SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
One can say that “Social development is a process which results in the transformation of social structures in a manner which improves the capacity of the society to fulfill its aspirations”. Society develops by consciousness and social consciousness develops by organization. A social development approach integrates as far as possible the generation of poverty and policy analysis with the process of including citizens and service users in policy cycles. In recent years, participatory processes have evolved from their roots in community development and micro-project design to become mainstreamed in macro-level policy discussions. For the past several years, social development has acquired a new salience in development thinking. Traditionally, development was seen mainly in terms of accretion in the material wealth of nations, and was measured in terms of rate of growth in domestic product. Economic growth itself was regarded as a function of capital inputs, both foreign and domestic. The main pursuit of economic policy was to mobilize the resources required for achieving a desired rate of growth. Acceleration in the rate of growth was supposed to take care of both economic and social problems.
In contemporary India the social problems are the result of a complex nexus between the factors of exclusion and inclusion rooted in history, values, and cultural ethos. Many of these problems based on the policy of segregation have not been addressed by the development strategy launched since Independence. Today, however, in the policy debate, orthodox economic liberalism is giving way to concerns regarding social consequences of globalization, as it affects the poorest and the marginalized sections of the population. Thus, a number of highly important and far-reaching social policy measures have been brought on to the development agenda, in the form of the Right to Information Act, Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and the Rural Health Mission among others and finally constitution of national advisory council chaired by Mr’s Sonia Gandhi is an open illustration of importance of social development at national level. This is also an indication of today’s scenario at the government level importance of inclusion of social policy in to variety of development plan and programmes being executed at top to bottom of the country
The current ongoing debate across the nation in food security bill also reflects that social developments have become an area of paramount importance for them. It has been emphasized that bill in current form is more of a food entitlement bill rather than a food security bill. One of the key area that is missing is to lack of measures to improve the nutrition status of general population and without them food security bill may not be as effective as it should be, given a fact that 19.8 % of children under-5 years of age are wasted or around 30 million children in India suffer from a form of acute malnutrition ,only the states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh account a number higher than the whole Africa in terms of SAM children for 2006, ,Acute malnutrition has higher concentration within children from rural areas (21 %), tribal & scheduled caste (28 % & 21 %), illiterate mother (23 %) and children under-3 (23 %). In one of the least developed state in India, Bihar the “Mukhymantri Balika Bycycle Yozna” which provides cycles to the girls of vulnerable community at free cost to enable them to cross some distance to complete their education is becoming highly popular. Number of civil society organizations, national and international organizations like DFID is also helping to achieve standard social indicators by number of prg on health, livelihood, Panchayati Raj, Urban Reform etc. Another flagship prg of government of India MNREGA which aims as enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing hundred days of wage-employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work is running quite successfully inspite of plethora of loop holes at the grass root level implementation. As per the latest 1.79 crore household has been provided man-day’s it includes 21.44% of SC population, 19.87% of ST population. If we discuss the penetration of this prg in Bihar according to the data available total

The whole idea behind this is to understand that how through the wheels of social development poverty and unemployment at mass level is being addressed in to various states and region of country. The introduction of smart card to the primary beneficiaries would also help to plug the leak in finance redistribution to the beneficiaries. If we analyse the expenditure on the basis of work division, maximum resources has been spent on rural connectivity with the village. Anther programme of immense social development launched by GoI is NRHM (National Rural Health Mission) recognizes the importance health in the process of socio- economic development of society. It adopts a synergistic approach by relating health to determinants of good health viz. segments of nutrition, sanitation, hygiene and safe drinking water The NRHM works within five different approaches namely community, flexible financing, monitor progress against standards improved management through capacity building, innovation in human resource management . If we talk about the achievement under this prg and considering the fact the health is s state subject and centre is trying to galvanise the state governments to resource the pool to achieve the set targets under NRHM gains are still considerable. As per the government data more than 8.09 lakh ASHA selected, 2.55 lakh trained and up to fifth module of health training standard and 5 lakh drug kits have been distributed. Around 1600 specialists, 8000 MBBS doctors, 26,000 staff nurses, 47,000 ANMS etc have been added in health human resource under the prg. Further around 3.5 crore women are covered under Janani Suraksha Yozna so far. What I mean to express by using these facts that social development has gigantic role to play in healthy and robust development of any society. Better social development indicator is one of the shining mirror of society through prism of development of human kind can be measured and acts as an imperative for further economic growth that brings more equity in the regionally imbalanced Indian states in terms of economics and social scale.

