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How A Tribal Village’s Digital Push Empowered Its Women

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 06:13:19 +0000

Mumbai: On January 31, 2019, at a joint sitting of both houses of parliament during the Interim Budget Session 2019, President Ram Nath Kovind noted that under the central government’s Digital India initiative, 116,000 villages in India have been digitally connected, 40,000 gram panchayats have WiFi hotspots and all gram panchayats together have 212,000 Common Service Centres.

An initiative in Palghar district, Maharashtra, is closing the gap between making such digital infrastructure available and the next step–providing digital literacy to people in rural areas, so they can directly access the government facilities and services that are available online. Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research (PUKAR), a Mumbai-based independent research collective under the Azim Premji Foundation, has been working to increase digital literacy and access to e-governance in the tribal villages of Maharashtra.

Palghar, the headquarters of the recently created Palghar district of Maharashtra, lies a little more than 100 km north of state capital Mumbai. The district is home to three ethnic groups–the Agri, the Kunbi (among the Other Backward Classes), and tribals. The first two are largely landowners, while the tribals, who comprise 35% of the population, work as agricultural labour. Each village in Palghar district has a separate hamlet for tribals, called a pada. These padas lack the infrastructure and services available to the rest of the village.

Through a project launched in rural Palghar district in 2014, PUKAR has been working to increase digital awareness and literacy, improve understanding of the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution, 1992–which empowered village-level self government institutions including the panchayats and gram sabhas–and train local youths as ‘e-sevaks’ to enable villagers to access government benefits via e-governance.

PUKAR’s objective was to help villagers secure the benefits due to them under various government welfare schemes and become more aware of their rights, with an emphasis on uplifting women, including increasing their participation in panchayats and gram sabhas.

Expanding digital literacy in tribal villages
The Palghar pilot project began in Bahadoli village, where 75% of the population is tribal. These villages, despite being only 80-100 km away from the metropolitan city of Mumbai, lack access to basic services available online, such as Aadhaar card correction or linking Aadhaar IDs with Permanent Account Numbers (PAN) for filing income tax returns, and accessing cooking gas subsidy and banking services, said Kiran Sawant, programme director, and Shrutika Shitole, associate director, PUKAR.

PUKAR set up a computer kiosk in each of the 14 villages in Palghar and trained youth ‘e-sevaks’ on how to enable villagers to access government facilities and schemes available on the Maharashtra government’s Aaple Sarkar (Your Government) e-governance website, from registering for Aadhaar cards and linking of Aadhaar with PAN, to availing government schemes. The kiosks are set up in the panchayat office and village residents can use them whenever they want.

PUKAR developed various print and video modules to train the e-sevaks, providing step-by-step information on accessing services online. These e-sevaks go door-to-door and run volunteer camps, while the panchayats provide basic facilities such as furniture and electricity.

As of October 2018, 64 e-sevaks were active in 31 villages where, along with trained innovators and coordinators, they had helped more than 30,000 villagers access information regarding government services. The goal is to make the youths and, in turn, the village, self-reliant.
These villagers have been able to gain access and information about more than 65 government schemes related to governance, farming, housing, subsidies and government certification. Villagers have saved a total of Rs 4.8 crore by accessing these kiosks and avoiding trips to the taluka office–about Rs 1,600 for each of the 30,000 users, more than the current monthly minimum wage of Rs 1,525 for a rural agricultural worker–according to reports by PUKAR.

PUKAR also conducts community service events in the target villages, and runs a cooperative called Unnati as well as an e-governance helpline. Any query on a governance-related issue is completed within 48 hours and the helpline reaches more than 80 villages.

A pressing concern in these tribal villages is access to satbara, or land records. This is especially relevant after the Supreme Court judgment of February 13, 2019, ordering the eviction of hundreds of thousands of indigenous forest dwellers and tribal households from forestlands across 16 states, including Maharashtra. Through the PUKAR project, 1,875 tribal residents across 31 villages in Palghar have been able to access their land records, a crucial step for obtaining exemption from eviction.

