WADI - Wonderful Livelihood Security for Tribals

The “Wadi” project, named after a system for land-based production in local parlance, is doing wonders for rural livelihoods in northeastern distirct of Raigarh in chhattsigarh state. The programme has especially promoted agro-horticulture and agro-forestry, thereby enhancing the socio-economic status of the resource-poor families, and has so far helped about 200 households in improving their livelihoods and crossing the poverty line. This project is sponsored by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), and running in 4 villages of the tribal-dominated Gharghoda block . Raigarh based non-government organization JanMitram is implementing the project sanctioned by NABARD under its Tribal Development Fund with the objective of bringing about a transformation in the rural landscape within the next couple of years. The initial results have depicted an increased access to nutritive food, better resource maintenance and reduction in migration to cities.

Talking of Development 

The project's main beneficiaries are Below Poverty Line (BPL) families whose annual income is below Rs.25,000 per anuum. Their livelihood portfolio comprises agriculture, animal husbandry and labour, which is only of subsistence type due to small land holding, degraded pasture and forests, low-yielding animals and large extent of wasteland farms. Except during the monsoon, people in the region do not get any work opportunities and their livelihood shifts to uncertainties, forcing them to depend mainly on daily wages in distant labour hubs. JanMitram’s President Dr. Mukesh Goswami says the project's main strategy is to initiate plantation of permanent nature, including fruit, fodder, timber and fuel trees, with an integrated resource management. Other activities have addressed important aspects of horticulture, forestry and allied systems, which can yield high productivity.

The project is bringing a steady improvement in family resource management as well as in the productivity of land and water units for the poor families, says Dr. Goswami. The project is also designed to address vulnerability of target families, including those in the BPL and near poverty line, against fluctuating climatic conditions. it shall strengthened the rural livelihood scenario by successfully connecting missing links of resource management in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry,  and fruits.

Mahesh Pahadsingh, The district Development Manager of NABARD in raigarh, says that major component of the strategy is poverty reduction through improved access of resource-poor families, which also take part in formulation, implementation and monitoring. A cluster approach has been adopted for implementation so as to have better replication, while long-lasting effects of sustainability of the promoted practices will be attained through family-based livelihood planning for effective use of existing resources.

A Wadi Site, showing fruit plantation with inter cropping 

Mr Pahadsingh told that activities undertaken as part of the project include plantation, construction of piped water courses and storage tanks, vermicomposting, nutritional gardening, field training camps, gender sensitization, chlorination of water sources, installation of solar lighting systems and awareness camps on water-borne diseases and control.A survey conducted at the project's initiation included the indicators of agricultural production and economic value, existing trees and their productivity, cattle population, farm practices and fodder production. On the basis on these inputs, the results of livelihood interventions shall be estimated. The project is all set to reduce input costs in agriculture and animal husbandry systems on the one hand and enhance production on the other in the years to come. Support in the shape of Wadi would strengthen the economy of primary production in wastelands.

Dr. Goswami says -JanMitram had laid emphasis on providing an important role to women in decision-making and involved them in a big way in economic activities and non-traditional roles. Besides, the village communities have been organized under Village planning committee,  so as to sustain efforts for production enhancement and equitable benefits. He tell that cost of the project was initially estimated at Rs.80 Lakh, while the community's contribution during the implementation would bring it down to Rs.73 Lakh. The economic changes would especially benefit the poor community, whose major land holdings are the sloping wastelands and eroded stream banks.

Onsite Training of Farmers 

Additionally, the village development programme (VDP) is also running parallel in these villages for  the families  who did not covered under WADI. This prgramme is designed to build capacity of farmers and availing assistance through convergence of different government schemes. This has brought an environment of cooperation among various departments i.e. Agriculture, Horticulture and animal husbandry. all such departments are now reaching these villages to make demonstration of techniques. Over 200 acres of land has now brought under SRI ( Seed intensification in rice), over 50 acre land under vegetable cultivation. 3 New farmers clubs have been formed.     

While tribal communities in the region earlier had a forest resource based livelihood, large-scale deforestation forced them to shift to farming activities on a sloping land and caused degradation. Continued and damaging run-off resulted in the loss of agricultural land along the stream course and led to an adverse effect on the ground water conditions in the district.

According to Dr. Goswami, NABARD had extended financial help to JanMitram for enhancing skills, improving resources and building new institutions in the field of land-based production mainly through resource development and management. “Recycling of nutrients is an added advantage of the project,” he says.

On its conclusion, the project is expected to make the target tribal households “drought-proof” with better nutritional resources and increase per hectare unit yield of different crops. With the livelihood available locally, production efficiency is set to improve and linkages for sustainable development strengthened.

