The PACS Programme seeks to ensure better governance and entitlement realisation by various means including:

Around 35,000 CBOs formed or strengthened by the PACS Programme across all its areas of operation constitute an important people’s monitoring body to ensure realisation of entitlements and proper implementation of government schemes. From across the programme area there are hundreds of examples of CBOs demanding and ensuring not only budgetary provisions at gram panchayat level but also implementation of drinking water schemes, approach roads for the village/ Dalit hamlets, drainage systems, construction of community halls, space for crematorium, regular working of the public distribution system (PDS), payment of old age and widow pensions, etc.

Here are some specific examples of how CBOS have made a difference:

In the Prithvipur block of Tikamgarh district, Sambhav, a network partner of the Voluntary Health Association of India ( VHAI ) has initiated an effective public distribution system (PDS) monitoring system through a community based organization called Jan Sangthan Manch (JSM). Active in 123 villages of Prithvipur block, the JSM has around 1200 members, mainly from the dalit and adivasi communities.

From February 24-March 1, 2006, the JSM organised a padyatra, to highlight corruption in the PDS system. The padyatra, which covered 30 villages of Prithvipur block, found that BPL families were not getting rations from PDS shops, or receiving less than the stipulated amount. On Antodaya cards people were getting 20-25 kg of food grains instead of 35 kg. Rations were sold at market rates to the needy, and there was variation in quantity supplied. Wheat was sold at Rs 7 per kg instead of Rs 4.65 to BPL families. In many villages sugar had not been distributed for the last 1 to 2 years. In some villages the sarpanch and the secretary demanded anything between Rs 50-500 to prepare Antodaya cards. There was discrepancy between the ration weighed and the amount distributed, which was always less.

At the conclusion of the padyatra a memorandum was submitted to the district collector. The collector set up a three-member committee to look into the issues. In front of the padyatris, the collector instructed senior officials to ensure that rations were distributed in his presence in the villages from where complaints were received, and the order was adhered to. This matter was also highlighted in the local press.

Likewise, in Tal Behat block, district Lalitpur, there are 53 CBOs called Jan Shakti Samitis (JSS) that have been alert in bringing instances of PDS malfunctioning to the authorities. In the PACS Programme project area, of the 69 PDS shops that were functioning, around 40 were not functioning properly. Due to the efforts of the JSS this number has been brought down to 23.

In the feudal and backward region of Bundelkhand, the Chitrakoot-based Akhil Bharatiya Samaj Seva Sansthan (ABSSS) and its PACS Programme network partners have set up village-level advocacy bodies called Chingari Sanghatans to work to secure rights through democratic means. Around 140 Chingari Sanghatans have been in seven blocks of five districts. Together they have approximately 1600 women members and 1300 male members. Every member has to pay a nominal monthly membership fee of one rupee and at least one meeting is held every month, to discuss pressing issues and plans of action. A record of meetings is maintained in a register. Every sanghatan has a chairperson and a treasurer. In most sanghatans these posts are held by women.

The Chingari Sanghatans have taken up numerous issues successfully. Here are some of the notable success stories:

n Through sustained pressure, the Chingari Sanghatan in Naraini block of Banda ensured that work worth Rs 1 crore was completed on a bridge across the river Pungri, connecting UP to MP. Lying incomplete since 1992, the bridge was inaugurated in December 2005.

n In Jaitpur block of Mahoba district, the Chingari Sanghatan ensured that action was taken against two policemen who beat to death a poor Dalit youth of Tikaria village, Hargobind Rajput, in January 2006. Hargobind’s family was sanctioned Rs 1 lakh as compensation.

Until a few years ago, the forest cover in Karma panchayat, Hazaribaug district, Jharkhand, was fast dwindling due to large-scale illegal tree-felling carried out by locals for paltry sums of money offered to them by contractors. This went on until women from around six villages in the panchayat decided to do something about it. Under the PACS Programme, the women had set up self-help groups, in May-June 2003, with assistance from Agragati, a CSO affiliated to the Jharkhand-based Society For Participatory Action & Reflection (SPAR). They would often discuss the destruction of their forests at group meetings. The women believed protecting the forests was the duty of the state forest department, so they decided to take the matter up with the forest officials. Meanwhile, the men of the village discouraged them against challenging government authority, saying: "Why care? We do not own the forests."

The forest authorities were unconcerned and refused to do anything. They took refuge in the argument that thick forests were an invitation to Naxalite activity.

