EE/ESD Program

Title of EE/ESD project

Scaling-up of Animal Husbandry and empowering Women through Credit, Self Help and Alternative Fuels/ Energy Sources

Created : Oct 18 2007 / Modified : Oct 19 2007

Organization Name: Ibtada

Type of the Project

National / Community Level: Community
Main contents and field: Agriculture / Conservation / Energy / Training

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Financial resources (Granted, sponsored by or partnership with)

Organization/Institution

UNDP

Name of Grant

Small Grants Programme

Amount

1,763,000 INR per year
(43,026 US Dollar)

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Target area and people: The project is being implemented in Alwar district of Rajasthan. Alwar is located at a distance of 150 kms from Delhi. Operational are is called Mewat. Mewat is synonymous with Meos, who form the dominant social group in the area. Meos were the majority community in the pre-partition days. They still form more than the 30 percent of the total popula鐃緒申tion of the Mewat region of Rajasthan.

Meos believe to have been converted to Islam in the 14th century and trace their ancestry to Rajputs or Yaduvanshis. Even after their conversion, they remained proud of their ancestry and maintained strong links with their Hindu background. Till few decades ago, they used to be Musalmans in name only and their village deities were the same as those of Hindu cultivators. They too observed several Hindu festivals. The Meo and non-Meo relations is an excellent example of Hindu-Muslim harmony. But this has been weakening during the last 3-4 decades.

Alwar has a dry climate with hot summer, cold winter and short monsoons. The average rainfall is 500 mms distributed over an average of thirty days. 80 percent of the rainfall is during south-west monsoon season, starting July to mid September the cold season starts in December and continues unto end of February. May and June are the hottest months when the temperature can go upto 48 degrees. During the brief south-east monsoon season, the relative humidity is over 70 percent. During the rest of the year the air is generally dry.

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Background/Problems of the project: Communities in rural India had been practicing livestock rearing for ages. Cattle, buffaloes, goat, sheep, all these animals have formed part of rural livestock profile. The fact is that animal husbandry contributes to around 20% of household income, which can be taken up-to 30-40%. With agriculture becoming costly day-by-day, this source of income is becoming more crucial to provide a back up support and sometimes do stop migration problems. Often it is said that an individual with 1-2 good quality of cattle always have a lower vulnerability index.

However, there are also some bottlenecks which block the income from buffalo rearing, such as,
a) Due to shortage of funds, poor people are not able to buy good quality buffaloes.
b) Lack of veterinary services leading to high mortality rate.
c) Lack of green fodder and other feeding practices affecting milk productivity.
d) Lack of proper management of animals lead to factors like less milk yield, more inter calving period, calf mortality and diseases.
e) Lack of funds also leads to dependence on milkmen (taking advance for purchase of buffaloes or for other needs), who pay fewer prices on purchase of milk.

Working towards the removal of these bottlenecks will help the farmers increase income from buffalo rearing. The effort is to promote and build sustainable livestock based livelihoods with the help of community institutions.

Rural women have to fetch fuel wood from forests for the purpose of cooking energy. Although, they should be fetching only dry wood, but at times, due to the scarcity of dry wood, they are forced to fetch green wood. Already stressed forest cover is further affected by this lopping. On the other hand, women have to go distant places for wood, which is a tiresome work for them. The project is planning to promote biogas as a means of alternate cooking energy. On one hand it will reduce stress on the forests, and on the other, it will provide good quality manure for agriculture and fodder production. Other objective of this project is conserving forests and thus environment.

Institutional Mechanisms and Capacity Enhancement:
Ibtada believes and working hard towards creating a network of grass root community institutions (preferably women). As only vibrant grass root institutions can bring into demonstrative change through their unity and institutional arrangements, which is a long-term goal. Fourth rationale of the project is to bring in the institutions into partnerships and relationships with mainstream bodies and building their capacities.

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Objectives/Significance of the project: - Conserving the bio-diversity through energy conservation: Conserving forests and reduce the fuel wood pressure by promoting biogas as means of cooking energy.
- Strengthen the institutions of rural women for conserving environment and bio-diversity and improve their livelihood sources.
- Build the capacity of community, especially women, to enhance their income from animal and land resources.
- Establishing mechanisms for better cattle health care and productivity.
- Enhance Institutional credit arrangements for the community for purchase of quality animals.
- Create local skills of animal care by training para vets.
- Facilitating institutional linkages with government service providers/machinery.

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Description of the project: Selection of Villages:
Ibtada has a strong network of community-based women's institutions. It is three-tier system of Self Help Groups ? Mahila Sabha (cluster level ? Mahila Manch (Federation).
At present there are 200 SHGs, 20 Mahila Sabhas and 2 Federations in 2 blocks covering about 50 villages. The federations of these 2 blocks will do the village selection. 30 villages will be selected for the project. These will be the core villages.

Strengthening the Institutions:
Both the 2 federations and at least 12 out of 20 Mahila Sabhas will be strengthened to handle the project. At present, the institutions are involved in savings & credit and other women's issues. Now these institutions will be strengthened to plan, implement and monitor the livelihoods project. The institutions will have to plan and arrange for community contribution component. E.g., In case of beneficiary contribution towards biogas, loan has to be arranged from the group/sabha.

