Rozgar Dhaba—a Panchayat Resource Center
Leveraging Technology to develop
skills of rural youths and mitigate migration
1. Context & Situation:
Many of us who have
rural background and at present working in cities could easily understand the
situation of employment opportunities in rural areas. I am from a small village
called Chausa in Buxar district of Bihar
and have gone through good institutions,
and technical professional course, presently working in New Delhi and at
present earning better, staying in a better accommodation and happy with the
living standard, but this not may be the case of many rikshawalas ,
constructions workers and many daily wage workers , who have been migrated
from rural or tribal background, they have to survive with average wage of 200-250 per day, have to
live in highly unhygienic unauthorised slums, probably with one time unhygienic
food, without any sanitation facility, without any health services and with
name tag of “Sehar ki gandagi”. But the
big question is why this all? Why and how after been migrated I am able to cope
up in a better way and able to survive better in a city, but not these
rikshawals and other people from the same category? Three probable reasons
could be my family financial status is quite good; I have gone through
professional institute and have received proper guidance from the educational
institute to get a better job here in the city, which may not be in the case of
daily wage workers in cities. But again here the question is why daily wages
migrants can’t be skilled/trained one? A report from World Bank[1]
states that migration from rural Indian context is about 26% and 78% of this
migration is within the states where as 22% total migration is out of the
migrant native state and following would be the key reasons on which this paper
would be discussing and suggesting a development model to strengthen Governance
system at Panchayat level to mitigate migration from rural India:
1. 1. Limited Livelihood
Opportunities with rural people: Last census report of India in 2011 unveils that
counted India’s population is 121 billion and out of this nearly 70% of
population lives in rural context, but surprisingly for the 70% population,
income/livelihood opportunities are mainly in the form of:
- 1.1.1 Practicing agriculture
- 1.1.2 Accessing government programmes
- 1.1.3 Daily wage labour work
But with all these
options , various de-motivating factors exists at ground level and thus makes
rural community ( especially youths) to migrate to near by cities or to metro
cities of other states and survive at the cost of their life and dignity.
1. 1. 1. Practicing Agriculture:
Non-profitable
agriculture: At present agriculture (especially in case of small and marginalised
farmers) is seems to be non-profitable with high cost of input (input cost in
agriculture is about 70-72% of the total income from agriculture[2]).
Concept of sustainable agriculture/organic farming is still far behind and its
feasibility (mainly with small & marginalised farmers from northern &
central belt of India) is quite difficult because of knowledge on organic
practices and costly and tedious organic certification process. Also in most of
the cases for farmers “more production” is important rather than giving
consideration for soil health. A report from Greenpeace India unveils that there
is constant increase in the agriculture input-fertilisers (The average crop response to fertiliser
use was around 25 kg of grain per kg of fertiliser during 1960s, the said value
has reduced drastically to 8 kg/kg only during late 1990s[3]),
where as production has become stagnant or has gone down and thus with increase
in input cost investment has increased and profit from agriculture has gone
down and is one of the key reason for farmers suicide in many of the
agriculture belts of India.
Lack of technological
awareness: Another aspect which has made agriculture a non-profitable in rural
India is “poor knowledge” on modern technology applications in agriculture to
gain more with less investment. On hand
institutions like KVK and NABARD has been set-up to aware and support rural
farming community on technical and financial aspect, where as on the other hand
Government of India (GoI) and other different technical
institutions/universities and NGOs have
introduced systems like generating knowledge and awareness amongst community
through mobile sms/Kissan call center, agriculture related programmes ( Krishi
Darshan[4]
on Doordarshan etc) on television, agriculture based community radio
initiatives in many parts of India, but overall the entire scenario
literacy and skill of usage of
technology has missed , and thus in spite of having various technical setups to
promote profitable agriculture still many small and marginalised farmers prefer
to have daily wage work than practicing agriculture[5].
