The women's development program in Rajasthan : a case study in group formation for women's development

r~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ C Policy Reseatch WORKING PAPEF3S | iWomen in Development Population and Human Resources Department The World Bank May 1992 WPS 913 The Women's Development Program in Rajasthan A Case Study in Group Formation for Women's Development Maitreyi Das Through awareness-building and group formation, rural women in several districts in India have realized that deprivation is not unchangeable, that alternatives exist, that they are competent enough to choose between alternatives, and that they are not alone. Policy Research Wodikng Papers disseminate the fuidinigs f work is progress a :d encourage thc exchange of idea amnong liank staff and allothers interested in developmenti ssues I hese papers, dsinbuted b) the Research Adsvsury Staff efarr) Lhe ncantes f Lhe auLhors reflect onrytheirviews,andshouldbeusedandcitedaccordingly thecftndings, incrpretaLons, andc.ticluasions.reLheCdutior. o'wn Theyshoald not bc attnbuted to the World Bank. its loard of lDrectors, iLS managemcn, or any of its niember counines  Policy Research Women in Development WPS 913 This papcr -a product of thc Womcn in Development Division, Population and Human Resourccs Department -was prepared as a background paper lor the report on Gender and Poverty in India. Copies of this paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Lynn Bennett, room F5-009, cxtension 82772 (May 1992, 94 pages). Das presents the Women's Development Pro- for women's groups and nongovemment organi- gram (WDP) - launched in six districts in zations. WDP stressed the need to build aware- Rajasthan, India in 1984, and now extending to ness and confidence among women as essential nine - as a case study in awareness-building to integrating them into the development proccss. and group formation among rural women. The institutional perspective or a place or A departure from the traditional pattern of' center where women can be offered continuing viewing women as the objects of welfare, WDP education anid Lraining gave way to the concept has been a distinct success. Rural women have ol' an intformal network of women's groups. realized that their deprivation is not unchange- Education was del'ined as the acquisition of able, that alternatives exist, that they are compe- knowledge, whicih may not necessarily mean tent enough to choose between alternatives, and literacy. It could even mean the acquisition of that they are not alone. skills for perneraling or controlling resources. One important feature of the project docu- WDP has demonstrated that illiteratc women ment was that it was provisional and tentative, can be cffective group organizers. The question essentially a guide to structure and ifhianicial this project opens up is this: organize women for patterns. Other programs focus on strengthening what'? Too much fbcus on training in communi- delivery systems; WDP's sole aim was to fbonn cation and group inieraction could become an groups that would consolidate Lhemselves for end in itself. Matlilat Samakhya, a program to their own development - these groups, once organize wrinen for education, used the process formed, would initiate any action they needed of WDP but changed its aims and emphasis. and decided upon. What emerges f'r-om die WDP experience is The second important element of the project the process it unleashed: the organization, document was the degree of freedom visualized interaction, and participation of womcn. ThePolicy Res-,arch Working l'aperS.ricsdissemlin iiates ih findlings ofr work under wiy in thc Bank. Anohjcctiv of thc scrics is to get these findings out quickly, even if prcsentations arc Icss than fully polisl'ed The findings. interpretations, and conclusions in thcsc papers do not necessarily rclrcsent ofFicial Bank policN. 1'roduced by thc Policy Rescarch lDissemination Ccnter  CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS USED INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 CHAPTER I: THE RAJASTHAN CONTEXT . . . . . . . . 8 CHAPTER II: BACKGROUND AND ORIGINS . . . . . . . 11 CHAPTER III: THE ORGANIZATIONAL BASE . . . . . . . 15 CHAPTER IV: THE ROLE OF TRAINING IN WDP . . 30 CHAPTER V: THE WORKING OF WOMEN'S GROUPS . . . . 36 CHAPTER VI: MONITORING AND EVALUATION . . . . . . 47 CHAPTER VII: THE IMPACT OF WDP . . . . . . . . . . 53 CHAPTER VIII: PROBLEMS IN PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT . . . 64 CHAPTER IX: PROGRAM FUNDING . . . . . . . . 72 CHAPTER X: MAHILk SAMAKHYA AND GROUP FORMATION FOR EDUCATION . . . . C T . N . . . . 74 ENDNOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 ANNEXURES I. MAP OF RAJASTHAN WITH THE WDP DISTRICTS . . . . . 86 II. SELECTED DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISI.rCS BY STATES . . 87 III. RAJASTHAN - DISTRICT-WISE RATE OF WORKING FEMALE PARTICIPATION . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. 88 IV. RAJASTHAN - LITERACY RATES AT DISTRICT LEVEL . . . 89 V. RAJASTHAN - DISTRICT-WISE SEX RATIO . . . . . . . 90 VI. PLAN FOR MVKS . . a . . . 4 . . . . . . . * . 