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Project type
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Rural development
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Approval date
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4 April 1991
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Implementation period
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1991-1999
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Total cost
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US$46.52 million
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Executing agency
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Tribal Welfare Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh
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BACKGROUND
The Andhra Pradesh Tribal Development Projectwas the first externally funded tribal development project in Andhra Pradesh and the second in India. It was also a pioneer in promoting community participation and reaching out to tribal groups and communities. The platform for participation that it developed drew on the experiences of other rural development and poverty reduction projects (for instance, self-help groups had already been tested in the IFAD-supported Tamil Nadu Women's Development Project).
PROJECT AREA
The project was implemented in four contiguous integrated tribal development agencies (ITDAs): Seethampeta (Srikakulam district), Parvathipuram (Vizianagaram district), Paderu (Visakhapatnam district) and Rampachodavaram (East Godavari district).
BENEFITING
The target group comprised all 63,370 households living in 2,077 villages of 16 selected watersheds. Especially vulnerable groups included landless households, destitute women and underemployed youth, as well as the estimated 60 per cent of tribal households in debt to non-tribal traders and moneylenders.
PROJECT OBJECTIVE
The project’s main objective was to foster self-reliance in household food security by increasing food production and raising tribal households’ income, with a special focus on households practising shifting or slash‑and‑burn (podu) agriculture. This objective was pursued through community-based participation within the context of the tribal environment, culture and values.
PROJECT COMPONENTS AND ACTIVITIES
Natural Resource Development
In terms of natural resource management, the project’s most significant activity was its efforts to replace traditional shifting cultivation methods by settled irrigated agricultural systems. The rationale for this was to improve household food security through the cultivation of high-yielding paddy rice and horticultural crops, and to protect the environment against deforestation and soil erosion.
The project achieved its principal targets of expanding irrigated areas, which increased 6.5 times relative to the pre-project period. At project end, more than 55,000 households were directly benefiting from highly productive horticultural plantations and orchards, where the emphasis was on planting a mix of cash and food crops. The most significant achievement was the establishment of nearly 40,000 hectares of orchards, mostly cashew.
Under the project, in addition to better irrigation and soil conservation methods, determining factors in enhancing food production were the development of improved seed varieties, the wider application of fertilizers and the adoption of improved agricultural practices.
Research and Development
Research and development was an activity within the Credit and Marketing Support component which initiated a process of blending modern knowledge with traditional knowledge systems.
This activity supported studies on gum karaya, leading to the development of four value-added products: powder, granules, cream and gel. Training programmes were organized for local people in improved tapping processes. Within a short period, the quality of gum improved substantially and prices rose by up to 250 per cent.
Through research and development, new products were developed from the ‘clearing nut’ (Strychnos potatorum), including a derivative that can substitute the water-purifying agents Alum and Natfloc-2200. The bioflocculant extracted from this nut is also used to clean nuclear waste. The gum karaya initiative was a major source of income for almost 12,000 tribal peoples and an important source of employment for tribal women.
Community Participation and Village Institutions
Participatory approaches designed to motivate and empower men and women were a key process in project activities. The project established a variety of local-level institutions, including self-help groups (SHGs), cluster-level associations of SHGs, user groups and village development committees (for example, for education, health, irrigation and grain banks). It also established village tribal development associations (VTDAs), which served both as a forum for the expression of community priorities and concerns, and as a means to deliver projects and programmes to the community.
Some 1,029 VTDAs and 1,231 SHGs were formed in the project area, together with 467 grain banks. These were the most significant village-level institutions and enabled members to do without the services of moneylenders for most of the year.
Community coordination teams ‑ groups of young, dedicated professionals who lived in the villages for up to three years ‑ were successful in encouraging genuine community participation in the identification of village priorities and the implementation and monitoring of development activities relating to health and education.
Education
The project provided support to 1,323 community schools, covering nearly 20,000 schoolchildren. A total of 81 educational resource centres were constructed. The introduction of community schools and the direct involvement of parents in managing the schools played an important role in raising enrolment and attendance rates. Annual school enrolment rose in all four districts, and 40 per cent of newly enrolled pupils were girls. Literacy rates among women and girls in the project area also rose substantially.
Women’s Development
Gender equity improved noticeably in many villages, mainly because of the SHGs. Women now play a key role in agriculture, village institutions, education, rural marketing and peace-building. One negative impact that the project had on gender equity, however, is that men now concentrate more on the more prestigious work in the irrigated areas, whereas previously men and women generally worked together on podu lands.
Health
The project encouraged community-based preventive health care. In particular, it promoted accessibility to primary health care, monitored mother and child health and epidemics, raised awareness of tribal peoples and supported capacity-building among medical and paramedical staff and tribals. It deployed over 1,000 community health workers in remote villages. They were selected from among married women in their 20s and 30s, preferably with some education, and provided with a month's intensive training and a basic medical kit. The project also supplied drugs, equipment and vehicles to 32 primary health centres.
LESSONS LEARNED
Participation and Empowerment
· Changes in the tribal development scene can be brought about by creating space during implementation for a multi-stakeholder approach with a specific focus on tribal peoples.
· A shift in focus from the limited objective of increasing employment opportunities through labour‑intensive schemes to the objective of full community management of a programme effectively empowers tribal peoples as partners in the improvement of their own natural resource base and means of livelihood.
· Because the concept of participation is understood differently by different people at different times and participation itself is invariably linked with an activity, projects need to apply multiple participatory strategies.
· Participation contributes positively to changes in social relationships not only within the state and at the grass roots, but also among the tribal peoples themselves, and between tribal peoples and other actors in the informal economy, such as moneylenders, traders and other service providers.
- A benevolent but paternalistic development approach results in unsustainable interventions and fails to reduce the dependency of communities on external support. For sustainability to be achieved there must be an increased focus on empowerment, grass-roots institution development, and local capacity-building in a range of technical and managerial skills.
- To promote grass-roots participation and empowerment following the 'development ladder approach’, projects need to pay attention to developing local institutions such as SHGs, village development committees and apex organizations of village development committees.
Building Community Institutions
- The performance of the various institutions involved in a project can vary widely depending largely on the level and regularity of project inputs, both economic and motivational. The existence of parallel institutional structures – community institutions with the traditional power structure on the one side and government institutions on the other – sometimes make it difficult to achieve better bargaining power for the community or to foster genuine participatory development.
- Building strong and lasting community institutions that allow tribal peoples to become self-reliant and reduce their dependency on external institutions requires time, continuous efforts and sustainable support mechanisms.
- It is essential to examine roles, relationships and community institutional arrangements in traditional societies. In particular, the nature of traditional authorities must be systematically investigated, and the necessary links between new and old institutions explicitly recognized, in order to avoid the emergence of parallel and potentially divisive structures.
Villages with strong traditional institutions find it easier to learn new approaches and technologies, and to upgrade their knowledge. Therefore, to obtain greater impact, project delivery needs to be regulated according to the institutional capacity available at the village level. |
