Professional Documents
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14.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit you should be able to:
14.1 INTRODUCTION
We have already discussed Livelihood and Sustainability in the previous unit, in
this unit we will be looking at the grassroots initiatives and their relevance in the
process of development.
To meet hopes and aspirations of people in the post- Second World War era,
development was a primary concern for most nations, especially the newly
independent Afro-Asian countries. Since per capita income in these newly
independent nations was low, they opted for programs which could provide them
a high growth rate in little time. There were many other listed priorities but
assumption was that once high growth rate is achieved the trickle-down effect
would ensure everyone getting benefit out of it. The policy makers relied on the
growth enhancement programs which would also lead to less unemployment,
194 * Written by Dr.Uzma Azhar, Independent Researcher, Delhi
poverty alleviation and other problems getting resolved. Economic growth and Grassroots Initiatives
economic development were used interchangeably. The reality soon became
manifest and in the post 1960s era economists from the developing world like
Amartya Sen, Samir Amin and Andre Gunder Frank criticized the Western world
dominated economic growth model which led to further growth of economic
inequalities in the society. Problems like poverty, unemployment, literacy, health
issues, etc. for the developing and underdeveloped world especially for their
marginalized population became huge challenges to deal with. The concept of
‘development’ itself has gone through lots of changes, now development means
along with economic growth, improvement in the social sectors (education, health,
literacy, gender equality, less conflicts on cultural issues, etc.), human
development (measures for all around growth of human personality) and
sustainable development (nature or environment friendly growth). For Gunnar
Myrdal (1960) development is an upward movement of the whole social system
by providing better living condition, viz. adequate food, better housing, improved
facilities for health, education and training, and the general improvement of
cultural facilities, which are all desirable.
Let us now see how grassroots initiatives are an important component of inclusive
development.
As we try and understand Indian informal sector which dominates the grassroots
initiatives mostly. We also need to know the section of population that comprises
it.
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Issues in Development Praxis NSS 55th Round Survey on Employment-Unemployment identified close to half
a billion people involved in the informal sector, with over 90% unregulated jobs.
According to a 2010 Oxfam report on “Social discrimination in India” Dalits
and Adivasis constitute the highest proportion of the population” in the informal
sector workforce, with 89% of them distributed across four poverty groups: the
extremely poor, poor, marginal, and vulnerable. Also, the report says, 85% of
Muslims in the informal sector “find themselves in lowest four income groups”.
The informal sector also includes 95%women working in it.
We are going to discuss Inclusive growth now which, by very definition, implies
an equitable allocation of resources with benefits accruing to every section of
the society.For inclusive growth and development we have to understand
initiatives from the lower strata of society creating innovations due to
necessity,hardships and challenges in their lives. Grassroots innovation may refer
to an informal environment where individuals may innovate to solve local
problems, produce and transform with indigenously available materials. They
may also involve non-banking and micro financing institutions which may include
helping with local products like bamboo, coconut, arecanut cocoa, spices’
plantations and their harvesting, processing, packaging, sales, etc.
Grassroots innovations can also include socially inclusive processes which may
be innovative at their source.
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2) What does inclusive growth imply? Grassroots Initiatives
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The one who is at the local (bottom level) must be given freedom and means to
exercise their power and plans with less bureaucratic interventions from the
top.The ‘bottom’ up’ approach has been found to be a more successful approach
to facilitate faster development leading to decentralization of power.With regard
to grassroots innovations,the centralized top-down approach is less participatory,
more instructive and too bureaucratic in nature.
Figure: 1: The Top Down approach showing power and authority flowing from
the Central /National government to state to district to panchayat level
(centralization). Bottom’Up approach shows power and authority flowing from
local panchayat/district to state to national government (decentralization) 197
Issues in Development Praxis
National Government
State Government
Recent years have seen the shift from the highly centralized system towards the
decentralized system. Besides outlining their functional activities,Constitution’s
(73rd Amendment) Act, 1992 provided constitutional status to the local bodies
in rural areas. In Article 243(6) of the Constitution, the entrustment of functions
to the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) are mentioned, that the area of
development and planning would be the primary role of Panchayats, and
implementation of economic development and social justice programs are to be
the focal points of all their activities.
Lately, Government of India has been making efforts for promoting cash-less
economy and to provide the facility of seamless digital payment to all citizens of
India, especially the poor covered under various schemes in a convenient, easy,
affordable, quick and secure manner.
