Two missions for the 60th anniversary

M.S. Swaminathan
The Hindu, July 28

Much remains to be done to make India hunger-free and to achieve a rural knowledge revolution.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of India’s independence on August 14-15, 1997, the then President K.R. Narayanan listed our adherence to a democratic system of governance and our launching a green revolution in agriculture as the two most important achievements of the first 50 years of what Jawaharlal Nehru christened “India’s tryst with destiny.” At a consultation held at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai at the beginning of th e new century, it was proposed that two major goals for the 60th anniversary commemoration should be a hunger-free India on the lines proposed by Mahatma Gandhi in 1946 at Naokhali, and accelerated progress in human resource development through a knowledge revolution in rural India. Based on a series of consultations, two Missions 2007 were launched through multi-stakeholder consortia, one for eliminating chronic under- and mal-nutrition, and the other for rural knowledge connectivity.

Unfortunately, the progress made since 1997 in the elimination of child, maternal, and adult malnutrition as well as in improving our rank in the U.N. Human Development Index has been poor in relation to our capacity to achieve them. It will therefore be worthwhile to review briefly where we are today.

Mission 2007: a hunger-free India

Over 200 million children, women, and men go to bed now partially hungry. Jointly with the World Food Programme, MSSRF scientists have analysed the causes for the persistence of widespread chronic hunger and presented the available information in two atlases relating to food insecurity in rural and urban India. These atlases provided valuable guidelines for the preparation of a road map for the elimination of chronic, hidden, and transient hunger and resulted in the development of the following seven-point action plan. This plan was developed on considerations of both affordability and ease of implementation.

1) Restructure the delivery of ongoing nutrition support programmes on a life cycle basis.

2) Universalise the Public Distribution System (PDS) and enlarge the composition of the food basket by including a wide range of nutritious cereals, millets, grain legumes, and tubers based on local preferences.

3) Introduce a food-cum-fortification approach for eliminating iron, iodine, zinc, and vitamin A deficiencies and accord priority to overcoming chronic and hidden hunger in pregnant women, and in children in the 0-2 age group.

4) Promote the organisation of community grain and water banks by local communities with the gram sabhas providing social oversight, and promote the concept, “store food grains and drinking water in every village.”

5) Pay particular attention to safe drinking water, primary health care, and nutrition education.

6) Enhance opportunities for on-farm and non-farm employment through the bio-village model of human-centred development, and improve the productivity and profitability of small farms (small farm families constitute more than 50 per cent of India’s population) through integrated crop-livestock farming systems and improved post-harvest technology.

7) Introduce a Food Guarantee Act combining the features of the food-for-work and the rural employment guarantee programmes; the use of food as currency benefits both farmers and urban consumers, since farmers will produce more if consumption is improved. In addition, household nutrition security is strengthened.

While releasing the Food Insecurity Atlas of Rural India at New Delhi on April 21, 2001, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee commended the goal of ‘Mission 2007: a hunger-free India’ in the following words:

“Democracy and hunger cannot go together. A hungry stomach questions and censures the system’s failure to meet what is a basic biological need of every human being. There can be no place for hunger and poverty in a modern world in which science and technology have created conditions for abundance and equitable development.

“The sacred mission of a “Hunger-free India” needs the cooperative efforts of the Central and State Governments, local self-government bodies, non-governmental organisations, international agencies, and, above all, our citizens. We can indeed banish hunger from our country in a short time. Let us resolve today to make this Mission substantially successful by 2007, which will mark the sixtieth anniversary of our independence.”

The National Commission on Farmers also endorsed the above strategy for achieving sustainable nutrition security. The Common Minimum Programme of the United Progressive Alliance Government contains a commitment to achieving universal nutrition security as soon as possible. Unfortunately, an integrated strategy is yet to be put in place with the result that the goal of a hunger-free India is nowhere near accomplishment.

Every village a knowledge centre

The second Mission 2007 relates to the knowledge and skill empowerment of rural families with the help of information and communication technology (ICT). Mission 2007: every village a knowledge centre stimulated developments such as the following:

1) The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched a village resource centre programme at the block level involving satellite connectivity and teleconferencing facilities.

2) The Department of Information Technology, Government of India, launched a common service centre programme designed to cover 100,000 villages.

3) The Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, decided to provide to each panchayat the necessary ICT infrastructure to enable it to participate in the e-governance programme.

4) ITC Ltd decided to expand its e-chaupal programme in order to cover 50,000 villages

5) The MSSRF has organised so far 80 village knowledge centres and 15 cillage resource centres.

6) Many State governments, public and private sector companies, academic and financial institutions, and NGOs have organised village knowledge centres in different parts of the country.

