HARIT PRAYAS-CI: June 2011

Monday, June 27, 2011

High Court asked the state government of Uttar Pradesh to submit report about suicides in Bundelkhand

Taking suo motu cognizance of media reports on suicides by farmers in Bundelkhand, the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday asked the state government to submit a report about every suicide, the causes behind them, and the relief provided to the farmers.

Directions were also issued to the Centre, asking for the status of various welfare schemes being implemented in the area. Further, to ensure no such incident takes place, the court asked financial institutions not to go for debt recovery.

Issuing notices, the bench directed the UP Chief Secretary to collect information about each and every death reported as suicide from hospitals, blocks and police stations, the studies conducted on the causes of such deaths, and the steps taken by the state government to provide relief to the farmers.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Forest Right Act @ www.tribal.nic.in

To get more information on Forest Right Act (FRA) you can log on to www.tribal.nic.in . also you can see the procedure to apply on video on http://www.forestrights.nic.in/committeeVideo/frmVideoClaim.jsp .

Status of tribals in India -Tribal population in India state-wise (in %)

The Constitution of India does not define Scheduled Tribes as such.Article 366(25) refers to scheduled tribes as those communities who are scheduled in accordance with Article 342 of the Constitution. According to Article 342 of the Constitution, the Scheduled Tribes are the tribes or tribal communities or part of or groups within these tribes and tribal communities which have been declared as such by the President through a public notification. As per the 1991 Census, the Scheduled Tribes account for 67.76 million representing 8.08 percent of the country’s population. Scheduled Tribes are spread across the country mainly in forest and hilly regions.
The essential characteristics of these communities are:-
Primitive Traits
Geographical isolation
Distinct culture
Shy of contact with community at large
Economically backward

The 1991 Census figures reveal that 42.02 percent of the Scheduled Tribes populations were main workers of whom 54.50 percent were cultivators and 32.69 per cent agricultural laborers. Thus, about 87 percent of the main workers from these communities were engaged in primary sector activities. The literacy rate of Scheduled Tribes is around 29.60 percent, as against the national average of 52 percent. More than three-quarters of Scheduled Tribes women are illiterate. These disparities are compounded by higher dropout rates in formal education resulting in disproportionately low representation in higher education. Not surprisingly, the cumulative effect has been that the proportion of Scheduled Tribes below the poverty line is substantially higher than the national average. The estimate of poverty made by Planning Commission for the year 1993-94 shows that 51.92 percent rural and 41.4 percent urban Scheduled Tribes were still living below the poverty line.

The Constitution of India incorporates several special provisions for the promotion of educational and economic interest of Scheduled Tribes and their protection from social injustice and all forms of exploitation. These objectives are sought to be achieved through a strategy known as the Tribal Sub-Plan strategy, which was adopted at the beginning of the Fifth Five Year Plan. The strategy seeks to ensure adequate flow of funds for tribal development form the State Plan allocations, schemes/programmes of Central Ministries/Departments, financial and Developmental Institutions. The cornerstone of this strategy has been to ensure earmarking of funds for TSP by States/UTs in proportion to the ST population in those State/Uts. Besides the efforts of the States/UTs and the Central Ministries/Departments to formulate and implement Tribal Sub-Plan for achieving socio-economic development of STs, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs is implementing several schemes and programmes for the benefits of STs.

The progress over the years on the literacy front may be seen from the following :-

	1961	1971	1981	1991	2001
Total literate population	24 %	29.4 %	36.2 %	52.2 %	64.84%
Scheduled Tribes (STs) population	8.5 %	11.3 %	16.3 %	29.6 %	47.10%
Total female population	12.9 %	18.6 %	29.8 %	39.3 %	53.67%
Total Scheduled Tribes (STs) female population	3.2 %	4.8 %	8.0 %	18.2 %	34.76%

There are now 194 Integrated Tribal Development Projects (ITDPs) in the country, where the ST population is more than 50% of the total population of the blocks or groups of block. During the Sixth Plan, pockets outside ITDP areas, having a total population of 10,000 with at least 5,000 scheduled tribes were covered under the Tribal Sub-Plan under Modified Area Development Approach (MADA). So far 252 MADA pockets have been identified in the country. In addition, 79 clusters with a total population of 5,000 of which 50 per cent are schedule tribes have been identified.

