About the Mobile Vaani Impact series: Since 2012, Mobile Vaani has been reaching thousands of people in India’s vast hinterlands with news, views and information about health, banking, education, sanitation, sexuality, agriculture, government policies, etc. At the same time, the platform offers these people the opportunity to voice their opinions and grievances about issues in their lives and communities.

Over the years, Mobile Vaani has grown in its potential, becoming a trusted platform that people reach out to with hyperlocal topics of concern. Additionally, it is a go-to source that a variety of stakeholders in local government and decision-making bodies tune into to understand the pulse of the people. Mobile Vaani volunteers have an important role to play in this: they support people in grievance redressal by reporting these issues, forwarding the news reports to relevant local officials to spur action, and following up on their implementation weeks down the line.
This way, Mobile Vaani contributes to bringing transparency and accountability to governance in India’s deepest, oft-ignored villages.

The Mobile Vaani ‘Impact’ series seeks to track this far-reaching result of Mobile Vaani’s work in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

———————————-

The first piece of the ‘Impact’ series traces the role of Mobile Vaani in highlighting the state of over 5,000 farmers in Kasmar in the Bokaro district of Jharkhand, who have been waiting for over a year for their agricultural insurance pay-outs following the drought of 2015.

In October 2015, volunteer reporter for Mobile Vaani Srinarayan Mahto reported the sorry state of Durga Puja celebrations in Jarandi in Bokaro, thanks to poor monsoons that had made farmers dizzy with worry over their crops. “There is no happiness,” he mentioned, even at a time of festivities.

Jharkhand was ravaged by a drought in 2015, with the state government declaring the entire state drought-hit in December that year. A report by the state agriculture department indicates that nearly half of all blocks in the state suffered at least 40 percent loss in their crops[2].  The state government demanded over INR 2,000 crore for drought relief from the centre. News reports stated that farmers across the state had to resort to eating weeds and grass to fill their stomachs in the absence of any earnings from harvests.

Agricultural insurance has been promoted by central and state governments in the country as one of the key ways farmers can minimise the damage caused to their finances because of losses and poor harvests. In Jharkhand, Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) are an oft-used mode to access agricultural insurance for farmers. As did the rest of the state, over 5,000 farmers in the Kasmar block in Bokaro, Jharkhand, had been paying premiums at the rate of INR 172/acre through PACS for a state-sponsored agricultural insurance scheme through 2015. The insured amount to be paid by the state in case of a claim was at the rate of INR 4,092/acre.

Following the declaration of drought in 2015, these farmers claimed their insurance pay-out from the government, which the government was to pay after a Circle Office report verifying the farmers’ claims against their land ownership.

As of December 2016, the farmers had not been reimbursed for their crop losses.

Enter Mobile Vaani.

Diwakar Mahto, a leader of a local farmers’ collective, brought this situation to the notice of Kamlesh Jaswal, a Mobile Vaani reporter from Kasmar. Following verification discussions with farmers that this was indeed the case, Kamlesh reported the news on Mobile Vaani on December 20^th 2016, and forwarded this to Shri Yogendra Prasad, MLA for the Gomia Assembly constituency, under which Kasmar falls.

Following this, MLA Shri Yogendra Prasad raised the issue at the Vidhan Sabha, questioning the pending repayment of claims to farmers in Kasmar. In response to the question asked by the MLA, a response was received on January 7^th, 2017 through a memo from the agriculture department. As stated in the memo, compensation of INR 1,91,22,989 will be paid to 5,068 farmers at the rate of INR 4,092 per acre, after an investigation to be carried out by the Deputy Commissioner of the Bokaro district.

Speaking to Mobile Vaani reporter JM Rangeela, Shri Yogendra Prasad said that following receiving information from Mobile Vaani reporter Kamlesh Jaiswal, he raised the issue during question hour in Vidhan Sabha, asking why payments in Kasmar block were delayed while formalities in other blocks have been completed.  Shri Prasad said that he has also raised the issue with district-level officials to ensure all due processes to speed up payments are completed.

