March 2009 Edition
Innovative project helps tribals farm better
Rita and Umesh Anand
Jamshedpur
LAKSHMAN Oraon and his wife Sarla are no ordinary farmers. On less than an acre of land,
they grow paddy, tomatoes, potatoes and onions. Their crop of paddy has just been harvested
and you can see the dry remnants sticking out of the soil. But they are getting ready for a
second major crop. It could be wheat with mustard and pulses in the margins.
Water harvesting structures at Mosodih village in the Seraikela- Kharsawan district of Jharkhand
have given Lakshman and Sarla stable irrigation and moisture in the soil. They grow enough for
themselves and their four children to eat all through the year. The surplus is sold in neighbouring
markets. The yield of paddy on their land has been steadily going up and is now 1.2 tonnes.
But just four years ago, life wasn't like this. Lakshman and Sarla would somehow grow a single
crop of paddy, stash it away for their personal consumption and enlist with the visiting labour
contractor who would take them and their children to cities in West Bengal where they would be
put to work on construction sites. After six months of bondage, they would return with Rs 2,000
between them. It was all the money they had in a year.
Till Lakshman and Sarla learnt to make their land productive, theirs was an existence full of
deprivation. The conditions they knew weren't just tough, they were inhuman. As construction
labour there was no dignity. No place to stay in the city. The toll those years took shows. They are no more than 40 years old but look as though they are in their 50s.
Things began to change for Lakshman and Sarla when the Tata Steel Rural
Development Society (TSRDS) embarked on land and water management
projects with the support of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) under its Central
India Initiative. Checkdams, ponds, tanks and lift irrigation systems began
come up in their district. They now have two big ponds in their village.
The Central India Initiative is an outcome of the research on the Central
India tribal belt by the International Water Management Institute. The research
was funded by SRTT.
Read More...
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr GD Agrawal ends heroic fast of five weeks to save Ganga
Civil Society News
New Delhi
Five weeks after Dr GD Agrawal went on a
fast unto death, the Union government
agreed to temporarily stop construction of
the Loharinag-Pala hydroelectric project.
The project is a mere 25 km from the Gangotri
glacier in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand,
which is from where the Bhagirathi-Ganga originates. “The Loharinag-Pala project has to be
stopped,” Dr Agrawal had said.
His request to the government was that no
dams should be built on a 125 km pristine
stretch of the Bhagirathi-Ganga from the
Gangotri glacier to Uttarkashi. The river should
be allowed to flow in its natural form. He had
warned that construction of dams on this
stretch will be tantamount to
killing the Ganga.
The Ganga is of immense religious
and cultural significance to
millions of Hindus and for this
reason Dr Agrawal, who is 76-
years-old, was willing to lay
down his life to save the river.
Dr Agrawal is one of India's
best known environmental scientists.
He was a professor at IIT,
Kanpur, and a member-secretary
of the Central Pollution Control
Board. He is an expert at
Environment Impact
Assessment, (EIA).
Between the Gangotri glacier
and Uttarkashi a series of dams
are being made. Just 25 km downstream the
glacier, the National Thermal Power
Corporation (NTPC), a public sector company, is
building the Loharinag-Pala project.
Reacting to the government's decision to halt
construction, Dr Ravi Chopra, director of the
People's Science Institute in Dehradun, said: "It
is a measure of how seriously the government
and the Prime Minister in particular take this
issue. The Prime Minister had earlier declared
the Ganga a national river. Now the government
will need to take the measures needed to
ensure that the Ganga really gets this status."
Read More...
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Umesh Anand
LONG years of neglect have made the revival of agriculture tricky. Farmers
need access to creative solutions in dealing with their current burden of
problems. This assistance is best provided in the field through specific
interventions. It is a slow and complex process in which many actors have to
be involved. It means marrying traditional systems with new technologies.
But above all it requires a vision of national prosperity linked to ecological
balance and well- being in rural areas.
The pilot project undertaken by Tata Steel with tribal farmers in the extremely poor district of Seraikela-Kharsawan in Jharkhand proves many things. But its signal achievement is that it establishes the viability of small holdings which have in recent times been all but written off by governments seeking to acquire high growth quickly through industrial investment. Thanks to the intervention of the Tata Steel Rural Development Society (TSRDS), farmers in that stressed out district are now doing two and even three crops on tiny pieces of land. The paddy productivity of 1.2 tonnes or so an acre is more than double of what it was known to be. In addition, there are vegetables and pulses being cultivated.
Since these farmers have surpluses, they can sell their produce in local markets, which means they have an income from their land. With food and money assured they no longer feel the need to migrate to cities to work as labourers at construction sites.
How has all this been possible? The first step was to ensure water as a year round resource using tanks, ponds, wells and so on. When water is available, life begins to seem good. It becomes possible to farm. Jharkhand gets plenty of rain which mostly goes waste. Capturing it makes a world of difference. Community structures also promote a sense of shared responsibility. Everyone can make it happen is the message that goes out.
Read More...
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
|
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Shreyasi Singh
New Delhi
TO many, Brij Kothari's ambitions
might seem just too big. It is
unusual, after all, for a personal
mission to be as big as his. As a member
of the faculty of IIM, Ahmedabad,
and as President of PlanetRead, an
NGO that he has founded, Brij bravely
aims to make India a country of a billion
literate people.