PUKAR’s methodology of community-based participatory action research has helped 360 women from self-help groups become digitally capable through training in information and communications technology (ICT). These women now pay their electricity bills and access their satbara records online. More than 500 schoolchildren have also received ICT training.

Empowering women
In the tribal village of Tandalwadi, IndiaSpend met six young women who received e-sevak training for more than two years. They are now ‘innovators’ who monitor other e-sevaks and help villagers form cooperatives such as Unnati.

These young women perform various tasks from getting permissions to hold awareness and registration camps from the panchayat to printing pamphlets, spreading awareness about and conducting camps. The e-sevaks also encourage women to contest panchayat-level elections and participate in the gram sabha.

Their assistance extends to carrying a photocopier from village to village. “The Xerox machine helps people save time and money.

Otherwise, for a few copies, a person has to travel all the way to the station. We also help them by printing out passport-size photographs, which saves them a lot of money. They use phones for online shopping too. Every house has at least one smartphone,” said Vaishali, an innovator, who gave only one name.

Manisha Naresh Guru, a housewife and gram sabha attendee from Tandulwadi, has an Aadhaar Card, PAN Card, a bank account in her own name and uses the ATM. She knows how to pay her electricity bill online, albeit finds it a little tedious. Manisha uses WhatsApp to keep in touch with her extended family and knows a few online shopping sites. She is also a member of the gram sabha in Tandalwadi and attends it regularly.

“Sabha mein accha lagta hai. Panchayat sabki baat sunti hai aur kaam kar ke deti hai. Koi kaam baaki nahi rehta,” she said, meaning, “I like attending the gram sabha. The panchayat addresses our concerns and does all our work, leaving nothing pending.”

Manisha’s companion Vandana adds that they now secure the gas subsidy, have a Voter ID card and have learnt about accessing satbara records and pension schemes from the e-sevaks. Manisha and Vandana are among the many tribal women in the village who have witnessed a change since the PUKAR Palghar project began. “Ye log humaare bacchon ko padhaate bhi hain,” Manisha adds, meaning the volunteers also teach village children.

Volunteers teach children, conduct camps and discuss topics such as the Constitution, which are all spillover effects of PUKAR’s work here.
The idea of digital literacy as an ‘empowering’ tool for women is a popular one as is evident from initiatives such as Digital Sakhi and Internet Saathi. Facebook recently announced an initiative, GOAL-Going Online As Leaders, to skill tribal girls from across India to become village-level digital young leaders for their communities.

PUKAR’s efforts have made this tool available not only to women but also to tribal and Other Backward Classes villagers.

“The villagers know who to approach now for any query,” a proud Vaishali added.

(Banerjee, a Master’s student of Political Science at M.S.U., Vadodara, is an intern at IndiaSpend.)

We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

Courtesy: India Spend

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Rural Households Have Just Enough Monthly Surplus To Buy A Ceiling Fan

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 06:17:24 +0000

Mumbai: Rs 1,413: That’s the average monthly surplus available to a rural Indian home, whether a farm or non-farm household–enough to buy a ceiling fan, but this money must be used to repay loans as well, according to new data from a national survey.

The poorest states by this measure were Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, with Andhra–which ranks 15 among 29 Indian states by per capita income–reporting a monthly surplus of Rs 95, 1/15th the national average and enough to buy only a litre of refined oil.

Drawn from the All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 (NAFIS), released in August 2018 by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), these data reveal enduring poverty in farm families, disparities between states and confirm growing inequality in India (documented here and here).

The average monthly consumption expenditure of rural Indian households–agricultural and non-agricultural–was Rs 6,646 in 2015-16 (agricultural year between July 1, 2015-June 30, 2016), compared to the average monthly income of Rs 8,059. That leaves Rs 1,413, the monthly surplus we referred to.

The average debt per indebted rural household in 2013 was Rs 103,000–almost equal to the price of a Royal Enfield Bullet 350–IndiaSpend reported on January 4, 2018, indicating the gulf in urban and rural areas, where 833 million or 68.8% of Indians live, most of them poor.