understanding livelihood

I have been associated with project named “Uday Uttrakhand” a livelihood intervention in the hills of Uttaranchal for last six months and have seen many notable changes within a short span of time. As one of the top priority of my organization named Access Development Service (ADS) is to make the market work for poor, and the foremost aim of the project is to increase the livelihood opportunities of the community of our project intervention area by designing the cascade of interventions in a hope that these intervention will increase the level of income generation and community will be largely satisfied with the project end scenario. We work in the area named Kalsi “famous for its Ashokan inscription” small block around 40 km from Dehradun city. The project have seen the two annual crops season and I am sure to say that lot of work have been achieved in the area and overall responses are quite fulfilling. It is also true that there are some gaps within the project which is yet to be bridged and chances are likely that it will difficult to put the cap on it simply because of the nature of gaps rather than putting an honest effort behind it. I meant to say that these gaps are institutional by nature and only institutional arrangements can fill these. The issue of governance with right approach is a critical missing link and continuous effort would only prevail. Before explaining much about the current interventions, I would like to have some understanding of nature of livelihood interventions being practiced in developmental sector.
Livelihood interventions are conscious effort from an outside agency or government institutions, departments to increase the livelihood opportunities of people living in bottom of pyramid of income generation. MNREGA implemented by Govt of India across the country can be termed a largest conscious effort by the Govt agency in recent decade .Number of Indian states like Bihar, MP, Uttaranchal, AP , Gujarat have also launched livelihood intervention prg with help of external agency like World Bank etc named “Ajivika” or related terms.. One of the major impediments in prg implementation come in form of supply of resource, skills, market linkage, credit facility to the community etc “In 1989, Vijay Mahajan and Thomas Dichter proposed an Alternate Livelihood Promotion Strategy through a paper: ‘A Contingency Approach to Enterprise Promotion’. They argued that promoting enterprises was complex and a better approach was to identify the bottleneck and work on that. In many cases, credit could be the only constraint. In such cases, minimalist credit was right and does work well. In other cases, credit is needed but is not the main constraint, what are needed could be skills, inputs or markets. Their argument was, though a large variety of services are required, all of them are not required at the same time and in every case. Thus the offering should be contingent upon what is needed in the situation. They also asserted that only a specialized type of organization could do it. And as it is difficult to build competencies to address all these factors in-house, collaboration becomes necessary”. Further coming to livelihood interventions there are number of approaches adopted by plethora of developmental agencies for their work in Indian context. Some of the approaches can be categories as
Spatial Approach: Promoting livelihoods in a specified geographical area, such as a region, sub-region, command area or a watershed

Segmental Approach: Promoting livelihoods for a vulnerable segment of the population, such as landless households, tribals, women and the disabled.

Sectoral Approach: Promoting livelihoods along a sector of the economy such as agriculture, or a sub-sector such as cotton.
Cluster Approach:-Usually a cluster arises around a particular activity, and eventually a number of related and supporting activities emerge leading to all round livelihood promotion. The activity may be agricultural, product like sugarcane or non farm products like Bikaneri Bhujia. There are several clusters in India, which are known for their products, such as, Shivakashi for matchbox, firecrackers, Ludhiana for woolen garments, Patiala for machine tools, Moradabad for brassware, Ulubedia for badminton shuttle corks, Lonavala for Chiki, groundnut molasses sweetmeat, etc.The twin pronged approach adopted by Access Development Service is mostly based upon cluster approach and SPARC MODEL of intervention. Before dwelling further I would also like to share the brief about the SPARC model of intervention. “SPARC – Small Producers and Artisans Resource Centre (SPARC) is a small team of professionals engaged to provide technical services to the primary producers in the farm and non-farm sectors. SPARC would be instituted by ACCESS, after the initial assessments to intervene in a specific subsector and an identified cluster within that. Located in the cluster the SPARC would initiate the activities to form the producer groups and producer company. In addition to providing technical service by itself, SPARC would leverage technical, financial and other business services from external agencies in the market. In doing so SPARC would make express use of the linkages forged by ACCESS at the national and sub-national levels. SPARC would thus act as a gateway for the primary producers to access resources, finance, input supplies, technology, information, markets and entitlements”[1]. This is meant to say that, to make the project sustainable SPARC model will be set up in each cluster and at end of project life line entire SPARC will be hosted by the project itself. Academically it can be viewed that cluster approach and sparc model will be sustained in coming days. But as far as current scenario are concerns practical testing of model itself has not been done till now. Further there are few examples in the development sector where clusters have been induced by external intervention. Most of the clusters have grown naturally meeting the demand of consumers and gradually expanded in a cluster approach.
In my point of view, the most important task of any livelihood intervention is to rescue the people from the clutches of poverty. It is often claimed that most of the livelihood programme are designed and implemented for the poor and vulnerable but there are very few studies or research are available to validate the objective of project intervention that can be shown to the policy makers, government representatives and other civil society organizations comparing ratio of investment made by organization, and alleviation of poverty from the masses. In our project intervention area we are trying to collect the data on project beneficiaries who actually got the benefits from the projects and how livelihood interventions are changing their status. The evidence based advocacy would be an ideal way to initiate this work. We are sure that in coming days at the fag end of project intervention there will be much to show off at grass root level.


