Chief Mentor's Note

In poverty stricken dry-land regions of India, where I come from, agriculture-dependent and traditional artisan households have been facing declining prospects day-by-day in terms of market and consumer preference. Starvation has been chronic in these households. As a result, migration has been/is acute and common and mostly in desperation for survival.

The condition at the sites of migration has been/is pathetic while the wages have been/are for hand-to-mouth existence. As the literacy has trickled to majority of the poor, the younger generation has been/is reluctant to pursue these livelihoods. While the resources are used sub-optimally, the employers are not finding the employees/labour with skills, market needs of the consumers are not met, etc., the poor are not getting jobs, some of their products/services are not in demand, some other products/services are in demand but not able to provide remunerative prices/wages. These paradoxes and the resultant unhappiness/frustration have driven me to get into rural management and my search for ways to resolve these paradoxes, has led me on to the livelihoods path.

As I traversed the livelihoods path, the following aspects have been found to be crucial: a. informed choice to the poor (integrating people’s knowledge-skills-resources with outside knowledge-skills-resources); b. working on the four arrows of livelihoods, rather than income alone; c. building on the existing first; d. concentrating on the local markets first (and therefore, market/market access first); e. least cost interventions (like skills, renewal, non-timber forest produce, organizing etc.) first; f. collective ownership of demand and supply; g. best practitioners within and around; h. metaskills to meet the dynamic changes globally/locally; and i. poor/community utilizing the opportunities for them in the economic growth and global integration processes while taking guard against the grave risks they have because of the competitive advantage/disadvantage-based situational realities. Gradually, the community has to get ready to move into ‘prosperity’ paradigm from the current ‘reducing poverty’ paradigm in terms of institutions and the professionals therein.

Livelihoods Framework (Four Arrows, Six Capitals and Four Contexts), LEAP Processes, Livelihoods Professionals, Community Livelihoods Resource Persons/ paraprofessionals, LSOs and their integrated networks etc., are important in ensuring the above crucial aspects in the livelihoods domain. They have to be done at a scale.

Redesigning the poverty reduction project to a livelihoods-centric project in Andhra Pradesh, this design becoming the basis for new projects that are coming up within and outside etc., evolving a simple but comprehensive Livelihoods Framework, bringing LEAP Processes to the center-stage, competency-based selection of cutting-edge professionals, building livelihoods orientation into the generic cutting-edge Community Coordinators, introducing a new cadre of Livelihoods Associates at the cutting-edge level, district level Livelihoods Resource Groups, Community Livelihoods Resource Persons (including Marketing persons, activists, paraprofessionals etc.), visioning and planning of the CBOs and support organizations etc., have started to make a difference to the poor. The induction process that has been evolved is unique and coupled with mentoring, this has become almost like a technology that can be applied.

I believe, if all this works, gradually, the mainstream institutions respond with positive orientation to support the poor in their endeavors to enhance their livelihoods in terms of policy, design (of poverty reduction and livelihoods projects), infrastructure, regulation, market access, partnerships, financing, jobs etc.