Dry Season Irrigation for Marginal and Tenant Farmers (DSI4MTF)

CDHI in partnership with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research ( ACIAR ) since Sep 2014 on an action research project at Dhaloguri village of Coochbehar and Uttar Chakwoakhtei village of Alipurduar district.  This Research for Development (R4D) project is considered as Short Research Action (SRA) has been improving the livelihood of woman, marginal and tenant farmers in the project area, through improved water use and increased dry season agricultural production by forming collective farming groups. The project has identified and tested a series of institutional and technical interventions to increase dry season farming in the context of stratified social structure.  There are 14 collective farming groups and 2 registered farmers producers company are functioning effectively and more than another 6 collectives are evolving as a part of out-scaling. Now the farmers are well connected with service providers / government departments and accessing different facilities like seed, shallow tube wells with pumps, solar irrigation system etc resulted in new crops introduced, poly house cultivation is taking place and farmers income increased. Also good number of article published based research studies in international level journal The SRA as an extension of DSI4MTF will come to end but CDHI will try to further partnership on the following issue to sustain the project activities-

  • Climate Smart Irrigation: Scaling of existing irrigation and agricultural practices through farmer collectives by using ECE.
  • Link our FCGs-farmers collectives groups with FPC and WUA
  • Connecting FCGs, FPCs and WUA with programme under NABARD, Agriculture dept., Horticulture dept. KVK and Marketing dept.
  • Formation and strengthening of new FCGs under govt. programmes by using well tested ECE
  • Market linkage including study on inclusive value chain
  • Scaling-out, scaling-up and scaling-deep

Socially Inclusive Agricultural Intensification (SIAGI)

CDHI has been implementing SIAGI project since 2016 at Uttar Chakowakheti  of Alipurduar district and Dhaloguri of Coochbehar district in collaboration with CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization), IIT, Kharagpur (Indian Institute of Technology), PRADAN (NGO), LNRMI. ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research) has been providing the financial support for implementing the project. It is a research project and looking at i) How and why agricultural intensification affects the rural livelihood, ii) What is the nature of social exclusion? Who gains, who loses, how and why? Iii) What are the livelihood risks and how the risk resilience capacity has developed among the community? iv) How do institutional arrangements and power structure influence to access knowledge and inputs? and v) Social inclusion towards agricultural intensification. Ethical Community engagement (ECE) has evolved as the main driving force of the project and CDHI is the pioneer of this concept. ECE helped us to build rapport with the community and run smoothly of the project activities with the active participation of the community. The important outcomes of the research are including the study on inclusive market value chain, bio-economic modelling and integrated modelling.

Netra Vasant National Rural Eye Health Programme

CDHI has been implementing Netra Vasant National Rural Eye Health Programme in Alipurduar district and Jalpaiguri district since April 2016 and February 2017 respectively in collaboration with Sightsavers and other stakeholders with the objective of sensitizing the community on eye health and at the same time, eliminating the avoidable blindness from the society. 

A large number of people have benefited from Netra Vashant National Rural Eye Care Programme.  Many got back their sight and everyone is very happy with the performance of the project.  They thanked to Sightsavers and CDHI for their great initiative.   

Multi Stakeholders (Tea Garden Volunteers, RMPs, Tea Garden Management, Social workers, ICDS workers, PRIs, Teachers, etc.) involvement and their active participation also created a good impact in the programme, it has helped us to organize camps in remote places where has never been a camp before, as a result, we able to reach a big percentage of the excluded community and they accessed the benefit of the programme. This would not have been possible unless there were active participation of the multi stakeholders.

The following chart shows our achievement so far.

Achievement

2016-17

2017-18

2018-19

2019-20

Total

Number of people free eye screened

13720

14280

12640

10459

51099

Number of people prescribed spectacle

2718

2993

2627

2295

10633

No. of subsidized spectacle distributed

2610

2884

2429

738

8661

No. of spectacle distributed free of cost

x

x

129

1157

1286

Number of people identified cataract

1756

2533

1829

1501

7619

Number of cataract surgery done

1246

1723

967

808

4744

 

There is a dedicated team in every block of Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri district for facilitating the programme. They are keeping touch with all the stakeholders. Project has ensured active participation of all the actors through community engagement process. It was not possible to achieve the success of the project without sincere efforts of all the actors.

Strengthening of community Institutions for Inclusive development in tea estates (CIID)

Bread for the World (BftW) supported Strengthening of Community Institutions for Inclusive Development in Tea Estates (CIID) Project has been running from last four years in five Tea Gardens of Chamurchi Gram Panchayat of Dhupguri block and CDHI has been facilitating the activities to achieve the goals of the project. A large number of people have been benefited from the programmes which include leadership / cadre building of Community Based Organizations (CBOs), capacity building, network and aliens building, advocacy with local as well as state level agencies on livelihood, disaster, justice and entitlement issues, gender mainstreaming, mainstreaming local capacities on peace and at the same time, working on conflict resilience , etc.

