EMPOWERING RURAL POOR- GROUND REALITIES

EMPOWERING RURAL POOR- GROUND REALITIES

Global Perspective:

Look at African continent, even after several decades of independence there is no significant improvement in poverty situation. International agencies are dumping food, medicines etc, but not the resources required for their sustainable development. The colonial rulers are replaced by their dark skinned counterparts and the loot is being continued under the cover of self rule controlled by colonial white Sahibs. It’s clear the developed world seldom give them fish to eat but not willing to teach them how to fish.

Despite so much of external aid, the Bangladesh poverty more or less remains the same. It is shocking to hear from horse mouth (an international gender development consultant) that the NGOs guest houses in Bangladesh are of minimum 4 star hotel standards located in prime locations with lakefronts etc and run into 200 to 300 rooms capacity.  It is clearly evident that the international aid is being used to create infrastructure for accommodating international and national consultants who are fattened with poverty business and book it as expenditure towards poverty reduction. No wonder there is hardly any improvement in quality of housing of poor in Bangladesh.

NRLM in India:

Coming to India, Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana- National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY- NRLM), also known as Aajeevika is the world’s largest poverty reduction program covering 7 crore rural poor cutting across the nation with different names like Velugu in AP & TG, Mangalam in Gujarat, Umed in Maharashtra, Jeevika in Bihar, Kudumbasree in Kerala, Pudhu vaazhvu in TN, Rajeevika in Rajasthan etc.

This World Bank funded/loan program is supposed to be the world’s largest poverty reduction program, extended PAN India after piloting in few states like united AP.  The main objective of the program is social empowerment of poor particularly women to address issues related to exploitation, gender, health, education, entitlements and rights, by organising them into SHGs, federate them. By design, the groups are extended financial support through sanghas, addressing commons and collectives through income generation activities and by providing sustainable Livelihoods enhancement programs.

Micro level field realities:

In reality the groups are able to access credit and organise themselves around revolving fund, involve in livelihoods enhancement programs to some extent. They are also successful to some extent in addressing children education and other issues. The impact of the program in sustainable income generation and production enhancement programs and influencing the markets is yet to be seen. It clearly failed in creating the federal setup around production and still struggling to find workable alternatives. The programs failed in identifying strong leadership among communities to take forward the initiatives and to cover up the failures trying to play around with fancy words like producer companies etc. Navsari, Lijjat papad, Mulkanoor etc are still successful models emerged out of committed leadership, despite huge financial support and trainings etc, these could not be replicated in NRLM due to reasons best known to the implementers.

As this program is under respective state governments, by design these groups are trained to sub serve the local socio-political system in an organised setup rather than groups fighting the exploitation and questing the system for their entitlements and rights. What best we can expect from administrative system which is already submissive to political system? The World Bank engaged experts, consultants, failed miserably in identifying these gaps and deviations from the objectives or hand in glove with prevailing atmosphere. I am sure volumes are written by these consultants about positive social empowerment with successful case studies and submitted reports to World Bank to get more and more funding.

Irrespective of party in power, these groups are being used to mobilize masses for public meetings and name them as social mobilization.

Invisible social development:

Unfortunately the field realities are different. I personally come across a situation where sand casting is given on SHGs name and being operated by local politicians by giving small cut to groups, gravel mining permissions given to SC societies and run by contractors, groups showing least interest in resisting exploitation. This might be the situation in other states too. Is it not a sad situation? Where are we moving as civic society? What had happened to huge funding in the form of loan taken from World Bank? Poor are hardly being benefited, countries becoming debit ridden and very few poverty consultants, hotels, airlines etc are being benefited.

Poverty as business:

 If we observe carefully same consultants with same bags, will appear in all state secretariat corridors and follow the approach of you pad my back, I pad your back, to sustain and survive in the business of poverty and if anyone speak about micro level field realities, the voices which are negligible minority are successfully silenced or even brand them as antisocial elements disturbing the rural ecosystem.

Many consultancy organisations made fortune out of poverty business and built their empires. For these empires to sustain more business has to be generated through poverty programs, hence the poverty ecosystem will not allow the poverty to reduce and find new dimensions in poverty so that everyone in the chain will get benefited. By design the poor will be fed with biscuits not with sustainable activities to ensure that they remain poor and be the focal point in ever green poverty business. These consultants are paid fat amounts (in the range of $ 500 to 1000/day) and when it comes to communities the budgets will be less than $ 1/day.

Institutions are started with allocations of over few hundred crores to produce socially sensitive management graduates, but the purpose is hardly being met despite spending huge funds. These need to seen critically and put into right track. Some of these poverty consultants and social reformers are exhibiting their lifestyles through lavish social functions and custom made outings and sending wrong signals to target communities.

Possible interventions:

·    The groups’ formation, orientation, trainings etc are to be relooked and ensure that the focus shall be on leadership, mainstreaming with self respect and dignity, conflict resolving through negotiations and mutual respect and the success of te programs shall be measured on these indicators.

·         In operations like sand casting, paddy procurement centres etc through SHG groups, the entire approvals and legal compliances are with SHGs and field level NRLM teams shall educate the communities and ensure that the communities do business on their own and refuse to be proxy to political or muscle power clouts.

·         Groups shall be oriented to come forward as commons and collectives to address issues related to their respective communities, not fall fray to political parties and sold out for cheap offerings.

·         The agriculture, income generation activities are to be integrated models which include possible value addition, risk mitigation and replicable models. Wherever it is necessary organise them into commons with collective purpose and scale up the activity with infusion of expertise, technology and networking.   

·         Have a serious look at the existing monitoring and evaluation systems in place and bring in changes by infusing action researchers, industry practitioners, action researchers, local leadership and ensure that the content is given importance than the language. 

  

·         The seminars, workshops shall give more focus to figures, production, productivity, and statistics than the process.

·         To make it happen the overhauling has to happen in NRLM setup from top to bottom and their performance and monitoring has to be redesigned to fit into newly defined roles.

B Guruva Reddy-9866889246

grbonthu@gmail.com