APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGIES (INDIA), UKHIMATH

AT (India) or ATI works in the upper Himalayan regions of Uttaranchal, promoting and supporting small enterprises that draw upon the vast natural resources of the region. ATI works with self help groups in the villages, through a system of service/input providers and establishes market linkages for the products. ATI has developed a complete package of services to support oak tasar production. Dairy development and apiculture are to two other areas where it has done significant work.

ATI focuses its work on villages in the districts of Chamoli and Rudraprayag, and is based in the town of Ukhimath, which is famous as the winter abode of Lord Kedarnath. Villages are clustered into ‘valleys’, and ATI has established support infrastructure for each valley. Two companies have been registered as producers’ companies – one for tasar, one for honey – to manage their respective businesses. At the valley level or in the villages, however, one did not come across any division between the three entities, and the identity was only that of ATI and its staff.

The tasar enterprise covers the entire gamut from egg production to garment making. ATI or Chamoli Tasar Limited (name of the company registered to manage the activity) has established the infrastructure for spinning, reeling, dyeing and weaving. Cocoon grainage and rearing are done by farmers in the villages. The predominant production is of oak tasar and this requires the farmer to live in the oak forests away from their villages for the three months when the cocoons are left on the trees. With the rapid disappearance of oak trees, ATI is now shifting focus to other forms of silk, eri raised on the castor crop and mulberry cocoons purchased from elsewhere. Bulk of the employment generated is in the post-cocoon category when the yarn is spun, dyed and woven. Chamoli tasar sells well in the market and it is a large supplier of tasar-wool blended materials to outlets like Fab India.

Devbhumi honey is the branded product from Devbhumi Madhu Limited, the company ATI has promoted for its apiculture activity. In this case, ATI has not taken the responsibility of marketing all the honey that is produced through its network of producers. ATI provides training to apiculturists and has established a network of ‘collectors’. These collectors act as the intermediary between the farmers and the company. All honey produced by the farmers is collected by the collectors, who depending on demand from the company supply unprocessed honey to it. The excess production is processed and sold locally by the collectors themselves. The area being close to Kedarnath, there is very high demand for honey during the yatra season every year, and this market is catered to by the collectors.

The yatra market also has very high demand for ghee. The dairy programme developed by ATI has had many takers in the villages due to this. ATI provides a support package involving artificial insemination, improved fodder and tie-up with the government livestock development programme for veterinary care.

Eco-tourism is another of ATI’s interventions. It has helped three entrepreneurs establish lodges that cater to diverse interests as hiking, bird-watching etc. In village Sari that falls on the route to Deoria tal, a lake at an altitude of more than 2000 metres, an eco-tourism group was organised. This group was expected to generate employment and income for themselves by taking advantage of the large number of tourists visiting the lake. One of the group members is also one of the three entrepreneurs who have set up tourist lodges. Gradually, it seems that the individual’s business interests have overtaken that of the group and the self help group is probably functional only on paper.

Some thoughts
It was a study in contrast to see the work of ATI soon after seeing that of Grassroots. Here are two organisations that talk about more or less the same things – sustainability of mountain ecologies and its people. But each has chosen to approach this goal from very different angles. ATI has a taken a market based approach where establishing an enterprise and ensuring its viability have taken precedence. One could even see pointers to the fact that business prudence has taken precedence over the original purpose of the organisation. The tasar enterprise began with a view to providing incentives to the local population to arrest the degradation of oak forests by generating tangible incomes from them. However, over the years, tasar or silk business in itself has become more important than the fact that oak forests continue to disappear. In the process people have gained, undoubtedly, especially new skills like spinning and weaving which have helped women improve their economic status.

Grassroots has let go of its commercial activities to Umang, which again is a Society. ATI despite having put in place business entities like the two producer companies has not been able to ‘let go’. The two companies – Chamoli Tasar and Devbhumi Madhu – together do business worth about a crore of rupees every year. One would think that is a scale sufficient to raise the two as independent entities. Why this has not happened is probably worth exploring further. What does it take for NGOs to build sustainable, community managed businesses? Is it yet another chimera like sustainable development?

While on the topic of NGOs doing business, it was educative to see the number of organisations that are engaged in producing the same kind of products and incurring fixed marketing costs many times over to sell them in the same market. Walking around Dilli Haat during the Dastkar Nature Bazar in late November, one came cross six organisations running that many stalls selling more or less the same products – woollen products, honey, jam-jelly-preserves and, apricot-peach oil.

A quick calculation of what it means to the producers is simple. Selling, marketing and administrative overheads often take up to 50% of the price realised on some of these products, leaving just half the consumer rupee to be shared between the raw material and labour. In many cases, thus, the primary producer gets somewhere around a quarter of what the market pays – not substantially different from what the “corporate devils” return!

If this is the case, how can NGOs take a holier-than-thou attitude vis-à-vis the market and claim large amount of grants from donors for doing livelihood promotion work? It may be time to go back to the old milkman from Anand and learn about decentralised production and centralised processing. And perhaps more importantly, centralised marketing.