Program Activity Gallery

(BAIF EU Project)


Banswara and Udaipur districts in southern part of Aravalli Ranges and are known for its underdeveloped tribal population. In this area the natural resources are in degraded conditions; where continued & recurring drought conditions have shattered the age-old livelihood patterns and socio-economic conditions of the inhabitants are pathetic. Maize, wheat and black gram are the staple food. Use of vegetable oil, milk and milk products in food is negligible. None of the poor family has sufficient sources to have balanced nutritious diet for their members. The overall condition of the area was pathetic both in terms of natural resources and sustainable livelihood options, and BAIF had experience of successful working with similar conditions in other parts of country. BAIF-RRIDMA planned to intervene in the life of deprived section of community with the approach of sustainable development so as to help them in re-establishing the recycling capacity of their resources and processes.

The real challenge was not only to eradicate poverty in a small area but to show a way to various other stakeholders in the area. The BAIF-RIIDMA launched “Transfer of Technology for Sustainable Development” the project to initiate demonstration for sustainable livelihood in two clusters namely Ghatol (Banswara) and Bagpura (Udaipur).


Purpose

6,000 family units in Udaipur & Banswara districts of Rajasthan have been brought above the poverty line


Factors Affecting Livelihood in the area

In these two districts for majority of families, agriculture and agricultural labour is considered as main stay of livelihood. Traditionally area had limited cultivated land supported by good forest cover and good conservation practices supporting replenishment of resources. But with changing of values, ownership, institutional set-ups, over exploitation and lack of conservation resulted into fast degradation within a short span. Moreover, uncertainty of rains and continued degradation of resources made impact on the sustainability of entire ecosystem and its productivity, adversely affecting the livelihood pattern of the area. However, to meet their basic requirements they had no choice but to continue putting pressure on available poor resources. As a result large section of the community lost productive resources and practices and had to rely only on their muscle power as a livelihood option. More and more families started using migration as a strategy to survive in resource less condition.
In the area the basket of family resources of poor tribal families included holding of a few bigha land, cattle, goats, and some implements. The land use pattern of the project village’s showed that most of the lands are wasted and are not under any productive use. The fact to be highlighted is that under/unemployment and low productivity of natural resources does not allow these poor and marginalised families to meet their livelihood on a sustainable basis. The existing production system is mostly dependent on degraded resources like marginal land and unproductive livestock thus fail to contribute to the economic development of the area. Condition of women in the society was not very good. Women contributes a large amount to budget of the family, but do not reap the rewards. The major Developmental Opportunities for the area were…
• Land Based Activity.
• Breed Improvement.
• Alternative Land Management.
• Water Harvesting Systems combined with Soil Conservation


JANA UTTHAN APPROACH FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF POVERTY ALLEVIATION

The Approach included application of participatory methodologies for identification of livelihood profiles, its bottlenecks and setting-up family wise strategy to strengthen its livelihood. In this approach initially Village Representatives identify the poor and work with each family to prepare a Family Micro Level Plan, based on the available assets, to assure food security and to enable them to come out of poverty. The approach is based on:
• MLP (Micro Level Planning): It aims to assure food security and raise the economic status above the poverty line, sustainably. MLP continuously evolve on the basis of each family’s needs, successes & failures.

Criteria for MLP:
• Availability of resources with people such as land, water, tree, human resources, livestock etc.
• Agriculture Production & Income assessment.
• Gap estimation between Poverty line & Present status.
• Family Need
• Capacity building & exposure.
• Formation of People’s Institutions & Federations.

MAIN FEATURES
* Reaching the very poorest
* Flexible, need based, problem solving approach
* Package of interventions with each family, to focus on food security, gender equity, health, education and quality of life
* Family specific approach converging into community development.

Parivar Utthan Component
“Pariwar Utthan-Family Based Interventions” for poorest of the poor families by helping them to ensure sustainable livelihood options and improved resource base. These interventions covered aspects related to food security of poor families, generating self - employment, promoting and establishing income generation activities through regeneration and up gradation of natural resources.


AGRICULTURE

The focus was to improve productivity of existing cultivable lands including well-developed and sloping fields by using on-farm technologies transfer such as agronomic practices and organic farming. The project team worked hard to convince the community to adopt organic farming for sustainable livelihood. Motivation of the farmers to adopt use of quality seed (composite variety), bio-fertilizers, vermi-compost & farm yard manure (FYM), protective irrigation to assure Khariff crop, medicinal & cash crops (Safed Musli, Ashwagandha, Ginger, Turmeric, Sonamukhi) were few interventions that contributed to food security and income growth at family level.
TREE BASED FARMING / HORTICULTURE / FARM FORESTRY/ SILVIPASTURE

WADI, traditionally derived from the Gujarat word “WADA” where the farmers grow their vegetables & fruits from a piece of land around homestead, was promoted in this area. BAIF helped community to convert wasteland to productive orchard called “WADI” Tree-based intervention is a package with beneficiary family, which included following activities:
Plantation:
• Live hedge fencing on border of waste land
• Plantation of Amla, Mango and other fruit grafts.
• Plantation of forestry species (fodder, fuel and timber) around fruit plantation
Post Plantation Activities
• Monitoring for protection & aftercare practices such as weeding, basin preparation, mulching, pruning and protective watering.
• Use of micro nutrient for improving quality of fruits
• Value addition support after fruit production
• Providing marketing support to GVEAS

