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NGOs like MYRADA, are only one
expression of the variety of civic groups that characterise
a democracy. These civic groups in India have emerged largely through the Gandhian, religious and radical movements as
well as in response to peoples needs for fellowship,
for community or group integration, for protection and promotion of common interests and culture. Many have emerged
through local initiatives to manage civic
services which Government departments or municipalities were unable to
cope with, such initiatives have
increased significantly during the past five years. Some are membership
groups, others are not. Some of these groups include service to the poor
as their sole objective while others
consider it an additional and at times a marginal one, whether
it be to the weaker sections of their own community or to the poor at
large. MYRADA is one of these civic
groups; its mission is to support the poor in rural areas irrespective
of caste or creed. This is generally clear and is the popular image of MYRADA. What is not so clear, however, is that
the strategy MYRADA adopts in its mission
to support the poor does not focus on the delivery of goods and services
but on the efforts of the poor to build
their own civic institutions, which can take the lead in the process
of sustainable self-reliance. While it is true that a large part of
MYRADA's resources are devoted to
delivering services (and the general opinion, even among Senior
Government officials, is that it delivers these services more effectively
than the Government) the real comparative
advantages MYRADA has acquired after several years
of trials and incremental learning are :
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its capacity to identify homogenous, affinity groups of the poor and
to support their growth into
sustainable self-help groups through the acquisition of skills and
self reliance; these groups not only manage physical capital like
credit, watershed resources forestry
and drinking water but also build up mutual trust and
self-confidence and a network of new relationships within and between groups; all these factors provide a base for
them to undertake new roles and non traditional
initiatives; this network of relations, mutual trust and support can be described loosely as Social Capital which
serves as a guarantee for investment in the
groups.
-
its ability to initiate and institutionalise linkages between these
groups and official systems like Banks
and Government Departments supporting various development
and anti-poverty programmes; this requires at one end initiatives not
only to change official policy and to make Government systems more responsive
to local diversity and changing situations, to handover power to peoples
institutions and at the other end build up responsible and appropriate peoples groups to take over and sustain them.
The structure of these groups and the patterns of networking that they
select depends on the resource they
manage like credit or natural resources, and on the structure of society in which they operate. For linkages with the
official systems to be institutionalised, requires
a change in official policy supported by adequate resources and commitment
to operationalise and sustain policy
change. MYRADA has increasing evidence that it is these
groups with their linkages and networks that provide the basis for:
1) the sustainable impact of benefits that accrued through the projects
investment;
2) the poor to acquire and sustain access to and control of resources.
Briefly put, therefore, MYRADA's comparative advantage lies in its
ability to focus on achieving the
objectives of sustainability and equity.
While it is recognised that the poor need backward and forward linkages
to progress, their need for sideways
linkages through group support in order to break out of the relationships
of dependence and to create adequate space to use the backward and forward
linkages provided, to their advantage, is not adequately accepted or incorporated in development strategy. For,
backward and forward linkages like the provision
of facilities for inputs and marketing, are of little use, if, traditional
social and economic relationships
continue to increase the dependence of the poor on those who have
access to and control of resources as well as on the social structure
which tends to perpetuate and legitimise
inequity.
