The dynamics of promoting entrepreneurship among the rural poor

Before digging in to the subject I must say that this is my first blog and I am writing this to share some of my experiences and learning in the field. The views expressed here are my personal opinions drawn from my own observations. I am in the process of learning, and i am always open to questions pertaining to the ideas or views expressed in this blog.

This blog post is the first part of the series of posts I would like to write on ‘the dynamics of promoting entrepreneurship among the rural poor’. This part basically explains ‘the need for promoting entrepreneurship among the rural poor’.

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As most of us must be aware of the famous Chinese axiom ‘’Give a man a fish, and you have fed him once. Teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime”, to extend it further, ‘Teach him how to make a business out of the extra fish that he catches everyday and you have improved his standard of living’ (assuming that he uses his earnings for the right purpose). To put in simple words this art of generating wealth out of the existing opportunity using available resources is what we call as entrepreneurship.

What is entrepreneurship: defining entrepreneurship is not an easy task as there are numerous definitions provided by various scholars based on the different contexts. Hence to choose a definition appropriate to rural context, we need to think of entrepreneurial skills that will be needed to improve the quality of life of individuals and communities and to sustain a healthy economy and environment. Hence “Entrepreneurship is the process of creating value by pulling together a unique package of resources to exploit an opportunity.” 1 

The need for promoting entrepreneurship among rural poor:

Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger is one of the important millennium development goals. Countries all over the world are implementing several programs to achieve this and India with a vast BPL population has a long track of policies to combat extreme poverty and hunger. These policies over last 50 years have taken various shifts from providing direct food subsidies, providing rural employment opportunities to promoting rural entrepreneurship.

As mentioned in the Chinese poem charity has its limits i.e. providing food subsidies is only a temporary solution and it is not sustainable in the long run keeping in mind the alarming economic situation. Also for an average rural family the food subsidy is not sufficient and hence they need to struggle for the remaining food. Hence governments have moved a step ahead towards providing employment in the rural areas i.e. teaching fishing.

This policy of creating rural employment sponsored by the government came as a game changer and helped many people in earning their bread. But it has its limits i.e. it has only provided limited employment which is not sufficient for a family to live a decent life. Keeping in mind the ever growing population and dwindling public finance, this policy alone may not help in improving the standard of living of rural people. Hence governments have moved a step further towards promoting rural entrepreneurship.

Promotion of rural entrepreneurship generates local jobs and adds value to the rural economy by reducing the stress on the government sponsored employment. Sustainable entrepreneurial activities ensure regular employment to the people and hence facilitates in improving their standard of living. But the challenge lies in promoting entrepreneurship in rural areas.

To summarize, poverty is multi dimensional and hence need a multi pronged approach.  All the three government initiatives mentioned above have contributed to reduce economic poverty. Though one approach may be better than the other but in reality all the three approaches are necessary depending on the context and level of poverty of the individuals. 

Graam Sabha and Accountability

Using Graam Sabha for evaluating performance of government schemes and field functionaries can serve as an excellent social accountability mechanism which can lead to better service delivery.

Before getting into the topic, I want to inform to readers that this my first blog post. As a person who really hates writing, it is a big ask to write blog posts. But somehow I have rolled up my sleeves want to take up the task of writing and this motivation does not come from within (to speak frankly) but through the encouragement of my colleagues. I want to thank each and every one of them who inspired me, through their writings, and motivated me to write.

When I was thinking what to write lot of topics came over to my mind but I thought I could write about my recent field visit to Chinabonala village in Karimnagar district to attend a Graam Sabha (GS). The objective of this GS is to broadly assess the performance of government schemes in terms of their implementation and also to improve the awareness regarding various village functionaries and their respective functions.

It was a pilot experiment did by Karimnagar district administration as per the instructions of state government and it was named as Prajavedika.

The Process:

1.      A GramSabha was organized with prior intimation about the objective of meeting

2.      All the village level functionaries, who are divided into various groups like welfare, human development etc, will be present.

3.      Each of them should explain their roles and responsibilities and their performance in language understood by the villagers. For example, a Field Assistant in MGNREGA, should explain them no.of job cards in the villages, no.of days of work provided, average wage rate etc

4.      Later people feedback will be taken on the performance indices of each and every official and necessary steps will be taken to improve the performance of the official and delivery.

In short it is a performance audit of various schemes and functionaries by the Graam Sabha.

