Helping People Help Myself

How's Delhi look like?
One of the impressions is like this.

On a Sunday evening, because people were waiting the moderate temperature avoiding the extreme heat during the day, the Lajpat Nagar market got so crowded with people and filled with full sounds of horns, voices and noises.

It's been 1.5 months since we started working on project briefs (project formulation documents) which will be signed by both parties - UNDP and Government of India (GOI). In our department, we have three new projects during 2008-2012 along with the same period of the 11th Five Year Plan by GOI.

UNDP is going to focus on, so called, lagged states whose Human Development Index is lower than other states, population consists of many of schedule castets (SCs) and tribes (STs), and institutional capacities are more limited than others to lift up the poor.

Three projects are:

1. Livelihood promotions to improve mechanisms and capacities of the community as well as the local governments (district and state). This project will include building inclusive monitoring mechanisms and applying some tools on national schemes and other poverty reduction programmes. In addition, it will establish PPCP (public-private-community partnerships) as a platform where multiple stakeholders can find mutual benefits.


2. Financial inclusion to provide more pro-poor financial products/services including savings, credit and insurance, particularly for disadvantaged groups such as women, SCs/STs and disabled people. This project will closely work with private financial companies, microfinance institutions (MFIs), community cooperatives and local banks such as NABARD to develop services and products and deliver to, historically excluded people.


3. Knowledge and advocacy to influence the state and national policies by demonstrating ground-level pilot projects and by exchanging good practices which have potentials to make a difference for the local people

I'm in Hyderabad, the state capital of Andra Pradesh to see current initiatives for the largest national poverty reduction scheme in India. It is a social welfare program to provide 100 days of work to the rural poor. More importantly, it is the first national program that mandates the social audit, an instrument to provide a channel for the poor to check the government's accountability and to enable the targeted people to claim their entitlements. For example, if the registered people did not get adequate number of days to work or if they didn't receive the accurate payment, they can claim their rights. On the ground, however, it is not simple as such.
Some people may not be aware their entitlements; some may not want to raise issues to avoid being threatened by local rich etc
Through the brief study and a few discussions, I felt that this social audit is still top-down because, principally, social auditors visit villages and report findings to the government. There is a form that registered people can submit their claims; nevertheless, I did not see sufficient empowerment of the villagers to fully utilize the mechanism or a solid system that the government seriously deal with the claim to solve problems.
Positively thinking, there are many opportunities to improve social audit and monitoring mechanism as a whole for, not only the NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) but for government schemes.

It is still the first day in Hyderabad so I would like to dig more.

This is a timing for project formulation at UNDP country office - it's still ongoing. Before the initiation of project identification and formulation, the country office established an agreement with the government of India, which led to United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) and Country Programme Action Plan (CPAP). Those framework and action plan include programme areas and target outcomes. For example, during the 5 years of the new UNDAF and CPAP, UNDP India will work on several themes - poverty reduction, governance, HIV and environment. My team is focusing on poverty reduction particularly microfinance, livelihood promotions, public-private-community-partnerships and monitoring&evaluations of national poverty reduction schemes.

In short, many things to do.... hiring local consultants to do research and assessment, brainstorming and developing some documents at UNDP office, interviews with local institutions and civil societies, a lot of discussions with government officials (Planning Commissions, Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of Housing and Urban Poor etc) etc

The field trip to Orissa was a part of assessment for a project formulation. I will be staying in Hyderabad for 4 days next week to discuss monitoring mechanisms and tools, to visit on-going project sites, and to discuss Andhra Pradesh government people.

Although our team's program budget is not huge, the scope and varieties of projects hit my core interests - very exciting to dig in!

Where is Orissa? It's one of the east coast states and on the middle belt facing Bay of Bengal. For its pupulation size, it ranks in the 11th among 28 states in India in spite of 36 million people.






Why in Orissa? They have good beaches (such as Puri), many historical places and beautiful Oriya dancers?
None of them, at least for this time.


