Diary of a Rural Manager!

Today is my last day at Access Development Services (ADS). I started eighteen months ago managing Farmer Producer Companies (FPOs) at South Rajasthan. I am very proud of my team, and I wish them well. They have a lot of challenging work ahead. But for me, it’s time to move on.  I’m not going to sugarcoat the reasons for my exit. This might be my last chance to switch sector since I am not getting any younger. I have taken a role of Operations Manager in  Chaitanya  at Pune that works in the micro-finance sector. I recognize the task before me is neither small nor easy. Microfinance means different work-style and leadership. The profile of a candidate in the development sector belongs to someone who easily adapts to new environments, enjoys travel and field work, likes to tinker with things, and prefers independence and improvisation to super specific tasks. Strong people management skills is a bonus learning, and much required.  One can't always be the ...

Do you know that only about 10 per cent of the over 22 lakh NGOs file their annual income and expenditure statements with the authorities ? As per given Source - A total of Rs 13,051 crore foreign contribution was received by 17,616 NGOs in the country in 2013-14, Rs 11,527 crore by 20,497 NGOs in 2012-2013 and Rs 11,558 crore by 22,747 NGOs in 2011-2012. Also quoting another Source - The main change is that all NGOs will have to make public each foreign contribution received by them within a week of the receipt, on their official website or a website prescribed by the government. Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) is a regulatory tool that enables monitoring and control of foreign funding. It will be better to know about  pros and cons of this tool  before going in this debate. PMO has initiated exercise to tighten monitoring over NGOs in the country. Intelligence Bureau has given inputs to "improve oversight and increase transparency" in the working of the volu...

Livelihoods Asia Summit 2015 was being held on December 10 and 11 in New Delhi, India. The Summit sessions were on topics like skill development, impacts of climate change on livelihoods, inclusive value chains, policy innovations, and private sector partnerships, among the approaches that offer a pathway out of poverty. The summit has more than a hundred delegates working as  sector specialists,  practitioners, and advocates in the livelihood sector. Panel sessions and other live events are great — especially the Q&A &, which ranges from absurd to tricky. There was a focus on policies, programs, private players, and potential in the poor during the sessions. There was emphasis by panelists to think of poverty as a dynamic and multidimensional phenomenon. There were numerous policy-level talks on SHG and FPO, but the dialogues on the next generation of institutions were lacking at the summit. The summit also ignored rights-based approaches to livelihood develo...

ACCESS has hosted the Inclusive Finance India Summit from December 8th to 9th, 2015 at in New Delhi, India. The summit has gained recognition and the Inclusive Finance India Report has been quoted extensively in the Malegam Committee , and working report for the Microfinance Bill. The Summit has facilitated discourse on issues like-policy environment, data analytics in financial inclusion, mobile wallets, BC model, customer protection, impact of JAM, and innovations in the sector. I attended the summit as the delegate of ACCESS team. The Summit began with release of the Sector report 2015 was followed by several sessions on microfinance and financial inclusion in the country. The buzz of the sessions were around Mudra bank , Payment banks, cash less economy and Small Finance Banks. Eight out of 10 Small Finance Banks which have been given in-principle nod by RBI are microfinance institution (MFIs).  Sector experts are hopeful that Small Finance Banks  fill the "missing midd...

Theda Skocpol, Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, notes that spending on education and family health care is especially likely to generate social and economic returns. Midday Meal (MDM) program is a school meal programme of the government of India designed to improve the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide. India's MDM program feeds 120 million children and employs 2 million women. It's an initiative that changes lives and provides human-capital investment in millions of children.  The poorest of the poor are defined as those who can eat only when they get work and who lack shelter, proper clothing, social respect, and means to send their children to school. They have no land, live on daily wages, and need to send school-age children to work in times of crisis. They send children to government schools as this is the only way to ensure one time meal to their wards and the best chance for children to break the cycle of poverty. MDM scheme has...

What is Livelihood ? Nobody understands this word outside the cocoon of the development sector. The problem with the word livelihoods is that it has overtones of subsistence. It hints that poor people should only have enough just to live – not to prosper. As Kate Magro says : “Why is it that Westerners have careers, jobs, employment opportunities and everyone else has a livelihood?” Livelihood is a convergence of multiple disciplines of profession leading to the cash flow in the household. Mostly the poor are engaged in a “diversified portfolio of subsistence activities” (DPSA) for earning their livelihoods. Hence,  Understanding smallholders' financial needs  will be the key step to understand livelihood scenario. A new survey of 1,800 banks conducted by the  Initiative for Smallholder Finance  reveals that the total amount of debt financing supplied by local banks to smallholder farmers in the developing world is approximately $9 billion. The first step tow...

