GRASSROOTS, RANIKHET

Grassroots is short for Pan Himalayan Grassroots Development Foundation. Wish there was some way to shorten the 120 steps, along roughly 200 metres drop, that one has to negotiate to reach their office in the outskirts of Ranikhet. Going down is easy, but climbing back, oh! forget it. Grassroots has been around since 1992, ever since the Pauls, Kalyan and Anita, moved to Ranikhet, the cantonment town in Almora district, from Chirag, an organisation in Kumaon they had helped form, together with other like minded people, in 1986.

Grassroots is now an amalgam of organisations. There is Grassroots itself, a small organisation of less than 10 people that acts as a facilitator to a number of development processes. Over the years, it piloted and experimented with a number of activities, and the successful ones have since been transferred to organisations set up by local staff. The Mahila Umang Samiti, Umang for short, is a federation of self-help groups in villages in Almora, Nainital and Bageshwar districts. Umang provides a platform for the women to engage in productive activities like knitting and food processing, by bringing about linkages with the market. Kumaon Artisans’ Guild (KAG) is another organisation which Grassroots has helped establish. An alliance of masons and construction supervisors, the Guild is an outcome of long years of work that Grassroots has put in, in the area of alternative technologies. Biogas is one of them.

Grassroots work priorities are governed by its founding mission of working on the regeneration of the Himalayan mountain ecosystem. It sees its work in diverse sectors as alternate technologies and natural resource management as being elements of this larger strategy. That this approach is working is evident from what one sees in the villages. Traditional sources of drinking water are drying up fast. The infiltration wells that the organisation has helped establish have provided a working alternative to the people. Similarly biogas has helped in reducing the demand for firewood, a very scarce commodity in the region.

Establishing successful pilots and leaving the expansion and scaling-up to local organisations like Umang and KAG is the role Grassroots plays. Moving from the past of technology specific interventions, Grassroots is now planning a fairly large natural resource development programme – regeneration of the Gagas river valley. The Gagas is a stream-fed river into which more than 30 streams, locally called Gadhera, drain. Through an intervention named “Gadhera Bachao Abiyan”, Grassroots plans to facilitate a multi-stakeholder forum to bring about substantial difference in the natural resource base of the area. Interestingly, about 90% of the land in the region belongs to the forest department. Thus unlike similar NGO interventions elsewhere, it is not sufficient to have community participation alone. There is need for a strong, working tripartite deal, between the communities, facilitating NGOs and the Forest Department. In the scheme of things Grassroots has worked out for the programme, local NGOs like KAG will deal with the community interface. About 10 other local NGOs have joined hands with Grassroots to implement the programme. Grassroots will take responsibility for the interface with the State and District administration.

Umang
Umang boasts of a network of women spread over 110 villages in 10 development blocks of the three districts. The governing body of Umang have representatives of the women’s groups. The day-to-day functions are managed by a group of women, headed by the Secretary, all of whom come from the area.

One part of Umang’s work is in community development. This includes areas like alternative energy, savings and credit groups and drinking water and sanitation. The other part of its work falls under the broad label of enterprise development. Knitting of woollen and cotton garments is the biggest activity, covering about 300 women in around 45 villages. Umang produces knitwear worth more than Rs.1.5 million each year, about a third of which accrues to the women as wages.

The other important enterprise activity is food processing. This includes making of pickles from local farm produce like chillies, ginger and garlic and fruit preserves and jams. The apiculture programme is also substantial, producing about 3 tonnes of honey every year. Umang also provides support to women for backyard poultry rearing.

Kumaon Artisans’ Guild
The purpose of the Guild revolves around the application of appropriate technologies for rural development. Thus most of its work is in the areas of biogas promotion and drinking water and sanitation. The infiltration wells technology developed by Tim Rees is the most significant drinking water solution that the Guild offers. Over the years the Guild has helped build more than 80 such wells, in addition to about 400 toilets and 200 biogas plants. The Guild also offers technical assistance to other organisations in Kumaon.

Some thoughts
The dominant development paradigm in Uttaranchal – heralded by the State with funds from multilateral donors and supported by a large section of the civil society – talks of the livelihoods approach. One sees very little focus on the quality of the natural resource base, which quite evident to the naked eye, is fast degenerating. Undoubtedly, Uttaranchal has great natural endowments to be exploited, to enable its people to earn good incomes. But concerns about sustainability of interventions get mere lip-service. It is in the context of such approaches that the interventions of Grassroots assume significance. They may be small in terms of coverage, but in terms of demonstrating alternative approaches they bring about a welcome freshness.

Grassroots also offers an interesting case study on the structure of development organisations. Irrespective of the degree of effectiveness of its ‘let-go’ strategy, it is refreshing to see an NGO make such efforts and actually take it beyond rhetoric. Lines dividing functions of Umang or KAG from Grassroots may be thin, but one cannot miss the genuineness of the effort. In fact, efforts are being made to ensure that the three organisations do not share the same work space. Now, all three work out of the Grassroots campus (of the 120-steps notoriety). During November 2005 in fact, KAG moved to its new premises. Umang needs a better organised space to manage its diverse production activities and once a suitable one is found, it also would have a new home.