Diary of a Rural Manager!

Communication for development (C4D) in rural areas employs the same tools as MNCs but serves different purposes. Rural Communication campaign for awarding people by NGO/Government has to put forward facts before target audiences to appraise them with the Government scheme or value of Sanitation, Education, Health, Gender, and Public Rights. The use of ICT like government department websites in distributing information is limited to English rather than the local language. Searching and cutting parts of data from the website is not easy for villagers using telephone-based connectivity. Mid-media activities such as street plays, mobile vans, screening of video films, and even Puppet shows are used as a medium of communication in rural areas. Hoarding, Wall paintings & danglers in the local vernacular language also form an important part of the marketing communication strategies. They come at a low cost and the visibility is high, and so is the stickiness. Booklets, Pamphlets, and new...

I always put greater faith in “I am a Nigerian widow with 10 million dollars to give you” emails than in corporate presentation or welfare scheme of government. Its funny to talk to very successful youths championing mythical 'free markets' who inside the bubble tend to assume, instinctively, that what is good for them is good for India. But, a conversation with government employee becomes mental assault who has 'natural' tendency to micromanage, curb, control, and even stifle any entrepreneurial activity leading to loss of their power. I am wandering between these two worlds currently. A World Bank consultant ( Shouvik Mitra ) once informally remarked that “Subsidies are like toothpaste coming out of the tube, once it is out, it is virtually impossible to put it back” . Hence, any decision on subsidy must emerge from public policy rather than political appeasement. Lately, I found so many voices among these mentioned group opposing Food Security Bill but having a d...

The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments ushered in the Panchayati Raj in India. Panchayati Raj Institution(PRI) is a three-tier system in the state with elected bodies at the village, block, and district levels. The rural mathematics of the vote in the Panchayat election has become highly political in nature due to the channeling of government scheme funds through the PRI. There are voices emerging on corruption at this basic level. Budget expenditure for Panchayat elections runs in lakhs for no other reason. Many gram pradhans are becoming powerful by grabbing resources meant for the welfare of the people whom they represent. In my opinion, PRI has embarked on one thing for sure, i.e., decentralized benefits of corruption. Looking on the positive side, infrastructure development and money are returning to the village economy through this arrangement. PRI has brought more of a sense of local governance to rural India. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolu...

It is time to invest in agriculture, rural development and food security. That's where the future of India lies.There is lot of women's participation in agriculture and allied activities in addition to the household work. Manually women were not able to increase the productivity and some of the health problem occurs. Simple Machine and tools like Coconut peeler, fishinh net, sugarcane stripper always act in drudgery reducing technologies and help to reduce the incidence of the health issues. Odisha government launched an innovative scheme, “ Women SHGs for Drudgery Reduction ". The vision behind is to make a positive impact on the health of women folk of the state by reducing their physical exertion. As per the scheme, each SHG would get Rs. 10,000 as financial assistance through which they can buy different types of technical equipments and enhance their productivity. Mahila Vikas Samabaya Nigam, the Women’s Development Corporation, was established as the Nodal Agency f...

There is a lot of talk about inclusive growth through financial inclusion. The competition between banks has never brought credit to the poor; it only took new financial products to richer people. RBI policy has forced banks for priority sector lending and the opening of branches in rural areas. SHG Bank linkage model was developed by NABARD under the strategy to reach the poor in a sustainable way. I have written on this issue in a  previous post . SHGs are linked to the formal banking system or microfinance institutions for accessing credit. Self-help groups minimize the bank's transaction costs and generate an attractive volume of deposits. While bankers have to handle only a single SHG account instead of a large number of small-sized individual accounts, borrowers as part of an SHG cut down expenses on travel (to & from the branch and other places) for completing paperwork and on the loss of workdays in canvassing for loans. There are many practical issues in this scheme f...