How tribes are often destroyed in the name of 'development'. A new film,  ‘There You Go!’ , has been launched by Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, which takes a satirical look at how tribes are often destroyed in the name of ‘development’. Indigenous peoples make up around 370 million of the world’s population – some 5 per cent – they constitute around one-third of the world’s 900 million extremely poor rural people. According to a UN report : In Australia, an indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot. The life expectancy gap is also 20 years in Nepal, while in Guatemala it is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11 . Traditional tribal habitats, particularly in mainland India, are rich in mineral and other resources and this has attracted large-scale power, mining, and infrastructure projects. Like any other indigenous communities all over the world, they face issues of brutal violence by pol...

1. Upton Sinclair -:  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ” 2. Interest on debts grow without rain. :- Yiddish Proverb 3. Ability is nothing without opportunity.  :– Unknown 4. Forget the risk and take the fall, if it’s what you want, then it’s worth the fall.  :– Unknown 5. Negative choices are our worst choices. :- Unknown

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Once, a gentleman gave me incredible insight into the development sector where NGOs follow a simple rule --- "Piss Less, Spread More". This appeared cynical to some extent and sounds profane at first. But people had longer careers talking about development than doing it. Shows which is easier!   This conversation caused me to look at life from a whole new perspective in the development sector. NGOs are currently less concerned with the quality of work and strive for a better communication strategy for social media, donors & other players. The brand image of NGOs is based on goodwill and less on the actual impact of their work. The unfortunate irony is that all too often, rhetoric and symbolism replace logic and action in the hallowed portals of the NGO conferences. Let us never forget that not all NGOs have necessarily been formed for altruistic reasons!

There is neither Perfect Market Competition nor Perfect Community Cooperation. The middle path of community owned enterprise competing in the market has always both social capital and market presence. The rise of the creative economy encourages self-interest over collective action in the society, but all is not lost. There is a Value-proposition for setting FPO (Farmer Producer Organization). Udaipur Agro Producer Company Limited, (UAPCL) is one such producer company focused on strengthening the livelihoods of the community. Here is the glimpse through this video in which yours truly has small part -

Do you know about Confirmation Bias? People more likely to believe information that fits their pre-existing beliefs, but they’re also more likely to go looking for such information. Hence, we are stuck with wrong design of the development programs dooming millions of investments. So, we do not let evidence from the ground guide the policy? Unfortunately, it is hard to get clear-cut evidence of causality. Using evidence to guide aid and social work is crucial to ensuring the efficient use of limited resources. For years, policymakers have debated different approaches to helping the poor and now they have published research paper after a nine-year, six-country study, offers resounding evidence for a strategy that works. Proponents of randomized program evaluation argued more field experiments were needed to learn what worked. There are also critiques like economist Angus Deaton who suspects that an average bureaucrat might take the results in controlled environment too serious. Any ...

As per Prof Cornel West, Democracy always raises the fundamental question: What is the role of the most disadvantaged in the public interest? The catch in the valid question lies in the definition of the 'Disadvantage Class/Caste'. The definition of "Who are they" varies among politicians, academics, and policymakers. Any major program in any sector can't be effective without a robust information system. The road to social justice for all should be based on solid data for understanding ground realities. SECC data is out . This census takes caste into account for the first time in any such exercise since 1931. But the government is hiding OBC numbers. The previous government led by the Congress had also decided to conduct a caste-based census, but not to make the data public. The reasons for withholding this data can only be political.  Data on economic indicators, with special enumeration of SCs and STs, is done by the regular census as well. SECC was commi...

Let me move ahead in the last part of Migrant Series. ( 1  and  2 ) .Whenever someone comes with an idea on research on the issue of migration and informal sector, there is complete lack of valid data on the nature and terms of employment, particularly in the informal sector. This is directly linked with the state’s unwillingness or inability to use resources for counting the large number of informal sector workers including child workers, bonded labour, migrant workers, home-based workers, domestic workers, and manual scavengers. A person migrate to a prosperous region due to low employment opportunities at home, low agricultural productivity, deeply entrenched feudalism, and negative industrial growth of the region. Due to irregular cash flow nature of agriculture, a household has no other option but to seek credit at exorbitant interest rates from the local money lender during an emergency situation. The household requires huge money for repayment that isn't much a...

