Case1-March-2013
DHAN Foundation in collaboration with Sri Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT), Mumbai has been working on both Vayalagam and Kalanjiam Programmes in Gaya district. DHAN Foundation process to initiate water resources conservation development in the region based on its decade long successful experience in rehabilitation of Tank system in South India and strengthening livelihoods sustaining Tank-fed agriculture to ensure food security for the small, marginal and landless communities including women.
The SDTT came forward to support renovation work of four Aahar- Pyne systems on pilot basis and introduce kalanjiam model of SHG microfinance, reaching the poor families in backward blocks of two districts in south Bihar namely Gaya and Aurangabad. The Organisation started its initial phase activities like preparing an inception 4 document, conducting exploratory study, potential identification and related primary and secondary data collection in the month of April-2009.
DHAN Foundation has a spread in 91 revenue villages of 19 Panachayts in Tankuppa and Fatehpur blocks of Gaya district. The organization is working with 570 SHGs, 22 village level Ahar-Pyne vayalagams in the area with the outreach of over 9,000 households. The organization has a presence in Madanpur block of Aurangabad and Raniganj block of Arariya district (North Bihar).
The Kalanjiam programme has started its development interventions at Tankuppa block in Gaya district during November-2009. The programme gained a very high response among the community and within a short span of one year the programme was able to reach about 2000 poor families in the block. The approach to saturate the block has been taken in phase wise manner. The five northern panchayat of the block was covered under initial phase and then the rest of the panchayats were covered. The good response among the community at Tankuppa led the team to initiate Fatehpur block of Gaya, adjacent to Tankuppa location
The factors which the poor keep in mind before
accessing savings facility in SHGs are security,
convenience, liquidity, and positive returns. Kalanjiam
members express their confidence and trust on their
groups with steadily increasing the quantum of savings.
To tap the savings potential of the members, the working
team along with the community leaders, have taken
continuous efforts to make them increase savings.
The groups in these areas have shown a remarkable
progress in this regard. The average member savings in
some of the poor packets have increased from र -20 to
र -40. The groups have mobilized cumulative savings to
र 80.5 Lakh in the area.
Kalanjiams play a vital role creating and strengthening the livelihoods by providing timely credit to its members. The programme with its limited period of interventions has been successful discouraging the member’s access to exploitative interest rates from various sources. Initially the credit was primarily availed by the members to meet their consumption needs but now the shift to support their livelihoods and income generating activities is fairly induced. Presently 30 per cent of the total loan is provided directly for livelihood initiatives; the remaining is for health, education, and debt redemption which in turn supports livelihoods. Loan repayment performance has significantly improved in all groups, due to rigorous monitoring and counseling at the member level.
Kalanjiams have shown that banking with the poor is
a viable business proposition though its interventions
in 12 states of India working with over 300 branches
and making some of the rural bank branches vibrant
and viable. Mutual trust between SHGs and banks is a
critical for a sustainable relationship. The efforts were
taken to increase the volume of SHG-bank linkages in
these blocks, about 60 groups were linked to Banks
and 104 groups were linked to KDFS (Kalanjiam
Development Financial Services). The linkage so far
has mobilized over र 57 lakh to these groups to support
their livelihoods activities.
The intervention in the block has adopted the following phase, period and focus for achieving development milestones. The places where SHGs concept is in the very beginning stage, phase wise periodic focus helps the groups to grow in a systematic way meeting its credit needs to support livelihoods and income generating activities for their members and achieve self reliance. They can contribute to the cost coverage for the sustainability of the people organization promoted by nesting these primary units.
