Diary of a Rural Manager!

What is a social audit ? It is better to have an idea of the concept in the first place.  Social_Audit_Report is uploaded to the NREGS website. But almost all of the community seems to be completely unaware of the documentation part. The best part of these meetings is the opportunity to meet office bearers and government officials on the same day. When the government makes the schedule for a social audit in October, it reviews work done/in progress from April to September. SA was originally scheduled in October, but due to a cyclone, it was completed in December. Advertisements were given in three Oriya newspapers, giving dates and locations of the social audit meeting. Local NGO was invited to attend the meetings, yet no provision of funds was available for community mobilization through local NGOs. This was all done when Gram Rozgar Sevak (GRS) [working personnel for NREGS at the Village level] were on strike. Their online petition is worth a read on the problem faced at the...

I reported at DRDA office, Ganjam district on 18th November 2013. I was relived from previous duty for PHAILIN rehabilitation work. Emergency relief work had already been finished in most of the block. Hence, rehabilitation work is not included in my role at Ganjam District. I was assigned to work at Bhanjanagar block exclusive for Odisha Livelihood Mission (OLM).  Bhanjanagar block is a non intensive block as per OLM guidelines. A new proposal to change this into intensive block has been sent to the central government. That means a lot of action under coming months but not now. Revolving fund to SHGs, e-NRLM (MIS)and SHG Bank Credit Linkage are the focus area  in job profile. OLM  , Panchayat Samiti Office, Bhanjanagar Work Station Every person worth its salt always knows how to correct itself, and eventually does. I feel vulnerable against myself. The trait of punctuality is leaving me even with the minor load of the government job. Hoping to maintain this...

Jargon is not monopoly of B School students, as they are also used excessively in the development sector. That is why practitioner doesn't read academic literature. The funny part is that the jargon such as 'Sustainable' and 'Strategy' in daily vocab as student is not coming any use to me. Development academics are known for their penchant for creating jargon where there is need for none, points out Pulitzer-Prize and Oscar-winning cartoonist and novelist Jules Feitter in his inimitable style. “I used to think I was poor . Then they told me I wasn’t poor, I was needy . Then they said needy was an expression that is self defeating, I was actually deprived . Then again they said deprived created a bad image, I was actually underprivileged . Now they say underprivileged is inaccurate. I am actually disadvantaged . I still don’t have a dime, but I sure have a rich vocabulary!” – Jules Feitter

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."- Richard Feynman ; That is why, despite knowing  the theoretical concepts on the Producer Groups , there were some practical lessons gained in the field. I had worked with Producer Groups farming Groundnut, Onion, & Pulses (even one group was doing business of NTFP) at Balanagir district, Odisha. I was guided under the able supervision of Kamalendu Paul, Zonal Manager, ORMAS (Orissa Rural Development and Marketing Society). The document Community Enterprise System Manual prepared by Prof. Amar KJR Nayak came helpful during work. All producer groups were having women members only. No producer group has been registered under any act till now. However, credit was given to them based on mutual trust between the government and Producer Groups. The legal process will be initiated soon. We were also unable to do protect farmers under the crop insurance scheme till this year. Or...

"Where the poor participate as subjects and not as objects of the development process, it is possible to generate growth, human development, and equity, not as mutually exclusive trade-offs but as complementary elements in the same process." --- Meeting the challenge, Report of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation, 1992. The problem with the modern outlook of business education is to view rural/urban citizens as target consumers. Instead, if we enable them as producers, that will surely boost the economy and well-being of our producers. Most of the producers are caught in the vicious circle of poverty and even fully dependent on the monsoon for a good harvest. The government has reworked its strategy of helping marginal and small producers in breaking out of the cycle of poverty by organizing them into producer groups. The concept of Producer Group has been lifted from the cooperative societies. This concept is based on voluntary cooperation as the r...

There are 6 lakh villages across the country. It is essential to know about government schemes and local culture while working in rural India. They will always come handy in certain situations. Great debate on caste system has not been touched by me where majority of Indians follow an unwritten rule of not mingling through marriage of one religion or caste. Hindi Calendar Months: Important Festivals: I am not elaborating on Festivals in India  that consumes a major part of government holidays. Just few minor ones, that may be unheard by most of us. Akshya Tritiya - Day for worshiping traditional seed-before ploughing and sowing of seed. Makar Sankranti / Onam- It is a harvest festival. Vasant Panchami - This dayannounces arrival of spring. Gudi Padwa / Ugadi / Bihu / Vishu - New Year in Hindu Calendar Navarathri - Celebrated five times a year but primarily once during spring. Ramadan - A month of fasting for Muslims. Important Schemes: 1- Poverty Alleviati...