The project provided the opportunity to work with the people of the tea gardens. There are five tea gardens under the project area with different problems which include accessing rights and entitlements as tea garden workers from the planters under tea plantation act, people are not aware about their rights and entitlements, they have been facing problem to access Aadhar Card, ration card, birth certificate, handicap certificate, caste certificate, housing benefit, benefit under Janoni Suraksha Yojona (JSY), old age pension, widow pension, Schedule Tribe pension and others. Most of the times, Tea Garden workers /non workers don’t access that quality and quantity of ration as they are entitled and at the same time, there are problems of irregular payment under MGNREGA, forced migration, political conflict, disaster, etc. 

Project has been trying to address the above issues in active participation of the community.  Following are the list of benefit in 2020-21.

Name of schemes

Applied

Received

JSY

42

38

Old age pension

64

51

Widow pension

35

22

Manobik pension

56

44

 

Project has been working on the issue of caste certificate. There are 112 people who have applied for caste certificates and so far 86 people received their certificates and some are under process. 

In year 2020, the project took initiatives to aware the people about the schemes for disable people and has been providing handholding support to access the benefits under the schemes. As a result 68 people applied for handicap certificate and 62 people already received. Project has been working on Public Distribution System (PDS) and trying to build capacity among the community on their rights and entitlement under PDS. Now they are aware of what kinds of ration they will get (quality and quantity). SHGs are facilitating the ration system in the tea garden but they could not stock the food grain properly during the rain and that got damage. People of the garden refused to take the damaged food grain. They submitted mass petition to the Authority for fresh food grain and respective department responded and people accessed fresh food grain. Now people are empowered and know what to do.        

There were 280 SHGs in Chamurchi G.P during 2016 at the initial stage of the project. We have facilitated numbers of events to sensitize the people on the Anandadhara programme and at the same time, organized several capacity building programmes for the members of SHGs. As a result, people got aware and came forward to form SHGs. As an impact of the project in 2020, good numbers of new SHGs formed and actively participating in socio-economic activities. Presently there are 600 above SHGs in Chamurchi Gram Panchayat and all are linked with respective banks, accessing loan to initiate income generating activities.

Peace building was one of the major events during the year. Conducted number of consultations with the leaders (political party/religious/others),common people, Tea Garden Managements regarding maintaining peace and tranquillity during vote, religious events and other times also and at the same time, facilitated rally, displayed banner on peace building. It impacted quite a lot among the poor community.

Earth quack, thunder storm, lightning, flood, etc. are the regular phenomena of the Terai Doars. We organized awareness programes in all the tea gardens of our project area and made them aware about dos and don’ts during lightning, earthquake etc. Workers as well as managements all appreciated the effort of CDHI.  At present, people are aware about different entitlements and rights and many of them have already applied for Caste certificate, ration card and other benefits under different government programmes for which they are entitled.

WBADMIP Project

CDHI is working as supporting organization (SO) under Minor Irrigation Department, Govt. of West Bengal from January 2020 under a West Bengal Accelerated Development of Minor Irrigation Programme (WBADMIP) supported by World Bank. Presently CDHI is facilitating and mobilizing the Water User Associations ( WUAs) and poor farming communities in four blocks of Alipurduar district. The Project development objective is to enhance agricultural production of small and marginal farmers in the project area through accelerated development of minor irrigation schemes by strengthening community-based irrigation management and by Agriculture, Horticulture and Fishery related development using new technologies and improved production practices to improve rural livelihoods within the project area.

The followings are the broad outlined activities of the consultancy services from CDHI as Support Organization (SO) on output basis:

  1. Base line survey, Need of EPA if any, Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) & Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) & Identification of Potential micro-watersheds/ Individual Schemes.
  2. Formation & Nurturing of Water Users Associations (WUA) and FPO/FPG (as and when required), Orientation of WUA on land & water development plan preparation and Capacity Building of WUA for sustainable operation, maintenance and management of MI Schemes& helping with the field data in preparation of SDMP (Scheme Dev. Management Plan) by DPMU.
  3. Implementation of Crop Planning, Land & Soil conservation by plantation, promoting horticulture, waste land intervention and fishery related activities as per instruction from DPMU.
  4. Conducting Training program of key functionaries of WUA, WUA& it’s beneficiaries on implementation of various project activities with the help of DPMU.
  5. Base line data & other data uploading in the MIS.
  6. Different types of reporting according to Project needs.

The initial results of the project is encouraging and identified key issues to revive and strengthening the existing WUAs as well as formation of new WUAs for socio economic development of marginal and tenants farmers.