After years of working directly with individuals and extending both
grants and loans to them as well as
opportunities to acquire new skills, MYRADA learnt that very few of the poor were able to take off and become self
reliant; the majority continued to depend on MYRADA
and in many cases the degree of dependence increased. The repayment rate of loans was poor inspite of consistent efforts
which were time consuming and distorted relationships
between people and the organisation. MYRADA learnt that the poor require
an institutional base on which to build their efforts towards self
reliance. MYRADA in the mid 80's adopted
a strategy which led to the emergence of Self Help Groups
(SHGs). After working for some months in the SHGs, members were asked why they had not broken out of the circle that
had kept them dependent; their common response
was: "How could we do it alone?". The strategic choice they have
to make, therefore, is
between hitching on individually to an intermediary NGO like MYRADA which has resulted in the NGO delivering
services and usually increasing the dependence
of people on intermediaries, or in identifying others in their village,
whom they can trust and with whom they
can work, and to build on their combined efforts which
an NGO can then support. It is these groups - now called self help groups
- which provide the poor, in programmes
supported by MYRADA's intervention, with the
institutional framework required to harness and sustain their efforts
towards self reliance and with the
opportunity and motivation to acquire management skills as their group
takes on several new roles and responsibilities. This experience helps
them to gain confidence and to establish
new relationships in society which together with their group,
protect their space for manoeuvre and their interests; as a result they
are able to establish and maintain a
degree of independence from those relationships in society - social,
cultural and economic - which have perpetuated their dependence. This
situation does not come about only by
identifying affinity groups - though this is the first and critical
step - but by providing opportunities for groups training and for group
members to acquire necessary skills and
confidence at each stage of their progress.
MYRADA's mission statement focuses on building sustainable institutions
(civic groups) of the poor which are
appropriate to the task or resource to be managed, on supporting their
efforts to network and on changing official policy which militates against
institutions of the poor increasing ownership of
investments that they and others have made
in their progress. MYRADA believes that it has the experience and a
comparative advantage (relative to
Government) in achieving this objective of building sustainable groups
and linkages among these groups as well as with the official systems which
are required to support the
sustainability of benefits resulting from project investment; it also
believes that it has comparative advantage to motivate these groups to
adopt mechanisms and regulations to
ensure that resources are distributed equitably and will remain
in the control of the poor. MYRADA's policy is to decrease the level of
its intervention in the groups life and
functioning, and to withdraw as the groups find other
sources or create new institutions which can take over those roles which MYRADA has performed. The civic groups which
MYRADA has supported the poor to establish
are the SHGs managing credit, the micro watershed management groups and the wasteland and forestry management groups,
together numbering over 3500.
In order to support the formation of such sustainable SHGs, MYRADA
incorporates and promotes six basic features in its development
strategy :
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it recognises that the basis of these groups is an affinity that
exists even before MYRADA intervenes;
its experience and expertise lies in recognising these group affinities
and building on them. To bring together people to form a
"group" on the basis of
indicators of eligibility established by outsiders (age limits, previous
default in repayment) or by the pressure
arising from the way funds were raised (the
member must have a child below five years who can be sponsored) or the
programme formulated (representation
required from various social and age groups),does
not build on the basis of affinity and is not a sound basis for group sustainability. MYRADA's experience is that
groups formed on the basis of these externally
imposed criteria require a great deal of time and effort just to keep together and tend to collapse once the NGO
withdraws. MYRADA however intervenes to
make the group members aware that homogeneity in terms of economic
factors is also a necessary feature for the group to function
effectively. MYRADA's experience
indicates that these affinity groups which are based on mutual
trust, support and interests and which are generally small (10-20 members) homogenous and voluntary are able to
generate self help and confidence and
are the appropriate institutions for managing credit. However, when
natural resources like those in a micro watershed are to be managed
these groups (there are usually several
in one micro watershed) have elected representatives
to form a watershed management committee. A similar pattern of management
is emerging in the villages where the process of forming Joint Forestry
Management Committees (JFMC) has been fostered over a period of time
and not imposed in a hurry by pressures to achieve targets. These
affinity groups are also forming Apex
groups and giving them specific functions to perform
allowing MYRADA to scale down its intervention.
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it fosters effective participation of all leading to capacity
building, attitudinal change and
increasing ownership in the project of all intervenors as well as of each member in the group. MYRADA learnt that
in programmes where Government staff
are involved, failure to involve them at every stage of the participatory
process leads to officials feeling marginalised and opting out of ownership of the project. This seriously
erodes the potential for learning and for change
in Government policies and systems which are required to give adequate weight to peoples knowledge and their efforts
to build supporting institutions and
linkages, which play an important part in ensuring sustainability of
project investment and impact.