[1] Access livelihood incubation model developed by Access Development Service New Delhi.

In the summer night

In the summer night when wind blows with chirp
I stand alone to watch twinkling stars,
They offer hopes against all odds
Whether u are alone or not, hopes never dies, hopes never dies

In the summer night, I stand alone to watch sea shore near the sea
They offer hopes against all odd
That we will come back to be with you,
Hopes never dies, never dies.

In the summer night ,I stand alone to watch dark nights and moon shining like a diamond cut
They offer hope against all odd that
In the pitch of darkness, when all will be gone,
Beam of light will be still reaching from window
Hopes never dies, never dies.

In the summer night, when silence galore at his best
And suddenly feisty stormy weather threaten to takes things away
The morning always offers dash of fragrance of flowers and life goes with zoom
Hopes never dies, never dies.

I am always standing alone against all odds
The hopes continues to flow from the abode,
I am standing high and just soaking it.


Rajeev

Disaster Management

Disaster Management is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks. It is a discipline that involves preparing for disaster before it occurs, disaster response, and supporting, and rebuilding society after natural or man made disasters have occurred. In general, any Disaster Management is the continuous process by which all individuals, groups, and communities manage hazards in an effort to avoid or ameliorate the impact of disasters resulting from the hazards. Actions taken depend in part on perceptions of risk of those exposed. Effective Disaster emergency management relies on thorough integration of disaster management plans at all levels of government and non-government involvement. Activities at each level individual, group, community affect the other levels.

Recent earthquake in Haiti has again brought the issue of disaster management at the fore front in the development sector. The world communities have started relief and rehabilitation operation sincerely but the immediate losses could not be stopped. As reported the Presidential Palace was collapsed, one could under stand the plight of commoners. AP( Associated Press) reported, that after two months of devastation “Trash and sewage are piling up at the squalid tent camps that hundreds of thousands have called home — and with torrential rains expected any day, authorities are not even close to providing the shelters they promised. Two months since the Jan. 12 quake, the government has yet to relocate a single person, despite a pledge that people would be moving into resettlement areas by early February.” One has to understand that this is the condition after more than a decade when world over Disaster management was taken as a part of developmental process that concluded any major disaster is direct set back to ongoing development work.

In India, few lessons were learnt when major earthquakes in Gujarat and Super cyclone in Orissa had jolted the entire political and bureaucratic class. After the super cyclone it was primarily felt to work on Disaster as a part of developmental process and sensitizing and awareness generation at community level would reduce the risk of disaster when it struck. In another way the cost incurred during prevention of disaster and cost incurred after disaster to initiate the normal socio-economic life has a major fiscal difference. This leads to initiate a major community driven disaster management programme. Against the back drop The developmental arm of UN, UNDP with the help of Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI had started the Disaster Risk Management Programme in India across seventeen states and 169 districts covering substantial part of the country .The prg itself has completed its five years terms and second phase has also started but can we say that the prg has achieved its primary objective? Nature of work done and change in the people’s perception on disaster management has changed a bit or not? This may happen that the prg itself has given birth to hundreds of development professionals who have started making the living and livelihood on these activites and few more people who got self motivated by this cause are working tirelessly.

