Diary of a Rural Manager!

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!