The Chiknayakanhalli Story : Part II

The population of C’Halli, according to the 1991 census was 193419, as compared to 171770 in 1981. Most people (91%) live in rural areas. The picture is not bright on the literacy front - 53% of male population, and only 35% of women are literates. Literacy for all is a far cry in this taluk. When we look at the workforce, we find that the workforce participation rate (WFFR) for the taluk in 1991 is 43.20%. The marginal workers constitute 12.5%, a worrisome figure - an increase of nearly 80% over the 1981 census figure of 7.86%. The deployment of the workforce is primarily as cultivators (52%), and agricultural labour (20%). A minuscule segment (4%) is engaged in household industry, processing and repairs and 24% in the other sectors such as trade, commerce, transport and other services.

Agriculture sector supports a disproportionately high population, much more than the capacity. An additional 6000 workers have been added to the agriculture sector in a decade thereby indicating increasing pressure on this sector due to population growth. All this naturally implies that new opportunities need to be opened up in non-land based economic activities.

It is appropriate here to examine the landholding pattern and its relationship with the local economy. Table below gives the landholding pattern.

This distribution is awfully skewed. Nearly 75% of the community are on subsistence agriculture and they own a total 38% of land whereas the balance 25% of the community own 62% of land and have a surplus income. The inequities are glaring when the economics of coconut plantations are considered. The marginal farmers produce ragi and maize only and the small farmer a bit of groundnut as well. But, the medium and large landholders utilize part of their holdings as coconut plantations. The return from coconut plantation is about Rs.35,000/- and Rs.75,000/- respectively per unirrigated/irrigated hectare of land! The farmers define ‘prosperity’ as ownership of 50 coconut trees! Any quest for prosperity through more coconut plantations in land use is natural, but will impinge on price stability, environmental concerns associated with monoculture and further inequities in income distribution.

The household industry sector is mostly agro/forest based such as oilmills and ‘beedi’ making. The sector needs to be widened. Setting up micro-enterprises could be a possible route in this direction.

Any development programme for the people of C’Halli taluk must address certain issues for specific socio/economic groups in the community. The table 1 below identifies some of these issues.

The taluk produces 60% of its cereal and pulse requirements. The other 40% has to come from outside. At the household level, the landless group is the most insecure as it has to earn a disposable income of about Rs.14,400/- for a family of five. The marginal farmer needs nearly Rs.10,000/- from wage earnings to meet his requirement.

The taluk seems to be in a comfortable position in respect of water. Mini Water Supply Scheme, where operational has been able to provide a min. of 150 litres of water to a household. Basically, the sources of water is a borewell with a pump and handpumps. There are months (December - May) when availability of water gets reduced. The quality of drinking water seems to be good since the taluk is relatively free from incidences of water borne diseases. The MWS programme has not covered all the villages in the taluk and during panchayat meetings this point came up as priority issue. The taluk has good ground water potential which may be exploited over a period of time sustainably towards improvement of human well-being through higher biomass production and household enterprises.

All households depend on agro-wastes and firewood irrespective of the income levels as cooking fuel! The demand-supply position is comfortable. The demand for firewood is difficult to meet in certain parts of the taluk, but there is a huge surplus of coconut residue that is available for free! But, there are health implications of using agro-wastes. The cooking devices are inefficient and the level of indoor air pollution is high. The taluk households will be better off with improved cookstoves.

The shelter situation is not satisfactory. 25 to 50% of rural shelters are of inferior quality. The poorer group of people use thatch as roofing material, the better off section uses mangalore tiles or RCC as roofing material. Efforts at mitigating the shelter problem of the weaker section are through government programmes.

The implementation of any action plan must necessarily involve institutions and people. An assessment of the existing institutions at C’halli is appropriate at this stage. These fall into the broad categories of government administration, panchayati raj institutions, NGO’s and the banks. The success of implementation hinges upon the ability of the institutions to generate synergies and deliver through an effective mechanism.