In other aspects, Orissa is on the top 5 from the bottom of Human Development Indicators. So, I wanted to see the barriers and challenges of the people in villages. I went to one of the districts, Mayurbhanj, 5 hours drive from the state capital, Bhubaneshwar.


It's concentrated with some tribal groups and their livelihoods depend on primary economic activities - crop cultivation, animal husbandary, oil seeds etc. Their residents are made of mud and dried rice straw that looked very poor but actually a kind of airy and cool. Their fashion is very colorful and their smiles are really peaceful although I was sweating under the sun and fighting against the heat...





I, Orissa office staff and some NGO people went together. Even among India local staff, the language, Oriya (official state language) was a hardle. We waited translations by Orissa office staff or NGO staff. We found that some government projects are reaching this area; however, productive equipments, access to market, basic infrastructures (electronics, water and telephone) are very limited.




PRIs (Panchayat Raj Institutions) where elected villagers are working to, ideally raise villagers' voices to block and district level, are still not capable enough. We found a lack of incentives for those elected people, little payment, unclear roles and almost confusion - how to link with block officers to improve their villages, how claim their needs to line ministries which run some national/state welfare programs.


In these rural areas, even availability of NGOs are not sufficient. Who can build capacity of villages and promote their livelihoods? Not an easy answer but we will try.

Looked like a tribal woman who is holding a child in her arm. It's a construction site where there is one man is supervising 6 workers including the woman. It's about 38 degree celsius ( over 100 F) during the day. A pile of bricks in distance, that supposed to be put on the ground. No cart and no equipment and you have only one hand available in this heat and strong sunshine. How long one can work? how many bricks she can carry during a day? how much she will be paid?

This is one of examples anyone can see and it may be merely one of daily scenes in Delhi/India.
I saw a 5-year-old girl holding a baby at Delhi station in 2005. She cast a significantly strong stare on me with streching her arm with an open palm. That was, probably, the eyes I had ever seen, the most powerful coercion withoug a single word. The eyes might have exhausted all of tears and compromises for her sister.

There are many cases that a mother leverage her child, most likely a girl and force her to stand on a street or to sell something in a heavy traffic. You want to avoid giving incentives to make this small child work on a street; however, at the same time, there is an emotion that one may not be able to control. That is also one part of the reality in Delhi or in India.

Jumped in a autorickshaw, a three-wheel car, a common trasportation in Delhi and went to the office. The reality was not that smooth.

Some negotations came first. Those autorikshaws have meters but they don't use or sometimes meters don't function. You don't want to keep standing in dusty air with heat. But you have to be patient because you need to avoid spoiling these drivers with foreigner prices. It took 10-15 minutes in the morning at around 8:30am to make a deal :P

Recalling the first visit 2005, something has to be changed but not found yet on a street. Less cows becuase of this big street?

The office is at Lodi Estate, New Delhi. It's a kind of south part of New Delhi close to a big garden called Lodi Gardent where you can find some historical architectures, trees, flowers and people walking/jogging in the moring and evening. Basically and relatively, a peaceful area I admit.

Introducing to most of staff at the office or being taken around without remembering many of names.... but somehow, warm welcomed. It should be a good start.
Checking intranet and memorizing names, my first task :S
Sometimes not easy to recognize their English with strong accent, especially like an always-top-gear-speaker emphasizing on every single word. Maybe he wants to be called Michael Schumacher

It was back in 2005 that I landed this continent for the first time before starting my grad school life. What a caos - cows, people, bicycles, three-wheel cars (Auto Rikshaw), small local cars (Maruti or even Ambassador) and fancy Italian car are running or jamming all together. How can you cross this street without traffic lights? All of them didn't seem to stop even when you step in this packed street. Actually, they stopped when they almost touched my body - this is the safety, you feel. Many things I explored as a beginner backpacker from Tokyo.

Why I came back to India? That's the story I want to know during my life and it is one of the motivations to kick-off this simple blog "Helping People Help Himself"

Let's see how my life goes.......