As far as participation of members in a
group's decisions was concerned, it soon became
evident that membership in an affinity group does not ensure effective participation of all; some members have less
confidence and skills than the others;
MYRADA therefore conducts a series of group trainings and also focuses on the weaker members to bring them to par.
Rotating the positions of President and
Secretary (or group representatives as some groups prefer to call them)
helps everyone to gain in confidence
and reduces the chances of a few taking control. The
group members learn to identify their needs, to prioritise them, to
evolve a strategy to meet these needs;
these are skills which they require when they intervene
in programmes outside the group. MYRADA plays a role in helping them
to acquire these skills and encourages people to use its staff and the technical resources that it can mobilise as a
sounding board while they evolve a management strategy. The experience in the group and
their success in mobilising and
managing credit as well as the exposure that MYRADA arranges for
the members helps them to acquire the confidence to take the initiative
to implement the strategy they have
adopted and to call on outside services when required.
For effective ownership to play a role in sustainability, control of the
intervention has to pass gradually during the
process, to the peoples institutions; this
increases the potential for sustainable impact after the project
withdraws. Once effective participation
becomes a feature of the self-help group meetings, the
poor gain confidence to intervene to planning, budgeting and
implementing programmes like
micro-watershed management (other) together with groups and
classes that affect the whole village or several villages.
MYRADA has learnt that sharing information about the project and
consulting with people is not adequate
to give them a sense of ownership. If consultation does
not lead to their tangible contribution in cash and/or in kind the basis
of ownership is weak. In the World Bank
Drinking Water and Sanitation Project with
which MYRADA is involved in two Districts of Karnataka, the pressure to make their stake-holdership tangible through
programme since they had adequate
water; the reason for their inclusion on the list provided by the Government was political - the pressure to
distribute gifts even though people may
not need them. Their tangible contribution raised the level of peoples interest in the project and led them to demand
a voice in the design and layout. There
are several examples in MYRADA projects where people have taken over supervision of construction or implementation
leaving the contractor out of the picture.
Many of the watershed associations in PIDOW Gulbarga have drawn up budgets which are 20% to 30% less than the
official budget and were still able to save
money which they contributed towards building up their common fund. This in turn strengthened the basis of their
ownership and provided a source of credit
for their livelihood options even after the project ended. Participation
in some projects like PIDOW Gulbarga
has even extended to evaluations undertaken
by a team of all the intervenors including representatives from the peoples watershed associations. Similar
examples have emerged in other projects
particularly in Holalkere, Huthur, Kamasamudram and Talavadi.
Participation, therefore of all members in the groups and of all
intervenors, including Government and
NGOs, in the process of identifying, planning, budgeting,
implementing and evaluating a project, helps to build respect for one another, to develop the attitudes and skills
required to interact with one another on
equal terms, and the confidence required to accept new responsibilities
to perform new roles and to build new
institutions. It also helps to initiate changes in
policy to support increasing ownership by peoples institutions and to operationalise people friendly policy which
had remained dormant. This experience which intervenors gain by being
involved throughout the process from project
identification to completion, increases their ownership and provides the basis for sustaining the benefits even
after the project withdraws. As far as the
poor are concerned, MYRADA learnt that for them to be able to become
self reliant (which in turn requires
that the benefits of the project continue to and even
increase after the project withdraws), they need to be organised as
affinity groups and to network in order
to participate effectively in the project cycle. This experience
helps them to acquire the confidence and skills necessary to negotiate and to hold their own among other intervenors
and interest groups. The facility of
obtaining credit through these groups for their essential needs provides
them with the degree of independence
they need; linkages with other SHGs gives them
a sense of protection and power; once this confidence is acquired
training in technical support for micro
enterprises is more easily absorbed and leads to their ability
to select initiatives they can manage which may not be initially viable according to official norms. These factors in
turn provide the basis for benefits to be
sustainable because they are supported by their own institutions,
choices, linkages and networks.
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