The official stint at Balangir is over after 175 Days. I have been transferred to Ganjam district that will be effective from 18th November 2013. Life will be turbulent, may be good in coming weeks. Since, Ganjam district has been badly affected by the PHAILIN and followed by flood due to incessant rain, it was decided to relocate eleven Young Professionals for the rehabilitation and restoration work. Transfer Order is little puzzlinh while looking at overall context of the decision. Currently, there are 36 Young Professionals employed at Odisha Livelihood Mission. There will be thirteen Young Professionals working at Ganjam district now with this official order. There are districts like Mayurbhanj, Kendrapada, Balasore and Bhadrak affected by cyclone and flash floods. No Young Professional is placed there for rehabilitation work. Hence, this skewed decision appears bias to me. Change is constant but its hard to guess pace of the change. There is an expression that “failing to pla...

It is a popular quote by Friedrich Nietzsch : All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. Elite and educated Indians have high obsession with two parameters for judging development in India either GDP growth rate and numbers of stock exchange. I will discuss about GDP and similar indicators. GDP is a good indicator but doesn't show up complete picture. It does not take into account income distribution. Let us talk about Per Capita Income. It is calculated by taking a measure of all sources of income in the aggregate (such as GDP or GNI) and dividing it by the total population. So, its just an average ! Hence, increase in wealth of Tata, Birla and Ambani can show up good figures for India but can't really reflect development of a common citizen. Let us use three global indices of development for comparison: 1. GCI (Global Competitiveness Index): issued by World Economic Forum, and is base...

NREGA funds are used for natural resource management activities by generating wage employment for the poor as well as strengthening their livelihood resource base. I will ask readers to go through these two articles :[ Rural job scheme: Can we get it right? and NREGA social Audit: Myths and Reality ] on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) before going forward. There is a social audit of MNREGS going on in Balangir district from 22-10-2013 to 26-10-2013. I attended three such meetings as an observer only. I attended social audit at Kutenpali, Jharmunda and Kandajuri Gram Panchayat of Loisingha Block. Loisingha Block consist of 18 G.Ps with 108 Villages and is 22 km away from district headquarter. The officers, Sarpanch and GRS were present for the meeting on time. Yet, there was lack of people attending the meeting held at Panchayat Bhavan. The registered person data is taken from NREGA website for the financial year 2013-2014. I have given distance ...

[ This post has been taken from 2013 edition of Dhwani, the annual journal of published by RMAX [ Rural Manager's Association of XIMB (Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar)]. Content has not been tampered but published without prior permission. Please contact blogger in the case of any dispute/offence/copyright issues. ] Author : Mr. Shouvik Mitra, World Bank Consultant The development sector has seen a sea change over the last four decades starting from the Sarvodaya movement, primarily inspired by the Gandhian philosophy in the early sixties to the professionalization of the sector in the mid eighties where NGOs like PRADAN and MYRADA came into existence to the near corporatization in the first decade of this century. Thus, with the evolving scenario the role o f r u r a l m a n a g e r s h a s c h a n g e d drastically. When Dr. Kurien established IRMA in 1979, the goal was to develop professionals to work for the sector in general and for AMUL/ GCMMF in particular. T...

All claims of the development by the government appear to be a hoax ...obviously! Because we always see huge margin of difference between announcement and implementation. Let us redefine government for our own understanding. It is a crucible of interest groups, rather than a black box of noble intentions. So, the responsibility of failure of schemes lies with various stakeholders in the development process. Growth can never be inorganic, and the system needs to learn before they grow. Now replace the system’ with a ‘welfare scheme’. Example: Gradual improvement (IRDP - SGSY - NRLM) is better approach for development. Not all schemes are so much lucky. They are renamed and often termed as ' old wine in new bottle '. Sometimes if any scheme is a completely prone to the corruption, we have hinged for its immense benefit to power holders. Bad schemes are like giving perpetual gifts that has made people into beggars rather than partners. India's government programmes are riddl...