Thus, Mission 2007 has triggered a national tele-centre movement for bridging the urban-rural digital divide and for ensuring knowledge connectivity in areas relevant to the day-to-day life and livelihood of rural families. The Government of India has included knowledge connectivity as an important component of Bharat Nirman or a New Deal for Rural India.

A national alliance has been formed for Mission 2007 — a broad based coalition of government, non-government, academic, and business sectors committed to the cause of taking ICT to all the 600,000 villages of India. In addition, with the generous assistance of Tata Trusts, the MSSRF has established a Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity (NVA) and a Jamsetji Tata Training School. The NVA has currently 985 Fellows from India and 25 Foreign Fellows drawn from Afghanistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Nepal, and Nigeria. These grass roots academicians are the torch-bearers of the rural knowledge revolution.

From August 15, Mission 2007 programme will grow into a Grameen Gyaan Abhiyan, a national movement for knowledge empowerment of rural families. It is hoped by 2010, the Abhiyan will cover every village and home or hut in the country.

The Green Revolution helped to increase the productivity of crops such as wheat and rice. The knowledge revolution, on the other hand, helps to enhance human productivity and creativity in several dimensions. The Grameen Gyaan Abhiyan will be based on the following organisational structure:

1) Every block will have a village resource centre with the help of ISRO.

2) Every panchayat will have a gyan chaupal or village knowledge centre with the help of the Department of Information Technology, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, civil society organisations, NABARD and financial institutions, multilateral donors, the academic and private sectors, and bilateral and multilateral donors.

3) The last mile and last person connectivity will be achieved through combinations of the Internet and community radio, and the Internet and the cell phone. For example, fishermen in catamarans will be guided through cell phones on wave heights and location of fish shoals.

While connectivity can be achieved, content creation and capacity building will be the greatest challenges. The content has to be dynamic, demand driven, locale specific, and in local languages.

A major role of the Grameen Gyaan Abhiyan movement will be the establishment of linkages between scientific know-how and field level do-how. For this purpose, village resource centres and village knowledge centres will have to be intimately linked with appropriate programmes such as the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan for literacy, the Yuva and Mahila Sakthi Abhiyans of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, the National Rural Health Mission, the National Horticulture Mission, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, and so on.

To expand the number of those being provided relevant information and services in retail trade in fruits, vegetables, and grains as well as on methods of safe handling, packaging, and marketing, a quality literacy movement based on Codex Alimentarius standards of food safety is being launched in association with the Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore. The Grameen Gyan Abhiyan will launch a knowledge on the wheels programme for the provision of services relevant to rural livelihoods. To start with, soil health care, water conservation and management, eye care, and post harvest technology will be covered with mobile vans designed by eminent institutions such as Sankara Netralaya in the case of eye care.

As a single step, the rural knowledge revolution is likely to have the largest beneficial impact on the physical, economic, and social well-being of the more than 700 million people living in villages. Poverty will persist under conditions where the human resource is under-valued and material resources are over-valued. Once the Grameen Gyan Abhiyan spreads, there will be a perceptible impact on the parameters governing human resource development. This, in turn, will lead to a paradigm shift from unskilled to skilled work in villages. This is the pathway to achieving the first among the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, namely the eradication of hunger and poverty.

(The writer was Chairman of the National Commission on Farmers.)



08/26/2005
INDIA

World Bank to loan India 9 billion dollars for rural development

by Maurizio d'Orlando

Suspicions abound that political and geo-strategic reasons are behind the aid.

New Delhi (AsiaNews) – During a recent Asian trip that included stops in India and Pakistan, World Bank (WB) President Paul Wolfowitz said the institution was lending India US$ 9 billion over the next three years for rural development. Press reports suggest three billions will be released each year, a 500 per cent increase over the last two years when the WB loaned only one billion the South-Asian giant.

The decision to raise aid was apparently made during Wolfowitz's trip. Before his depart, the WB was prepared to sign up for three billions over three years.

The loans are earmarked for roads, drinking water and irrigation facilities in rural areas. Nearly 70 per cent of India's more than 1 billion people live in more than 500,000 villages connected largely by dusty tracks, dependent on agriculture and forced to endure acute shortages of drinking water and electricity.

"But though it's making rapid strides, India has an unfinished agenda," Wolfowitz said in a statement released to the press. "It is still home to a quarter of the world's poor people, most of whom reside in the rural areas. Infrastructure constraints are an impediment to growth. The government has rightly made provision of rural infrastructure and investments in hard infrastructure a priority. The World Bank feels privileged to support these efforts."

In 2004 India had one of the fastest annual growth rates in the world: about 7 per cent. Sixty years ago half of the population lived below the poverty line as measured by minimum caloric intake and ability to provide basic education to children.