Will the smiles return?

While the state has benefitted from a better-than-average monsoon in 2016, farmers are still struggling to cope with their losses from 2015. Insurance pay-outs will be enormously beneficial in helping farmers plan their upcoming cropping seasons. Kamlesh Jaiswal, reporting for Mobile Vaani from Kasmar in Bokaro, indicates that farmers in the region are delighted to hear that they are likely to get their payments soon.

Mobile Vaani’s dedicated field team will continue to follow up on the news to ensure the Circle Office files its verification report to lead to speedy disbursement of insurance pay-outs to affected farmers.

Since the day it started operating, Gram Vaani has always strived to live its name, to be the voice of the village. The different campaigns and projects undertaken by the company is a clear indication of its aspirations. The interesting fact is that, being first of its kind, we were able to give voice to millions to people across the country, change the way campaigns are run and write another chapter in implementation and accountability of projects.

At this point when the only communicative media that can reach to millions of rural households in India is a low-end mobile phone, we have designed and created an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform, which suddenly shifts the flow of information to a bottom-up format. With every project and campaign, we are opening up a new possibility on how this technology can be turned into an instrument that can truly bring out the voice of the village. Our recent project with Population Foundation of India (PFI) and Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3India) , shows another significant way how it can be extensively used as a tool in data collection.

Data Collection for Accountability

Data collection using the traditional paper based method is not the easiest and practical way, especially for collecting data for accountability from a grass root level, and this, in many cases, became the reason for the non-existence of such data. This had led to a system which took advantage of this situation and worked without much accountability. But when the old method is replaced by an IVR, it enables the stakeholders to collect data in real time from a vast audience and thus, ensure better implementation and accountability. It generates data that didn’t exist before, and this is exactly what the IVR for an accountability check list did for the project mShakti implemented jointly by PFI and C3India.

Project mShakti

The project mShakti is aimed to strengthen the voice, participation, leadership and influence of Elected Women Representatives (EWRs) within the Panchayati Raj system in order to bring about social change on issues that affect women, particularly family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) and related issues like Girls Education and Age of Marriage. The activities under this project are geared towards encouraging positive individual change and leadership as well as collective action by women at all three levels of the Panchayat system. The project also aims to strengthen State level advocacy on women’s reproductive health by engaging with women MLAs, journalists and women headed NGO network, Urja. The EWRs from four different districts of Bihar were given special training sessions and following the training, they have been active in Gram Sabhas and have visited health facilities within their jurisdiction, including the Health Sub Centre (HSC), Primary Health Centre (PHC), District Hospital (DH) and also been active in participating and engaging with processes in the Village Health, Nutrition and Sanitation Day (VHNSD).

The Accountability Checklist

In order to support the EWRs to monitor the facilities at the above mentioned health facilities,  four checklists was developed for use at the level of VHNSD, HSC, PHC and DH. Broadly, these checklists track availability and utilization of Family Planning/Reproductive Health services, including availability of equipment, medical supplies, personnel and infrastructure facilities. They also track financial management (such as untied funds) and community participation through Rogi Kalyan Samitis. The tracking is done using Gram vaani IVR platform which enabled collecting and recording data easier using their mobile phones. The voice- based system which can guide the user through the IVR sequence has options to provide data, record messages, listen, comment and give feedback to messages. It also has surveys to be taken by the users.

The elected women representatives (EWRs) have been enthusiastically using the checklists and collecting information with support from C3 India and local NGO partners. Data has been generated covering 421 VHNSDs, 109 Sub-Centres, six 24×7 PHCs and three district hospitals spread across 6 selected blocks across 3 districts.

The objective of this effort is not only to empower local women leaders to lead in improving services for women’s health but also to work with the system to enhance quality of services under NRHM by ensuring accountability at all levels.