There are two factors that affect the lives of farmers - Lack of financial planning and Information Asymmetry. Let us roughly cash flow of the marginal farmer (as owner or tenant or share cropper who cultivates agricultural land up to 2.5 acres) that will fall into low-income households. The cash out flow of the household is throughout the year and peak-out during festive season, marriage or birth) and bad patches (accident/death) in the family. The farmer gets cash inflow with sales of produce only. Hence, the borrowings of the farmer limits the growth option for the household. Let us take an excerpt from the paper -  Why Don‘t We See Poverty Convergence? by Martin Ravallion  - "Banerjee and Duflo (2003) provide a simple but insightful growth model with borrowing constraints. Someone who starts her productive life with sufficient wealth is able to invest her unconstrained optimal amount, equating the (declining) marginal product of her capital with the interest rate. But ...

Livelihoods Initiative at CMF has compiled a list of government schemes that focus on livelihoods promotion, broken down by state that is updated by latest August 2013. I am updating here name of schemes implemented in Odisha. Social Security Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) Annapurna Scheme Anganwadi Karyakartri Bima Yojana Emergency Feeding Programme State Old Age Pension (SOAP) Scheme National Social Assistance Programme for Social Security Pensions National Old Age Pension Scheme National Family Benefit Scheme Balika Samriddhi Yojana (BSY) Jana Seva Divas - Streamlining of the process of Pension Payment Programme for Care of Older Persons Day care Centre Prevention of Alcoholism and Substance (Drugs) Abuse. Scheme for Welfare of Orphan and Destitute Children Orissa Disability Pension (ODP) Scheme Welfare Rehabilitation of distressed women Balika Samridhi Yojana State commission for Women MVSN An Integrated programme for Street Children Training & Rehabilita...

I saw two vans simply parked around in block office compound at Balangir district. I don't know which department/agency own the vehicles. Both are marked with the sign of UNICEF. And they are rusting like a junk. Our tax money and foreigners aid money, earned though hard work, in this case are hardly put at work. These vehicles are mere extension of wastage of public goods by our government. Vehicle at Muribahal Block Office Vehicle at Titlagarh Block Office, The most reliable way to save an asset at government workplace? Make sure it is used. End Notes : *Photographs are taken by personal phone camera in July 2013. **No offence to the local governance ! :)

I joined OLM office as YP at Balangir on 27th May 2013. I completed 100 working days today. Let me redirect reader to details of the place where I am working : Balangir District . Balangir/Bolanagir lies in KBK (Koraput Blangir Kalahandi) region and is considered as one of the country's 250 most backward districts. KBK itself has attracted the attention of policy makers, development planners and the poverty critics due to its persistent underdevelopment from last few decades. As per my observation, this place is working with slow/numb administrative activity supported by overt political agitation. There is no resource block under OLM (Odisha Livelihood Mission) strategy for this financial year 2013-2014 in Balangir. Hence, I have to solely work with ORMAS (Orissa Rural Development and Marketing Society). Motto of ORMAS is simple- Creating competence and values in rural Orissa . ORMAS was constituted to facilitate for a sustainable livelihood of the rural poor by working with S...

India’s most enduring heritage since independence is poverty. Poverty can't be fought by throwing doles and subsidy in the name of government schemes. It can only be done by creating suitable ecosystem for innovative and risk taking individuals. These persons need not to be engineering and management college students. A street vendor with no education is taking more risk and still pursing business is an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is more prevalent and still damn difficult to pursue for people working in unorganised sector. A NCEUS report estimates that in 2005 out of the 485 million persons employed in India, 86 percent or 395 million worked in the unorganised sector, generating 50.6 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product. Someone once told me to understand how businesses runs, interact with an entrepreneur, even if it is a pawn shop. I didn't get the point back then. Once in the college, I had read few chapters of book Grassroots entrepreneurship : entrepren...