By some accounts, about a quarter of the population still lives below the poverty line despite obvious progress. Using different measuring criteria, other studies estimate the number of poor in India to be around 350-400 people.

Whichever is correct, it still is true that today's main social cleavage is between the rapidly growing cities and the still backward countryside.

Some Indian commentators like Sudhir Chadda of the India Daily wonder whether Wolfowitz will be able to do what Indian politicians—from the currently ruling Congress Party to the opposition Hindu nationalist BJP—have failed time and time again to do, i.e. help the poor.

Chadda notes that both parties received funds in the last elections from India's "oligarchs", the 17 families who control 87 per cent of India's wealth. For him and others, the two parties would not be able to survive even a day without the oligarchs' financial backing.

Beside what the current economic situation may mean, another political factor is at stake. The current Congress-led coalition government is in power because of the support of India's Communist Party, which controls almost 13 per cent of all the seats in parliament and is gaining support in the poorer, rural areas of the country.

Indian commentators thus view WB assistance as politically motivated, inspired by a desire to see rural voters move towards the Congress Party and the hope that aid might generate greater sympathy for the US in Indian society.

And lest we forget, Paul Wolfowitz was recently appointed to the post of WB President thanks to the backing of US President George W. Bush.

Finally, the US recently expressed its opposition to a gas pipeline linking Iran to India through Pakistan. For many observers, this opposition is rooted in strategic considerations. Whilst a pipeline might give India access to Iran's gas supplies, it would also economically and politically link the two countries.

It is no secret that Iran remains on the US unwanted guest list.

According to the Pakistani press, the WB loan offer would stop India from succumbing to Iran's excessively tight hug.

However, the WB denied reports that the donor agency had warned the Pakistani government against supporting the proposed gas pipeline, WB spokesman Shahzad Shargil said on August 18 in Islamabad.

When asked, he declined though to make any statement whether or not the World Bank had any concerns or apprehensions regarding the project, saying that the WB President Paul Wolfowitz was the right person to comment. (MdO)


World Bank approves 600 million dollar farmers' assistance package for India

From ANI Correspondent

New Delhi, June 27, 2007: The World Bank today approved one of its largest support packages to India with a 600 million dollar loan and credit designed to transform access to financial services for India's poorest farmers.

The Strengthening Rural Credit Cooperatives Project supports the Government of India's program to reform and revitalize the country's rural Credit Cooperative Banks (CCBs). These include some 31 State Cooperative Banks, 367 District Central Cooperative Banks and over 100,000 Primary Agricultural Credit Societies. The goal is to transform them into efficient and commercially viable institutions responsive to the financial service needs of India's poorer farmers, including small and marginal farmers.

Since the early 1990s, India has introduced impressive financial sector reforms that have resulted in increased competition, diversification, openness, and depth. Yet, India's rural population still has limited access to finance from formal sources, relying instead on extortionate money lenders.

The problem is particularly severe for small and marginal farmers, who are among the poorest of India's rural dwellers farming, respectively, less than one acre and between one and four acres of land. World Bank estimates suggest that some 87 percent of marginal farmers and 70 percent of small farmers have no access to credit from a formal financial institution.

"Better access to finance for India's rural poor is absolutely critical for higher rural growth, for reducing inequality, and ultimately, alleviating poverty," said Isabel Guerrero, World Bank Country Director for India.

"By providing small farmers with improved financial services, such as credit, savings, remittances and insurance, this project will play a significant role in helping India's rural poor benefit from growth opportunities," she added.

Twelve Indian states have signed up to the reform program. Potentially viable CCBs in those states will commit to a set of far-reaching legal, regulatory, governance and institutional reforms which will open the way to financial and operational restructuring.

In the process the CCBs will be recapitalized with grants to wipe out the accumulated losses, the value of members' capital will be restored, and a minimum capital to risk weighted assets ratio (CRAR) of 7 percent will be achieved.

The project will also provide technical assistance throughout the process to strengthen CCB governance, managerial and operational performance, and support the computerization for enhanced efficiency and transparency. CCB members, particularly small and marginal farmers, will receive training in areas such as financial literacy and a strong project focus on monitoring and evaluation systems, will include monitoring by CCB members themselves.

"The project will transform India's rural credit cooperative banks into efficient and commercially viable institutions that can provide financial services to the poorest farmers at affordable terms. "This will enable poor farmers to break out of the clutches of usurious moneylenders, diversify economic activities, increase incomes, and improve their livelihoods," said Priya Basu, World Bank Lead Economist and project team leader.

The 12 states which have signed the Memoranda of Understanding with the Government of India and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) include: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Harayana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

The loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has 20 years maturity, including a five year grace period.

The credit is provided by the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's concessionary lending arm and has 35 years to maturity and a 10-year grace period.


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