Finally, a group of women from Barmasia, Diguar Basti, Patan, Karmali Tola, Munda Tola and Barma Tola decided to take matters into their own hands. They set up vigilance groups and attempted to stop the illegal tree-felling. In late December 2003 a women’s group, led by Savitri Devi from Patan village, was attacked by illegal tree-cutters. Although the elderly woman sustained injuries, her group fought back the attackers.

The incident caused widespread concern across villages and hamlets in the panchayat. A joint meeting was held and, to everyone’s surprise, the men came out in support of the women saying they were protecting the forests in the larger interests of the area and the community. Indeed, the event led to the formation of the first Jungle Raksha Samiti, headed by Savitri Devi. The Samiti now enjoys recognition and support even from the state forest department.

The villages and hamlets agreed on a joint forest protection programme, with each village doing the rounds of the forests from Monday to Friday, between 10 am and 1 pm. They also undertook afforestation drives, and an area was set aside for the grazing of domestic animals. Fines for illegal grazing were decided. "Around Rs 1,000 was collected in fines during 2005, which goes to show that the Jungle Raksha Samitis are indeed active, and illegal tree-felling is restricted to the minimum," says Anita Devi from Barmasia village.

"We want to continue the mahila samitis and not limit ourselves to forest protection alone," says Savitri Devi. "We want to do collective farming, build good houses and ensure better education and health facilities for our children."

The impact assessment report of DFID makes the following observation:

Sustained CSO input and presence has led to increased confidence among CBO members, particularly SHG members who stand out as more confident in each of the 16 study projects. This is evident most significantly among women who are less diffident about interacting with males within and outside the community, gram panchayat (GP) representatives and government and bank officials and, who, in some cases, have taken the initiative to attend and participate actively in gram sabhas, intervened in instances of domestic violence, voiced grievances over issues such as BPL and voter identification and land encroachment and the working of anganwadis, GPs, government schemes, health centers, mid-day meals, PDS, schools, etc., and ventured out of the village to present, and seek solutions to their concerns to political leaders and government and bank officials. This marks a departure from the general situation in the PACS Programme states where the poor have rarely had opportunities to interrogate the working of local governments and public service providers/ institutions.A broadbased forum to tackle drought in Maharashtra

A common criticism against CSOs is that they usually work in isolation. The criticism is quite valid and has one major crippling implication: CSOs working in the same geographical or thematic area do not share knowledge, expertise, learnings and resources. This results in waste of energy and time; proven ‘best practices’ are not easily adopted by others. People for whose benefit CSOs work are the ultimate losers.

The PACS Programme is tackling this problem by developing two kinds of CSO partnerships:

n Partnerships within the programme (internal networks) by strengthening the capacity of the partners to manage large projects, develop linkages beyond project activities, envision long-term impacts and undertake sustainable short-term interventions.

The programme has also tried to develop CSOs’ ability to leverage activities against interventions by other partners as well manage external partnerships with government, financial institutions and private sectors.

An important long-term network developed and supported by the programme is the The Maharashtra Dushkal Hatavu Manu Jagavu Drought Forum (MDHMJ-DF). The forum evolved as a response to severe drought situation experienced in 2003-04 in Marathwada and parts of Vidarbha covered. At a peer learning workshop held in Aurangabad in March 2004, programme partners resolved to work collectively on the issue of drought. Partners organised rallies, padayatras and dharnas in drought-hit areas to raise awareness and mobilise the government machinery to provide fodder, water through tankers and work under the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). Sampark, a Mumbai-based advocacy organisation supported by the PACS Programme, arranged tours of journalists to the worst-affected districts of Maharashtra, and lobbied with policymakers and people’s representatives. Green Earth, a PACS Programme resource organisation, coordinated a rapid assessment of drought in six districts and 50 villages of Maharashtra.

The ground situation was discussed in three regional workshops in early September 2004 and the state-level peer learning workshop later in the month. Partners then chalked out a road map to eradicate drought in Maharashtra within the next ten years.

In order to put the plan into action, it was felt necessary to build up a ‘drought cadre’ which had a shared vision and purpose, and which was fully equipped with knowledge of all government resolutions and schemes related to drought and drought relief, and issues relevant to drought. An initial period of three months was earmarked for building up a band of 180 drought relief workers, to be deployed in 900 villages in nine districts. These drought warriors were trained to assess, monitor and document the situation in the 900 villages in a common format, study government policies and interface with government officials, and undertake and push for relief and mitigation measures.

