This experience helped me and my colleagues reinforce our understanding about participatory exercises.

The two-month VCD exercise in October-November 2009 helped me understand the process in a comprehensive manner, overcome a lot of my inhibitions about participatory methodologies, brought to me a sense of achievement and more importantly re-established my faith in participatory methodologies. Below are the excerpts of my encounter with Value Chain Development.

Background

TARA Livelihood Academy (TLA) has been working on Green Jobs Demonstration Project in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh). This projects aims at systematically identifying the key intervention points within a sector. Jabalpur has been identified as a cluster where dairy sector is one of the leading businesses. Among many of the outputs, one was to carry out a value chain development process in the dairy sector to understand the sector better and facilitate decent works and green jobs throughout the sector.

Hideki Kagohashi from ILO put in a lot of effort in conceptualising this process. The VCD process in Jabalpur was carried out with a team of TLA led by Gemunu Wijesena and Ariyarathna Subasingha (ILO consultants from Sri Lanka). Camilla Roman from ILO India had an important role in coordinating the process.

Jabalpur Dairy Cluster: An Overview

There are 220 sheds (SME) at Jabalpur; possessing approximately 35000 animals; 95% of which are buffaloes. The daily milk output is estimated to be in the 125,000 to 150,000 litre range. The annual buffalo sale for slaughter is 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes. The yearly buffalo dung output is 2.5 to 3.0 lakh tonnes. The sale of young calf is estimated at around 20,000 per annum. There are dedicated villages involved in rearing of the buffalloes during the dry period. A large number of small dairy farms at the village level (440 Dairy co-operatives, 22,000 members) produce 35 - 40,000 litres of milk/day.

There exists a strong Business Association comprising 171 members under the banner of Jabalpur Pashupalak Evam Dugdh Utpadak Kisan Mahasangh. Jabalpur city has a very reputed Agriculture University, the Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwavidyalaya (JNKVV) and a Veterinary College. The department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services conduct special animal health camps and artificial insemination services, pregnancy diagnosis services, etc.

Value chain development is described by ILO as under:

A value chain is a sequence of target-oriented combinations of production factors that create a marketable product or service from conception to the final consumption. This includes activities such as design, production, marketing, distribution and support services to the final consumer. The activities that comprise the value chain can be contained within a single firm or divided among different firms, as well as within a single geographical location or spread over wider areas. The term Value Chain refers to the fact that value is added to preliminary products through the combination of other resources. (ILO, 2006)

VCD Process

The process was divided in small phases: Understanding the dairy sector, Hypothesis workshops, Initial assessment, Start-up workshops (Validating the findings), Detailed discussions with stakeholders and analysis, Result presentation and proposals, Formation of steering groups, Facilitation to develop action plans, and Steering group meetings (Updates and future plans). In the beginning, an in depth research of the Jabalpur dairy sector was carried out by representatives from TLA. It resulted in a well-documented report that offered a lot of clarity about the sector.

This workshop began with sharing the objectives and results expected out of this process. The process of value chain development began with a workshop where different stakeholders of the dairy sector were present. The facilitators shared their understanding about the sector, based on the secondary information, and encouraged the stakeholders to share their views and opinions about the dairy sector in Jabalpur. A comprehensive firsthand information was made available at the end of this workshop.

The initial assessment phase was to meet the important stakeholders related to the sector in a direct manner. The facilitators thus, got involved in informal discussions with the stakeholders to understand each of their perspectives separately. This phase helped the facilitators to develop a value chain map on the basis of the information gathered.

The start-up workshop was the platform where a maximum number of stakeholders representing almost all the sub-sectors were present. The findings of the previous phase were shared with the participants who were encouraged to validate the findings. Many additions and deletions took place in terms of the value chain of the dairy clusters of Jabalpur. Numerous corrections made by the participants were included in the findings at the end of this phase.

Value chain map of Jabalpur dairy cluster

There were detailed stakeholders’ level discussions across the sub-sector. A series of one-to-one discussions as well as group meetings took place to understand the sector better. New information and addition to the value chain came across that gave a new shape to the exercise. Interactions with different stakeholders helped to have a comprehensive understanding about the dairy clusters.

Before organising a result presentation workshop the VCD team, along with the representatives from the sector, analysed the gathered information and brought out different proposals at each of the value chain level. The proposals were shared with the stakeholders and validation and finalisation of these proposals were carried out.

The catch in this phase was to ensure that the proposals were stakeholder driven and not facilitating agency driven ones.

Very carefully, the selection of the word steering group was made to ensure that the group remained a working group and did not act as any other committee or platform. The concept of the steering group was shared with the stakeholders and many of the representatives volunteered to become members of the steering group. The steering group is a group of individuals/organisations to push the proposals forward and ensure that the proposals are being implemented. The VCD team further met the agencies/individuals entrepreneurs to develop an action plan based on the proposals they had shown interest in. Two steering group meetings have been organised and preparatory works such as identification of a chairman and secretariat has been carried out. The steering group has also discussed the agenda related to implementation of the proposals.

The journey through all these phases has helped the team learn the importance of a participatory exercise in its truest sense. There have been wonderful responses and initiatives from the stakeholders in phases where proposals were discussed and a steering group was formed. As the response of the stakeholders was very positive, it was ultimately very encouraging for the team to see the fruits of their labour. To make it a part of my write up, it is also worthy to mention that out of the thirteen proposals proposed, as many as eight have already begun and are in different phases of implementation. The interesting part is that all the proposals that are being implemented have been done solely on the expenditure of the stakeholders and no funding has been pumped in.

To be associated with the Value Chain Development process has been a matter of immense pride and pleasure for me and for the whole team as it aimed very minutely on the process without losing focus on the results.

A methodology such as Value Chain Development is a basis to understand the principles of Participatory Learning and Action. And any process that is based on this principle will surely lead to the results as expected and some times more than what was expected. q