NAFIS, launched in 2016-17, covered 245 districts in 29 states including 40,327 households in tier-3 to tier-6 cities (population less than 50,000) “to get a holistic view of the rural financial landscape”, the report said.

While average monthly expenditure for all households in rural India was Rs 6,646, agricultural households–that is, households that received produce in excess of Rs 5,000 from agricultural activities–reported 15% more expenses compared to non-agricultural households (Rs 6,187).

Households in Punjab and Kerala have highest expenses
The average monthly consumption expenditure per household of Punjab (Rs 11,707) was the highest in India, nearly twice the national average of Rs 6,646, followed by Kerala (Rs 11,156).

Households in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reported lower consumption than the national average.

The median monthly per capita expenditure for Indian farm households was Rs 1,375, indicating that 50% of the households reported a monthly expense of less than Rs 1,375 per person per month, according to the report.

Source: NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17

The surplus in Andhra Pradesh (Rs 95)–cost of a litre of refined oil–was the least in the country, nearly 1/15th the national average of Rs 1,413.

Agricultural households with less than 0.01 hectares (ha)–less than a quarter of a football field–had an average monthly income of Rs 8,136, which was nearly half of those with land more than 2 ha.

“With an exception of households in the size class of less than 0.01 ha of land, the income surplus for households goes on increasing with the increase in the size of land possessed showing a sharp increase in the last size class of more than 2 hectares,“ the report said.

“Incomes vary based on factors such as the nature of irrigation and the type of crop,” Madhura Swaminathan, economist and chairperson of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, told IndiaSpend in an interview on September 16, 2018. “In our research, we found that in all villages nearly 20%-30% of small farmers, in some cases nearly 50%, made losses or negative incomes.”

Richest spend six times as much as than poorest
In agricultural households, the richest households spent six times as much as the poorest.

The average monthly consumption of households varied based on the decile class (poorest households are at one and the richest at 10 on a scale of 1-10). Of all households in rural India, consumption of households in the highest decile class, or richest, were 6.5 times higher than the lowest while their income was 20 times that of the lowest class.

Source: NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17

“Considering all households combined, the consumption expenditure of the households in the second decile was about 1.5 times that of the first decile, and that for the tenth decile was also roughly 1.5 times that of the 9th decile,” the report said. “This phenomenon was common for both agricultural and non-agricultural households and is reflective of the wide disparity in the status of the poorest as compared to the richest households.”

Agricultural households with more than 2 hectare (ha)–equivalent to nearly three football fields–of land spend 52% of the monthly expenditure on non-food items compared to 46% among those who owned less than 0.01 ha of land.

The richest households spent 54% of their income on non-food items while the poorest households’ spending on the same was nine percentage points less, showing that the poor spent most of the income on food.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

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732 Million Indians Have No Access To Toilet, At Risk Of Diseases: New Report

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 07:33:08 +0000

India, the world’s second-largest country by population, has the highest number of people (732 million) without access to toilets, according to a new report.

“When I got pregnant, it was hard to walk to the field to defecate as the path was not safe. My mother-in-law used to accompany me because I needed help sitting down and getting up.”–Maheshwari (25), Raichur, India. India has the highest number of people, 732 million, with no access to toilets and women and girls are among the worst affected.

The report by WaterAid, titled Out Of Order:The State of the World’s Toilets 2017, further stated that 355 million women and girls lack access to a toilet. If they were to stand in a line, the queue could circle the Earth more than four times.

Source: WaterAid
Note: Data as of 2015

India’s low ranking on the sanitation index is despite the changes brought by the government’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission. Launched in October 2014, it increased the country’s sanitation coverage from 39% to 65% by November 2017, according to government data. In this period, 52 million household toilets were built in rural India.

The cleanliness campaign has reduced the proportion of people defecating in the open by 40%, meaning more than 100 million people now use toilets, according to the WaterAid report.

