Making a difference
India's population recently reached one billion - making India the only country besides China to have so many people to feed. Economic
growth has generally been good and India has been, so far, very successful in matching food production to its rising population but there are signs
that increases in yield are beginning to fall away.
Future food production in India will therefore have to come, in part, from areas that are marginal and from
farmers who are already living on the edge of extreme poverty and are only able to work the land part-time.
The dryland areas have largely failed to benefit from the Green Revolution and poverty is particularly common amongst those who are dependent on common property resources, such as grazing land and forests. In the past, when forests in India were still productive, tribal people were able to derive up to 40% of their incomes from forest products. With the degradation of these forests this is no longer possible and a large proportion of the local people have to migrate to distant towns to spend up to five months of the year away from their villages looking for work. Labouring jobs provide a reasonable income but away from the confines of their villages the vulnerability of these people leaves them open to frequent ill treatment and abuse.
And yet rural output and greater empowerment for the poor can be achieved but, to achieve this, a shift from subsistence agriculture to a diversification in livelihoods is required. Mike Wilson, Senior Natural Resources Advisor for the UK Department for International Development in India has witnessed the increase in productivity that can be achieved in these semi-arid, rainfed areas. 'At the start of these projects, many areas looked like the back of the moon - there was no trees, the soil was gone - it was absolutely desolate. But recently I've been back to areas where there is now emerging forest with pheasants coming into land, to villages that are entirely covered by soil conservation measures. New irrigation schemes are also in place and new varieties of crops, successfully bred using participatory breeding techniques, are being grown.' But, besides the physical benefits of these new measures, the increase in social benefits has also been observed, 'People are now much very much more confident and are able to articulate to the outside world their problems and aspirations. The community are able to come together and work very effectively in groups which, they have seen for themselves, is far more powerful than individuals trying to achieve things alone.'
Capturing people's strengths, especially the strength of groups, has been the starting point for DFID's livelihood's approach in India, as elsewhere. The projects have built on the capital assets of the poor: assets such as their skills, knowledge and ability to work and the wide range of natural resources from which livelihoods are derived. Each person and each community possesses different assets but the challenge lies not in setting priorities but in achieving a balance of equity so that every individual is involved in some part of the project's activities. And, to provide these people not just with the training but in the confidence to plan for their future.
DFID's rural development programme for India remains its largest with an investment of £200 million. However, the Western India Rainfed Farming Project alone aims to improve the livelihoods of 675,000 rural dwellers by 2005. A further phase budgeted at £20 million was agreed in 1998. The investment is huge but so is the challenge: 70% of people in many areas currently earn, as a household, less than £200 a year. Women are up at four o'clock in the morning till ten o'clock at night with up to six hours a day spent in collecting water and fuelwood - activities that are essential but do not generate an income. With the introduction of modern technology and training for activities such as improvement of water management and cash enterprises, time spent on domestic chores can be diversified to provide greater productivity and efficiency. From training in technical skills from budding or grafting fruit trees to building dams, many have also acquired social and institutional skills. Villagers have been able to form groups, manage savings and credit institutions and even form a team to travel hundreds of kilometres away from the project village to spread the word, start a new initiative and provide confidence for others to do the same. As Mike Wilson of DIFD concludes, 'This has tremendous implications because one of the problems with rural development has always been, who is actually going to do it. Government hasn't got the staff or if they do have the staff, they don't have the right disposition or training. And yet here we have a very, very powerful motivated labour force who can do things at absolutely minimal cost and do it with tremendous enthusiasm.'