Lack of knowledge &
skills on access to finance: to One more
key aspect, which has hindered the profit of agriculture is the access of financial
support to the farmers (mainly for small and marginalised) and if we do
diagnosis of it , again we will find that on one hand there good number of financial institutional( In rural banking
of India there are 14475 rural banks in the country of which 2126 i.e. 91% are
located in remote areas[6])
set-up in the rural context of India in
the form of Grameen banks, Cooperatives , central banks-rural divisions, NABARD
etc, where as on the other hand from government different subsidy and loan
policies/programmes are there for the farmers through rural financial
institutional set-ups, but still an estimated 500-600 million rural population
do not have bank accounts and a good percentage of those who have bank accounts
are still not able to understand the complexity of availing financial services
for the agriculture sector and base reason behind this is that there are
structural and policy setups for financial services, but a set-up/system at
rural community level to literate people or to generate/spread knowledge on accessing financial services is still
lacking and thus in spite of entire bigger system of financial set-ups still an
estimated credit demand in rural India is about 133000 crores [7].
In the recent past ATM machines and kiosk banking has also introduced in rural belt,
but again knowledge & skill to operate ATMs [8](important
is considering access by poor and marginalised) are the big hindrances.
With all the above
concerns agriculture-a key source of livelihood for the rural community is
losing its importance amongst the community and thus now farming communities
are also migrating to cities.
1.1.2 Accessing Government
programmes: There are government programmes like MGNREGA[9]
(that too an option of unskilled work), but is limited to 100 days of work to a
Household , not to an individual and has many issues in terms of delay in
payment, less wages etc. In a survey by
Caritas India[10] in
Madhya Pradesh (104 villages of 7 districts-Indore, Ujjain, Umaiya, Shivpuri,
Khandwa, Shehore and Jhabua) and Rajasthan ( 43 villages of Sawaimadhopur,
Ajmer & Banswara) in 2012 unveils that
still 48% of the households in the said districts villages do not have access
to MGNREGA i.e still they do not have the job cards to avail work under
MGNREGA. One of the significant objectives of the NREGA is to arrest
out-migration of unskilled, landless labour force from the rural areas to urban
areas by ensuring up to 100 days of wage employment within their native
jurisdiction so that these 100 days guaranteed wage employment can be
judiciously and rationally utilized by the landless peasants during lean and
distress seasons. 70% of the families baseline surveyed opined that there is
migration from their respective village to towns/cities in search of job.
Almost fifty percent of the HHs have expressed that migration is taking place
from their villages. Contrary to the general perception of better wages upon
migration, 70 percent of the beneficiaries revealed that the migration is only
for just wages and not for any better wages. This implies that there is a
distress migration for just minimum wages to eke out the livelihood and for
survival rather than for better wages.
At present government has introduced payment of MGNREGA work through
post office/banks and one can see the status of MGNREGA work details of their
villages on its website, but here poor or Base of Pyramid (BoP) rural context
have highly poor financial and technical skill, thus again in spite of have
good systems, somewhere without a system of strengthening knowledge and skills
to access the benefits, options for rural people are limited.
On the other hand there
are there are other government programmes for income generation in the rural
areas but again the difficulty is in the decentralised system of functioning in
India knowledge of development/income generation programmes are higher at
policy makers where as it is limited at the community level also at Panchayat
level hardly there is any public system which could generate /train/ on
knowledge of government programmes. Many times information on government
programmes ends up with the pasting a note on the panchayat notice board and in
most of the cases hardly such information’s been shared in the Panchayats and by the Panchayats, on contrary if we see
now Panchayats are moving towards e-panchayat
/e-governance system with connectivity and accessibility to internet , but
again the difficulty is in the form of knowledge and skills on the usage of ICT
( Information Communication & Technology) by the community to know about livelihood options and to generate income from the same is the
big question mark. Also other practical situations in the form electricity,
availability of ICT technical person in the villages are concerns to think on!
From the above we can
observe that in spite of having good government programmes of income generation
or employment guarantee , lack of knowledge on the programmes amongst community and difficulty in its
execution and reaching to the community creates a space gap between livelihood
based government programmes and community and thus migration takes place!