Accountability is broadly defined as an obligation of those holding power to take responsibility for their behavior and actions with the ultimate objective of improving service delivery to the citizens who have given them their mandate.¹ As accountability is one of the crucial factors for good governance and effective service delivery upholding the same is very important.

The performance of the field functionaries, in fact most of the officials, is evaluated only quantitative basis and the authenticity of the same is also sometimes questionable. But when it comes to some qualitative aspects like behavior of the official, discrimination by official, response time etc are not evaluated in the regular performance metrics or annual appraisal of an officer. But platforms like Graamsabha will not only authenticate the quantitative aspect but also qualitative part of the performance. Even though there is a large scope of improving the accountability, there are some short comings of the above process. People are not opening up against some departments like revenue and police with a fear of later consequences. People are feeling difficult to understand the performance of indices of the officials as the latter are mostly using official language. The whole activity is time taking because of which because of which people are losing interest and started moving out. The major challenge is people participation in the GS which a huge challenge right from its inception. But this can be addressed if this activity offers some value to the people.

Overall the whole exercise proved to be successful in which people get to know about various government schemes and the functions of various officials. This will not only increase awareness but also help in clearing any gaps existing in terms of delivery. By correcting short comings the whole process can serve as an excellent Social accountability mechanism which ultimately results in effective service delivery.

The Eternal Challenge of Rural Credit

I first started thinking about the role of credit when I was doing a study on credit in tribal areas. For some time I had been planning to visit some very interior tribal habitations. So, I choose an interior village named   "Boddagandi" for the study. Before I discuss about credit in general, Let me discuss a bit about the specific scenario in the village. Its a small village on top a hill surrounded by forests all around. There are very few travel options because of the up hill ride and lack of proper road. So obviously there are accessibility issues when it come to the village. Since we are talking about credit I should mention that there is a bank which is 30 kms away from the village.Again because of lack of transport they will have to reach this bank by foot.

With that in context, let me outline some broad observations from the study. Not a single person in the village had taken a loan form the bank in the past 2-3 years because they were just too afraid of banks. No MFI's have ever reached this village. The average loan taken was around 5000 rupees. The most popular sources were SHG and GCC ( Girijan Co-operative Corporation).

Now let me jump out of this and talk about credit in general by taking the example of above village. Credit generally has four characteristics:
Accessibility, Adequacy, Timeliness and Affordability.

Adequacy: This characteristic is basically about weather the quantum amount of loan given is sufficient to meet the need. if the quantum is not sufficient then he/she will have to resort to informal lending channels which are very costly.In the above village the average loan was quite low at around 5000 which might actually not be a sufficient  amount to meet many of their needs. Also SERP, the oldest and probably the best of the SRLM's facilitated 10651 crores to its 442032 groups though its SHG bank linkage program. Thats a per group fiannce of  240995. Assuming a group has around 15 members then the per member finance would be around 16000 per annum which is no way sufficient to pull a person out of poverty. Some development expert told me sometime back that access to atleast a lakh of money is necessary to pull a family out of poverty. That shows how far we are yet to go in providing adequacy.  But this aspect is closely related to debt carrying capacity of the person. So the challenge is in finding the balance between the quantum of loan to meet the need and the debt carrying capacity of the person

Accessibility: This characteristic is basically about how easily accessible a credit source is. One of the many reasons for the success of MFI's was their accessibility. They would deliver the loan at your door step. Also the preference of informal lending channels to government lending channels is because of their accessibility. Government lending channels generally lack this aspect of credit. Though in the above village both sources of preferred credit are government sources that is because of the complete absence of other credit sources due to inaccessibility of the village

Affordability: Affordability refers to the cost of the loan. Generally government lending channels are easily affordable than informal lending channels. High cost of informal lending channels is one reasons for the perpetual debt crisis in rural areas. Informal lending channels make up for lack of affordability by being better at accessibility. In the above village both of them being government sources the cost of the loan was between 4% and 12%.

Timeliness: Timeliness refers to whether the credit is received  in time to meet the need. Not receiving credit on time is another reason for resorting to high cost debts from informal lending sources. This aspect is especially critical during emergencies like deaths. In the above village both the sources SHG and GCC take time time for delivering the credit. At least a couple of weeks to a month. Again government sources tend to be poor in this aspect compared to informal lending sources.

To sum it up informal lending sources are still prevalent because they are generally good at Accessibility, Adequacy an Timeliness. Government scores over informal lending sources when it comes to Affordability. So for government to be the preferred lending source it has to improve on those three characteristics. Some measures seem to be taken in this direction like the "Sthreenidhi" started by Andhra tries to tackle timeliness through technology. May be my next blog post on Sthreenidhi :).

