Nexus of Good: Transformative convergence

Nestled in the picturesque Satpura hills, Melghat epitomises beauty. Chikhaldara and Dharni — two blocks of the Melghat subdivision of Amravati district in Maharashtra — with predominant forest cover, host an almost untouched core tiger reserve and are home to Korku tribal population. However, on account of restrictive infrastructure development and cultural dissimilarity, the administration often faces difficulties in the service delivery of government schemes.

Every year, many people migrate out of Melghat for livelihood. The migration begins after Diwali towards October end. People start returning in March for their favourite Holi festival — sometimes going back for two months only to return in June to sow their fields for Kharif crops.

When Mittali Sethi, a young and dynamic IAS officer took over as Project Officer of the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP), she made an attempt to understand the issues that beset this region, with a view to addressing them. The key issue for consideration was that when someone migrates for nearly six months, the destination becomes as much their home as Melghat. But the 'destination' is not able to provide the protective net that their home village does. In Maharashtra, tribal areas are covered under schemes from the government — providing extra nutrition, special funds for infrastructure and much more. Was it possible to provide the same benefits to people who migrated?

During 2020-21, with the pandemic looming large, the single most important target was to give people work in their villages so that they don't have to undergo distress migration. Aided by systemic improvements by the state MREGS department, the able and inspiring leadership of District Collector Shelesh Nawal and excellent field inputs from a committed set of BDOs and tehsildars, the Melghat team — led by Mittali Sethi — was able to generate the highest employment in the state for the year 2020-21. Both blocks together provided more than 61 lakh person-days employment in the year. This was around nine per cent of the state figure, and the highest in at least the past five years. Apart from generating employment, it was equally vital to improve asset quality and take up those works that helped build sustainable structures or systems for the village.

The challenges, to begin with, were not only the geography and inaccessibility but also the multitude of stakeholders, agencies and departments that were to be brought together even to initiate planning. For example, many villages in Melghat are located in forest areas and, therefore, do not lend themselves to the traditional route of planning by revenue/development departments. For such reasons, the forest department needs to be intricately involved. On the other hand, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 — simply called Forest Rights Act (FRA) — provides many villages with Community Forest Rights (CFR). CFR land generally comprises a forest compartment or a part of it, that is managed by the village itself through a CFR Management Committee (CFRMC). For lack of technical expertise or collaboration, in many of these villages, CFR lands lie unused for years.

The idea was to bring together these two problems and set up a system where both could complement each other and, possibly, set up a virtuous cycle. The contention was that MREGS work provided in CFR areas would result not only in employment generation but also participatory action, more sustainable planning in years to come and, quite possibly, a local healthy climate ecosystem.

Thus began the pilot project with the Forest Department and Samaaj Pragati Sahyog (SPS) — an NGO that assisted technically all through the programme and continues to do so. A beginning was made in eight villages with the training of stakeholders involving Forest Rights Committees of these villages by Range Forest Officers (RFO). SPS also took people for exposure visits to other districts/states so that they could see the best models in similar geographies. There were extensive Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) exercises, targets were set for MREGS estimates and regular follow-ups through the SDO office were made.

It was a result of this regular follow up and monitoring that Sosokheda — one of the pilot villages — witnessed reverse migration this year. People who used to leave every year came back after getting calls from villagers about the availability of work. (Sosokheda village, which generates around 600 person-days annually on average, provided more than 5,500 person-days of work this year). In Bod village, work opened up for the first time in five years. However, the most important outcome was participation in action. Rangubeli — another pilot village — came together to do shramdaan (voluntary labour) for repairing their access road. In Sosokheda, the village decided to create large-scale leaf pits to stop forest fires, and planted 5,000 trees in their CFR land — the maintenance of which will not only give livelihood to its people but also flourish the pristine jungle around them. In a world predominantly affected by climate change, these local ecosystems have a lot to teach us.

Encouraged by the progress in this project, an attempt was made to establish convergence elsewhere. Infrastructural gap analyses were carried out. The idea was to plug such gaps. An excellent example was presented when Chikhaldara BDO converged on the need to build a school's compound wall, nursery garden and classrooms with MREGS estimates. Similarly, in Dharni, a village was taken up with no motorable road since independence under the MREGS convergence. The road was funded under MREGS and a state scheme in a combined manner. This strategy provides multiple benefits. Many high-cost (with high labour cost) projects that await funding lend themselves well to MREGS convergence, as the scheme can pay labour costs. More importantly, people build their assets themselves by bypassing contracts and, therefore, have a stake in the quality of work. The state MREGS department has been introducing additions to the scheme to make it more adaptable and flexible.

Holding the additional charge of Project Officer, ITDP enabled Mittali Sethi to converge MREGS with a few tribal department schemes as well. A part of the scheme, therefore, was funded through MREGS and partly through ITDP (in other cases, other sources of funds — District Planning funds, MLA funds to name a few — were also used). The central focus of this exercise was to plan with people — both 'planning' and 'people' are extremely crucial and non-negotiable components of the approach.

Mittali Sethi and her committed team demonstrated that by taking all the stakeholders into confidence, and through convergence, even very complex issues can be resolved and the benefits of development projects be delivered more effectively. They also present a wonderful example of Nexus of Good that can be replicated and scaled.

Views expressed are personal