1.1.3 Daily wage labour
work: Another
key source of livelihood for the BoP from rural context is daily wage labour
work, but interesting facts about it is that the recent boom in
construction/real estate sector in A & B class[11]
cities of India made most of the unskilled daily wage labourers in these cities
in excitement of getting 200-250 INR per day in compare to 100-130 INR per day
in their natives, but these daily wage labourers ending their search at
construction sites are hardly aware about the difficulties of living in cities
and once left their villages, difficult to get back, because of family and
societal pressure to earn and send back money to their family members staying
in villages. Worst part in this entire circle of wage labour is that through
out the life a wage labour is wage labour and hardly able to become a skilled
worker, this also creates impact on their future generation to be a wage labour
only!
1.2.Limited scope for
skill development of rural youth: In terms of
skill development of rural youths there is hardly any option of skill based
trainings/education are available for the rural people (mainly youths). A
report on skilled workers under unorganised sector confirms 26 million people
engaged in unorganised sector are mainly the migrant workers from rural
India and of total workers engaged in
unorganised sector that there are only 2%[12]
of youths ( under 35 years of age) are skilled youths. This scenario of skilled
and unskilled rural community clearly indicates that either the government
programmes or the individuals interest in income generation is mere limited to
income generation only and through any source ( no concern of being skilled), This results in youths and
their future generation end-up mostly with the unskilled daily wage worker and thus they have only option left out is
migrating to near by or metro cities and get engaged in to construction labour
work or rikshaw ( tri-cycle) puller, house servants or other similar type daily wage work settled
in unauthorised illegal slums and get the
name tag of Sehar ki Gandagi (
squalor of cities)! Important aspect need to be noticed here is that many
of these unskilled labourers could be turned up in to small-scale entrepreneurs
in their own local context and would have been providing various technical and
no-technical skilled services to the local community and must be generating
employment opportunities for many other youths; provided they would have been
properly guided and trained on locally possible income generating skilled work. Also probably this would be the best option
where youths been trained locally on the locally possible skilled trades (knowledge and practice based rather than
literature based) to initiate entrepreneurship or get engaged locally , and
thus this would reduce migration pressure on cities and give the rural
community a life with family, with their own land and with dignity! Government
of Rajasthan with its programme RMOL ( Rajasthan Mission of Livelihood), the recently initiated central government
programme NRLM ( National Rural Livelihood Mission) and National Policy on
Skill Development (In India) talks
about and includes skill development of
rural youths , but here again the biggest hurdle is accessibility of all these
schemes by the community. We can also understand this thing in the form that
there are skill development programmes/platform for the rural youths and there
are unemployed and unskilled rural youths , but there is no common platform to
bring both programmes and youths together and thus on one side various
programmes from government are keep on coming where as migration on the other
hand is keep on increasing from rural to urban context!
1.1.3
Advanced communication technology in rural
India: With 2013 rural India has also
grown with technological interventions mainly to upgrade skills and share
information through internet and mobiles. A study report on usage of technology
(in the form of usage of computer and mobile) by rural population states that 4.6% of Rural India population have access to
Internet ( which has grown 7.2 % in last two years), where as 39% of rural
India population uses mobile for communication[13].
These are the bigger technological changes in rural India which makes them
connect through cites and even the entire globe? Why cant’ this communication
technology would be used for mitigating migration and generating better livelihood options for
the rural population ( mainly the deprived section) in their own villages and
for 365 days in a year?
This is one
of the important aspect in the rural context that , technology in the form of
mobile, internet, DTH[14]
( Direct To Home) television is existing and emerging at large scale, but the
usage of it is mainly limited with entertainment rather than gaining knowledge
and as a source of income generation. Infect in villages keeping mobile has now
become the part of life and is also a status symbol. Keeping mobile also incurs
expanses and on average per month expense of mobile holders in rural India is
about 100-150 INR[15] , this
in turn is an extra expenditure for the rural poor and has hardly any role in
generating income.