Grievance redressal mechanism as the barometer of effectiveness of public service delivery

We should move away from looking at grievance redressal mechanisms as merely a fire-fighting mechanism and actively use the information gathered to improve public service delivery. 

In Andhra Pradesh, every Monday in every district is a “grievance day”. In essence, the citizens could approach the higher echelons of administration namely the District Collector and all other district officers with their grievances. These grievances could be of many types. Citizens could approach the administration with a genuine grievance that they haven’t been receiving their entitlements namely pensions, rations etc. They could also approach the administration with legal entanglements or disputes. They could also approach for favors which do not technically fall under entitlements, but would require the grace of the district officials and it would be perfectly legitimate to help them by providing some support through existing schemes/programmes of the government. 

Interestingly, people also approach the officers where they deliberately know that they are not entitled to a service, but they know that someone else who is also not entitled got that service. For instance, I am not entitled to pension, but I know that my neighbor who is also not entitled is getting pension, so why shouldn’t I throw my hat in the ring?

Occasionally, to lighten up the day of Collector and other officers, you get some grievances (albeit genuine in nature) wherein they might ask you to get the mobile tower removed from their vicinity because radiation causes cancer! I don’t know how to categorize such a grievance! Frankly, the officer attending such a grievance also has to use her own tact to assuage the applicant. 

Usually the people write their grievances on a piece of white paper or on a pre-formatted application depending on the local procedures adopted. It is highly likely that most of these people are illiterate and therefore use the help of brokers who station themselves outside the offices of the collectorate to offer their services for a fee. It is commonly found that when they offer their services they do not usually offer a quality service for the fee they collect from the people. With an intention to maximize their revenues, they fill up the wrong application for their grievance because they want to economize on time taken in filling up forms and maximize their customers’ footfalls. It is also possible that they do not have the appropriate forms and therefore they fill the grievance on the wrong forms. The applicant will have to face the consequent hassles while presenting their grievance to the Collector. 

Once the grievance comes to the Collector, she forwards it to the relevant department. If you happen to be new to public administration and are reading this blog, you might be wondering why should the District Collector, the chief executive of the district merely act as postman? The answer lies in our hierarchical culture of administration. It is believed that (perhaps rightly so) if a piece of paper comes from the higher officers or the Collector in this case, it will be acted upon. This is unlike the most commonsensical process, where a citizen with a grievance approaches the relevant officer far down the hierarchy of the government and his grievance is looked into and resolved at that level itself. So because of lack of adequate accountability, the citizen has to travel up to the district headquarters and present to the district officers who in turn would merely send it back to the relevant officer. If only our administration was a bit more citizen-friendly our grievance redressal mechanism would have been adequately decentralized. Technically, the same grievance redressal mechanism exists at the block levels, but the citizens seem to prefer approaching the district administration. 

Now the grievance is sent to the relevant officer. What is missing in the whole process is tracking of applications. How can an applicant assure herself that her application will be resolved in due course of time without a tracking mechanism? How can the superior officers assure themselves that the applications they forwarded to their subordinate officers will be resolved? Therefore, this is a crucial juncture where the system goes for a toss. So we don’t know what happens to the grievances after they are presented. Yet, the citizens come with enormous hope every Monday to present their grievances. If we are not even sure that the grievances are getting redressed appropriately, expecting the following steps might just be wishful thinking. 

Ideally, we should aspire for the day when there would be no grievance. In essence, the administration is able to resolve all the hassles that exist for the citizens. Although this is just a utopian goal, one can practically set a goal to minimize the grievances they get over time. The process should start by codifying the grievances and sorting them out by regions and departments/offices. While ensuring that every department in every region resolves the grievances in a time-bound manner is a priority, one should also start investigating the reasons for emergence of such grievances. This in turn will help identify best practices in public administration in certain regions/departments, ignorance of citizens with regard to government services, adoption of corrupt practices, etc. Such investigations will help generate innovative solutions generated by the best performers in administration and promote mutual learning. It will also stir up yardstick incentives for offices who would like to showcase themselves amongst their peers. 

In this fashion, the grievance redressal mechanism could be effectively used as a barometer for public service delivery and perhaps result in a citizen-friendly government in the long run, improving the faith of citizens in government.

P.S. Incorporating some of the above ideas, I re-drafted the Grievance Redressal Bill currently in Parliament and sent it to Parliamentary Standing Committee on behalf of my previous employer. If interested, you can download it from this link: Rajendra_Redrafted_Grievance_Redressal_Bill.