Livestock Based Intervention:
In Indian rural area livestock rearing was considered as supplementary activity for sustainability of land-based livelihood, but with reduced resources and poor knowledge system this approach got diluted. Project took the task of intervening in livestock front to increase contribution of livestock rearing in livelihood basket and develop early adopters to become role model for whole community. Focus was to strengthen animal husbandry practices existed among the tribal community. The Major activities in Livestock based interventions are
§ Breed Improvement with Artificial Insemination technique at doorsteps through local trained six youths as paravet.
§ Breed Improvement in Goat through Sirohi Community Buck.
§ Support Activities: Green Fodder Demonstration, Cattle Feed / Mineral Mixture.
§ Preventive Health Care: Deworming, Vaccination
§ Training and Advisory Services
§ Establishment of Dairy Societies & Bulk Milk Coolers

Area Based Interventions:
Besides family based interventions to support specific families, BAIF-RIIDMA also followed approach of resources improvement for creating better work opportunities and general living conditions for deprived families and sectors. The main activities were

1. Quality of life: To address the issue at two levels one - women in development and second community health.
2. Manava Vikas Sangh: The basic objective behind the formation of MVS was to promote unity amongst the community & enhance the social and economic status of the tribal community and post project management of development activities in the village.
3. Training: Transfer of technology purely depends on percolation of knowledge and skill building related to use of knowledge and technology.

It was observed that in the project area most of the families could not enjoy their earnings because of poor health and/or mal-nutrition, because of poor hygenic conditons and also less involvement of women in development process. In the initial years it was decided to address the issue of improving quality of life with two point of interventions one - women development and second community health.

Women Development
Tribal women are the most disadvantaged section of the community due to poor awareness and education about technologies. Their drudgery is also linked to poor health services, lack of control over income and no involvement in community level (jati Panchayat) etc. Gender issues in society are complex and demands in-depth study of underlying socio-politico-economic-cultural dynamics. The women focused activities created the platform to discuss the SHGs concept. Formation of SHGs is an outcome of a process adopted to involve women in various technical activities such as vermicompost, improved cook stove and biogas installations. Regular follow up, discussion with group members, training programmes and exposure visits enhanced the women’s confidence level.

Community Health Support:
High Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Mother Mortality Rate (MMR), poor health status of women, occurrence of chronic diseases like tuberculosis and skin diseases were very common in the area due to poor reproductive health, leucorrhoea, malnourishment, lack of safe drinking water, and delay in health. To address above problems RRIDMA planned the activities with the community during the project are:

§ Improvement of household hygiene.
§ Address malnutrition problem in children.
§ Promote Nutritional garden.
§ Establishment of Primary Treatment Centre (PTC).
§ Develop referral health services and linkages with Government institutions
§ Facilitate immunization programme & reproductive health.
§ Educate village worker in community health aspect.
§ Construction of community bathrooms near hand pumps

Capacity Building
RRIDMA analyzed the whole scenario and designed its training and capacity enhancement strategy for the area. Initially local youth was trained i.e. Field guides and later these were used to built overall capacity of the community using the approach of percolation of knowledge and skill building on use of technology addressing the livelihoods. In this training at various levels played a crucial and important role through regular orientation of community on sustainable rural development approaches and technologies related to them. Organic farming, leadership development, group dynamics, agriculture, micro enterprises, livestock management, community health and hygiene and gender related issues, were subjects of training and capacity building activities.

People’s Organizations:

“Sustainability of any intervention is only possible when ownership is with users,” was the basic concept for the BIAF-RRIDMA team to evolve different types of People’s Organization. RRIDMA formed Gram Vikas evam Aayojana Samities (GVAS) as key functioning agency to take-up following responsibilities:

1. Ensure community participation in activities
2. Conduct village meetings
3. Beneficiary selection as per the criteria
4. Family wise intervention planning and execution
5. Distribution of seeds, saplings, fertilizers etc
6. Execution of work and project payments
7. Prepare annual budget for village activities
8. Decide and ensure beneficiary contribution and deposit it in GVAS bank account
9. Maintain records like stock register, distribution register, contribution register, Jan Utthan register and the receipts
Presently these GVAS are providing support in form of Defining Marketing Strategy for village products, Estimates for Output (Fruit), Establish Agro Service Centers, Grading of agricultural produce, Survey for Potential Market & Market Linkages, Value Addition of Fruits, Establish permanent links with government departments like Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Forest, Bank, Panchayati Raj Institution, Market & NGO’s.

Learnings

The project proved that food security in an area and further strengthening to economic growth can only be possible be prevent degradation of natural resources. It was integrated approach that contributed to achieve this in project area. One important lesson of this approach was that the sustainability of any intervention depends on the technology being user-friendly for farmers. The project also gave us a confidence that poverty issue could be very well addressed by technological interventions, if they are community focused and user friendly. It is not only reliability of the technologies but also community orientation towards its results which take them towards sustainable livelihood.
This project in two clusters of Banswara and Udaipur have helped us to experience how adoption of agro-horticulture, agro-forestry, and complementary animal-husbandry system, appropriate water harvesting can help to reduce ill effects of drought on the poor tribal community. Integrated and intensive Natural resources management interventions can offer an opportunity to bring about desired changes in livelihood pattern and overall life of the community in distress.