Further one can argue that it is always easier to criticize than start working to filter on those deficiencies for the prg or person who has been accused. This may also be described as a fad of Indian middle class drawing room talks but issues; like Disaster Management has been making a great impact on most of the common people of our country. It may have less affect on citizens of developed countries but they also cdnt save them selves from Katrina or recent spate of urban floods being faced by them. Back to the issue, I would like to highlight few aspects of the prg being implemented by the UNDP along with the government departments in most of the district of various states .As a UN volunteer, I was posted at Begusarai one of the semi -urban district of Bihar. One of the major aspect of prg was to plan and prepare a disaster management plan for villages, tehsil, block, sub division and district and states against the natural disaster that particular place may face in coming days. But most of the plans prepared were of very poor quality and has no takers. Nor the implementing agencies neither the government who has mandate to adopt it could work accordingly. To make the matter worst, the plan was one-dimensional, apart from few socio economic basic data’s and name of few officials from district or village level there is hardly important information one can find. This is a story of most of the plans prepared at village, block and district level. At present I am not sure how many Indian states can claim that they have robust, tested disaster management plan.Mahatashtra was one of the early states who proclaimed state level disaster management plan but during Mumbai flood its utility was found to be zero. One of the glaring reason was they had not thought of that flood can occur in Mumbai so there was no established operational mechanism against it. But contradicting it at the same time some top class development also took place like setting up of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), an agency specially to look mainly after response during any natural disasters and setting some standards in relief and rescue measures with rapid movement and mobilization of their resources with minimum lapses of time. This is my firm belief that establishing an institution may be an arduous task but can be done, compare it with community mobilisation process that appears simple but complex to achieve. NDMA’s work during disaster struck due to change of course by river Koshi was remarkable.

Many more developmental agencies have also come in the filed of Disaster Management with grand agenda to serve the poor and vulnerable during an emergency. But whatever their vision and mission , most of them have started disaster management wing not because of their love and empathy for the common masses, but because the fund flow which has increased in this sector and that may make happy living of few disaster management experts ,directors and so called domain experts. They are never tired to boast about the importance of community participation in all the seminars and forums if given chance to speak up invited or uninvited. But again there are some good aspects also. European Commission have been sincerely sanctioning projects of relief, rehabilitation and preparation after every disaster in India and around the world. I had a personal experience of working in two of the project of relief and rehabilitation in Muzaffarpur on behalf of Care India and some good work was completed that really helped the affected community. Whether it was Koshi in Bihar or Tsunami, and recent Aila in West Bengal they have responded during every disaster. One can raise a question about the length of project that is small in nature with shorter time period. But this is one agency or organization becoming a ray of hope for many international agencies wishes to show their presence in the affected area but due to lack of fund for immediate resource mobilization they may not do much.

Thematically speaking because of the evolving nature of the subject itself quite a number of persons / organizations are not sure what and how they want to work in this area. One of the biggest concerns is that most of the organizational wings of Disaster Management takes a back seat during normal time where there is less work to do. It is the demand of the time that these issues should not be only taken at national level but must also be linked up with most of the ongoing developmental prg of public and private sectors. In India within a couple of years number of national level social development prg have been introduced by the government be it NREGS, NRHM, HIV- AIDS, SARVA SIKSHA ABHIYAN etc but none of them have addressed the issue of disaster. For them it is still being perceived as a one of the event that comes and goes. Where as now it has been clearly established that process of development and disasters are directly linked to each other and both can’t go into opposite direction..

What I meant to say from entire argument is that the discipline of disaster management should not be taken as a one of the subject to read and understand to produce few experts that may provide some tangible benefits to the society, rather it should be taken as subject in-built in most of issues. It can also be termed as “Hub and Spoke concept” where all the developmental subjects will be acting as spoke, executing some or other form of Disaster Management activities finally converging at pinnacle of development. In continuation the million dollar question that creeps in most of the development practioners that how much it relates with poverty?. Well if we view poverty alleviation as a matter of income generation it may or may not address it but if we can view poverty as a diverse and dynamic, social inferiority, isolation, physical weakness and vulnerability then certainly it has major role to play in all form of socio economic development (Poverty and Livelihoods: Whose Reality Counts Robert Chambers, ISD Papers). The complex relationship with poverty and disaster management is also well argued by Mr. S.Yodamani in his chapter “Disaster Preparedness and Management”

tells from developmental sector

One can argue, that the crux of development sector mainly works on the premise of twin pillars, (1) To work for the poor and marginalized in order to alleviate the level of poverty and other vulnerabilities of rural and urban poor (2) To generate and mobilize the resources for that purpose and use it in with specific objective. The concept appears simple and easy to execute but when a some one will be willing to contribute and work for the sector, this come as zero- sum game. In modern developmental sector, the rule of the game has changed totally.