1.2 Inference of above
discussion:
From the above
discussion on rural livelihood scenario it is quite clear that in the rural
context, government has various livelihood based development programmes,
community has its own resources in the form of agriculture and allied sector,
community has now access and ease in usage of ICT (Information Communication
& Technology) for their day to day life happenings and also community do
not wants to migrate if locally they could have better livelihood options. The
hurdle is visualised in the form of a common platform to bring programme ,
community and usage of existing local
ICT to generate locally possible sustainable livelihood options through
knowledge and skill development of community at local level and on regular
basis and in turn it will change the
community attitude towards migrating to cities in search of livelihood!
2. A solution to mitigate migration through Rozgar Dhaba as Panchayat
Resource Centers (PRC): With the above said status
and possibility of usage of Information and communication based technology to
ensure sustainable livelihood options in the rural and tribal pockets of
Rajasthan (Ajmer and Banswara) Caritas India has intervened with a livelihood
model through its LIFE[16]
(Livelihood Initiation For Empowerment) project in the form of Rozgar Dhaba
Centers! At present 6 Rozgar Dhaba centers are in operation (4 at Ajmer & 2
at Banswara).
2.1 Concept of Rozgar
Dhaba :
In today’s world “information on livelihood and on time” is vital for everyone
either some one is staying in urban big cities or some one is living in small
interior village. At present we see several centers, agencies, and websites providing
information to urban people on urban based livelihood. Some of the well known
websites are as:
But hardly there is any
agency or center which provides information on development programmes, rural
livelihood options and for skill development of youths for rural community.
Rural people have only source in the form of Panchayat, but at most of the
places Panchayat operations are inactive in terms of providing information’s.
Considering the above Rozgar Dhaba has emerged as the concept of Information
Center providing information on various rural livelihood options and is only
working for the poor people and the sustainable livelihood options related with
them in the form of skill upgradtion, providing access to government schemes,
and promotion of low cost sustainable agriculture ,
Objective of Rozgar
Dhaba:
- Securing livelihood of the rural poor and marginalised youths
through strengthening the channel of information dissemination on
employment availability and other livelihood sources.
- Increased livelihood opportunities for the underprivileged youth
with a focus on more entrepreneurs.
Base of Rozgar Dhaba: Rozgar Dhaba is an
internet and mobile technology based livelihood promotion center being
established in rural context in the form of Panchayat Resource Center to
technically assist Panchayats in knowledge and skill building of community on
various livelihood based government programmes. It is a center at Panchayat
level where simply community is being trained on internet and mobile usage to
access government schemes and is also used to train rural youths on various locally
possible skills and also work as a portal for rural youths to place them in the
near by areas private and public firms.
Focus of Rozgar Dhaba: It focuses on farmers,
school dropout and illiterate youth (both male & female) in the concerned
villages to secure their livelihood by building skills through vocational
training, generating awareness on government schemes and programmes through IEC
(Information Education & Communication)
material and personal interaction ( in the form of guidance and counselling),
establishing and strengthening linkages with PRI and other local institutions
for the growth and development of the community. Rozgar Dhaba empowers the
community by building skills in various trades to help them build livelihood on
their own.
Rozgar Dhaba thus is
making a movement in the country through the associating/implementing partners
to reach out to the un-reached and vulnerable sections to tap the hidden
potential of youth who are branded as redundant, waste, useless and how best it
can recycle them into productive human capital as opportunities galore in the
globalized economy.
Facilities at Rozgar Dhaba: At present following
facilities are available at the Rozgar Dhaba
·
It providers information (audio-visual &
printed) electronic on self-employment, employment, agriculture, livestock
rearing and income generation activities) for all targeted groups.
·
IEC (
Information Education & Communication) material & Forms are available at the
centre to give handholding support to the villagers to apply and access the
benefits of the schemes.
·
Weekly
film-shows based on livelihood generation and other project issues would be
imparted.
·
Information Communication & Technology (ICT)
services are available through internet for villagers for updated information’s
and services.