Using the simple tool of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) on popular song-based television programmes, PlanetRead is sharpening the literacy skills of an estimated 200 million 'literates' or 'early literates'. By superimposing subtitles on visuals in the 'same' language as the audio, Brij ensures that reading becomes a byproduct of entertainment that is already being mass consumed.
Government estimates claim 600
million people are literate in India,
but, in reality, nearly half of these literates
can best be called early literates
or neo literates. Despite five years of
primary school education many early
literates cannot read even newspaper
headlines. But, they are a step ahead
of illiteracy because they do possess
some rudimentary familiarity with
alphabets. It is these early literates who benefit
mostly from SLS.
PlanetRead has effectively leveraged the ubiquity
of television in rural India to promote learning.
Over the last 10 years, SLS (a joint initiative of
PlanetRead and IIM Ahmedabad's Centre for
Educational Innovation), has been successfully
implemented on film songs and popular entertainment
programmes on TV in 10 languages –
Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil,
Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, and Punjabi. So, a
Hindi song has lyrics subtitled in Hindi, a Bengali
song has Bengali subtitles. What you hear is what
you read. Subtitles are even designed so that the
colour of every word changes in perfect tune with
the song.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Subir Roy
Bangalore
BANGALORE has traditionally been strong on
voluntary initiative and this has spawned a
new public private partnership venture to
come to grips with the city's intractable problems.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in
Karnataka and prominent NGO Janaagraha have
taken the lead to form Bangalore City Connect.
The thought that made this happen is the realisation among business that "corporate social responsibility initiatives are not enough and something more needs to be done to come to grips with our urban problems; this is critical since, if the city survives, business survives," says V Ravichandar, managing director of Feedback Consulting and veteran "civic catalyst" in the now broad PPP space.
The City Connect platform, though started by business, is open for any NGO or residents' welfare association to join by endorsing its charter. Some of its more prominent institutional members are ABLE, the association of biotechnology firms, local chambers of commerce like BCIC and FKCCI and the national association of software and services firms, NASSCOM. Enabling City Connect is a non-profit trust, Bangalore City Connect Foundation, born in 2007 after the Bangalore Urban Declaration was adopted. Bangalore City Connect is building up a corpus through membership fees and spending commitments, with around Rs 80 lakhs collected so far.
Other than business associations, civil society groups and state agencies form its two main categories of participants. The latter is vital as not only do you need the state agencies by your side to get virtually anything done, to retain the latter's continued support it is necessary to ask "what's in it for the state agencies for them to want to work with you," adds Ravichandar. He should know because he was a key force in the highly successful Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) which made a mark in the city during the early part of the decade but folded up with the change of government in 2004.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Milindo Chakravarti
IS the Indian village becoming more inclusive after the
introduction of panchayati raj? Professor BS Baviskar and
Dr George Mathew of the Institute of Social Sciences, (ISS),
New Delhi, embarked on a mission to find out. They got 17
serious researchers to spend a lot of time in villages, interacting
and observing. The outcome, published in a book,
Inclusion and Exclusion in Local Governance: Field Studies
from Rural India is remarkably insightful.
The book, comprising 16 studies from 14 states, captures
the ground reality in India's villages. Yes, there is some dismal
news but inexorable change is also taking place. Baviskar
and Mathew spoke about their work to Milindo Chakravarti.
What was the motivation for the book?
The idea was concretised in 2000, seven years after the 73rd
Amendment to the Constitution was passed. These years were
a very important and critical period. By that time one election
for panchayats in each state was over. We were closely watching
what was happening at ground level. We had another compulsion
to do such a study since we were the first institute to
publish a 'Panchayati Raj Update' that provides a record of
what is really happening at ground level in each state.
We found horrible things were taking place as far as the practice of democracy at the grassroots is concerned. Nobody is bothered about the practice of democracy at the national level. The percentage of voting in the panchayat elections is far higher than that recorded in Parliament or for that matter, even in the Assembly elections.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rita Anand
TILL nine years ago, the homeless were invisible in Delhi. Without a roof you had the status of a beggar. Then, in the chilly winter of 2000, dead bodies began to surface on the footpath. They were the homeless. They slept in the open with no blankets and by morning they were dead.
The media started reporting these grim facts. The story shook the conscience of sensitive citizens. As luck would have it, some months earlier, the Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan (Right to Shelter Campaign), supported by Action Aid, had started in a small way to work for the homeless.
Aashray Adhikar began to investigate. It uncovered the sad existence of the homeless. Pathetic stories started tumbling out. Not all homeless were from the toiling classes. A few were graduates. Many homeless worked very hard to earn a living.
Indu Prakash Singh of Aashray Adhikar and his team did a survey, moving around late at night. The homeless slept just about anywhere: under flyovers, near temples, in parks, under staircases, on railway platforms. The activists' rough survey yielded 52,765 homeless, mostly single men. There were vulnerable women and children also for whom the night was hell.
The state government did have ramshackle night shelters, mostly locked up. Aashray Adhikar demanded that shelters be renovated so that nobody would need to risk life and limb for a night of sleep. They took note of empty community halls and government schools where the homeless could sleep.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
About Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ©2007 Civil Society
........................................Webmaster Vishwanathan ( vishu4@rediffmail.com )