States / Chhattisgarh

Background

Chhattisgarh which also means thirty six forts, is a resource rich state located in the central-eastern part of the country. It is the tenth-largest state of the country, with an area of 135,194 square kilometer and a population of 25 million. The state has a high forest cover and is known for its temples and waterfalls. As per census 2011, the state is having a literacy rate of 65.99%. 76.76 percent of the state’s population resides in rural areas. As the state was part of Madhya Pradesh, the Panchayati Raj legislation which was in force became applicable to Chhattisgarh and came to be known as Chhattisgarh Panchayat Raj Adhiniyam, 1993. The state operates a three tier panchayati raj system. There are 27 District Panchayats, 146 intermediary (Block) Panchayats and 9655 Gram Panchayats. Chhattisgarh State Rural Livelihoods Mission (Bihan) is working in the state with the primary objective to reduce poverty by promoting diversified and gainful self and wage employment opportunities. A large portion of the state has been declared as “Schedule V areas” under the constitution giving them special rights.

Kudumbashree NRO has been working in Chhattisgarh for implementing PRI-CBO Convergence project and SVEP.

PRI-CBO Convergence 

The MoU for providing technical assistance and implementation support in Model Convergence Block Project was made effective from 1st May, 2017. A total of five blocks namely Balrampur, Bastar, Chhurra, Narharpur and Rajnandgaon across five districts of Chhattisgarh were identified for the Model Convergence Block Project. Out of the five blocks under MCBP, Kudumbashree- NRO is providing technical support in one cluster in each of the five blocks. Kudumbashree-NRO is engaged in total of 87 Gram Pancahayats of five clusters in five blocks. The Model Convergence Block Project envisages to build capacity of Self Help Groups and its Federations for departmental and Panchayat Raj Institution convergence, to nurture and groom Convergence-CRPs into potential mentors to scale up the Project. The other objective of the project is to strengthen Gram Sabha for enhancing the participation level of SHG women, identification of beneficiaries and prioritisation of the same, implementation of centrally sponsored schemes and State sponsored schemes in the partnership with Community Based Organisation, strengthening CBOs for micro planning and demand articulation using participatory tools like PAE, EAP and GP2RP.

Before rolling out the field level activities in the block three days orientation program was kept for the state, district officials and block officials to brief them about the project, participatory tools for convergence and also to devise field level activities for the block. Selection and finalisation of the Convergence-CRPs in each village was done by Bihan without much support from the Kudumbashree (LRGs in Chhattisgarh are called as Convergence-Community Resource Persons (C-CRP/ Yojana Didi). Preceding the PAE roll out in the field, initial orientation to 3226 VO members and one to one orientation about the project to PRI members were given. After the completion of this activity, PAE was rolled out in 1787 SHGs of five clusters across five blocks. 113 Convergence CRPs were trained upon PAE tool and schemes to facilitate the entire activity. 112 VOs consolidated their PAE data and presented it in 15th August and 2nd October, 2017 Gram Sabha.

After the completion of PAE, training on EAP was provided to 158 Convergence-CRPs of five clusters. This was done to facilitate SHG leaders to formulate plans for accessing entitlement gap in their respective VOs. 112 VOs in five clusters of five Blocks have completed preparing their EAP. As the EAP has been completed in the VOs, it necessitates to put in place a system for community based tracking system known as Entitlement Tracking Register (ETR) at village level which will empower CBOs in understanding and documenting entitlement access. It will also help to have a plan of action for accessing entitlements and jointly plan with Panchayat and departments for eradicating poverty at the village level. Yojana Didi and VO Executive Committee members were trained in the upkeep of ETR registers. The MoU between Kudumbashree and Bihan came to an end on 30^th June, 2018.

SVEP

The MoU with Chhattisgarh SRLM was signed in January 2018 for implementing SVEP for three Blocks- Balrampur in Balrampur district, Chhura in Raipur district, Rajnandgoan in Rajnandgaon district. The work was initiated with a state level stakeholder workshop conducted in the same month followed by selection of CRPs-EP in February’18. The selected CRPs-EP were provided with a series of training programmes for conducting census and survey for DPR. This provided them with first hand exposure to the block. All the selected CRPs-EP are women in the mentioned SVEP blocks. Balrampur and Churra have more proportion of ST population compared to Rajnandgoan block. Now, in the third year of implementation with average coverage of  450 SHGs and 55 VOs in Balrampur, Chuura and Rajnandgaon block. Till March 2020, there is the achievement of 100% of the total ME target in Rajnandgaon block. And 87% achievement in Balrampur & Chhura block. The eight module of capacity building of training namely TED I, II, III, TEAM AI, AII, TEAM BI, BII, BIII has been given to the CRP-Eps in all the blocks. CRP-Eps have been also oriented and trained on using VE-IT application and they are ready to use the application from the new financial year (April 2020-21). 

SVEP project status in Chhattisgarh as of June 2020