As drought is a recurring and widespread phenomenon affecting huge sections of the population, and a number of organisations in Maharshtra have already done considerable work in the area of drought mitigation, PACS Programme partners expressed the need to network with other CSOs on the issue and build a large and effective civil society platform. The MDHMJ-DF thus evolved organically as a result of this felt need.

The MDHMJ-DF was initially an informal federation of around 40 CSOs working with the PACS Programme in nine drought-prone districts. An effort to create a larger network was made in the peer review workshop held in March 2005, when leading experts of civil society drought activists from outside the programme were invited to share their experiences and insights. With involvement of most programme CSOs in the state and other CSOs working on drought, the MDHMJ-DF then planned a huge drought padyatra. Around 100 people were involved in the planning of the padyatra in various capacities over the next eight months, and the padyatra was finally flagged off from a village in Beed district of Marathwada, on January 1, 2006.

Over the next two months, the padyatra covered around 160 villages in nine districts of Marathwada and Vidarbha, culminating at Mahatma Gandhi’s Sewagram Ashram (Wardha) on March 2, 2006. Overall, around 10,000 people participated; on any given day there were at least 150 people walking in the padyatra. That apart, some 50 experts from various fields and students took part in detailed assessments in 60 villages. In the first 15 days of the padyatra itself, discussions were held with around 5,000 drought-affected people. Through these interactions, several instances of gross mismanagement and injustice were uncovered. On the positive side, the interactions also inspired some communities to take action on their own.

The PACS Programme then decided to give the MDHMJ-DF a formal character, with vision and mission statements, a strategic plan, a core organisation structure, district coordinating agencies, short-term action plan and a secretariat in Pune. Tentative detailing of the formal character was done by the state programme support team and then put up before all partner CSOs at the peer learning workshop held in Pune in September 2006. The broad objectives of the MDHMJ DF that has thus emerged are:

n Building a strong forum with the process of inclusion

n Training of drought warriors in consulation with experts

n Selection, orientation and capacity building of new drought warriors, with preference for women

n Undertaking micro-level initiatives for replication in other parts of the state

Some of the expected outputs were:

n Formation of drought study circles in 11 districts

n Training of 400 drought warriors in one year

n Mass mobilization to actively link 2000 odd villages to the drought forum process

n Preparation of drought plans for 11 districts

n Building of a comprehensive MIS based on tracking of issues, NREGS implmentation and information on drought status in villages obtained from diaries maintained by drought warriors

The organisation, management and coordination of activities towards these objectives is being done by the drought secretariat. The core committee is the executive body of the forum. All decisions of the forum are ratified and executed through the Secretariat. Membership to the MDHMJ-DF is open to all individuals, groups and actors who believe in the vision and mission of the forum are ready to work on a collective basis with mutual respect; share their experiences, experiments and capacities; believe in people-centered development processes, transparency and accountability; are ready to work as a pressure group for a social change and believe in promoting and nurturing local leadership.

The MDHMJ-DF programme has put into operation a detailed work plan for 2007 and much progress has already been achieved. Training modules to set up a cadre of ‘drought warriors’ — village-level workers who will tackle various aspects of drought management and mitigation — are in place. Around 200 drought warriors have already been trained; each will work in five villages. Each drought warrior maintains a carefully prepared `drought diary’ that elicits information under over 80 heads. The drought diaries are updated every month and constitute an extremely useful resource base for short-term and long-term drought management. By creating a cadre of 400 drought warriors, the forum hopes to cover 2,000 villages.

District drought forums have been set up in all districts of Vidharbha and Marathwada. The district forums meet on fixed dates every month and report to the secretariat. The district forums enjoy considerable flexibility and respond to felt local needs in their own way. Thus, while one particular district forum seeks to establish close linkages with government officials, another seeks to highlight issues through local media. All the district forums have the capacity and network to identify worst-hit areas in their district, and move the government to take immediate drought mitigation efforts such as sanction of works under the state’s Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Most importantly, the district forums have successfully broadened their base by eliciting keen interest and participation of CSOs that had not been part of the PACS Programme. As a result, the MDHMJ-DF today has an informal membership list of around 500 CSOs.

A computerised information system, including relevant information about all these NGOs, is being built.

Two research projects have already been initiated by the drought forum. The first relates to appropriate modifications in farm implements to increase their effectiveness. The second study focusses on design and utility of percolation tanks.