As the agricultural options dwindle for small and marginal farmers in Indian villages, there is a growing need for livelihood opportunities through non-farm activities. Without sustainable livelihood, it is not conceivable that the disadvantaged villagers can make a decent living. Schumacher Centre, a development organisation inspired by the thinking of legendary E F Schumacher seeks “to tackle the roots of poverty” in rural India and “to promote village livelihoods through use of appropriate technology and skill building of small farmers, and landless artisans”. In pursuing its livelihood objectives, the Centre has been working in Udham Singh Nagar district in Uttaranchal. Within the district, seven villages were targeted: it consisted 200 direct women beneficiaries from the scheduled castes, other backward class and landless artisans all of whom experienced low levels of income, and poverty. In addition to beekeeping and honey production, related interventions like health, human rights education, participation in local governance and basic education were to benefit as many as 6483 villagers representing the total population of seven targeted villages. By enhancing and maintaining a level of livelihood, the Centre aimed at ensuring that the quality of family and community life in the region is sustained in the longer term. Situation Analysis
Although bee keeping appeared an obvious route to livelihood generation
as the targets were located in an agro-forestry area The silver lining, however, was that there was a high level of interest shown by the potential beneficiaries in participating in the income generating activities. Also, the target area was suitable for honey production, forested hills, vegetation and temperature providing appropriate environment for bee keeping; there was also a tradition of bee keeping in the area. The strategies adopted to carry out bee keeping were mainly to constitute the women into self help groups; training them into collective action for capital formation for saving and credit and providing them with appropriate tools like bee hive, bees wax, surplus bees, training them by an apiarist, providing them with health and human rights education. The strategies centred over all on supporting honey production and marketing. Alongside this core activity, there were other related activities aimed at increasing the self-confidence and self-image of the beneficiaries, so that they may look forward to a better quality of life. The Activities The core activity was honey production and rest of the social mobilisation inputs were built around it. Over all planning and management of honey production, development of marketing linkages, SHG savings and loan for investment in honey production, storage and packaging, provision of equipments and containers for selling, marketing materials such as labels, flyers on the benefits of honey, market research, liaison with wholesalers, marketing outlets etc constituted the activity schedule for honey production. Almost all the target population lacked a basic understanding of hygiene, water borne and other diseases, reproductive and child health care and nutrition. Many children, women and the old were in need of health care and there was no regular health check ups for the children in the schools. Lack of basic health education and facilities were rendering people vulnerable, thereby affecting their livelihood opportunities. The Centre planned health awareness camps for the target population, prepared groups of animators who could continue the sensitisation process through the SHGs. About 300 children had no access to school or had to walk long distances to schools in nearby villages. The adults lacked any kind of literacy or numeracy skills and would benefit greatly from access to such skills in support of their income generation and savings/loan activities. The Centre planned to lobby the local government to provide, equip and staff a school to educate 300 children. It also planned to introduce literacy and numeracy skills with an e-literacy package, developed for quick learning by illiterate or semi-literate villagers. More importantly, the Centre, through its social mobilisation activities, sought to impress upon the villagers the value of education in relation to participation in public action as well as for employment generation for children, school drop outs and adults. Human rights education is another area, critical for livelihood creation. Most often people in villages remain poor and deprived for want of accurate information and inability to access their rights. Of late, the Right to Information has become a universally accepted principle of governance, but its exercise or utilisation remains elusive. This is because villagers are not able to assert their rights. For instance, the ‘new panchayats’ have acquired enough power and functions to deliver development in their own areas. But they are still not effective, as the people do not empower the panchayats by participating, demanding, urging and checking on the functions of panchayat officials and representatives. Consequently, the rural elite dominating the local leadership make panchayats non-participative and an instrument of their own self-aggrandisement. Although the Centre did not engage in local governance issues, it sought to mobilize the SHGs to make them aware of their rights, responsibilities and risks of inaction. Outcomes
The intervention has befitted the targets in several ways. The
honey production has increased the self employment Manju Koranga is married with three children. Her husband is a farmer. Manju was trained in one of the SHG groups, but she decided to do her own bee keeping as she found 13 members in an SHG shared one bee hive. Remaining a part of SHG, she bought her own beehive as she realised that if one had the resources, one could expand the beekeeping much faster and generate more income. She sold her cow to purchase five beehives of her own. She concentrated her efforts on increasing the number of bees within each hive so that she could extract up to 120 kg of honey in a year. The apiarist trainer continued to provide necessary inputs to Manju on an individual basis. She continued to be a member of her SHG as she found she received many other benefits from the group, benefits of others’ successes and disappointments. With a new source of livelihood, Manju could dream. She wanted to educate her eldest child, a daughter, who wanted to do a diploma in engineering. Her two sons were at school and if they too wanted to go to college, she was confident of supporting them. In addition to the increased honey production, which helped the women save a part of their income and use it for the betterment of their families, there were other benefits contributing to their quality of life. They had an improved understanding of health issues as a result of participation in health camps. They had better access to services as a result of increased presence of health workers, government health agencies and medical practitioners in the area. All this, an outcome of the Centre lobbying with local officials and other government bodies to meet their legislative requirements to provide primary health care. With massive social mobilisation in the targeted villages, the villagers’ self confidence has considerably increased through basic literacy, participation in the SHGs, awareness of rights and entitlements, ability to link with government schemes and services provided, working in collectives. It has been observed that self-confidence and a development orientation is the key to greater livelihoods in the villages. The Way Forward A honey processing plant is envisaged to be set up to prevent spoilage of honey and maintain a natural quality. The processed honey is also expected to fetch at least three times higher value for the producers. A sleek, compact easy-to-operate and eco-friendly honey processing unit is meant to help the innovative entrepreneur to produce high quality honey by removing impurities, wax, pollens and water. The capacity of the unit will be 150-200 kg/8 hours shift. Since there has been prior intervention in these villages and women have already been trained in beekeeping there is a strong base available to build on. The introduction of appropriate technology will add value to the production and income of the beneficiaries. Thus, the particular intervention has immense potential for replication because community production, collective action, integrated approach and the use of appropriate technology will generate local employment and enhance livelihood generation. The SHGs need to be introduced to micro-finance activities. For the sake of sustainability, micro-enterprise like beekeeping needs to be supported by micro finance. In collective action, it is easier to generate financial capital along with social capital. It also makes each member of the group realise their own potential through a “lead and lag” approach to the group. The Centre has taken a small but steady step, on the long road to village livelihood and better quality of life. q Dr. D K Giri dkgiri@schumachercenterindia.org The author is Director of Schumacher Centre for Development, New Delhi |
known to be suitable for honey production, a situation analysis was
conducted to study the living conditions and the prevalent economic
activities in the area. From an extensive situation analysis using
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques it was found that there
were hardly any means of income generation for women villagers apart
from their unpaid or minimal income as a result of participation in
agriculture/livestock activities. The families experienced a high level
of poverty, not only for want of adequate income, but also for poor or
no access to health and education. Out of seven villages, only one
village had access to health services and one village had no school at
all. Five villages had no electricity connection. Women had little or no
formal education and so were predominantly illiterate. Interestingly,
neither government nor voluntary agency were found to be working in the
immediate area, although 10 to 15 kms away, there was a bit of
commercial agricultural activity like rice mills exporting rice outside
the state. 
opportunities. The honey locally produced from local bees and flowers,
locally processed keeping the enzyme, has retained the nutrient value
intact. The beneficiaries have had increased income, greater collective
bargaining power by working through SHGs and new skills and
technologies. It is relevant here to narrate the initiatives taken by a
woman in entrepreneurial activities