Skill development:
- Community based trainings on usage of mobile to accesses government
schemes ( mainly knowing about government programmes, its submission of
application and availing its benefits) and on various other services like
how to call Kissan call center ( & what information could be gathered
from it) is being given on regular day to day basis. Demonstrations of
such calls are being done at the Panchayat level Rozgar Dhaba center
(especially when community comes to watch television during evening time)
·
For the unemployed people it caters in terms of
providing initial job information/notices and also about different institutes
from where they can get training before starting their job
- Evening and early morning skill development classes through recorded ( through laptop) skill development trainings on locally
possible income generation trades (like mobile repair, agriculture motor
mechanic, motor cycle repair, tractor repair, petty shop establishment,
beautician, craft ) is being given to the village youths (both male and
female)
Financial support:
- Establishes linkages with NABARD, KVK and local banks and creates a platform
for sharing and linking rural youths with technical and financial support
to be an entrepreneur. It caters for those people who want to start their
own small business i.e. who want to be self-employed in terms of providing
information about different banks which can give them financial support in
terms of loan, institutes which can provide them training and basic
information about the job they want to start.
·
It supports the concept of women empowerment in the
form of initiating the concept of Self Help Group (SHG) and other skill
development initiatives in the form of tailoring and other gender (female)
related courses. At present 3 women manages business initiatives ( Poultry
farm, tailoring center and a restaurant) are in operation in 3 villages of
Ajmer through Rozgar Dhaba
Assistance
support:
·
It caters to the physically handicapped people in
terms of providing information to them about several government schemes for
physically handicapped people and assisting and helping those to get benefit of
that schemes. Along with that it will also provide them proper support for
self-employment.
·
It also provides counselling to the community on
different livelihood options.
·
Assistance in filing RTI ( Right To Information) as
apart of service or complain redressial mechanism
·
Assisting old age people in terms of providing
information on old age pension, travel concession, low bank interest rate etc.
Agricultural support:
Rozgar Dhaba also work
as the center for disseminating information (and probably implementation) on
agriculture to the rural youths and farmers to ensure and (or) secure their
livelihood for combating poverty and hungerness (addressing the 1st
Millennium Development Goal). This information could be in the form of:
- Online training conferencing (through laptop and internet) on usage
local seeds, practice of
organic cultivation through locally possible organic inputs
- Information on kisan credit card and other government
schemes related to agriculture
- IEC material on Right for Food programme & PDS system
How Rozgar Dhaba
functions?
- Operated by
community & PRI: At present Rozgar Dhaba is being operated with
the support from community and PRI (Community and PRI has provided rooms
for its operation and bearing other expenditures as-electricity, water and
its maintenance. Farmers club of the village do the management of Rozgar
Dhaba.
- MIS for people registered at Rozgar Dhaba: Each and every
Rozgar Dhaba has a its own MIS system where there is details of all those
community members who have registered their name at the center. Rozgar
Dhaba also maintains the MIS for service providers and job providers
- A trained local team: A team of rural youth volunteers and member of
farmers club being initially trained on usage of communication technology
especially mobile and internet and then through these local human
resources further on knowledge and skill is being imparted amongst the
other community members.
·
By being the part of panchayat or working in
collaboration with Panchayat (Its
1st time in India, a VIC has become officially the part of
Panchayat) : Now with the initiation of Rozgar Dhaba under LIFE project; LIFE project
at Ajmer has crossed another landmark in establishing linkages with PRI. In
Ajmer LIFE project 4 villages we have
Rozgar Dhaba to facilitate information dissemination on government schemes and
work as a bridge between the local employer and unemployed villages, it also
promote sustainable agriculture through capacity building and tie-ups with
KVK-Ajmer. Now out of four Rozgar Dhaba’s one Rozgar Dhaba ( at Naulakha village) has now become the
part of Godiyawas Panchayat (one of the project Panchayat) at Godiyawas
village. Panchayat has officially approved and given space ( a Panchayat School
old building) for the Rozgar Dhaba Center to operate and assist in the various
activities of Panchayat, especially in terms of generating awareness on
government schemes. Now at Naulakha Rozgar Dhaba on an average 50-60 people
walk-in for getting information on various schemes and accessing information
through news paper and television.