In order to give more focussed attention to the development of Scheduled Tribes, a separate Ministry, known as the Ministry of Tribal Affairs was constituted in October 1999. The new Ministry carved out of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, is the nodal Ministry for overall policy, planning and coordination of programmes and schemes for the development of Scheduled Tribes.

The mandate of the Ministry includes social security and social insurance with respect to the Scheduled Tribes, tribal welfare planning, project formulation research and training, promotion and development of voluntary efforts on tribal welfare and certain matters relating to administration of the Scheduled Areas. In regard to sectoral programmes and development of these communities, the policy, planning, monitoring, evaluation as also their coordination is the responsibility of the concerned central Ministries/Departments, State Governments and UT Administrations. Each Central Ministry/Department will be the nodal Ministry of Department concerning its sector. Ministry of Tribal Affairs supports and supplements the efforts of State Governments/U.T. Administrations and the various Central Ministries/Departments for the holistic development of these communities.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Bundelkhand: 519 farmer suicides in the seven districts, year 2011(just 5-6 months!)

Official figures confirm 519 suicides in the seven districts in the first five months of this year. This figure includes all suicides.

Everything is in short supply here, especially hope. There was a flicker of it, though, when on April 30 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came here with Rahul Gandhi. Maybe the people were expecting a miracle, an end to the misery created by season after season of bad crops and the resultant rising debt. Their hope proved to be short-lived. Since then, nine farmers have killed themselves in Banda district alone, the worst hit in a cluster of seven district that form the ravaged Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. The other six districts are Hamirpur, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Mahoba, Chitrakoot and Jalaun. Banda district hospital has reported around 330 cases of suicide between January and May this year.

Locals here say most of the suicides are by indebted farmers, their world darkened by the burden. The actual number, however, is difficult to tell. Official figures confirm 519 suicides in the seven districts in the first five months of this year. This figure includes all suicides. But even if one were to go by the official figures, there has been an alarming rise in the rate of suicides in the last five months. In the 12 months of 2009, there were 568 suicides in the seven districts against 519 in just the first five months of this year. In 2010, 583 suicides were recorded. Between 2001 and 2005, there were 1,275 cases of suicide (the period includes 2002 and 2004, two harsh drought years).

Obviously, some additional factor, other than the normal depressive factors, has been responsible for the sudden spurt in suicides. There is good reason to believe that the killer factor this year has been rural indebtedness. The total amount of current outstanding rural bank debts in Bundelkhand is Rs 4,370.32 crore. This is 21% more than 2010 when the total bank debts stood at Rs 3,613.22 cr. The region is among the most backward in the country, marked by high poverty. The soil is rocky and of low fertility, having suffered erosion of topsoil and denuded of green cover. There are no significant irrigation schemes and cultivation is largely rain dependent, though rainfall itself is scanty.

Bhupat Arak, a 40-year-old farmer of Badokhar Khurd hanged himself on May 27. Officials say he killed himself after a fight with his wife. But he was supporting a family of nine: wife, mother and six children, four of them girls who have to be married off. He had six bighas of land, but the crop was a washout this year. And he owed UP Allahabad Gramin Bank Rs 1.5 lakh. In Hamirpur's Garha village, 18-year-old Manorama Singh ended her life so that her 78-year-old grandfather, Prahlad, would not have to take yet another loan for her marriage. Ending her life, she thought, would put an end to the family's problems. It hasn't. Singh owes SBI's Ichauli Bank over Rs 3 lakh.

In four of the worst affected districts, Banda, Hamirpur, Lalitpur and Jhansi, farmers owe banks about Rs 2,750 crore. And income has been patchy. Since 2002, three years have been declared drought-affected: in 2002, 2004 and 2009. This year, too, the crop has been bad. Over the last few years, things have progressively gone from bad to worse for farmers in Bundelkhand. The emergency medical officer at Banda's district hospital, Dr Vineet Sachan, said,"The district hospital treats at least three suicide or attempted suicide cases every day. We are able to save about 60% cases that are brought to us in time. We have observed a year-on-year increment of 20% in suicide cases over the past few years. Since January 2011, we've had over 550 cases."