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janmitram@gmail.com

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In Chhattisgarh Assembly, RTI Applicants Face New Hurdles

THE CHHATTISGARH Assembly will now consider an applicant’s intent before giving information under RTI. It might even refuse the application if it is convinced it has been made with mala fide intent. This clearly goes against the RTI Act, which says that an applicant requesting information shall not be required to give any reason. But can intent be ascertained without asking the reason?

The Assembly enforced this rule last month by issuing a notification. It has also hiked the fee for an RTI application concerning the Assembly from Rs 10 to Rs 500. And the copy of documents provided will also cost more, setting citizens back by Rs 15 per page instead of Rs 2 charged elsewhere in the country.

“Earlier, there were no (specific) rules for the Legislative Assembly. We adopted this model from Uttar Pradesh,” says Assembly Secretary Devendra Verma.

Expensive info  at the Chhattisgarh Assembly 

Chhattisgarh Speaker Dharam Lal Kaushik defends the notification saying the information regarding the questions raised by MLAs is still provided at a cost of Rs 1 per copy and the higher fee would apply only to the information sought about the Assembly.

RTI activists aren’t amused by the Assembly’s decision. “The underprivileged will have to sacrifice a lot of money to file an RTI application. It goes against the spirit of the law,” says Shekhar Singh, a member of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), the NGO that was instrumental in bringing the RTI Act.

Veteran RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal adds that this model would encourage other states to follow suit. “This is despite the Department of Personnel & Training requesting, in its circulars, states and competent authorities to maintain a uniform fee of Rs 10,” he says.

Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi couldn’t agree more. “Bad practices get easily copied and this is disappointing,” he says. “The intent clause is disrespectful of the law. The RTI Act talks of a reasonable fee and Rs 500 is not reasonable. These (legislative) bodies just don’t want to give information.” Gandhi has shot off letters to the CM, Leader of the Opposition and the Speaker asking them to maintain the fee at Rs 10 per application and Rs 2 for additional copies.

This is not the first time that such a regressive step has been initiated by the Chhattisgarh government. In 2009, it limited the word count to just 150 and number of subjects to one for each RTI application. The restriction was also adopted by the Madhya Pradesh Assembly in 2010. “Restricting the subject to one is illegal under the RTI Act as it clearly provides for even partial transfer of application to other authorities if all the information is not available with one department,” says NCPRI’S Nikhil Dey.

Similarly, Prateek Pandey, an RTI activist of the Chhattisgarh Citizen Initiative, says there is lack of clarity. “Once I asked the former State Information Commissioner (SIC) to define ‘subject’ and he just smiled. If the SIC can’t answer that, how will a Public Information Officer? Everyone interprets it in his own way,” he says.

The SIC recently ruled against the “Speaker’s privilege” to deny information in the case of an applicant seeking audit reports of the accounts of the House and the applications received by it. Many MLAs have also been in the line of fire due to information obtained under RTI last year, which revealed that they had been receiving gifts such as microwave ovens, washing machines, etc., in violation of rules.

The way ahead is either to accept the decision meekly or wait for someone to fight it out in court saying that the notification is unreasonable and unlawful. Shekhar Singh says that this confrontation can be avoided. He gives the example of Manipur, where the government had introduced a similar rule and when the activists wrote to them, the state authorities reduced the application fee.

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By Prakhar Jain - prakhar@tehelka.com

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne040212Chhattisgarh.asp

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Mitanins-Changing Face of Community Health

A global trend favouring large-scale interventions by Community Health Workers (CHWs) has paid huge and unexpected dividends in Chhattisgarh, where CHWs called mitanins have not only substantially improved infant mortality rates but are also meeting the goal of holistic development

Creating Bond of Friendship- Mitanins with Davapeti

They've improved child survival rates in the state, furthered local women's participation in the community, and helped ensure people's right to food. What's more, Chhattisgarh's 60,000-strong volunteer Community Health Workers (CHWs), or mitanins ('friends' in the local language), have done all this in a relatively short period of time, armed with just a bag of basic drugs, a little training, loads of enthusiasm, and empathy.

A government-civil society partnership started in 2000, the mitanin programme is widely credited with bringing the rural Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in Chhattisgarh down from 85 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2002 (the second highest in the country) to 65 in 2005, much the same as the national rural IMR of 64.

Rewind to the beginning of the decade. In the context of high illiteracy and poverty, and with a third of the population being tribal, the 3,818 health sub-centres (staffed by one auxiliary nurse each) were unable to provide outreach services to the 18 million rural people dispersed over 54,000 habitations. Infants in the impoverished tribal- and scheduled caste-dominated region remained malnourished despite a network of anganwadis; primary health centres 'functioned' without doctors.

