Women in Rural Development Constrains and Opportunity

Dear Friends ,

The following article can be linked to Rural Development and Development Dynamics in the syllabus. I have highlighted important points please make a note of the same.

Regards

GMStudyCenter

(Source:http://articlescollections.com/women-in-rural-development-constrains-and-opportunity/)

Throughout our country rural areas are characterized by high levels of poverty limited economic and employment opportunities undeveloped infrastructure and limited services with marginalized communities economically dependent on urban areas. For decades our rural communities were denied adequate education and our youth forced to abandon their homes and seek jobs in the cities. Our people were forced out of the countryside to become cheap migrant laborers in the factories, in the cities and on the farms. Our women in rural areas have had to bear the brunt of suffering by having to walk long distances to fetch water and collect firewood, by having to eke out their living and that of their families often on barren land to which they had been removed. They have remained pillars of strength in the community and we must pay tribute to their fortitude and resilience. Further our rural communities have to contend with lack of access to government services and unintended policy implementation consequences, as the implementation of policy tended to be biased towards the urban and semi urban areas.

We have to recognize women as the driving force for rural development. Women farmers are main food producers in developing countries and yet they are one of the most vulnerable groups. Their economic empowerment to produce more and to participate in policy formulation is critical to addressing poverty and food insecurity.

Before rural development can be successful, the important role of women has to be acknowledged. Moreover, they have to be fully integrated and given the possibility of acquiring knowledge and skills, and of utilizing them as well.

The government should also abolish the legally based discrimination of women fixed in inheritance rights; give them equal access to land, livestock, and means of production; make it possible for them to participate in business activities; and guarantee them a right to membership and voting in labor organizations, credit associations, and similar organizations.

The number of women in training and extension programmes should be increased, especially in posts from which they have been excluded until now. The contents and subjects of training and extension programmes should be expanded so that the role of women in production, processing, and marketing can also be taken into account.

To achieve participation equal to that of men in public institutions, the women's cooperative activities should be promoted. To achieve this goal, it will be necessary to create a system for ascertaining the obstacles hindering the participation of women in schools, health services, employment, and general development. Statistical data showing women's contribution in production should be compiled and published. Measures facilitating household work and care of the children increase the chance for women to participate in economic, training, and political activities. Men should also be obligated to do their share of household work.

Training facilities of equal quality for girls and women, with the same subject matter as for men, should be established and made attractive by offering scholarships. These institutions should be followed up by possibilities of earning an income with the guarantee of an equal salary for equal work. Training possibilities for women are especially important not only in the fields of agriculture and in non- agricultural gainful employment, but also in the sectors health, nutrition, children's education, and family planning. It is necessary to make sure that, during the transition from a traditional economy to the modern technologies; the negative implications for women are minimized.

The face of the farmer and natural resource manager is primarily female in most of the developing world. Knowledge, technology, policies, institutions and programmes must therefore be developed by putting women at the centre to orient structures and processes to address their needs as food producers and environmental managers through gender mainstreaming and investing in women and girls to bridge the existing gender gaps. The prevailing misunderstanding and neglect of this fact has contributed to a significant loss of opportunities and investments in women farmers and thus has had major consequences for food security and poverty alleviation. Rather than being regarded as a vulnerable group, women’s knowledge, experience and substantial roles make them experts in agriculture and natural resource management; they are key agents in the way forward for sustainable development.

As women bear the brunt of poverty, it is just and fair that the bulk of our programmes be targeted towards them. We have to ensure that they also enjoy the fruits of freedom. We need to formulate tangible programmes that will take women issues to the centre of our agenda. The consolidation of democracy in our country requires the eradication of social and economic inequities, especially those that are systematic in nature, which were generated in our history.

Though agriculture has a central role to play in the rural community, it is not an end in itself but a means to an end which is rural development. It remains one of the important ingredients which include access to healthcare, education and other government services such enabling documents. Therefore the project planning for rural development needs to take these factors into account. Although significant progress has been made in restructuring and transforming our society and institutions, systematic inequalities and unfair discrimination remain deeply embedded in social structures, practices and attitudes, undermining the aspirations of our constitutional federal democratic republic.

Talking with Teeth: Micro-Planning with Community Scorecards

Dear Friends ,

I am posting this article because it gives some important points for answer writing on Local Administration, Democratic Decentralization and Participative Governance.  I have highlighted the important stuff please make note of this. Many conventional books do not discuss these topics but you can use in your answers to give a futuristic view and can quote these case studies. It will only help in making your answer slightly different than others. After studying Rural administration from conventional books we should be able to match this article with the theory.

(Source World bank website)

Regards

GMStudyCenter

Coming together is a process

Keeping together is progress

Working together is success

This message, written on the wall of a public building in Gureghar village in Maharashtra, India, implies the significant changes that have recently taken place. Since 2007, 178 villages including Gureghar have been part of an innovative social accountability process that has redefined relationships between citizens, service providers and local government. Building upon two decades of experience with micro-planning, the innovation in this pilot project is that micro-planning has been combined with a community scorecard process to strengthen accountability.

Partnered with the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration and the World Bank, the project was spearheaded by then CEO of the District, S. Kadu-Patil.

(The primary role of a District CEO is to administer all development project and services, such as health and education services, for the District.) The project team and the CEO invested a lot of effort to build the political will of other decision-makers and service providers. In fact, many of these functionaries were then organized into Task Forces to actually implement the process while a cadre of facilitators underwent intensive 20-day training.

The actual micro-planning and community scorecard process took place over 5 days at the village level and included participatory data generation and analysis through household and village surveys, and focus group discussions with vulnerable groups such as women and youth. They were conducted by village youth themselves with the help of facilitators. This allowed the community to determine local understandings of problems and resources as well as build ownership over the collected information.

