TS and WB Agreement to Improve Incomes of Farmers and Health

The Telangana State Government and the World Bank recently inked a pact of Rs.500 credit for the Telangana Rural Inclusive Growth Project aimed at enhancing the agricultural incomes of the small and marginal farmers in the State and ensure increased access to services related to health, nutrition, sanitation and social entitlements to these farmers.

The project mainly will focus on increasing economic opportunities for small and marginal farmers especially from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled tribe households, in the 150 most backward mandals of the State covering 6000 villages by helping them gain access to extension services and quality inputs like improved seeds, market linkages and institutional credit investments will also be made in improving access to services in the areas of health, nutrition, water and sanitation besides increasing coverage and effectiveness under the social safety new programmes.

The project is composed of five components. The first component is the Value Chain Development component, which is aimed to increase the income of 250,000 small and marginal farmers by at least 50 percent through livelihood diversification, productivity enhancement and improved market access.

This component will work with those small and marginal producers who have built up productive assets, have previously participated in productivity improvement, and have the potential to exploit growth opportunities for high value commodities such as red gram, vegetables, soybean and Groundnut milk, poultry and small ruminants (sheep/Goat rearing). This component currently being piloted across 28 mandals and across all agricultural commodities value chain, nearly 7707 farmers have been mobilized into 583 producer groups.

The second component is Human Development. It is intended to create awareness for demanding Water and Sanitation, better Health& Nutrition Community Managed Education Services (CMES), pre-school education services and also strengthening existing public systems to deliver quality services.

The project will use community led approaches to improve access to water and sanitation services in about 150 targeted backward mandals by adopting saturation approach to cover all households and rural institutions like schools, anganwadi centers, and health centers and helping them achieve Open Defecation Free (ODF) status. So far 4 Gram Pnachathis out of 12 Gram Panchyathis are declared as ODF villages on pilot basis in Telangana.

The third component is Digital Local Government complements the Government of Telangana's efforts to strengthen panchayati raj institutions (PRI), this component aims to improve the coverage and service delivery of social protection entitlements to 500,000 of poorest households, mainly from SC and ST households.

Component four is ICT, TA and Partnerships. This component will create an enabling ecosystem for innovation and transformation in delivering good quality last-mile services planned under the components 1, 2 and 3. A strong IT platform with positioning hardware to capture real time data will be positioned in each Grama Panchyathi.

The final component is Project Implementation Support. This component is to strengthen the project implementation and will finance dedicated staffing for the project activities, consultancies, training and related material, office equipment, and operational costs.

As part of the project, the officials concerned would closely work with panchayats in the 150 mandals, especially on last mile service delivery issues, establish technology enabled “One Stop Shops” at the panchayat level and strengthen their role as an interface between the citizens and suppliers of crucial services. In addition, a facility to improve service deliveries for people with disabilities and women would also be established.

The project would help link small and marginal farmers to urban markets and make them competitive across the value chain so that they would be able to take advantage of the potential benefits from allied sectors like horticulture and livestock.

Investments would be made in increasing the nutritional content of products such as milk, vegetables and poultry. The other key aspect would be to invigorate and create local markets by connecting rural producers and enterprises with rural consumers and enhancing the quality of consumption by the poor households by making nutrient rice snacks available through nutria-shops and creating awareness on the benefits of these products.

The greatest potential for growth in the agriculture sector comes from cash-crops, livestock and fisheries. For instance between 2004 and 2013, the fisheries sub-sector grew at 8.7 percent, while the agriculture sector as a whole grew only at about 3.9 percent.

This project certainly complements the Government’s efforts at strengthening panchayats so that they can play a greater role in planning, implementing and monitoring key Government programmes. Creating such strong institutions will go a long way in improving the lives of farmers and fulfilling their aspirations for a better life,” World Bank Country Director said.

G.Rajendera Kumar