| Phase | Period | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Formation | 0-6 months | Initiating operational norms |
| Financial | 6-12 months | Initiation of bank linkage process |
| Stabilisation | 12-24 months | Establishing pucca systems, membership at cluster level etc. |
| Livelihood | 24-36 month | Graduating the members w.r.t credit on consumption to credit on income generations. |
| Diversification | 36 months and above | Cost coverages, business support, civic programmes, management of growth etc… |
The Kalanjiam follows a set of books to maintain their accounts and financial transactions at group and member level. The accounting system is developed in vernacular language to make them more familiar for understanding by the members and the movement workers. Cash book, minutes book, receipt and vouchers, loan vouchers, payment vouchers and member pass books were maintained properly by the members themselves with the support of field associates. The daily transactions in the group get entered in the DHANAM software which gives a quality MIS data for easy monitoring of the group activities at federation level. The MIS data is also used for decision making to strengthen the SHGs and come out with new services and possible development interventions.
More than 3,200 numbers including farmers, SHG/ MFGs members, associates and leaders got training on livelihoods, organic manure cultivation, vermi-compost, technical training on SRI in paddy, wheat and mustered, bee keeping and mushroom cultivation. To support and strengthen the current livelihoods options was the prime focus so far. The initiatives on the path of scaling up after due training, skill building, piloting and demonstrations are taken in the following area.
Mushroom Cultivation: The mushroom cultivation is at an initial stage. The training in this respect has been provided to over 900 members and four exposure visits have been conducted. This has clicked among the groups and Kalanjiam at Dhibar village has become pioneer in adopting this technique to advance to their livelihood activities.
The members are getting benefits by selling the produce
locally at र120/kg. SRI (Paddy, Wheat, mustered): The
training on SRI and few demonstrations in this regard have fetched a good result among the poor farmers.
The yield has been better and comparative investment
input costs to agriculture. Intensive training in this
regard has been provided to members and about 300
member farmers in four Panchayats have adopted this
technique. The bigger farmers are reluctant to adopt
this but this becoming relevantly popular among small
and marginal farmers in the area. This initiative needs
greater concentration to make it popularize among
farmers for its adoption for their increase yield and
reduce vulnerability.
Zero Budget natural farming: ZBNF has been initiated in Bagiya village in Salaiya Kalan Panchayat in Fatehpur block and in Chobar Panchayat in Tankuppa Block. It was basically been done to reduce the dependency on fertilizers and use the natural products that are available within the village. It was applied on the vegetable cultivation and also on paddy. The development has brought good results for the in terms of their reduced cost and dependency on fertilizers and pesticides. A constant effort is being made through successful field demonstrations in this regard to change the behavior of the member farmers and make it more popular among them in the area.
Kitchen Garden: While analyzing the database of the group members. It shows that major part of the loan is being spent on addressing basic health related issues. The nutrition of the family members is a great concern in the area. The vegetable consumption among the poor people is low and results in nutrition deficiency. The initial initiative in this regard has been taken by providing seasonal vegetable seeds of high nutrient to members.
The Vayalagam programme has started its development interventions at Tankuppa block in Gaya district during August–2009. The programme in South Bihar shares the larger mandate of DVTF of promoting contextualized nested institutions model to sustain tankfed or Ahar- Pyne based agriculture as a prime source of livelihoods of under-privileged Small, Marginal farmers, landless and Women folks in the area.
The programme focuses on Ahar-Pyne renovation and rehabilitation work through organizing community, promoting people institutions at village and Pyne level and involving them in cost coverage. The programme has a spread in 22 villages of Tankuppa and Fatehpur blocks at Gaya district and also has presence in two villages of Madanpur block at Aurangabad district of south Bihar. The interventions has renovated 4 Pyne and 9 branch pyne covering a physical channel work of 26 Km, 7 Ahars, construction of an aqueduct, construction of one Oorani and some pyne head works.
Water is essentially plays an important role as life sustaining resource, as a source of irrigation and for non agriculture usage. The main sources of water have generally been utilization of stream and river water, direct tapping of rain water (rain water harvesting) and ground water. The Indian subcontinent has a long history of human intervention in collection, storage, distribution and management of water for irrigation to support agriculture. The people in rural India have traditionally relied upon the local rainfall to meet their water requirements for agriculture and non agriculture purposes. Hence the country has witnessed many such early settlements that devised their own systems of rain water harvesting and management based on the country’s distinctive climate and geographical diversity varying in temperature, elevation, rainfall, etc.