The third factor has also came out, is not mentioned above. The factor is the interest of many powerful organizations, their human resource personnel, government role and responsibilities and community at large who understand the nuisance of development sector now. As during one of my field visit on behalf of my organization, we went for base line survey to find out the level of intervention required from organizational point of view were planning to do. Before when we reach, naively we spoke to the local mukhiya about our planned visit. After visiting the place we were astonished to find out villagers were more interested to know about how much money organization would be bringing in and what are other prospects of being associated with forthcoming project. It is inspite of that we have been telling them that team is here only to assess the situation and final decision will take place after consulting the seniors and other stake holders.
There is another growing concern which few of my friends would be happy to disagree. The sense of helplessness among the committed professionals who spends lot of time to in balancing the point of view of donor, implementing agency and the community at large. He may not be understood by the organization for he works because of the difference in perception. For an organization spending money within a stipulated time may be a top priority but for an individual project design and deliverables may comes first rather then exhausting the resources. Because we all know that “always love your work not the organization because you never know when organization will stop loving you’. I mean to say difference in the perspective is always important. How an individual approach a programme and project or vise- versa.
The process of resources mobilization has and its linkages has also gone sea changes in coming years. While seeing in the context of India it can said that there is always a mis- match between demand of community, response from the government and national and international NGO’s. I am without being prejudice to my country men and women the fund flow for relief and rehabilitation during TSUNAMI was much greater than in comparison to resources generated for the river koshi flood in Bihar. I am not sure about the factuality of statement but it was said that devastation at Koshi was larger than TSUNAMI. The whole argument is that how international and national community responds to the crisis is matter of serious debate. The role of government in-terms resource mobilization during these periods is also an issue to ponder on. Thanks to growing economic liberlisation and increasing business of number of Indian companies is in a better position to contribute for the development sector. But most of them prefer to play different ball game. In a view to appease the prospective state governments they heavily fund in the Chief Minister Fund and sum up their responsibility. While doing so they can rightly claim that they have done their duty but they have ignored the organizations that have got the specilisation in relief and rehabilitation works for which they have established themselves. The point of matter is not to oppose the funding to the concern government but look at the larger picture. These funding to local and national NGO will not generate jobs at their level but also develop the capacity of local organization starving for resource crunch. The aspect of monitoring and evaluation also goes out of purview from the donor.

The advent of globalization and its impact has also its pro and cons. It had a wider ramification on most of developmental international organization. Because of their own institutional arrangements and poor liasoning and networking capacity within the country where they implement the prg, most of them are depended on resources from abroad but the due to current economic recession where profits have dwindled and number of jobs are axed heavily contribution to the developmental sector would be the last thing in the mind of CEO’s and board members. This makes task of resource mobilization arduous. In a current scenario there is growing concern to recognition and pursue pro-poor agenda for development. While doing so most of the developmental organization missed or ignored the market intervention that directly linked with growth. What matters is the degree to which economic growth provides opportunities for the poor, and the extent to which poor men and women can take advantage of those opportunities. In this area lot can be done by the developmental sector community. Instead of running and completing the projects in specific time period and leaving the area of intervention in huff, the emerging agenda should be more holistic and broader, focused on supporting enterprises and entrepreneurship considered important for the poor. Expanding market access to all and improving how markets function can lead to more satisfactory level of intervention. This influence the rate and pattern of economic growth. For growth to be “pro-poor”, the rate has to be high and sustainable and the pattern broad and inclusive. Institutions and policies shape market outcomes and so determine the degree to which they are pro-poor. The role of developmental sector in shaping the plan and policies for market reform is also unclear. But there are some areas where , developmental sector is working in tandem joining hand to hand with many and may be able to provide an alternative point of view , eg India based network on Disaster Management and UNDP supported solution exchange network is gaining wide access to number of policy makers, leading to more democratic development of policies and planning. The development and implementation of RTI act in India can be termed as classic example of government and development sector contribution.