Diary of a Rural Manager!

The international standard for the definition of the poor i.e. a household that spends more than one-third of its income on food is followed in India, 95 percent of all households would be considered poor. Every country needs an inclusive political and economic institution to break out the cycle of poverty. The delivery of financial services at an affordable cost to the vast sections of extremely poor and vulnerable groups of people is a necessity for the development of India. Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. — Dwight D. Eisenhower Budgets help to determine how much money one has, where to invest it, and whether one can achieve your financial goals. A budget is a forecast of all cash sources and expenditures. MIP is a tool for financial planning that can be used for both SHG and its members. Socio-Economic Analysis of each SHG is performed as risk is involved in giving loans without any collateral. The format used in  TRIPTI  can be downloaded here. Indica...

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...