91 VII. CASE-STUDY OF FUNCTIONING OF WDP IN JAIPUR DISTRICT 92  I am grateful to Sharada Jain and Kavi'a Shrivastava at IDS, Jaipur for sparing time, internal documents and valuable comments, to Mamta Jaitly at the state IDARA, Pritam Pal at the Jaipur DWDA, Vimala Ramachandran at the Ministry of Education and Ajay Mehta at Sewa Mandir for information, and time for discussion. This paper owes considerably to Lynn Bennett's guidance aad Gotz Schreiber's interest.  LIST OF ABDRNVTATION1 AND MACRNYM8 AENFE: Adult Education and Non-formal Education DIU: District Implementation Unit (Mahila Samakhya) DRDPR: Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj DRU: District Resource Unit (Mahila Samakhya) DRDA: District Rural Development Agency DWCRA: Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas DWDA: District Women's Development Agency HRD: Human Resource Development ICDS: Integrated Child Development Services IDARA: Information Development and Resource Agency IDS: Institute of Development Studies IRDP: Integrated Rural Development Program NAEP: National Adult Education Program NCSW: National Commission for Self-Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector NGO: Non-government Agency PD: Project Director PO: Project Officer SITARA: State Information, Training and Resource Agency (Mahila Samakhya) TRYSEM: Training of Rural Youth for Self-Employment UNICEF: United Nations Children's Fund UNFPA: United Nations Population Fund  5 INTRODUCTION 0.1 The importance of organizing women into groups lies in the colle-tive strength women build which gives them access to and control of resoui:es. These resources may be in the form of productive assets like land, credit, or machinery, or in the form of services like health care, education and extension services. Women's groups provide a forum to women for interaction, learning skills and discovering a commonality in their situation. 0.2 Women's development in India has up to now followed a social welfare approach in programs for women and children. Official documents from the 1980s, however, beginning with the Sixth Plan document, have set out intentions of involving women in the development process, but what had been overlooked was the need for receiving mechanisms amona the disadvantaged groups. Group-formation thus is seen by this paper as an essential pre- requisite for the reception and effective utilization of sectoral programs for women. 0.3 The Women's Development Program was begun in Rajasthan in 1984 in six districts and now extends over nine. It is presented here as a case study in awareness-building and group- formation among rural women. It represents a departure from the pattern of viewing women as welfare subjects, and has distinguished itself in terms of its premises, objectives and implementation.  0.4 WDP has established that the formation of groups is possible and can be repeated. It has led to the realization among -ural women that their deprived condition is not unchangeable, that alternatives exist, that they have the competence to choose between alternatives and that they are not alone in the task. The question that WDP opens up is: organize women for what? Nahila Samakhya, a program to organize women for education has attempted to builc upon the methodology of WDP with a shift in aims and emphasis. Thus, the relevant category which emerges in WDP is the process that it has unleased -- of participation, interaction and organization of women. 0.5 This paper is divided into 10 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the program area - Rajasthan, arza the status of women in the state. Chapter 2 presents the background and origins of WDP and the circumstances under which it came into existence. Chapter 3 delineates the organizational structure and administrative arrangements for the program. Chapter 4 discusses the role of training in WDP, and the innovations made in the training process. The formation of groups, and the process of extending the program to rural women is dealt with in Chapter 5. The system and concept of monitoring and evaluation in WDP are the focus for Chapter 6. Chapter 7 dwells on the impact of WDP on rural women, and the question of involving women in income generation activities. The structural and processual problems in the development of WDP, as well as management issues, and  7 NGO/government interaction form the core of the discussion in Chapter 8. Chapters 9 and 10 deal with financial arrangements for WDP and a new program for women's education, Mahila Samakhya, respectively.  8 CRg TlR It THE RA1JASTHN CONTEXT 1.1 Rajasthan is an aconomically backward state in northwest India. Extending over an area of 342.t thousand square kilometers, it has a population of 34.26 million. Eleven out of its twenty-seven districts are desert districts (situated in the Thar desert), five are pre-dominantly tribal and about fifteen are drought-prone. Chronic problems include desertification, scarce, unsafe drinking water, drought, and industrial backwardness. 