National Child Labour Project

CDHI has been working with the Child Labors from extremely vulnerable families in different location of Jalpaiguri district. In the reporting period of 2020-21 with support of National Child Labour Programme, CDHI is facilitating and running 3 schools where currently 146 students of different age group children are studying although started with 5 child labour schools in 2008. Along with study, students get training on life skills, vocational training, athletics, etc. and at the same time, we aware them about risks of unsafe migration. In this financial year, 41 children returned to the mainstreaming / formal education. So far, we have been able to mainstream 773 children and many of them are continuing study, some of them are studying at graduation level. The mass scale awareness among the poor families also supported the community to reduce the child labour.

Gender and Women Development

Uttar Banga Terai Mahila Samity (UBTMS) is the women led organization ( Registered under West Bengal Society Act and FCRA) working in Teari and Dooars region of North Bengal is the sister organization of CDHI. The mission of the organization is to mobilize, organize and build the capacity of the poor and marginalized women to assert and access various entitlements and to help them to enhance income and well being through institutional and enterprise development. The UBTMS has been able to organize 784 women Self Help Groups (SHGs) comprising 9537 women members so far. There are 56 clusters under the UBTMS and this is one of the women federation in North Bengal facilitated and managed by the marginalized women including schedule case (SC) and schedule tribe (ST) communities. The activities are including the following-

  • Facilitating women SHGs for ensuring the social rights and entitlements among the women and their children.
  • Strengthening and empowering the women based local institutions and organizing women SHGs by conducting different level handholding, trainings, exposure etc.
  • Skill development training on small business development among the women SHGs members.
  • Motivating poor women towards small enterprise development programme by conducting “Enterprise Innovation Award” programme across all villages of the working districts.
  • Conducting Mahila Milan Sabha (mini women convention) in the respective cluster for the strengthening their group dynamics and confidence building. UBTMS has been celebrating different national and internationals events including women day. Also award ceremony for encouraging the meritorious daughters of the SHG members and motivating the poor to think big.
  • Keeping special vigilance on trafficking of youths and teenage girls of the SHG members under their respective clusters.
  • Promoting “Sukannya” policy for 0 – 10 years old girls of SHGs members through the State Bank of India and emergency fund for supporting to the needy and poor families under the UBTMS. Also social security and promoting micro insurance policy of TATA AIA among the SHGs members.
  • Also organizing other social events like Free Eye Health Check-up camps in the respective clusters in collaboration with CDHI.
  • Series of training and exposures are conducting on evolving gender and women development issues.
  • Publication of article, books, news bulletin etc based on learning and experience of women SHGs for disseminating among different stakeholders.

UBTMS is also working with NABARD in facilitating and conducting different programmes including micro-enterprise development training for women SHGs since 2012. Apart from the women federation it has also a credit linked with the respective State Bank of India (SBI) for financial support to SHG members for enhancing the capacity building and livelihood of 9529 households directly. There are 73% of women trainees involved in different income generating activities like goat rearing, embroidery, mushroom cultivation etc. Resulted in enhanced family income among the poor and marginalized.

Women run Collective Enterprises: An integrated model for the Eastern Gangetic Plains

The project on “Women run Collective Enterprises: An integrated model for the Eastern Gangetic Plains” is funded by The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) through University of Birmingham (UoB) as a lead organization. This one year piloting project is supported under 3ie’s “Swashakt Programme” that focuses on addressing the evidence gap and unlocking benefits for women in farm and non-farm sectors. The Swashakt programme supports the implementation and evaluation of project that aims to establish and strengthen women’s empowerment collective enterprises (WECs) in nine states. In West Bengal, this project is implemented by CDHI in Teari and Dooars region of North Bengal covering Coochbehar and Alipurduar districts. The women run collective enterprise under Farmers Producer Companies (FPCs) is producing organic inputs including vermin compost, trichoderma, neem oil, and azolla as well as selling it in following the market value chain (VC). It is ensuring the promotion of environment friendly agriculture cultivation. The collective enterprise is also providing door to door service to small and marginal farmers in selling organic inputs at competitive cost in compare to the inputs they use on date. 

The project is officially initiated in May 2021 and started work with one (1) production unit by the existing collective group of 23 poor farmers in Coochbehar. Now, in the month of November 2021 there are 102 members including 97 women are involved in producing inputs by setting up another four (4) production units after conducting the series of skill development events (technical and leadership) for the collective members. The five (5) collective enterprises at five locations are well connected with different stakeholders including North Bengal Agriculture University (UBKV), KVK, NABARD, Agriculture deptt. SRLM/NRLM etc. Already good quantity of vermin compost and azolla sold out and self-efficacy created among the poor women of collectives in the project location. The project is targeting to include more poor women under collective enterprises so that more than 210 poor women can be involved in this initiative at the end of the piloting in March 2022, This is also expected that their income from enterprises will be doubled within next 3 years to support their families in the context of improved health, child education and well being.