Fighting against malnutrition- Weighting and followup of malnourished children 

There was an urgent need for someone to act as a link between the service and the beneficiaries, someone who could counsel the villagers and encourage them to seek improvements in service as a matter of right. Who best to do this but women from within the community itself?

In consultation with various civil society representatives, a government-funded network of 54,000 women community volunteers was formed through an MoU between the state government and civil society. The mitanin programme is run by an autonomous state health resource centre parallel to the health department.

The mitanin programme envisaged a synergy of health services at the community, outreach and facility levels as essential for its success. Mitanins would carry out family-level outreach activities such as essential care of newborns, nutritional counselling, and case management of illnesses that are common in childhood.

The role of these volunteers evolved over time into a set of activities that focused on child survival and essential care of newborns, and into another set of rights-based activities that enabled access to basic public services as fundamental entitlements to be secured through women's empowerment and community action.

A team of 3,000 motivated women were engaged as middle-level supervisors and trainers to address the issues of human resources and poor support from health personnel.

The Koriya region of Chhattisgarh may have been mineral-rich but its Gond and Kerwa tribal communities were dirt poor. Despite this, none of the government programmes, including the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) had reached them. Childhood infections were rampant, and infant mortality high.

Finally in 2003, the state government decided to appoint a mitanin in every village. The change thereafter is visible on the faces of children in Rokda village, where Rambai is a mitanin. Since being appointed, Rambai has treated hundreds of infections, tracked and counselled pregnant women on nutrition, and ensured that all infants were breastfed and immunised. "Earlier, women were starved for the first six days and the babies were fed cow or goat's milk with a cloth. Many children died as there was a lot of malnutrition. Now I tell women to breastfeed the children for six months, and then start on supplementary food. I tell the women to feed them five to six times, whatever they themselves eat. I also tell women to eat green leafy vegetables, depending on what is available. If there aren't any vegetables, I tell them grow them so that they don't have to buy them," she says.

Other mitanins in Koriya began sending complaints to the district collector about the poor state of anganwadis and primary health centres. When no action was taken, they approached the Supreme Court commissioners on the right to food. They wrote to the state government and action was immediate. About 10,000 complaints have so far been received against the public health centres alone, according to programme officials.

Now, even as the mitanins go about their work, the Dekh Rekh Samiti, a monitoring committee, visits anganwadis and schools every week to oversee their functioning. "We check whether teachers come or not, whether food is being served in the anganwadi and whether the rations are reaching pregnant women," says Gangabai, a member. In fact, they have already written to the administration that a new centre needs to be built near the school.

"Along with providing healthcare, the mitanins have focused on food programmes like the ICDS and midday meals scheme, and helped mobilise communities around them," says Samir Gar of the Adivasi Adhikar Samiti, Chhattisgarh. "Now there is a full house at the anganwadi, as children flock there for food, and Rambai helps the anganwadi worker with the cooking."

Malnutrition in Koriya has since dipped from 73% in 1999 to 66% in 2006.

Mitanin gathered  in a get together  programme 

Today, there are mitanins in 60,092 of 72,000 hamlets in Chhattisgarh. "At least 45,000 of them are active in organising the community to access public health facilities and 6,000 were able to bring about some change in their community, to get doors opened for the villagers," says state coordinator Raman, a former activist at the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad.

"Mitanins don't get salaries. The honour they get in society makes them come forward," says Raman. "In fact, 5,000 of them stood for panchayat elections and got elected," he adds. This is the biggest band of activists after China's barefoot doctors, proud officials claim.

"Much of the improvement in child survival rates in Chhattisgarh undoubtedly relates to better health-seeking behaviour and childcare practices. The initiation of breastfeeding during the first two hours after birth increased from 24% of live births to 71% of live births, and the use of oral rehydration salts in the management of diarrhoea in children younger than three years increased by 12% in the two weeks before the survey," says a review of the programme published in a recent issue of the British medical journal The Lancet. "Overall, the state has seen the number of underweight children fall from 61% to 52%. In addition to this, immunisation has increased from 22% to 49% in the 1-2 age-group."

By :  Lisa Batiwalla, for InfoChange News and Features

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JanMitram worked for Mitanins as implementing and Mentoring organisation till March 2011,  in two blocks of Raigarh District. We were involved in programme, right from there selection (2003-04),  and then sequential  training  that took many years. A network of over 830 Mitanins was created. This programme did so well that it was incorporated in Regular activities of Health Department, under National Rural Health Mission. However, organisation Still connected with Mitanins for strengthening and development of there social network.


Mitanin Sangthan, formed under exit policy of supporting organisation, now oversee issues and providing leadership. These blocks are now leading in district in major health indicators.  The Sangthan is exemplary for strengthening of women based CBOs. 
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