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

A walking library……@JCSS-Jhansi

To strengthen the ‘concept clarity’ of the staff on various development concerns and policies, JCSS-Jhansi HARIT PRAYAS team has subscribed ‘Kurekshetra’ development monthly magazine in Hindi and learning and knowledge of it they are also sharing with Farmers club in the villages.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Harit Prayas, RBM, Water conservation and Migration, in Bundelkhand

-By Kumar Ratan (Project Manager, HARIT PRAYAS, JCSS-Jhansi -UP)

Recently in Joint meeting at XIDAS-Jabalpur the resource person from XIDAS-Jabalpur asked JCSS-Jhansi, Jhansi team that "why one should add water conservation as one of the outputs in Harit Prayas project. Harit Prayas deals with ensuring rural livelihood, food security and focus on reducing migration. In the RBM (Result Based Management) framework how will one justify 'water conservation' in Harit Prayas?"

I think the following story clarifies it better, i. e the relationship between water conservation, rural livelihood and reducing migration.

The RBM frame is really good for better implementation of any project but at the same time it has its own limitations, we must be aware of it. The JCSS R& D section is working on this. Till then think about this story...........

Migration from the parched lands of Bundelkhand is common. But the scene in Dadhat Maaf, a village in Kabrai tehsil of Mahoba is even bleaker. Nearly 90 % of its inhabitants have migrated out. Just about 250 people live in the village that had 3,000 population. The village has no water left-either for drinking or for washing.

Two hundred and fifty people living there are surviving on the water they scrape from 10 wells that have water at bed level. The other 240 wells are completely dry. The four hand pumps refused to yield water soon after the onset of the summers. The ground water level in the village has gone down to 120 feet-too difficult a depth to reach in the rocky belly of the earth there.

"Our primary occupation was vegetable cultivation. But we can't cultivate anymore. So people began migrating. First the surface water dried up when the irrigation canal (from Urmil river) passing the village began thinning in 2008. In last four years, the ground water level too went down. Now, the village-an old one-has just elderly and a handful of youths left," said Harichand Kushwaha, a villager. Small wonder most of the houses are locked. The locks too have turned rusty over the period of time. Mohan Sahu's is one such house-he took his entire family to Bhind, a part of Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Govt lowers pension age limit for BPL category

An additional 72.32 lakh persons in the age group of 60-64 years and living below the poverty line will get pension benefits with the Government on Thursday lowering the age limit to 60.

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also decided to increase the rate of pension to persons of 80 years and above from Rs 200 to Rs 500.

The revised norms would be applicable with effect from 1^st April this year and total additional requirement will be Rs 2,770 crore for implementing the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme-- part of the National Social Assistance Programme of the Central government.

"It is estimated that lowering of the age limit would benefit about an additional 72.32 lakh persons in the age group of 60-64 years and living below the poverty line. It is estimated that 26.49 lakh persons above the age of 80 years and living below the poverty line, would become eligible to receive enhanced Central assistance at Rs. 500 per month," the Government said in a statement.

At present 169 lakh persons above the age of 65 years and living below poverty line are receiving Central assistance under Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme.

"The additional funds required will be Rs 1,736 crore for providing old age pension at Rs 200 per month per beneficiary in the age group of 60-64 years and Rs 953 crore for providing enhanced pension at Rs 500 per month per beneficiary of age 80 years and above," the Government said.

"Thus the total additional requirement will be Rs 2,770 crore including 3 per cent administrative expenses," it said.

As a result of change in the eligibility criteria for receiving old age pension, eligibility criteria for widow pension under IGNWPS and disability pension under IGNDPS will get revised from 40-64 years to 40-59 years and from 18-64 years to 18-59 years respectively, the statement said.

It has been a long-pending demand to lower the age of old age pension beneficiaries to 60.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

...recent event @ MVSS-Sagar

08^th June 2011: Training to the MVSS-Sagar HARIT PRAYAS staff on ‘Progress Monitoring Framework (PMF)’ of HARIT PRAYAS

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Forth coming visit of Caritas India Project Officer-Mr. Vinod Pandey

7^th-8^th June 2011: MVSS-Sagar

9^th-12^th June 2011: SSSS-Satna

13-14^th June 2011: JCSS-Jhansi

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

JOINT REVIEW MEETING

JOINT REVIEW MEETING

XIDAS-JABALPUR

29^th-31^st MAY 2011

Every day HARIT PRAYAS is growing….