1.2 Rajasthan is also notable for the low status of its female population. The female literacy rate in Rajasthan is 11.4 percent compared to the all-India figure of 24.4 percent (see annexure 2 for lite-acy figures for other states). Only 2.69 percent of the scheduled caste women and 1.2 percent of the scheduled tribe women are literate. In Jaipur district which contains the capital of Rajasthan, less than 1 percent of rural women are literate. Rajasthan's female literacy puts it among the six states of India having the lowest rate of female literacy (less than 20 percent). According to the conventional methods of computing work-participation, Rajasthan has a female work- participation rate of 21.06 percent. (For a district-wise breakdown of work-participation, literacy, and sex-ratio see annexures 4, 5, and 6, respectivelv.)  1.3 The reasons for the backwardness of women in Rajasthan are both cultural and e,conomic. Rajasthan had been one of the strongholds of the feudal Rajput kings. As in other feudal, martial cultures, among the Rajputs too, the low position of women in society served to enhance the prestige of the warring clans. The current adverse sex-ratio of 1088 males to 1000 females in the state suggests that women's low status persists. 1.4 Women's development in Rajasthan was further hindered by the fact that Rajasthan was left mostly untouched by the movements for women's uplift, including education, widow romarriage and inheritance of property, which swept India in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the struggle for India's independence from British rule, women played a prominent role, but the movement in Rajasthan was not very vigorolis, and women had little part in it. Finally, the geographical and topographical problems of the area serve to compound the low status of women in terms of accessibility to health-care and education and the availability of fuelwood, fodder, and water. 1.5 What Rajasthan does have to its credit are a number of non-government agencies working in remote, inaccessible areas. Also, there is a tradition of grass-root activism and self-help groups, organized by dynamic persors from within the community. In addition, the last two decades have seen the rise of several women's organizations involved in research, training, and field-  10 work. This combined with the fact that Rajasthan has a strong administrative ethoa, has paved the way for innovation and experiment. I  OMPUR I:I B^CKGROUD AND ORIGINS OF WDP 20. WDP originated as a result of rigorous exercises undertaken by the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj' (DRDPR) of the Government of Rajasthan (GOR) from 1982 to 1984, in response to difficulties encountered in implementation of the various development schemes. The DRDPR was charged with overseeing the Government of India's 20-Point Program, which included the various schemes such as emancipation of bonded labor, securing miiiimum wages for workers, primary education, child immunization, ecc. After reviewing available research, intensive field study, and interaction with voluntary agencies and social activists working in the field, the DRDPR reached the conclusion that in order for development programs to be successful, women must be given access to them through innovative means. The consensus was to laurnch a program which would create a new sense of worth among poor rural women and develop new fora of communication, and understanding about social and developmental issues. 2.2 The formal beginnings of WDP can be t.-aced to May 1983 when the Development Commissioner initiated a brief conceptual paper on the proposed program. The paper was discussed by Secretaries and heads of departments in the state administration. While these officials had no objection to the program, neither were they enthusiastic about it. Also, they could not commit  12 funds for the program in view of the financial stringency in the state. However, the Development Commissioner had already had preliminary discassivn with UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Welfare at the center regarding funding for the program. Apart from its clearance by the Rajasthan Chief Minister and the Minister in charge of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, the proposal does not seem to have been subject to di,cussion with the political leadership of the State. 2.3 In February 1984, UNICEF sponsored a two-day workshop in Udaipur, Rajasthan, to discuss the draft prepared by DRDPR. The workshop was attended by senior officials of the Central and State Government, leaders in the field of women's development from across the country, and representatives from UNICEF. The importance of the workshop lay in the fact that the various components of the Project document were discussed in detail, and suggestions made by the participants. It also set the tone for the participatory nature of the meetings for WDP. The Project document 2.4 The WDP document was finalized by DRDPR within a month after the Udaipur workshop. The financial estimates were prepared in close consultation with the local UNICEF office. A brief Hindi version of the document was prepared and processed by the Government of Rajasthan, which gave its final approval in April 1984. The document was published in the following month.  