With increasing digitisation, changing consumption patterns and rising concerns about environment conservation posing novel challenges, fresh perspectives are needed to promote livelihoods of the poor. A new report by Access Development Services looks at these issues.
With changing times come new challenges. This is especially evident when issues such as livelihoods promotion of those living in poverty are concerned.
In a scenario where an estimated 51 percent (487 million out of the 950 million) people in the working age (15-64 years) in India are engaged in work, the task of providing meaningful livelihoods to the rest becomes truly massive. Societal transformations such as increasing digitisation, changing consumption patterns and rising concerns about environment conservation have further made the task complex.
These and other relevant issues have been addressed in this year’s State of India’s Livelihoods (SOIL) report, which was released on January 18 during the Livelihoods India Summit organised by Access Development Services in New Delhi. Through its eight chapters, the report amplifies and addresses some of these issues, while also exploring the efficacy of solutions being tried in face of the current challenges and how they can be addressed.
The report has been authored by 21 subject experts such as C Shambu Prasad, professor of strategic management and social sciences at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA); Ashok Kr Sircar, professor, Azim Premji University; Ranu Bhogal, director, Carm-Daksh; Sanjiv Phansalkar, director of VikasAnvesh Foundation, Pune; Suhela Khan and Dr Feroza Sanjana of UN Women, among others. This edition of the SOIL report has been edited by Phansalkar.
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While Prasad has looked at challenges and opportunities connected with the current movement to establish farmer producer organisations, Bhogal has done a detailed assessment of the graduation approach for enhancing livelihoods of the ultra-poor, and Phansalkar has delved into issues of livelihoods in the flood prone regions of the country. Also tackled in the report are issues such as women entrepreneurship and how it contributes to women empowerment, the potential benefits of claiming carbon offset from agriculture of small holders, and 10 years of the corporate social responsibility law and what it has contributed.
“In the first place, it is to be noted that unlike the ’70s and the ’80s, the problem of livelihoods is no longer merely the problem of hunger or of survival,” the report points out. “Except for a specific category of ‘scattered and disenfranchised people’, livelihoods problem is no longer one of ensuring that people get enough food,” it adds while talking about the elderly, persons with disability, mentally challenged people, particularly vulnerable tribal groups, and nomadic people, etc.
One of the key points addressed in the report is that for most people, life patterns and consumption habits have changed as a result of digital inclusion through internet connectivity and use of smartphones. With 71 percent people having access to smartphones, and public or shared facilities for digital inclusion reaching most village residents, the situation poses a major challenge and an opportunity. While the challenge lies in terms of accelerated rise in expectations, opportunities arise in the context of strengthening ‘digital public infrastructure’ including payment gateways, Jandhan- Aadhar-Mudra triad, rise of dominance of ‘direct benefit transfer’ (DBT) schemes, open network for digital commerce (ONDC), digital credit management systems, etc.
Another critical issue raised in the report is about certain hitherto neglected geographies such as the flood-prone areas, where high population density and restricted crop calendars pose major hurdles. Besides all this, also highlighted is the problem that the rural poor face in accessing markets as well as fixed and working capital needed for practising their livelihood.
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Among the solutions suggested in the report are providing consumption support to the ultra-poor households to enable them to acquire basic resilience, strengthening their essential entitlements, providing them an asset, and helping them with capacity building support to become productive as well as access the markets.
“In order to reduce transaction cost and acquire superior bargaining power and market presence, small producers need to be organised in farmer producer organisations (FPOs),” the report says. “Using regularly available funds under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to carry out a wide range of landscape activities has a substantially unexploited potential,” it adds.
The report further talks about the role that the private sector can play to bring the solutions to fruition.
“Much better contribution can be availed from corporate houses if they were to share their managerial expertise to solve the knotty problems in implementing these solutions,” it says. “It would be wonderful if corporate managerial talent can be coupled with their own as well as other development resources for enhancing the livelihoods of the poor and bringing cheer to their faces.”
The entire report is available here.
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The lead image at the top shows fishermen catching fish at a lake in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh. (Photo from Shutterstock)