And since, we are taking about micro enterprises’ here, if we look at the
distribution of enterprises’ categories through urban and rural through data
released by Government of India in its Micro, Medium and Small enterprises
(2018-19), we see micro enterprises dominating in both urban and rural areas.
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Grassroots Initiatives
Distribution of Enterprises Category Wise (Numbers in lakh)*
*Source: Government of India Micro, Medium and Small Enterprises Annual Report 2018-19
The numbers across urban and rural show how the informal sector through micro
enterprises’ is at the core of grassroots’ initiatives’.
Check Your Progress II
1) What is top-down approach?
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199
Issues in Development Praxis Largely engaged in the agricultural and tertiary sectors, self-employed women
can be grouped as: (a) home-based producers: those who weave fabric etc., make
pottery, bidi, agarbati, papad and produce ready-made garments, spin yarn and
do embroidery work; (b) small vendors and hawkers, selling vegetables, fruits,
and other household items from their carts or makeshift stores; and (c) providers
of services’: manual laborers such as agricultural laborers, construction workers,
contract laborers, laundry and domestic workers. They also include rag pickers
and workers who gather forest products (SEWA, 1995, p. 1,quoted in Datta 2003).
Against the overall backdrop of women’s labor in India, the case of self-employed
women has to be examined. According to an estimate there are 314 million people
in the workforce, ninety million of whom are women. Most, i.e. almost 90 per
cent of these women are employed in agriculture and related activities, which
include work in informal household industries, petty trades and services, and
construction. There are no government agencies or procedures to determine wage
structure, working hours, working conditions, grievance management, or
retirement and other benefits for self-employed women in the informal sector.
Employers are at liberty to set parameters in the informal sector, there are no
standards, contracts or recourse for women workers when they are mistreated or
wages promised them are unpaid. (Datta 2003)
With regard to support for women’ we have a lot of women’s groups working on
the grassroots’ initiatives’ promoted under Development of Women and Child in
Rural Areas (DWCRA), Womens’ Development Programs (WDP), Mahila
Samakhya, Water and Sanitation Board, Bank Credits (self-help groups), Dairy
projects, Forestry,Handicrafts, etc. mainly at government initiatives, etc.
Maharashtra faced its worst drought in more than 40 years last year. While nothing
can ultimately wring water from desiccated land, Swayam Shikshan Prayog
ensured that more than 72,000 women were empowered to effectively navigate
the conditions. For years, the organization has promoted sustainable agriculture,
enabling women to obtain land and engage in a form of mixed-crop, organic
farming that uses little water. For many women, it gave them economic
independence and allowed them to build cooperatives with like-minded women.
14.4.1 Nazdeek
Formed in 2012, Nazdeek is a legal empowerment organization for Adivasi (tribal)
womenvolunteers, who identified and reported cases of maternaland infant health
care violations occurring in teaplantation areas in Sonitpur District, Assam (as
part of their End Maternal Mortality Now Project). Through this initiative, women
could report violations through text message, using numeric codes corresponding
to specific locations and types of violations. Like the CEGSS project,the cases
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Grassroots Initiatives
were mapped onto a publicly accessibleUshahidi platform (endmmnow.org).
Locations included facilities run by tea plantation managers,which are legally
required to provide basic healthcare to their workers; as well as public
facilities,such as hospitals; Anganwadi centers (communitycenters providing
health and food services to womenand children); and ration shops. To
implementthe project, Nazdeek worked with a local organizationand an
international partner.
14.4.2 SEWA
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was formed in 1972 in
Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Its membership has grown rapidly from 30,000 in 1996 to
318,527 in 2000 (SEWA, 2000) since its inception. Membership stands at 205,985
in the state of Gujarat alone.
Two-thirds of SEWA’s members are based in the rural areas. The organization
crosses lines of religion and caste, as one-third of the members are Muslim and
another third are scheduled castes. SEWA organizes women into cooperatives
and operates like a trade union. Apart from the work,it also provides various
services such as banking, child-care, legal aid, and vocational instruction. SEWA
defines self-employed women to include workers who earn a living through their
own small businesses or wage labor and do not receive regular salaries like formal
sector workers.