Panchayat also feel Rozgar Dhaba as one of the better option, where not
only information on government schemes, but also counseling and assistance is
being provided by the Rozgar Dhaba.
2.1 Impact of Rozgar
Dhaba in strengthening governance and mitigating migration:
Social strengthening
governance:
- Established a common platform for the for the community by the
community to gain knowledge and
skill on various livelihood options
- Now at Naulakha Rozgar Dhaba on an average 50-60 people walk-in for
getting information on various schemes and accessing information through
news paper and television.
Political strengthening
of Panchayat functions:
- Functions of Godiywas Panchayat has improved in terms of NREGA and
other govt schemes. Godiywas Panchayat has become one of the best
Panchayat in the Rajasthan for the performance in MGNREGA, where every
eligible HHs has job card, 95% of the HHS received 100 days of work with full
wage.
- Panchayat also feel Rozgar Dhaba as one of the better option, where
not only information on government schemes, but also counselling and
assistance is being provided by the Rozgar Dhaba
Economically
strengthening of community:
- In last 2 years 117 youths been trained and out of this 50 have
started earning average income ranging from 1500-4500 INR per month.
- 200 youths have seek information on various govt. employment
opportunities and 80% of them applied for it and about 7% of them got
jobs.
- Unsafe migration in the project villages project villages has
reduced to 100%, and migration in total has reduced up to 80%
3. Conclusion:
With the simple training
to community on usage of mobile and internet to access government schemes and
develop skills, we can strengthen the concept of usage of technology to gather
information on various government programmes, developing skills of youth and
place them locally or near by and could be a possible source to reduce
migration pressure on urban cities from rural India and this all
could be possible through initiating a technology based model like
Rozgar Dhaba through gram Panchayats.
-Vinod Kumar Pandey
[2] Base line survey findings by
caritas India
in Madhya Pradesh & Rajasthan in 2012
[4] Krishi darshan: is an Indian
television program on Doordarshan aimed at disseminating agricultural
information to rural, farming audiences. It commenced on January 26, 1967 and
is one of the longest running programs on Indian television
[5] Based on the Baseline survey by
Caritas India
in the tribal and rural pockets of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in 2012
[6] Source: Indian finance &
investment guide
[8] An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine (ATM) is a
computerized telecommunications device that enables the clients of a financial
institution to perform financial transactions without the need for a cashier,
human clerk or bank teller. ATMs are known by various other names including ATM
machine, automated banking machine, "cash machine"
[9] MGNREGA: The
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act aims at enhancing the
livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing hundred days of
wage-employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members
volunteer to do unskilled manual work. It has enacted by legislation on August
25, 2005
[10] Caritas India is the official national
organisation of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India for social
development. It was established in 1962 to assist the Church in India in
efforts to eradicate poverty, reach relief and rehabilitation in times of
disasters and organize communities for self advancement. During the last four
decades of its humanitarian and development efforts, Caritas India has
served the poor and marginalized, without any distinction of caste, creed and
ethnicity.
[14] Direct broadcast satellite (DBS) is a term used to refer to satellite
television broadcasts intended for home reception. A designation broader than
DBS would be direct-to-home signals, or DTH. This has initially distinguished
the transmissions directly intended for home viewers from cable television
distribution services that sometimes carried on the same satellite.
[15] Based on caritas India
findings in baseline survey reports of Madhya Pradesh & Rajasthan in 2012
[16] LIFE (Livelihood Initiation
For Empowerment) project has been initiated by Caritas India and Caritas Spain
with the concept of securing the sustainable livelihood options for the
deprived targeted community of the Banswara and Ajmer districts of Rajasthan. The project is being implemented by SJVS
Banswara and Disha-RCDSSS Ajmer in 20 project villages of the concerned
districts (10 villages in each district). For more on
LIFE project log on to www.liferajasthan.blogspot.com