Community scorecard exercises were also conducted for education, health and other services. The “teeth” of the process, the community scorecard process is basically a structured conversation between the frontline service providers and the users of that service to understand and address gaps in service delivery. The users decide on indicators to assess the service delivery and then both the users and the service providers assess delivery against these indicators. Once the scorecards are completed, both groups come together in face-to-face meeting to discuss gaps in the scoring and jointly devise solutions. This prioritizes constructive conversation rather than confrontation but without diffusing the real problems that the community and frontline service providers face. This is where the trained facilitators played a valuable role in making sure the scorecard process was a meaningful conversation between two groups who rarely get to meet in such a space. On the last day of the 5-day process, the community came together to construct a village action plan based on the problems and needs that emerged out of the process. These village action plans were used to inform and guide higher levels of planning. At higher levels, service providers came together to discuss and take joint action on the problems at the village level. This convergence was also a new but important shift. As described by S. Kadu Patil himself, convergence of service providers signifies a shift in the way development itself was viewed:

 

"The lack of toilets at schools and thus the lack of privacy forces girls to drop out once they reach adolescence. If they drop out, they are more likely to get married at an earlier age and get pregnant. During pregnancy, because she has not been educated, she is not able to take care of her health and after pregnancy, she does not have the awareness to understand how to nourish her baby. The problems of sanitation, education, maternal health and child health are all interconnected. This process takes a holistic view of development at the village level and allows important government agencies to be in dialogue to converge and better serve the poor."

Another important component of the process was iteration. The 5-day process was repeated in 6 months intervals after the first cycle to reinforce and monitor progress of service providers as well as the community in following through on village action plans.

Each district in India has an estimated annual budget of US$50 million to provide health, nutrition, drinking water, sanitation, and education to its citizens. Before the pilot project, Satara, although considered a better-developed district in terms of social and economic indices, still fell short in terms of actual service delivery outcomes. After one year of this social accountability project, Satara district has seen significant changes from the district down to the community level. Over this period, 178 villages in the district of Satara have seen a significant reduction in malnourished children, a 16 percent increase in immunized children and unsafe drinking water samples have decreased by approximately 63%. And these are just some of the changes that can be measured. This process has institutionalized spaces for engagement between citizens and government and between citizens and service providers that has led to dialogue and deliberation over local development programs and resources and increased awareness and ownership of village-level problems.

( There are some terms which needs further elaboration in this article - like 

Citizen Report Cards and Community Score Cards )

Citizen Report Cards are participatory surveys that provide quantative feedback on user perceptions on the quality, adequacy and efficiency of public services. They go beyond just being a data collection exercise to being an instrument to exact public accountability through the extensive media coverage and civil society advocacy that accompanies the process.

Community Score Cards are qualitative monitoring tools that are used for local level monitoring and performance evaluation of services, projects and even government administrative units by the communities themselves. The community score card (CSC) process is a hybrid of the techniques of social audit, community monitoring and citizen report cards. Like the citizen report card, the CSC process is an instrument to exact social and public accountability and responsiveness from service providers. However, by including an interface meeting between service providers and the community that allows for immediate feedback, the process is also a strong instrument for empowerment.

Panchayati Raj after 15 Years : Challenges Ahead

Dear Friends ,

The article below gives an appraisal of Panchayati Raj. Please use it in your answer writing for questions concerned on Local Governance and their performance

Regards

GMStudyCenter

(Source :http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article651.html)

Fifteen years have passed since the landmark 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act was approved in 1992 by the Indian Parliament. Devolution of 29 functions, reservation of 33 per cent seats for women, similar reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their population, statutory requirement to hold periodic elections under the supervision of State Election Commissions, transfer of funds to panchayat bodies according to the recommendations of the State Finance Commissions were some of the highlights of the constitutional mandate rightly hailed as a silent revolution. Political leaders called it as ‘the greatest experiment in democracy ever’.

Since then three elections have been held and 2.4 lakh elected panchayat bodies have been in place. Nearly 27 lakh members have been elected throughout the country, 37 per cent of them being women, while 19 per cent and 12 per cent represent Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes respectively. All these figures are truly impressive unmatched by any other country in the world. As Indians we are justified in feeling proud about these achievements. At the same time we should also have an objective view of the ground reality, take note of our inadequacies and failures, and be ready to face the challenges ahead.

The crux of the problem concerning the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) is really the transfer of functions, funds and functionaries without which the panchayats cannot function effectively as the third tier of democratic government. As per the information available in November 2006, only eight States and one Union Territory have transferred all the 29 functions or subjects to the PRIs. Most of these transfers remain on paper without the support of adequate funding and functionaries. Kerala is the only State which has devolved 40 per cent of its Plan outlay to panchayats. The record of setting up the much talked about District Planning Committees is equally disappointing. Only 13 States and four Union Territories have formed such committees and many of them remain on paper without functioning as an effective tool of local planning.

There has been a significant progress on the front of women’s empowerment, but there are many hurdles in the way of elected women including the age-old male domination leading to cases of proxy roles played by the male members of the family. The Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates are duly elected but face stiff opposition and discrimination from the dominant castes to allow them to fully exercise their rights. The gram sabhas which were to function as a forum of genuine democratic participation, in most cases, do not function in the right spirit. They are often looked upon as a ritual to fulfil the formal requirement. The MLAs and MPs, along with the local bureaucracy, treat the PRIs as a threat to their authority and privilege and do everything in their power to scuttle them.

There is a hope for the PRIs to progress further if they meet these challenges with confidence and determination. They will have to work for genuine participation, fight against the opponents of the PRIs, and imbibe the spirit of democratic decentralisation.