While we have a fair idea of social network, only few know about this is relatively new and multifaceted jargon: Social Capital . The simplest way to understand social capital is through the old adage, “it’s not what you know, but who you know” . There is variety of definitions of this word due to highly contextual nature. In words of wiki social capital is the expected collective or economic benefits derived from the preferential treatment and cooperation between individuals and groups. I became aware of this term while studying Livelihood and Natural resource management. I recalled concept of social capital while working with producer groups. I started wondering about cohesive nature and community cooperation. Any person in society cooperate as well as compete. Still others may be in conflict. Hence, I saw there is a scope for micro to macro level analysis of social capital. Alas ! I am not an expert on this subject. There is also an absence of consensus on how to measure it due...

There is a common dialogue in bollywood films, “ Kanoon andha hota hai ” (Law is blind), this line stands cent percent true to every word in reality too. Sneha Singh was working as Young Professional in Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project (BRLP) was mysteriously found dead in a hotel room in Munger, Bihar. Police primarily suspected it to be suicide, but facts point otherwise. She was found hanging from ventilator's door and in half naked condition with her private parts bleeding and body in very bad shape. Police said that she killed herself after watching "Mohabbatein". She was once Ranchi RJ who took a new path of development professional for the sake of nation building. There is need of Civil protest and use of social network. This is not about me or you; it's about justice being delivered to atleast one person. More information can be gathered her - Justiceforsneha ; We all really want a proper crime investigation rather than burial of case under carpet.

The details of the history of attempts to promote decentralized planning from the first plan onwards to the mid-eighties is summarized in the table below: Why Decentralization? The main problem of centralized governance is lack of knowledge about local circumstances due to the geographical distance. It also creates psychological distance of government officials from citizens of the remote part. Best case in favor of decentralizing government is that it creates the inclusive institutions. Autonomy for local population to have a voice in government for decision making enables development. But, Political decentralization has no meaning if there is no fiscal decentralization. Taking from the blog post written long back - As Oates (1993) explained, "the basic economic case for fiscal decentralization is the enhancement of economic efficiency: the provision of local outputs that are differentiated according to local tastes and circumstances results in higher levels of social we...

SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS:- The social inclusion process will include two steps; first to identify the left out poor, those who are not a part of any SHG/ other CBOs, and second to ensure their participation in different community-based organizations [SHGs, GPLF, etc.] at the village/ Gram Panchayat level. In this process, the project also needs to identify the extremely poor and vulnerable groups (EPVG) in the community that typically suffer from severe economic and social impediments. For this purpose, the project adopted a community-based participatory approach to identify and prioritize project beneficiaries, including ‘extreme poor and vulnerable groups, persons with disabilities, and the ‘left out poor’. The proposed methodology for the same is called situational Analysis in the project which will comprise of the following exercises: 1- Participatory identification of Poor(PIP): o Social mapping/ collection of baseline of beneficiaries o Well Being Grouping 2- SHG Grading 3- Instit...

Targeted Rural Initiatives for Poverty Termination & Infrastructure (TRIPTI) aims at enhancing the socio-economic status of the poor, especially women and disadvantaged groups, in ten districts of Orissa over a period of five years, beginning 10 February 2009. The project is assisted by the International Development Agency of the World Bank and implemented by Orissa Poverty Reduction Mission, a society under the Panchayati Raj Department of Government of Orissa. TRIPTI project under World Bank Assistance is running in 38 blocks in 10 districts that will be treated as pilot blocks for NRLM. The SHGs are at the first tier of the community institution structure. One SHG is formed constituting 10-20 women members (in case of disability or dispersed location the group size may be 5 to 20). The second tier of the structure is called Cluster Level Forum (CLF) which is an aggregation of 5 to 15 SHGs at the village/hamlet level. GPLF is the third tier of SHGs which is formed taking represe...

This Governance and Accountability (GAC) is taken directly from the PPT of world bank team. A: Awareness on GAC - Good project management is promoted by adopted governance and accountability. However, one needs to generate awareness on GAC. B: Benchmarking - The benchmarking on what can be delivered has to be done with due consultations with stakeholder who would deliver the service. C: Capacity Building - A training module needs to be developed which empowers the entire project staff and participating institutions at all level with basic activities under GAC, tools to be used under GAC. D: Deterrence - A clear cut policy which includes measures for prevention, detection and punitive action needs to be defined. D: Documentation - Documentation of procured assets, field processes, accounts, bookkeeping etc. are integral part of GAC. E: Effective Service Delivery - The deviation against the benchmarks has to be captured regarding the service delivery. F: Focal Poi...