13 2.5 The interesting thing about the prepEration of the Project document is not its content, nor even the process which was followed for its development, but its declared provisionality and tentativeness. In fact, the earliest records of the meetings of WDP have statements by the Development Commissioner that he did not attach any sanctity to the project document, and that depending on experience, its parameters could be altered. The project document in fact remained essentially a guide to the structure and the financial patterns. Most other aspects of the project were altered as the implementation got underway. This included the shift of emphasis from concrete objectives of the program like employment and education to training and communication, a firm refusal to accept any quantitative targets and much wider role of non-government agencies. 2.6 The objectives of the program as set forth in the project document are both ambitious and ambiguous. The importance of the document for women's development strategy lies in the fact that it accepts and indeed stresses that no development is feasible without strong receiving mechanisms among disadvantaged groups, in this case, women. While other programs concentrate on strengthening delivery systems, the sole aim of WDP is to form groups which will consolidate themselves for their own development. It is implicit that these groups, once formed, will initiate the action which they need and decide upon. The policy document displays a basic faith in the potential of  14 women's groups and the "need to encourage and create agencies, groups and individuals to articulate concern towards indignities and discrimination against women... (and to) ... empower women through communication of information, education and training and to enable them to recognize and improve their social and economic status" (GOR, 1984). 2.7 The second important element of the document is the degree of freedom visualized for women's groups and non- government organizations (NGOs). This is basically what sets WDP apart from other innovative government programs of women's development. Almost all government programs in women's development have stressed the need to build awareness and confidence among women, but before WDP there had never been a program that saw this as the paramount pre-requisite for integrating women into the development process.  1S TEKA3R TII: THE ORQgNZ oATINAL BAg 3.1 The management structure of WCP is an unusual amalgam of conventional departmental functioning along with direct and continuous involvement of local NGOs through an apex level Information Development and Resource Agency (IDARA) and an NGO assigned the responsibility for concurrent evaluation, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). In a somewhat unique manner WDP permitted the initiative for decision making to be taken over by women's organizations, rather than resting with the conventional administrative hierarchy. External funding (by UNICEF) has ensured that Government control mechanisms do not operate on a day to day basis, as they do in the case of ordinary Government schemes. The following chart will aid in the understanding of the verious levels of organization and functions. LEVEL ORGAIZATION/ORER FUNCTION STATE Dept. of Women, Children Overall coordination/ and Nuttrition Administration State Information Development Information, training, and Resource Agency (IDARA) - staff selection, news- non-governmental letter Institute of Development Monitoring, evaluation studies, Jaipur - independent, non-governmental body  .6 DISTRICT District Women's Development Administration Agency District Information Development Information, training, and Resource Agency district newsletter FIELD Pracheta Block level worker - supervisor of 10 Sathins, trainer, liason person SATHIN One for 10 villages - main field functionary organizer/animator of groups tate Level 3.2 Originally WDP was intended to be a part of the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (DRDPR). It was expected that a Joint Development Commissioner would be in charge of the program with some support staff. Over the years however, the administrative responsibility for WDP shifted to the Department of Social Welfare, most specifically to the Directorate of Women and Child Development (W C and N). The Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare is assisted by a Director of Women and Child Development, who in addition to WDP is also responsible for several other important schemes, including the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program. She is assisted by an Additional Director who is exclusively in charge of WDP. The person responsible for WDP has  17 generally been a female officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) with one exception. This position has been treated as a stepping stone for movement to another position for the IAS Officers. The Department of Social Welfare is responsible for staff recruitment, monitoring, selection of districts, and identification of a voluntary agency to serve as district Information Development and Resource Agency (IDARA). 3.3 There is also at the State level, the apex technical support agency or the