM aggregation method by learning OWA operator weights in the participatory modelling domain. The innovation of this work lies in the fact that the strengths of the relationship were calculated with the proposed aggregation approach and further compared with the weights of the average method and those assigned by the experts. The results showed that the OWA-FCM resembles the structure of the expert-based FCM and, in most cases, showcased an improved performance compared to the model constructed by the experts. The FCM-based scenarios try to model the situation of livelihood enhancement through building self-managed and sustainable institutional platforms along with promoting social resilience and economic stability of the rural poor women. What makes this study important with regards to the scenario analysis results is that the OWA-FCM method presents similar trends to the other two aggregation methods examined with regards to the impact that certain key concepts such as political, social, and economic empowerment of women can have on other important key concepts such as increasing social harmony in the community. It was well demonstrated in the study that there was consistency among the impacts of the model of certain key concepts on other components, which makes the proposed method significant for policymakers.

Moreover, the proposed aggregation method can be applied by policymakers for strategic decisions in various scientific domains, validating its generic applicability and convenience when a significantly large number of experts and/or stakeholders are involved in designing FCMs. This new aggregation method, when combined with FCM-based simulations, can facilitate the preparation of more appropriate, equitable, and e ffective policy scenarios and responses, including shifting investment, production, distribution, and consumption towards more sustainable approaches, and the development of better governance capacities at multiple scales.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualisation, K.P. and P.K.S.; data collection, P.K.S. and H.C., methodology, K.P., P.K.S., and E.P.; software, K.P.; validation, K.P., P.K.S., and H.C.; investigation, K.P.; resources, P.K.S. and H.C.; data curation, P.K.S.; writing—original draft preparation, K.P. and P.K.S.; writing—review and editing, K.P., P.K.S., E.P., H.C., and D.B.; visualisation, K.P., P.K.S., and E.P.; supervision, E.P., D.B., and G.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** Part of this work has received funding from the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, for providing financial support. We sincerely thank the participants who took part in the research.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
