Institutions involved in Rural Development in India

1. NABARD
2. KVIC
3. DRDA
4. NIRD
5. NRRDA
6. CAPART

Women Empowerment

http://www.kudumbashree.org/?q=homepage

Kudumbashree

Launched by the Government of Kerala in 1998 for wiping out absolute poverty from the State through concerted community action under the leadership of Local Self Governments, Kudumbashree is today one of the largest women-empowering projects in the country. The programme has 37 lakh members and covers more than 50% of the households in Kerala. Built around three critical components, micro credit, entrepreneurship and empowerment, the Kudumbashree initiative has today succeeded in addressing the basic needs of the less privileged women, thus providing them a more dignified life and a better future. Literal meaning of Kudumbashree is prosperity (shree) of family (Kudumbam).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AIR

According to Ayurveda, Air is one of the five elements this entire Universe is made up of (out of Air, Water, Earth, Fire and Ether). Hence, the quality of air would be a direct determinant of quality of everything in this universe and hence that of living-beings as well. In order to improve the quality of life humans learnt how to seek cooperation from mother nature. But the very desire of making accelerated material progress man has started exploiting the bounties of nature as a result of which humanity is surrounded by such irreversible changes in nature which is now making the existence of life on this planet vulnerable. Air pollution is once such exploitation where humans have altered the composition of the air by adulterating it with undesirable pollutants like sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter (dust, shoot etc.). The problem of air pollution started raising its head in post industrial-revolution era. The prime mover of rapid industrialization,that is, the fossil fuel were burnt indiscriminately in boilers, engines , power houses etc. leading to increase in the concentration of afore mentioned gases in the atmosphere. This has further led to several health-related ailments in human beings.

But one may ask, how are these factors responsible for contaminating the air in our villages since most of the industrial activities are confined to rural set-up only ? As a matter of fact the most important source of air pollution and hence a degraded quality of air in rural areas is the combustion of bio-mass based fuel in the hearths of village households. A significant proportion of village kitchen-stoves are being run on wood, cow-dung cakes and dried agricultural residue. This has got a direct impact on the health of the women and children of villages as it is they who spend good amount of time exposed to the dangerous gases produced while burning of these fuels.

"Findings - Results revealed that cow dung is the most polluting fuel with maximum emissions of PM10, PM 2.5, VOCs, CO, NO2 and Benzene followed by wood and kerosene. Interestingly kerosene combustion emits the highest amount of PAHs. Emissions for all the fuels show the presence of carcinogenic PAHs which could be a serious health concern. The composition of LPG/PNG leads to reductions of pollutants because of better combustion process. LPG which is largely propane and butane, and PNG which is 90 per cent methane prove to be healthier fuels. Based on the results, the authors suggest that technological intervention is required to replace the traditional stoves with improved fuel efficient stoves. "

http://www.teriin.org/index.php?option=com_publication&task=details&sid=1515&theme=

Now, so what should be the approach to address this issue. As discussed in previous post, the first activity should be to measure the extent of problem. So what could be the possible parameters in this case to measure. They could be:

1. Percentage of household using bio-gas based fuel for cooking.

2. Average duration of time for which an individual is exposed to the exhaust gases (cooking man-hours avg.)

3. Cost incurred on fuel (daily/monthly). This parameter would impact the choice of alternatives.

4. Number of cases per household of ailments like asthma, bronchitis, eye-problems or any other health issue caused by smoke.

5. Out-of-pocket expenditure on medical assistance for these ailments.

6. Type of fuel used; wood, cow-dung cakes, agricultural residue like bagasse etc.

Coming to solutions now: 

The approach could be

a) Reduce the time of exposure, i.e., make cooking faster---> Pressure Cookers, Metal Utensils for better heat transfer instead of earthen ware.

b) Among the many alternatives of bio-mass based fuel use the one which has more heat content, lesser moisture---> Sun dried wood, bagasse, brickets

c) Eliminate the exposure of humans to flu gases---> provision of chimneys, smokeless chulhas

d) Replace the fuel itself with cleaner fuels---> LPG, Solar Cooker, Electric stoves, Kerosene Stoves 

GoI could promote manufacturing of bio-diesel, bio-ethanol from the same source of bio-mass based fuels. Both would be a better fuel than the bio-mass itself.

to be continued...

Aadarsh-Gram

This is about an idea to develop every village in India into a Model Village where in each inhabitant in the village would have higher level of a metric which I call Satisfaction Index (SI). It is a common concept in the field of management that without measurement we can not manage. Hence, it becomes crucial to define SI at the outset and generate an exhaustive list of all its determinants as well. It would be wonderful if we a get a clarity of the functional relationship between the determinants and the SI but carrying a higher degree of subjectivity within itself it would be difficult to quantify SI in terms of its determinants but nevertheless we would put our grey cells to test to achieve this.

So, what we are basically trying to do is to determine a functional relationship as shown below: 

SI = f (d1, d2, d3...dn) ;

Now, if we know all the d's and the way they impact SI, we can control SI (this reminds me of a Design of Experiment during my college days where I tried to determine input-output relationship for a welding operation. Wish, individual satisfaction levels had such an objectivity). So, what could be the factors affecting SI? the top-of-the-mind answer to this would be fulfillment of 'Needs' (not Wants). Here it would be pertinent to understand that the pyramid of Satisfaction is made up of basic life requirements at the base and then incremental aspirations as and when the layer underneath achieves the required satisfaction level. Basically, I am referring to Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid.

Here we see that there are a lot of factors which are influencing the Satisfaction Level (SI) of individuals. It would defeat the concept of 'satisficing' (satisfy + suffice) given by Herbert Simon if we go for trying to fulfill each of the needs at one go. Simply, the resources at our disposal do not allow us to take that approach.  Hence, it would be advisable to prioritize the factors/determinants to be addressed. So, if one has to determine the weight-age of the determinants constituting 'SI' he/she would be assigning higher values for the determinants lying on the lower tiers. To put it in other words the determinants fulfilling Physiological Needs have to be addressed before the Safety and Security Needs and so on.

After gaining this clarity it now remains to start working on each of the determinants mentioned in the bottom-most tier. They are Air (d1), Food (d2), Water (d3), Shelter (d4), Clothing (d5), Sleep (d6). The objective at hand is to increase the degree of fulfillment of all these 6 needs to a reasonable level. So what is this reasonable level? A few more queries which come up are:

1. How to measure the degree of fulfillment of each of these determinants?

2. Do we have a  established metric system or we need to devise one?

3. What is the level then, to which we want to raise the fulfillment levels of all these ?

4. Are there any universally accepted fulfillment levels?

I have made an attempt to answer the Query No 1. It is as shown in the matrix below.

(I have kept the determinant of 'sleep' outside its purview as by raising the level of fulfillment of the rest of the five would automatically lead to take care of one's sleep.)

 to be continued...