The state administration is represented at the district and taluk levels through the line departments, which cater to the development and revenue collection functions. In Karnataka, like in many other states, the development activities have been brought under the purview of the panchayati raj institutions. The interface between these institutions and line departments at the district level is provided by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Zilla Parishad, who also serves as its secretary.

Each line department in the district prepares its annual plan which is then collated in the district plan. The outcome of this effort is a collection of schemes for each department with clearly laid out physical and financial targets. Many experts feel there are lacunae in the process adopted for the exercise and also in the end-product, the district plan. The process-related issues pertain to lack of a strong database of planning; its departmental/sectoral approach; and, no community participation in the process. The district plan, besides listing out the schemes to be implemented, provides little direction on crucial guidelines for implementation and a sound monitoring framework.

This present planning effort through IMSD has sought to surmount some of these drawbacks and the experiences gained now need to be integrated with the mainstream planning efforts. We have initiated this process by engaging the government administration in the consultative process. However, further efforts are required to strengthen the administrative machinery by widespread adoption of improved planning techniques and introducing issues of sustainability; foster measures of community mobilisation and better tools of monitoring. To achieve this, more attention needs to be paid to human resource development and capacity building of the institutions to derive sustained benefits from the IMSD effort.

With the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, the country has taken a major step towards decentralising decision-making at the grassroots. As a result, Karnataka, has a three-tier panchayat system for each administrative hierarchy. The Zilla Parishad is mandated to cover the entire district while the taluk and gram panchayats cover the taluk and a group of villages respectively. Tumkur district has 10 taluks, including Chiknayakanhalli. There are 28 gram panchayats in Chiknayakanhalli taluk.

The constitutional provisions clearly specify the respective role and power of each of the institutions. While these provisions are laudable, it needs to be stated here that a healthy position requires the functions of each of these institutions to smoothly roll into one another. The action proposals at the panchayat level were discussed at the GP meetings, while those to be implemented between two or more panchayats were discussed at the taluk panchayat meeting.

The elections to the panchayats were held in 1994 and they have a little over two years left before their term expires. The timing of the IMSD programme in the taluk is thus very appropriate. The composition of the panchayats is mandated by the Constitution and has representation of specific community groups, including women. Many of the members are first-timers and do require specific training to discharge their duties more effectively.

The purpose of extensive interaction with the GPs was to examine the possibility of involving them in the implementation phase. There is some scepticism in Karnataka about the Gram Panchayats’ ability to play an effective role in planned development with their present level of capacity. But, this view is rather unfounded. During the extensive interactions with the Gram Panchayats, the potential strength of the Gram Panchayats stood out in the following areas :

targeting of programmes : Gram Panchayats are able to identify the target groups for aspects of development.

additional resources : Gram Panchayats can mobilise voluntary labour, an extremely valuable resource input, allot panchayat land for development activity and even collect contributions from the rural community where such contributions lead to the concept of project ownership by people.

community management : Gram Panchayats have been associated with management of water supply system, and joint forest management. They can also handle water harvesting structures such as tanks and checkdams.

monitoring : Gram Panchayats are in the best position to monitor the progress and impact of a development activity and may be able to suggest mid-term corrections on the basis of the community’s perceptions and wisdom.

It is now accepted that the NGOs can be active players in sustainable development programmes. Development Alternatives is the only national level NGO working in the taluk and has identified its partnership role in the planning and implementation process. It can assist in the establishment and training of many units in the voluntary sector who can play a very useful role in the delivery system in social development.

C’halli taluk has an adequate presence of nationalised banks who operate credit schemes that are approved in the priority sectors, sectors such as agriculture, animal husbandry, micro industries. Loans are available for trade, transport, education and housing as well. The IMSD action plan will attempt to build up synergy with the banks’ credit plan.

The synthesis is based on integration of different natural resources per se, integration of natural resource and human development issues and highlighting the priority from common interaction. An analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and constraints of C’halli taluk is given in Table 2.