Let us start from Migration Series - 1 . Once there was a popular myth: in the Government and Development Sector: Migration of 'poor' rural population is bad idea. Even when higher caste population was migrating towards cities for education, the government was launching various schemes on poverty reduction in the villages to prevent people from moving to the urban areas. So, why is the Migration Issue ? Migration – when it is safe, legal, and voluntary – is the oldest poverty-reduction and human-development strategy [ Migration, Development and Poverty Reduction in Asia ] . As per Wiggins & Keats [ Stepping out of agriculture ] - "Migration takes various forms, distinguished by:   Destination – international versus domestic, rural to urban, rural to rural and urban to urban; and,  Length of absence – permanent moves of a year or more, and seasonal moves – to which might even be added daily commuting." Many moves are not permanent, but vary from seasonal ...

The heading of the article doesn't seems to confuse reader who are working in development sector. Its a fancy word on the training of field staff. The major component of any development project is institutional and human capacity development in the community. Training the larger development community to more effectively support community-driven efforts requires a field staff with local networking, trust and suitable skills. There are six factors to be considered while managing field staff in the development project. 1. Recruitment of LRPs - In this phase, mostly NGOs go either for references or prefer an experienced candidate. The most preferable candidate is not the most smart one from the community. Honesty, non political nature, perception in public and hard work are the traits to be seen in the recruitment phase. With some expectations the leadership is concentrated in the hands of elderly people. The style of functioning of these elderly people exhibits authoritarianism...

In every field of endeavor, the one who reaches the pinnacle will be found to have built upon the knowledge and experience of someone who preceded him. People in development sector feel obliged to submit report to donor organization with complete focus on grants. There are suggestions from the expensive government project reports that end up just gathering dust on a shelf in India. Thousands, of reports on policy, poverty and development issues are released each year worldwide. A lot of recommendations, solutions and findings are kept on piling in a PDF version. The citation of paper doesn't imply that it has been read. Even the reader looked only at downloads and citations to gauge the use of these reports. The key question that comes in mind: Who will ever read them? Even world bank is pondering over this question ( Which World Bank reports are widely read ? ) Recent findings suggest my fears: The researchers contribute to their discipline's knowledge with the deep op...

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning. --- Mahatma Gandhi I am driven by personal ambition and not selfless heroism. I look for perpetual returns with a field work backing up degree in rural management. Few Rural Managers work towards the development of the rural folks. One doesn't has to be born and brought up in villages and small towns. Empathy and an open mind will do the job really well. Trial at the field level is much engagement and full of frustration for any rural manager while it's occurring, and and many can vouch for this. When the task is accomplished, the afterglow does provide a lot of satisfaction. Self Motivation is the key to perform in whatever condition one is placed into. As an rural manager, I learned that the most important thing is to listen and to be willing ...

GoI had issued a circular for Farmers producer organisations (FPOs) on 11th February 2014. As per circular, FPOs may be treated at par with cooperatives and other quasi- governmental institutions providing common service facilities to the farmers/users in Rashtriya Krishi vikas yojana (RKVY). Please check the circular on the government website .

Young Professional (YP) is a short-term work opportunity (three years) to experience development and gain exposure to government operations and policies. Panchayati Raj Department, Odisha is the agency in implementing National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) program delivery and interface in Odisha serving to the marginalized section of the population. While the government is always reluctant to share or de-valuate power to the community, NRLM has tried to build sustainable community institutions at the Panchayat level. YPs served either at the district or block administration level. In simpler words, YP is just another name of Management Trainee in a government agency doing the contractual job without any power. Why I joined Odisha Livelihood Mission?   One can't have the right to voice their disappointments unless one understands the functionality of the government. I have also considered the government as the biggest development agency in India. Hence, it is of utmos...

Progressing with the previous discussion of FPO: Public Policy & Value Chain Development , we are looking into credit accessibility of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). India is successful despite the government because of the entrepreneurship, energy, and ingenuity of the Indian people. Our smallholder farmers are not marginal recipients of charity but instead customer entrepreneurs. Even with the linking of small and marginal farmers to FPOs, the question of reliable and affordable sources of financing for the capital requirement of Infrastructure and operation always lingers for the farmers. There is always the issue of access to credit in the agrarian sector. There are many donor agencies like International foundations, Domestic Foundations, Business related CSR, and government schemes for financing credit to FPOs. But the search for such donors with big pockets for solving the problem is elusive and unsustainable way. Formal financial institutions (FIs) are war...