Paderu Shri Modakondamma Utsavalu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hYrP6kdSUDM

“I have attended modakondamma festival where god is in durga avatar festival at Paderu 12th to 14th may as it is the major event for tribals living in 11 mandals across agency and participants include across the state, would like to share experiences that surprised me”.

To go with the origin of the festival it has a very historic start since 1960, people not only from Paderu but also tribal from other agency region came to touch the idol of goddess. Before attending the event I questioned some tribal about history, geography and economics of event and understood the significance of the event for tribal. My estimate is about 10000s but I realized more than 4, 00,000 joined in 3 days, the regular road which I always walk in 10-15 minutes from start to end of Paderu town took almost 2hrs. In the crowd, everyone are cheerful as they have seen the goddess and their requests will come true.

After I have finished a round to events made, felt like the readers of the blog should have attended to witness the changes happening in tribal life as the main schedule of festival are carrying goddess so that more people can touch god and ask for blessings, the preparations across the town are done by bearing in mind interests of youth brought changes in the lightings patterns across the street including shapes of London bridge, Tajmahal, Charminar, peacock etc.

The festival is backed by both tribal and non-tribal living, working as govt. officials in agency region and collection of funds started 15 days in advance from all commercial goods sellers, govt. official of ITDA (includes schools, PHCs), Chanda collection from travelers to shape the festival into a greater extent.

I went to a couple of houses for greeting their family, given me a surprise houses are full of relatives gathered across the residences. This situation is common in tribal and non-tribal households as they feel it’s a festival for all. Though the spaces of houses are not enough to accommodate the number of relatives yet they call their relatives one week in advance, ask them to stay in their houses which they feel is bonding and sharing.

Second and third day are more excited for youth they see it as right dais to show abilities in dance, imitation, magic and finding out right spouses. The dances and singing events continued till 4 AM every day and I felt very fascinating when they have performed Ganganam style dance, Back street boys steps etc. western songs irrespective of language people standing around the stage also started screaming, appreciating and started to imitate the same moves. I couldn’t resist myself about mentioning that alcohol was sold in every shop across the street and allowed to drink in public, it’s an harvest of money plant for many liquor traders and gambling games like dice, ring game, cup game, guess card game were mushroomed in all places, which I would say for quick money in simple steps described by seller made tribal lose their hard earned money saved around year.

Shopping preferences were ranging from daily needs to Olay total effects, I have seen most of products now a days kids in metro cities ask their parents are available to purchase like Ben 10 bags, Bey blade tops, flying plastic tiny fans, balloons with in shape of picachu from Pokemon series and chota bheem may be due to the presence of 7 DTH services in almost all the interior areas of agency. Already soft drinks have taken the place of drinking water in festival.

Over all the festival brought tribal & non-tribal together showed exactly how bonding and sharing works. I wouldn’t be surprise to see branded imports entering into tribal life style sooner than our expectations.

video

Grievance Redressal Mechanism- Pain that needs to be made a Boon

  To make it work in the true spirit, grievance redressal needs to be strengthened at Mandal and Panchayat levels

“The public Grievance Redressal Mechanism is part and parcel of day to day activities of any District administration. In fact, the grievance redressal mechanism of the District Administration is the gauge to measure its efficiency and effectiveness as it provides important feedback on the working of the administration.”

Well, we have been looking at all such statements most of the time in various articles and government websites. But what interests me is in looking at the need for such and how does it gain so much importance at one level and no such at another level. After being in the district for more than twelve months and attending more than twenty grievance days (Mondays as usual J ), i have learnt that bureaucracy tends to centralise and bring the focus on to themselves which usually the politicos do.

Ranging from a ration card, bore well repair to sanction of an Indiramma house, untimely disbursal of widow and disability pensions, there are several kinds of grievances which most of us might have encountered during the grievance days. Collectorates and ITDAs crowded with the people forming long queues waiting for the lords to resolve their issues.

In one of the grievances when i was new to the district, I’ve come across an old woman requesting people to write the grievance on behalf of her (she being an illiterate) and thereafter struggling to get her grievance registered and stamped. Meanwhile, curious to know her details, i had a brief interaction with her on whereabouts and the grievance. With a tormented face, she replied that she has not been receiving pension from the past few months and is finding it difficult. When inquired if she ever tried to get it resolved at her village as well as Mandal level, and did she ever try the helpline?.  the answer was No. Further, i’ve asked her what made her think that the problem gets solved coming down here travelling and spending a quarter of her monthly pension amount. She replied that this is the only place she knows where grievances will be solved for sure.

