Jagadananda has been a social activist for more than two decades. Until recently, he was heading Centre for Youth and Social Development (CYSD), which is a grassroots organisation working with tribal and rural poor in Odisha.
He has initiated grassroots micro-planning at the village Panchayat level in tribal dominated districts of Odisha. As a member of the State Planning Board, he helped steer the bottom-up planning process in the backward districts of the State. He is also a former information commissioner of Odisha Information Commission.
He has played a key leadership role in the civil society sector in the country, too. He was the chairperson of the Voluntary Action Network India (VANI) and the chair of Sa-Dhan, a national network of community development micro finance institutions. Currently, he serves on the board of Rejuvenate India Movement and the Credibility Alliance, a national level network formed to promote accountability and credibility norms within civil society organisations.
At the International level as a member of the Civil Society Advisory group at the Commonwealth Foundation, he has brought several social policy issues and concerns of civil society at the level of Commonwealth Heads of the Government (CHOGM). He was also a contributor to the UN Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen) as well as the UN Conference on Financing for Development (Mexico) and participated at several round tables at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Excerpts from an interview:
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You have been working with a broad spectrum of civil society organisations and also with the government, including NITI Aayog. How do you assess NGOs’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic?
The Covid-19 pandemic has created possibilities for civil society across the country to come forward with whatever limited resources to help fellow citizens and it has really been a life-changing experience during the last few months.
At the government of India level NITI, Aayog created an interface platform and in the CSO standing committee we had many rounds of meetings during this pandemic. One round was with the high power committee, which consists of NITI Aayog, cabinet secretariat, Ministry of Home Affairs, Prime Minister’s office and the National Disaster Management Authority. Also, we had exclusive meetings with Health Departments at the secretary level and discussed the problems at the ground level, which was followed up with meeting the Health Minister himself, and then subsequently at NITI Aayog we had several rounds of meetings to identify what are the problems and how do we deal with them, and a direct relationship established. So, it has been a great challenge for civil society, which has responded very well.
The pandemic has increased the divide between the privileged and the underprivileged even more. What are the lessons for bridging the gap?
During the pandemic we realised that there is a big chunk of the population, who are not able to access their entitlements like social security and food security benefits, which provide an opportunity for people below poverty line to get their rations.
Then there are people who are below poverty line, but are not registered as such. It means identifying them and ensuring that everyone who is eligible for national food security entitlements is provided these benefits.
Similarly, support is required by other sections of the society like women-headed households, disabled-headed households, widow-headed households, transgender communities, even senior citizens. These communities requires special care and the government has made provisions for all. Therefore the role of civil society is to ensure that these people who are already excluded are included in this system.
The second lesson is about the role of Panchayats. At the local government level the planning is done well when locals come together and it is inclusive planning. But there is a divide between the rich and the poor, and those who have good houses to live in and those who do not have proper houses even to take shelter exist. For bridging these gaps the Panchayat identifies those families, their problems, their issues and then creates provisions for them to ensure things will start improving.
The third lesson is about livelihood. The government cannot feed everybody and reach every one every time so you have to have a sustainable decent way of living.
In Odisha people depend upon agriculture and forest resources. How do you deal with them? How do you create good marketing facility so that the minor forest produce, which they pick up is processed, value added and marketed and they get a good income out of it. Similarly, agriculture workers and small farmers require handholding support and also support in marketing. The best thing is that the minimum support price is guaranteed to farmers, but the minimum procurement price many a time does not reach the poor. This is one area where we should scale up our intervention.
Covid-19 has come up as a different challenge. How can we turn this challenge into an opportunity to pursue sustainable development and natural resource management?
Covid-19 has certainly created challenges in the society for everyone from the rich to the poor, from villages to cities, from local governments to Parliament, and from civil society to market actors. Everybody is worried about future.
It is a great opportunity to revisit Gandhian model of economy and that is the big role for civil society. Gandhi ji said we don’t need mass production; we need production from masses.
The Prime Minister also said Aatma Nirbhar Bharat is only possible when the Aatma Nirbhar Panchayat works actually. At the Aatma Nirbahar Panchayat the foundation of Sustainable Development Goals too is grounded. If we manage our natural resources then we can achieve sustainable development.
Also, sustainable development demands focus on education, water and sanitation, health, etc, which is a governmental affair. The government is really mandated to reach people and help them to meet their needs. Here, the question arises that today there are villages that do not have drinking water, and people have to travel miles to access public health. So, it has exposed the cracks in our basic needs delivery system. Whether we live with Covid-19 or without it, the health system, food system, drinking water and sanitation system needs to be fixed and there civil society’s role is critical.
The role of civil society is to bring innovations to complex issues of poverty and development and in influencing policies. Therefore, to address this challenge, we need to conduct innovative experiments in operational areas and demonstrate that these experiments really deliver something. Then the government will take it forward and scale it up in a big way.
We may have to live with this virus for long time. How should the NGO sector prepare for the future?
The sector has joined as Covid-19 warriors. CYSD workers have masks, they maintain social distance, they have sanitizers and they are working deep in the community. We are self-mandated citizens, who have joined hands for a cause. We are connecting with migrants who have gone through a lot of problems because they know how the world has treated them. How their old employers have treated them. The lockdown was a bad experience for them. So, one challenge for the NGO sector is to revitalize the rural economy.
How has CYSD responded to the covid-19 pandemic?
It was a great opportunity for CYSD to respond during the lockdown. We decided that we must reach vulnerable segments of the society whether in urban slums or in villages. So we identified domestic workers, daily wage laborers and migrants and tried to reach out to them. CYSD has reached to 10,000 families and each family consists of 4-5 members. In all, CYDS has reached approximately 50,000.
Secondly CYSD collaborated with Humanitarian Aid International and used digital technology like drones for public awareness. We also provided assistance to Panchayats and made Covid-19 centres in local schools. Now we are working to support migrant workers and other rural workers to avail of MGNREGA scheme. We are also working with farmers, who are unable to sell farms products. We arranged transport facilities so that they could transport their products with special permission of the district administration and link with marketing channels that were opened for them.
– Transcript by Mohammad Mujtaba
(An intern from Jamia Millia Islamia)