SEWA set up by Ela Bhatt (since 1972), has transformed itself from a trade
organization of poor, self-employed workers to a labor, cooperative and women’s
movement, which has contributed significantly to the economic and social well-
being of large numbers of women and households. SEWA focuses on women’s
struggle to address these issues. Its support to self-employed women is geared
toward achieving remuneration, career prospects, and skill development in sectors
where these are marginal or nonexistent (Varma et al., 1996, p. xxv). Focusing
on the idea of self-help, SEWA also strengthens women’s bargaining power, offers
new alternatives, and succeeds in organizing women to enter the mainstream of
the economy
14.4.3 SAHAYOG
In 1992, SAHAYOG was established, awomen’s health and rights organization
based in Uttar Pradesh (UP). SAHAYOG is composed of approximately12,000
poor, rural women leaders from Dalit,Muslim, and tribal communitieshas a long-
standingcollaboration with community-based organizations(CBOs) throughout
UP and with a grassroots women’s forum (MahilaSwasthyaAdhikarManchor
MSAM). In 2011, the government initiated a scheme to ensure free comprehensive
maternity care, and the UP state government requested that civil society
organizations monitor its implementation independently. In 2012, SAHAYOG
launched a project to use interactive voice response to document health
providerdemands that women make informal payments for maternal health care
services they were entitled to receive free of charge. A two-district pilot version
of the project was evaluated in 2013, and then the project was refined and scaled
up to four districts in 2014.
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Issues in Development Praxis 14.4.4 MNREGA
Government led grassroots’ initiative, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is the world’s largest works-based
social protection scheme which has covered all of India since 2006 and aims at
enhancing livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of
guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult
members volunteer to do unskilled manual work (Kaur et al., 2017). The scheme
ensures social inclusion and strengthens Panchayati Raj (local government)
institutions,it also provides improved productive assets and livelihood resources
in rural areas, proactively. The assigned projects may include public works linked
to natural resource management (mostly watershed-related projects), improving
conditions of assets for vulnerable sections of society, and building common and
rural infrastructure.
MNREGA’s key characteristics of the program are:
employment for all rural households (one member per household) who are
willing to work (100 days/year),
free registration with a job guaranteed within 15 days of application,
fixed minimum wage with weekly payments,
at least a third of employees must be women.
MNREGA implementation program in a country with over 833 million people
living in rural areas requires a massive effort. It comes under Ministry of Rural
Development (MoRD) which is responsible for ensuring the adequate and timely
delivery of resources and funds to the states and for reviewing, monitoring and
evaluating the use of these resources.
In the recent past, 2020 migration of laborers due to pandemic has led to renewed
interest in MNREGA for ensuring rural employment for the marginalized poor.
MSME SAMADHAAN portal, since its launch on i.e. 30th October 2017, MSEs
have filed 18509 applications related to delayed payments. Apart from cases
where delayed payments were settled mutually between seller and buyers, 4682
applications were converted to cases by 11.6.2019.
Porras Ina and Kaur, Nanki (2018) India’s Mahatma Gandhi Guaranteed
Employment programme, International Institute for Environment and
Development, London.
3) SEWA organizes women into cooperatives and operates like a trade union.
Apart from the work, it also provides various services such as banking,
child-care, legal aid, and vocational instruction. SEWA defines self-
employed women to include workers who earn a living through their own
small businesses or wage labor and do not receive regular salaries like formal
sector workers.
REFERENCES
Banerjee N.K.(2016) Grassroot Empowerment(1975-1990):A Discussion
P a p e r h t t p s : / / w w w. c w d s . a c . i n / w p - c o n t e n t / u p l o a d s / 2 0 1 6 / 0 9 /
GrassrootEmpowerment.pdf accessed on 18th April,2020
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24905392?Search=yes&resultItemClick=accessed
on 11th June, 2020
Porras Ina and Kaur, Nanki (2018) India’s Mahatma Gandhi Guaranteed
Employment programme, International Institute for Environment and
Development, London.
Health and Human Rights ,Vol. 20, No. 2, SPECIAL SECTION: Human Rights
and the Social Determinants of Health pp. 169-184 .
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26542069 accessed on 13th May, 2020
http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/39239/1/Unit-1.pdfaccessed on 13th
May, 2020.
https://msme.gov.in/sites/default/files/Annualrprt.pdfaccessed on 12th June, 2020.
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