SOIL Report 2008 - ACCESS Development Services

Civil Society Initiativesso far has covered four million hectares in 850 villages, benefiting 75,000 families. The land holders areearning about Rs 20,000 per annum as gross income over the base line. This integrated approach whereagronomic interventions are a key component, is a departure from most other watershed programmes,which emphasise conservation with farmers largely left on their own to make agricultural productionimprovements.Promotion of agri-horti forestry: To provide sustainable income for small farmers, particularly tribalswho own degraded lands, the Wadi ii programme covers 2,811 villages benefiting one lakh familiescovering an area of 40,345 iii hectares in six states. A core activity of the programme is the wadi, ahorti-forestry orchard raised by the tribal family on sloping uplands. It comprises a fruit orchard with aperipheral plantation of forest trees and bamboo, providing small timber and fodder. This land is broughtunder intercrops in the monsoon and, if possible with small-scale irrigation, even in winter/summer.Introduction of vegetable and tuber crops, either as intercrops in the own lands or on river beds, helpsto bring in more cash and incomes. The homesteads are used to raise kitchen gardens, nurseries, and forrecycling of farm waste for manure. New water resources are created by gully plugging, construction ofpercolation tanks and encouraging farmers to dig farm ponds. Improved lowland agriculture has helpedboost food production and ensure food security. Over time, many other need-based components such ashealth, drinking water provision, processing and marketing of farm produce, have been taken up. Thirtyfive cooperatives/federations have been formed in the wadi area for procuring and selling/processingof the produce from wadi. iv This holistic approach, which combines livelihood generation through multipleneed-based activities, has been a major departure from conventional development efforts whichare highly sectoral in content. BAIF has now adopted the village cluster development approach (as ispracticed in wadi) in other rural villages with heterogeneous communities, depending on the local needsand resources available with individual families.ChallengesHow to make the organisations member centric in day-to-day functioning is a key challenge, since thepeople have never had such institutional arrangements in the past. Promoting sustainable livelihoodsfor the landless continues to pose challenges for it requires a very wide range of interventions. Thusresults do not always match expectations. Scaling up efforts to reach larger populations through moresustainable funding mechanisms is another key issue. According to BAIF, replicable models based onself-supporting funding are the key to scaling up.Accordingto BAIF,replicablemodels based onself-supportingfunding are thekey to scalingup.Case Study 2 :BASIX 5BASIX was established in the year 1996, ‘to promote a large number of sustainable livelihoods forthe rural poor and women, through the provision of financial services and technical assistance in anintegrated manner. BASIX strives to yield a competitive rate of return to its investors so as to be ableto access mainstream capital and human resources on a continuous basis.’ The first five years thus sawBASIX integrating livelihood promotion and financial services in a financially sustainable manner.Today, BASIX as a group of companies comprises Bharatiya Samruddhi Finance Limited which provideslivelihood promotion services; KBS Local Area Bank, providing various banking services; andIndian Grameen Services (IGS) that offers research and development services. The Livelihood Schoolprovides for knowledge building of livelihood practitioners and the BASIX Academy offers a one-yearTriploma programme in microfinance and livelihood promotion to meet the human resource requirementsof the sector.5Case developed by BASIX team.135