Table 2: SWOC Analysis - Gram Panchayat
Strengths		Weaknesses
♣	Comfortable ground water resources	♣	Poor land and water management
♣	Dominance of coconut in local economy	♣	Predominance of agricultural workforce
♣	Comfortable demand-supply position of domestic energy at taluk level	♣	Low land productivity
♣	Drinking water programmes largely successful	♣	Weak infrastructure
♣	Dully elected panchyats in operation with more than three years of their term remaining	♣	Low literacy level

Opportunities		Constraints
♣	Potential of sustainability harvesting ground water	♣	Low rainfall and no possibility of canal irrigation in the near-term
♣	The enabling constitutional framework for panchayats	♣	Inequitable land ownership
♣	The groundswell of goodwill among GPs after the interactive planning process		Weak planning and implementation framework of development programmes
♣	The availability of a detailed Action Plan with possibility of funding to implement the plan	♣	Lack of inter departmental coordination and partnerships among institutions

The priorities for development, on the basis of the database and people’s perceptions as revealed in the interactions with the Taluk/Gram Panchayats are as follows:

Identification of priorities needs to be translated into IMSD programme objectives which are to be reached through adoption of an appropriate development strategy. The objectives set are to :

In order to achieve the goal and objectives, the approach of the programme will include the following:

Direct intervention : in some of the sectors, utilise the additional IMSD funds for directly meeting project objectives.

Facilitating function : This will be through provision of inputs like access to expertise, information or technology.

Community participation : Innovative measures of community participation will be used for project implementation.

Sustainability and uptake : During the middle years of the project, a dissemination and uptake strategy will be put into place. Among other things, this will also examine the issue of project sustainability.

The IMSD programme is making four key interventions, in accordance with the objectives mentioned earlier. These are:

A detailed menu of interventions has been worked out. A distinctive feature of the interventions is the quantification of outputs through specific indicators. The economic appraisal of the suggested interventions is largely positive and the social acceptability quite high. The latter is primarily due to the fact that the planning and design have been based on key stakeholder interaction.

The IMSD programme will be implemented during 1997-2002, which is co-terminus with the duration of the Ninth Plan. It is our intention to effectively promote convergence of services during the Ninth Plan. The IMSD programme will operate in 15 priority panchayats. These panchayats have been selected on the basis of existing need for new interventions and prospects of success. This is sought to be achieved through an innovative management and institutional system.

A three tier structure has been designed. Overall strategic, policy, co-ordination and approval functions for the programme will be carried out by a specially constituted Programme Steering Committee headed by the Chairman, Zilla Parishad under the aegis of the Department of Rural Development. The committee will have the officials of line departments of the government, the lead bank, representative from NGOs and a few gram panchayats by rotation. The PSC will meet at least once every six months and on special occasions, when so required.

The next level is the Programme Implementation Unit which will have a Government official of appropriate seniority as Manager/Co-ordinator and four specialists (natural resources, community interaction, training, monitoring and uptake). The PIU has full financial responsibility and its mandate is “effective delivery”. The third tier is the task force which will be drawn up from government, non-government or private experts for each specific item on the menu.

The exclusion of the Gram Panchayats from PIU may be construed as leaving out ‘people’ from the final phase of the development process. But, it is not so. The SWOC analysis of Gram Panchayat (Table 2) warrants risk reduction in implementation and on the basis of evaluated strength of the gram panchayats in the taluk, at least 6 gram panchayats out of 15 covered by the IMSD programme will be given responsibility for implementation of specific activities. PIU will consult all the 15 GPs who will be involved in community mobilisation in the panchayats. Three of the panchayats have adequate capacity for association with all activities including financial management. They will be given the responsibility, on a graded basis, for tendering, processing and procurement under the supervision of the PIU. The panchayats will require capacity strengthening in order to exercise the powers delegated to them under the 73rd amendment to the Constitution. The proposed role of the selected panchayats with adequate capacity and their performance, could be the first real-test of true delegation. The PSC, PIU, ought to make a positive contribution in making this venture successful. The eyes of development ideologues and strategists are on Chikanayakanhalli. q