For that moment, i was amazed by the importance of a grievance day by the administration and was all praise for it. After looking at several such grievance days, i started thinking if this hyped system at the top has widened so much that it shadowed the next levels of grievance redressal mechanisms. Ideally, the issues which are to be resolved at the Village and Mandal level are allowed to be carried to the level of the district administration. Just that the decreasing number of wage seekers in MGNREGA (usual ideal conditions) indicates development but not under-performance, similarly decrease in number of petitioners on the grievance day at district level is not really bad. There is a need for decentralised grievance redressal mechanism by the administrative staff at Panchayat and Mandal levels involving the politicos of the same level. Strengthening the grievance redressal mechanism at the Panchayat level makes sense rather than centralising the control with the lords who are not approachable, patient and sensitive enough to listen to the grievances of an individual.

It is expected that the time bound services bill may change the scenario having grievance officers at all levels. I believe that as long as the higher level bureaucracy do not work on decentralisation and infact tend to make things work only at their level which will add to their personal glory, there cannot a systemic overhaul of administrative responsiveness at all levels which is very much required.

By the way, the old woman returned with a sense of confidence after giving her petition and i hope she might have been receiving her pension from then.

A Week in Tadikonda Village

This is about my experience staying in a backward tribal dominated village, Tadikonda located in Gummalakshmipuram mandal in Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh. It is located on a hilltop and is surrounded by hills and has a very scenic view. The village is around 12kms away from the mandal headquarters and share a border with Odisha. The two major tribes are Jatapu’s and Savarah's (PTG).

It was during my village immersion as part of the PMRDF training, I was allotted this village. My knowledge on rural life was very limited except that I was told by my colleagues that tribals are very friendly and also several “do not do” things such as don’t drink water, don’t sleep without a mosquito net and so on. 

Finally I got to the village at about late noon and it was peak summer then. I was put up in a school that barely had a few rooms. I pretty much spent the evening to myself wondering what is in stake for the next coming week. Next morning I was woken up by the sounds of talking by a few tribal womenfolk who were on their way to the farms at about 5:30 AM (sunrise). Frankly I am not a morning person but I thought not going back to sleep would be the best thing rather than being woken up again and again. In about 30 -45 min a group of people (mix of youth in their early 20’s and teens) come to the school ground and play cricket. After watching them play for a while I gathered the courage to go and ask if I could join them play. They welcomed me in and were very anxious to know who I was and details of why I had come and what not. Here I was reminded of what I was told about tribal people before I came here that they are very friendly and generous.

Followed by the game here comes something unique and what I would call a “community bath”. Most of the men or young adults take a bath in a natural pond. Here I was accompanied by the youth to the pond (around 20 or so), initially reluctant but later I join them. I later enquired to find out if this was only for fun but was told that it was something they have been doing all their lives.

Later at noon it was either resting or going around the farms and also at times practice archery with the boys. The evening was the time I used to spend interacting with SHG’s or conducting an house hold survey usually enquiring about their livelihoods, their take on delivery of government services and to understand their way of living. Once back, it was again time with the boys. This was like a regular routine for the week and I really and thoroughly enjoyed my time in Tadikonda.

I really could connect well to the youth and over the course got to know more on their lifestyle, ambitions and dreams. Just to give an idea about the group of youth, two of them have graduated with a degree and were with no jobs, 7 -10 of them have completed 10^th class and the rest below 10^th class and they were currently working under NREGA and since during at that time no works were undertaken they were completely free. Some of them secured a job through Rajiva Yuva Kiranalu scheme but could not sustain it for more than a month or two. They had returned back and reason that low pay scale, cost of living and staying away from their family and village are the main factors in quitting their jobs.

Most of the youth were ambitious and wanted to work respectable office jobs. In fact one of them even told me he wanted to be a banker but had no idea or information about how to get in. I was convinced that apart from providing a good education or an opportunity of a job there is a need to hand hold them and counsel them in choosing the right kind of job and provide the necessary information or training for them to qualify. Also interacting with the other youth I feel there is a need to create more jobs in rural areas rather than asking them to work in urban places, which is quite a distance.

To conclude I would like to say that one week in Tadikonda was truly memorable and a unique learning. I also take the impression that tribal youth in particular are very generous and kind and in particular make what we call “true friends”. It’s been close to eleven months since then and till date they often call and enquire about my wellbeing and keep wishing me the very best in life.