Diary of a Rural Manager!

Today is World Refugee Day: There are now more displaced people on the planet than at any other time in human history. UN Security Council has failed to prevent war through negotiation, diplomacy, and sanctions. By the end of 2015, 65.3 million individuals had been driven from their homes as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations. Of these, 21.3 million were refugees, 40.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 3.2 million asylum-seekers (UNHCR, 2015a). The civil wars always have unfolded refugee crisis in every part of the world. The refugee choose to transit to safe locations and may become “stuck” in a country that was intended to be a pit stop on a longer journey. But why don’t refugees just stay in these countries such as India, Turkey or Greece? Human Rights as well as Living conditions of destination where migrants had most wanted to reach significantly affect their migration intention. The reasons for this are clear: poor...

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...

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...