The characteristics of these traditional systems such its size, storage capacity, nature, uses, management and ownership is highly localized and varied from one place to another. These are embodied, for example Tank system in south India, Aahar-Pyne system in Bihar, Katta, Munda, Bandha or Sagar in Odisha and many indigenous devices used in Gujarat and Rajasthan. The Ahar-Pyne system consisting of an artificial earthen channel (locally named Pyne) led off from a river or stream, in case of a bigger Pyne, conveying the part of monsoon flows to feed a series of earthen bund reservoirs (locally called Ahar), constructed across the line of drainage to have a synergized hydrologic efficiency.
There exist more than 10,000 such structures in Gaya district alone. The irrigation systems are simple but fragile structures. They have to be constantly maintained, monitored and conserved.
Even more difficult is sharing the scarce water amongst its users, particularly farmers to meet their livelihood needs. Ahar-Pyne system primarily provides crucial irrigation to crops and it has greater significance during the scarcity period. The system helps recharging groundwater, function as a source of multiple uses for the village community (water for livestock and wildlife, fish rearing, water for cultural and ritual, washing, bathing, etc), and play a role in the maintenance of a good natural environment.
DHAN Foundation has chosen to intervene and restore these multipurpose Ahar-Pyne systems to their designed standard and revive their local management by creating social capital through community investments and facilitating mainstream collaborations.
The farmers of the village getting benefit from any of the Ahar or Pyne of the village forms a village level Ahar-Pyne association. The association enrols beneficiary farmers as member of the general body. The association forms an executive management committee and selects office bearers.
Pyne level Association (Cascade Ahar association) The beneficiary village level Ahar-pyne associations promote a Pyne level association. The members of executive- management committee of each village level Ahar-Pyne association represents as general body member of the Pyne level association. The association forms an executive management committee and selects office bearers.
The intensity of the farmers’ collective action goes down after the rehabilitation works. So there is a need for intensifying the collectivism by the farmers through measures other than rehabilitation also. Hence, Micro Finance Groups (MFGs) are formed within the Vayalagams and credit linkage is arranged so that the farmers would meet at regular intervals with a meaningful purpose.
| Sl. No. | Particulars | Number |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Panchayats | 9 |
| 2 | Villages | 23 |
| 3 | Vayalagams (people institutions promoted around water bodies) | 22 |
| 4 | Pyne Level Associations (promoted above village level water user associations) | 4 |
| 5 | Micro Finance Groups (Sub set of Vayalagams) | 36 |
| 6 | Total Members in MFGs (Micro Finance Groups) | 669 |
| 7 | Families covered | 2,625 |
The Oorani pilot project has been implemented with the support of DFID under SWASTH programme in Tetariya village of Tankuppa block. There were 37 water samples collected from 33 hand pumps and 4 wells in the village and the test results showed 24 out of them were contaminated by fluoride which figures out 65% of the households were using unsafe water for their drinking purpose.
The dental affects of fluorosis was also visible among the community. Hence the rehabilitation of drinking water / domestic ooranis with the provision of filtering mechanism is taken up with peoples’ participation through their associations. The pilot project will fetch benefits to 87 households and 567 population of the village. The intervention will benefit the neighbouring villages or hamlets also.
The programme has spread in 22 villages of Tankuppa and Fatehpur blocks at Gaya district and also has presence in two villages of Madanpur block at Aurangabad district of south Bihar.
Programme reach in Gaya: The achievements made during the reporting period are as under DHAN’s integrated approach towards poverty alleviation through its Kalanjiam and Vayalagam program is providing good results and there is lot more works to do in coming here to bring a overall development in our work area.