India also ranks sixth among the top ten nations working to reduce open defecation and improving access to basic sanitation. The percentage of population without access to at least basic sanitation fell from 78.3% in 2000 to 56% in 2015, according to the report.

Diarrhoeal diseases kill 60,700 Indian children each year

Each year, 60,700 children under five years die from diarrhoeal diseases, the WaterAid report said.

Diarrhoea remains the second leading cause of death in Indian children under five years, killing an estimated 321 children every day in 2015, as IndiaSpend reported on July 29, 2017, based on a World Health Organization factsheet.

Hookworms, which can spread through open defecation, cause diarrhoea, anaemia and weight loss in women, according to the report. These problems are linked to low birth weight and slow child growth–38% of children in India under five are stunted, according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16, (NFHS-4) data.

Indian states with poor access to sanitation report high incidence of diarrhoeal diseases. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Chhattisgarh had the highest rate of mortality among children under five years of age, higher stunting (low height-for-age) rates and higher prevalence of diarrhoea due to poor sanitation, as IndiaSpend reported on April 26, 2017, based on NFHS-4.

States With Higher Access To Improved Sanitation
Had Lower Prevalence Of Anaemia, Diarrhoea

Access To Improved Sanitation: Top 5 States
State	Households with improved sanitation	Prevalence of diarrhoea*	Non-pregnant women who are anaemic**	Pregnant women who are anaemic**
Kerala	98.10%	3.40%	34.60%	22.60%
Sikkim	88.20%	1.50%	35.20%	23.60%
Mizoram	83.50%	7.60%	24.60%	26.60%
Punjab	81.50%	6.60%	54%	42%
Haryana	79.20%	7.70%	63.15	55%
India	48.40%	9.20%	53.10%	50.30%

Access To Improved Sanitation: Bottom 5 States
State	Households with improved sanitation	Prevalence of diarrhoea*	Non-pregnant women who are anaemic**	Pregnant women who are anaemic**
Jharkhand	24.40%	6.90%	65.30%	62.60%
Bihar	25.20%	10.40%	60.40%	58.30%
Odisha	29.40%	9.80%	51.20%	47.60%
Chhattisgarh	32.70%	9.10%	47.30%	41.50%
Madhya Pradesh	33.70%	9.50%	52.40%	54.60%
India	48.40%	9.20%	53.10%	50.30%

Source: National Family Health Survey 2015-16
*reported in two weeks preceding the survey **Among women aged 15-49 years

The tables above show the top five and bottom five states based on the percentage of households with improved sanitation, according to NFHS-4. States with higher percentage of improved sanitation have lower levels of anaemia among women (both pregnant and non-pregnant). These states also reported fewer cases of diarrhoea than the national average.

For example, Kerala, which had the highest percentage of households with improved sanitation (98.1%)–the national average was 48.4%–also had the lowest prevalence of diarrhoea (3.4%) and the lowest percentage of women with anaemia (22.6%).

Bihar, with only 25% households using improved sanitation, had the highest prevalence of diarrhoea (10.2%) and the highest percentage of anaemic pregnant women (58.3%).

For women, high risk of illiteracy, harassment

Apart from poor health, lack of toilets means that more than 1.1 billion women and girls globally get limited education and face harassment. In rural India, high dropout rates and non-enrolment among girls can be attributed to absence of toilet facilities, as IndiaSpend reported on July 19, 2017.

In rural India, 23% of girls have listed menstruation as the chief reason for dropping out of school. As many as 28% of them said they do not go to school during their period because they lack clean and affordable protection, as IndiaSpend reported on June 19, 2017.

Sanitation policies should cover the needs of those who are vulnerable, said Raman VR, head of policy at WaterAid India.

“Adolescent girls and women want facilities in which they can manage their periods safely and hygienically,” he said, “Pregnant women need easily accessible and usable toilets, and the elderly or people with disability require toilets with design features that help overcome the physical constraints they typically face.”

(Salve is an analyst at IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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