Diary of a Rural Manager!

I always remember the words of Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping - "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." So, now NGOs and the government are finally coming to the phase of acceptance of market forces in the development sector. The cooperative movement is already a failure except for a few notable examples. The government has never managed to manage any scheme efficiently. The government is partnering with various professional organizations for setting up a new institution in the country - Farmers Producer Company (FPC) / Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO). The legal framework is ready under the Companies Act. According to this new law, only farmer–producers can be members of the FPC and the farmer members themselves will manage this company. It takes care of the flaws in the cooperative societies but has also borrowed the strengths of the corporate companies. FPO/FPC will be dominating future debates on livelihood and its suc...

Udaipur Agro Producer Company Limited, UAPCL, is a social-enterprise company focused on strengthening the livelihoods of the community. The organization was registered on June 29, 2010. The company’s main concentration is building the surrounding community through direct collaboration. The company is comprised of 1635 members. Each member is a local farmer mostly small and marginal who owns a share of the company. UAPCL Annual General Meeting Share Certificate Distribution ACCESS Team with UAPCL Board of Directors ACCESS Development Services is working in the area of livelihood with FPOs (Farmer Producer Orgainzation). Here is a glimpse of Annual General Meeting organized by one such - UAPCL attended by 700 members. Here we see smallholder farmers not as marginal recipients of charity instead as customer entrepreneurs. I will be updating more on FPOs in this space.

Let me start with a joke: I have a MBA degree and wanna be consultant in future! Does any development organization need consultant ? Yes, they do. Analyst and Consultant form a core area of jobs created in the knowledge economy. Whereas a leader can win people over in an instant due to oration and vision, an analyst can do same with the technical wizardry. But the most over-hyped and over-mocked job belongs to consultant.  Consultants are not brought on to be unbiased. They are hired to confirm a particular bias. There is a popular one line gag on consultant - "If you are not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem." There is always a lot of conferences and consultations on ‘labour rights’ that continue to be held at five star hotels — which for one are known to underpay their employees — without a hint of irony. It may seem wrong, pragmatic, or indecisive and confused? Take your pick. A consultant must focus on collecting data and...

It's fine to have people working in development sector with degrees from the elite colleges. But even if they are good at statistics and analysis, they cannot be decision-makers without a grassroots experience. Problem with today’s education is that it doesn't have any relationship to the real world. Images get reinforced over time with newspaper, media and cinema. Innocent Villagers, Shrewd Businessmen, Corrupt bureaucracy and Selfish Political leaders become stereotype. Such perception breaks with each intersection and performance in the field. Living in the village with no other business but to follow native life in the present day of social media buzz and 24*7 connectivity seems bizarre. But one sees the traditions, ceremonies and transactions over and over again. What it leaves one with temporary chaos in the beginning. In addition to fostering mutual understanding, perpetually curiosity and occasionally confused volunteer start to see the way of living of a community....

Government is so agile to implement e-governance solutions for improving its tax collection system, but prefers neolithic methods for cash disbursal decisive and purposeful governance.  The government’s budget is a mess. Subsidies have been overdone and not properly targeted. In the current year, total subsidies will be over 2.8 trillion rupees. Instead of making the direct cash transfer, all of the welfare scheme has been turned into a giant procurement exercise. That is why, Reserve Bank of India governor  Raghuram Rajan made a strong pitch for direct cash transfers  to the poor, saying this would help reduce corruption by breaking the "cycle of dependence". A cash transfer is a development project stripped of any active management costs, and its performance tracks the success or failure of the individual recipient. Cash Transfers are examples of certain transfer payments include welfare (financial aid), social security, and government making subsidies for certain busi...