There is a growing need for implementing agencies/ administration to use a conflict sensitive approach in planning and implementing developmental policies (be it land policy/land and governance/water/forest rights, rural development, employment generation, housing schemes etc). In the absence of such an approach, instead of trust building governance initiatives have ended up fuelling conflict, be it the case of PRI election in the State of Jammu and Kashmir held in 2011 or the failure to effectively implement provisions of the PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act as a tool for conflict amelioration and transformation in Chhattisgarh and other states.
Across the country we are thus seeing that well intentioned governance measures, when not implemented in its true spirit especially in conflict prone region, only go on to fuel mistrust and resentment towards the administration. Meanwhile what we hear are stories of everyday resistance in accessing government schemes and the glaring gap between policies and actual implementation on the ground. These pressing concerns we hear about in the media or through first-hand experiences during visits to conflict affected regions raise some vital questions:
Undoubtedly we all are participants of the urbanising India which is growing in massive scale and pace and is developing to be the main contributor towards India’s GDP. However, the unpleasant dimension of this phenomenon is the ‘urbanisation of poverty’ hitting our cities and developing small and medium towns. Poverty has become synonym with deprived right to shelter, social and physical infrastructure, livelihood, security and even dignity of life. The vulnerable poor struggle to raise their concerns and demand their basic rights from the service providers, even when the country at present boasts of several ‘schemes for the urban poor’.
Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (SPARC) initiated the ‘Strengthening Civil Society Voices on Urban Poverty in India’ project with the support of the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation in the year 2011. The initiative has now spread to 34 cities across 11 states in India and is facilitating and synthesizing engagements at the city, state and national levels, bringing together the broad spectrum of civil society actors - organizations of the urban poor, local NGOs, research institutions, media and other coalitions in creating an enabling environment on urban poverty issues. Dialogues between the service providers and the civil society and urban poor communities are being strengthened as well as accountability of the governing bodies is being tracked and supported through this initiative.
A National Level Consultation that shall reflect on learning and lessons from the above initiative and facilitate active dialogues between varied participants from civil society, urban poor communities, academicians and service providers shall be held in Delhi in June 2013. This National Consultation will be a deliberation session on ‘Urban Poverty: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities’ and is being jointly organized by PRIA, SPARC and Forum of Informal Urban Poor Workers on the 20th and 21st of June 2013 in New Delhi at India International Centre.
Enrich this consultation with your participation under the three theme areas of: Redefining Urban Poverty, Municipal Governance and Urban Poverty and Schemes and Services for the Urban Poor: Issues and Challenges.
This report analyzes the strategies, impacts, and learnings from PRIA's project, Strengthening Gender Response of Panchayats in Rajasthan (SGRPR), in the context of India's National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and its aims for facilitating a system of decentralized health planning in rural communities. It examines some of the most critical issues taking place in the implementation of the scheme and how the strategies utilized in SGRPR have served to fill key gaps in its operationalization, resulting in building the capacity of local leaders and citizens to meaningfully participate in the development and implementation of decentralized health plans. The report concludes with a series of recommendations, drawn from these learnings, for how civil society can work more strategically with the state on ensuring the effective implementation of public policy.
PRIA (Society for Participatory Research In Asia), New Delhi
This synthesis document shares the highpoints of the experiences of PRIA by co-facilitating two writeshops, wherein a group of writers came together, shared, made collective sense and finally wrote, alone and with others, on significant issues of social change. It attempts to draw some learnings on writeshops, so that other practitioners can benefit from this experience, and experience the pleasure of writing and facilitating others to write.
PRIA (Society for Participatory Research In Asia), New Delhi
This paper is essentially three stories—of mobilizing young adolescent girls from disadvantaged communities in different parts of India to become adults with a voice, champions of social change when they grow up. The stories, told from different perspectives, describe the programmatic interventions carried out in three projects — Kishori Panchayats in Bihar (undertaken by CENCORED), Addressing Violence Against Dalit Women in Haryana (undertaken by PRIA) and the Vidya-Gyan scholarship programme in Uttar Pradesh (undertaken by Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra). The last section of the paper tries to tease out what facilitates and constrains efforts to mobilize adolescent girls.
HARC, Uttarakhand and Debika Goswami, PRIA, New Delhi.
“Empowering Rural Women of Alaknanda Valley, Uttarakhand through Farmers’ Cooperative” narrates the success stories of the rural women of Alaknanda valley in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand; these women, with the help of Himalayan Action Research Centre (HARC), have been able to create, control and manage an Agri-business Multipurpose Autonomous Cooperative which acts as a model of inspiration for many other women as well as organisations working on agriculture based livelihood programmes. The main objective behind documenting this participatory practice is to gain insights regarding the participation of the rural women in agriculture related micro enterprise through the formation of a cooperative and the associated processes of their social and economic empowerment. It also analyses the role of HARC as a supporting agency.
The process of documentation has jointly been done by HARC, Dehradun and Kaleshwar and Society for Participatory Research in South Asia (PRIA), New Delhi. The methodology that has been used here includes review of all secondary text, audio and video documentations available at the HARC offices and library, intensive discussions with the women members of the cooperative as well as the HARC team both in Dehradun and Kaleshwar, village level meeting with the SHGs associated with the cooperative in the area of intervention.
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Institutional Strengthening
Planning and Budgeting