To analyzing the baseline data report (of all 64 villages of the project), redefining results area and LFA, finalizing targets and developing PMF of the project on the basis of baseline survey findings a joint meeting of HARIT PRAYAS partners has been organized from 29^th-31^st May 2011 at XIDAS (Xavier Institute of Development Action & Studies). The meeting was in the form of workshop and has been facilitated by the resource person from ASK-India (Association for Stimulating Know how (ASK), is a capacity building organization, engaging with grassroots communities, NGOs, Government and Corporate to enhance thinking, reflection, learning and action to achieve equitable development and social justice.) the participants of the programme were-Fr. Fredrick D’souza (Asst. ED Caritas India),Fr. Shaju (Director MVSS-Sagar),Sr. Karuna (MVSS, Sagar), Dr. Uma (HOD-XIDAS-Jabalpur), Mr. Philip (Operations manager-Caritas India), Mr. Prakash (Ask-India), Mr. Mehul (ASK-India), Mr. Saju (State Officer, Caritas India), Mr. Kumar Ratan(JCSS-Jhansi), Mr. Jerome (JCSS-Jhansi),Ms. Malti (JCSS-Jhansi),Mr. Krishna (JCSS-Jhansi),Mr. Kailash (JCSS-Jhansi),Mr. Sino (SSSS-Satna),Mr. Veerander Sen (SSSS-Satna),Mr. Veerender Tripathi (SSSS-Satna),Mr. Arun (SSSS-Satna),Mr. Rajesh (SSSS-Satna),Mr. Hari (MVSS-Sagar), Mr. Raja (MVSS-Sagar),Mr. Arvind (MVSS-Sagar),Mr. Rajendera (MVSS-Sagar),Mr. Ankit (XIDAS-Jabalpur)Mr. Praful (XIDAS-Jabalpur), Mr. Vinod Pandey (Caritas India).

Process followed

In the three days workshop on baseline findings and redefining the existing proposal of HARIT PRAYAS in terms of setting clear cut targets against the results and developing the Performance Monitoring Framework (PMF) for the project, following process have been adopted:

Step-1: Introduction of the HARIT PRAYAS project and the team members including the resource person and XIDAS staff.

Step-2: Sharing of the agenda of the day particular and next 2 days which includes following:

Re-visiting and shaping of results of existing proposal on the basis of baseline.
Finalizing LFA & PMF of in the existing proposal of HARIT PRAYAS-partner-wise and by the HARIT PRAYAS team.
Finalizing activities on the basis of results set and inclusion it into the PMF.

Step-3: sharing of the key finding of baseline survey by the XIDAS and the Caritas India team.

Step-4: sharing of existing proposal and re-working on results area and the LFA of it with the HARIT PRAYAS p[partner team as a group work. Partners re-gone through the result area and set it clearly on the basis of baseline than set the indicator and means of verification for the same. Once this has completed partners have presented it in front of the entire team and the same has finalized with feed back from the team members and other partners team members.

Step-5: On the basis of LFA, again the partner-wise HARIT PRAYAS team sit with the their own team members along with Caritas India staff/Ask facilitators and finalized the PMF of the project (which was earlier not in the proposal)

Step-6: On the basis of PMF HARIT PRAYAS teams re-worked on the activities planned and as per the results have set the sequential activities for the project.

Step-7: Sharing by each team its PMF and activities

Step-8: Developing the action plan for next 10 15 days which includes the final shaping of the existing proposal and submitting the same to the Caritas India.

Participation of HARIT PRAYAS staff

HARIT PRAYAS cluster coordinators did the analysis of baseline survey and set the target
Team has worked till late nights (even 1-2 am) on both days.
Teams came well prepared with the understanding of project and villages and analysis of baseline survey findings.

Overall learning’s by the staff:

(Individual staff learning’s are attached here)

Now we are clear exactly what we have to do and with whom we have to do?
Training and other activities would not be generic, but would be specific to the target community and target HHs.
Clarity on results, PMF and LFA
Analysing data on excel sheet

This review meeting has sharpened the project focus and set the clear cut targets for individual activities, which in turn would lead to the better result.