FOREWORD

   
It has been thirty months since PDDP started implementing Village Development Programme through Social Mobilization (VDP) in its Programme districts. During this period nearly eighty thousand people from nearly sixty-seven thousand households have become members of community organizations, and these rural poor have managed to save about Rs. 32 million, and have invested nearly Rs. 39 million among themselves, almost equally between men and women. It is beyond anyone’s imagination as to how the poor have been able to come up with so much of their own money. This is not money that has been gifted to them by anybody. It is money that has been gathered painstakingly paisa by paisa by these villagers. Some have given up cups of tea or cigarettes to contribute money for their weekly savings. Others have scrounged money from their household expenses. Whatever the means, the rural poor have shown that, if they want to, they can save. And in doing so, they have paved the way for a self-reliant future.

VDP follows the vision of HMG’s Ninth Plan by focussing on poverty alleviation and decentralized local governance. It is very much a poor-oriented programme, with most of the benefits going to the most deprived of the groups. It is commendable that each community organization has developed its own classification of a ‘poverty profile,’ on who is poorest, poor and medium, and see that the benefits of the programme are first shared by the rural poor. Such classification of poverty will also help the government to map out the ‘poorest’, ‘poor’ and ‘average’ settlements and estimate the resources required to uplift the poorest to the average category.

Another good aspect about VDP is that it is a very participatory programme with all the men and women in the settlement involved in prioritizing their development needs. Whether it is productive infrastructural projects like irrigation, drinking water supply and micro-hydro , or those in the social sector like schools, health posts, garbage disposal etc., the community people get together; seek resources for the implementation of the projects, contribute voluntary labor and materials as their contribution, and form maintenance committees to care for the projects that they have built. They feel ownership for the projects, and in doing so ensure the sustainability of the schemes.

Each Programme VDC now has a group of experts providing specialized services in rural settlements, thus making them self-reliant. Relying on oneself injects the rural people with a sense of self-worth, which they had lost by being made to feel deprived and worthless as they relied on ‘outsiders’ for everything. The regaining of ‘self-worth’ is the most important step towards self-empowerment.

These community organizations, who are now on the path of self-reliance and self-empowerment, will now gradually enhance and turn themselves into institutions that will become the receiving mechanism of all development efforts at the grassroots. Then they will be truly self-governing too, true to the spirit of decentralized local governance as has been envisioned by HMG. When this programme is replicated as a model and strategy of poverty alleviation initiatives in all other parts of the country, then, I believe, the government’s poverty alleviation efforts too will really start to bear fruit.

Dr. Jagadish Chandra Pokharel
Member
National Planning Commission

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