Training of Leaders:
The community leaders (women) will be educated about the project cycle its objectives and outcomes in relation with livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. These leaders in future will ensure sustained outputs over a period of time. Moreover these leaders will play a role to setting up the mechanisms and system in place in the village society. A total of 30-40 leaders will be prepared, who will learn the understanding of the concepts and will in turn disseminate the above knowledge to the other counterparts with the help of the network of SHG institutions present in villages. These leaders will influence the family level decisions to look into environmental issues.

Construction of Biogas Plants:
Taking forward the initiative of biodiversity conservation, Ibtada proposes to build another 75 biogas plants in 30 villages. Estimated cost of each plant is proposed Rs. 9000. The biogas plants would help to reduce the emission of Co2 in environment with reduction in consumption of fuel wood. In addition to reduced emission the plant will provide organic manure in the form of Biogas Slurry equivalent to organic manure that will further reduce the consumption of chemical fertilizer again restoring soil conservation.

Veterinary Camps and Services:
Alwar district is one of the largest milk-producing centers in Rajasthan, but still given the quality and maintenance of animal is not sound as compared to other areas. The area has immense potential in terms of promotion of milk-based economy, which reduces the vulnerability level of rural folks (especially women) at the time of natural calamity and any other crisis. Ibtada has already experimented and generated enough interest in the community towards animal husbandry. With series of discussion lack of veterinary support and disease attack are the major reasons for loss of cattle and low productivity of cattle in this area.

Ibtada in its effort of continuing and scaling up its earlier work proposes to conduct 90 veterinary camps in 30 villages. The total cost of one veterinary camp computed to be Rs. 1000, of which 33% will be born by the community to have increase the sense of ownership and responsibility.

Capacity Building at local level:
Developing Para Vets: In its effort of making the initiative and movement alive and sustained, we learnt that with community mobilization and awareness generation, there is also a need to develop local community para vets during the project tenure, which will serve in the village with the knowledge they will gain during this process. These community para vets will get acquainted in elementary and basic knowledge through classroom trainings and on site training and experiments.
Ibtada proposes to develop at least 15 para vets.

Training Local masons and technicians:
The construction, installation and maintenance of biogas plants are new to local communities. During the process of biogas activity implementation, special emphasis will be given to training local masons and technicians. The plant construction will be done by the local masons, who will get trained in the activity. Local technicians will also be trained for installation and maintenance of the plants.

Institutional Credit Arrangement for Purchase of Buffalo:
The institutions promoted by Ibtada are already in the process of facilitating credit through banks. In our earlier endeavor a total of Rs. 12,00,000 was mobilized for purchase of cattle. Ibtada proposes to set a target of Rs. 26.40 lakhs during the project duration for purchase of 220 animals.

Promoting vermi composting:
Ibtada has got a project sanction from CAPART for promotion of vermi composting with 30 farmers and training 100 farmers in the process of vermi compost. This will help in the process of agro forestry and organic farming. In the initial year, Ibtada will implement the CAPART supported project for 30 farmers. In the year 2 and 3, 60 more farmers will be added, totaling at least 90.

Promotion of Agro forestry/Horticulture:
The system of Agro forestry provides long-term consistent and periodic return that helps in keeping the cash flow ongoing and reduce vulnerability level by failure of agriculture or natural crisis. Ibtada proposes to work with 40 farmers in building a demonstrative model for Agro forestry in 1-2 bigha of land. Per farmer computed cost of this activity comes to around Rs. 4500 out of which farmer will be contributing Rs. 2500.

Exposure Visits:
The farmers need to be exposed to the areas where better practices are adopted in the field that has lead to increased production. A believes is stronger when it is seen and observed practically, interacting with the fellow farmers who have adopted these mechanisms and were benefited. The exposure trips will be organized around Agroforestry system, organic farming and other institutional work performed by other institutions. Two exposure visits will be conducted during the period.

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Materials/equipments used in the project:: Construction material such as bricks, cement, concerete, Stove, Sanitary fittings

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Pictures and maps

Time span/Timeline: The project is being implemented from Dec 15, 2005 to Dec 14, 2008.

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Result/Self evaluation (success or failure) including its reasons: 1. The biogas activity is going slow because the members are getting discouraged because of rising construction prices. Then lot of members either don't have sufficient buffaloes or space to build the plants.
2. Last monsoon, the project did fodder plants plantation with some beneficiaries. But the scale was small at each beneficiary level and there was not much interest and thus, lot of mortality. Now, the project is focusing on horticulture and this monsoon activity is going to start. The success is yet to be witnessed.
3. Masons are not interested in this because they have to change place of work to distant villages and there is time and cost involved. Also, there is break in work and resultant wage loss.
4. Community is also not much encouraged about vermin compost and there si shortage of water in summers.

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Other learning from the project: Project has involved community in each step i.e. planning, implementation and monitoring which has worked amazingly. As the implementation process is going on so is increasing the involvement of community in follow up. The status of each activity is discussed in group, cluster and federation meetings. A member not found to be taking care of biogas or vermicompost properly is handled by the women institutions only. Project has also made arrangements for timely monitoring of the activities as in case of previous UNDP project it was felt that there was some gap from project's side also. That's why, the project is quite careful this time.

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