Winds of Change

In the month of February, 2013, convergence meetings were organized in Muzaffarpur, Aurnagabad and Sitamarhi where the EWRs presented their findings related to gaps in health delivery system such as non-availability of examination table, lack of basic infrastructure, non-functional weighing machine, unavailability and un-utilization of untied fund,  lack of contraceptive and blood storage facility etc. relevant officials such as the Civil Surgeon, District Panchayati Raj Officer (DPRO), Additional Chief Medical Officer (ACMO) and District Immunization Officer (DIO).

These women have been able to effect a visible improvement in the quality of the VHSNDs in their constituencies and have also taken up other issues like local infrastructure, quality of education, retention and enrolment of girls in schools, facilitating entitlements under various schemes for the poor, etc. These changes are reflected in the statistics relating to their participation at various meetings – both within Panchayats and the health system (the VHSNDs for example)

mShakti has also been able to mobilise women MLAs from the Bihar Vidhan Sabha who have committed to support the issue in the coming months.

Earlier this year, we wrote about what we learnt from working with partners to build gender equitable and healthy societies by using information and communication technologies. This time, we want to talk about our work with various organisations to increase access to livelihood opportunities and to enhance resilience in livelihood for low-income people in rural and urban India.

A large IVR survey across our Mobile Vaani clubs showed that agriculture continues to be the biggest source of employment in rural India, but it is ridden with risk which is not well managed due to very poor penetration of financial instruments like insurance services to weather these shocks.

Further, be it for livelihood or subsistence, most agricultural families are forced to supplement their farming income with other sources even for basic sustenance. This is where the breadth of challenges faced by rural families increases considerably.

For the long run, parents have a strong belief that the education of their children will help them find good jobs to eventually pull their families out of poverty, and they are looking for tips on how they can support their children to get a better education.

On a more immediate basis though, migration is a common route: many families have members who migrate to cities to seek industrial employment or informal sector work like in construction to grow their incomes, but besides the skilling required especially in industrial work, these workers struggle to settle down in the city and navigate their workplace and rights.

Many rural families also try to expand into non-farm and off-farm opportunities to augment their household income. Women especially get into different lines of work and business, be it home-based or otherwise, but they need information and guidance on setting up businesses and on how to get or use credit.

Even with a steady growth in formal sources of credit like through microfinance and SHG networks, people typically don’t have easy access to mentors who can guide them to use the credit effectively.

Continue to read below and click on the infographics to know more about how we have worked with our partners to address these challenges through appropriate ICT solutions. This includes work with our partner organizations like PRADAN, Digital Green, and GIZ on agriculture, with Jeevika, Project Concern International, and Gram Tarang on education and skilling, and with SEWA and Sa-dhan on financial literacy.

As always, please write to us at contact@gramvaani.org if you’d like to know more about any of these programs or explore areas of collaboration. After all, it only takes INR 25 per month to reach a person with information that facilitates their economic empowerment!

Managing agriculture shocks and improving farm outcomes

Looking beyond agriculture

Learning to manage funds and supplement income

by Vani Viswanathan

About the Mobile Vaani Impact series: Since 2012, Mobile Vaani has been reaching thousands of people in India’s vast hinterlands with news, views and information about health, banking, education, sanitation, sexuality, agriculture, government policies, etc. At the same time, the platform offers these people the opportunity to voice their opinions and grievances about issues in their lives and communities.

Over the years, Mobile Vaani has grown in its potential, becoming a trusted platform that people reach out to with hyperlocal topics of concern. Additionally, it is a go-to source that a variety of stakeholders in local government and decision-making bodies tune into to understand the pulse of the people. Mobile Vaani volunteers have an important role to play in this: they support people in grievance redressal by reporting these issues, forwarding the news reports to relevant local officials to spur action, and following up on their implementation weeks down the line.
This way, Mobile Vaani contributes to bringing transparency and accountability to governance in India’s deepest, oft-ignored villages.

The Mobile Vaani ‘Impact’ series seeks to track this far-reaching result of Mobile Vaani’s work in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

———————————-

The first piece of the ‘Impact’ series traces the role of Mobile Vaani in highlighting the state of over 5,000 farmers in Kasmar in the Bokaro district of Jharkhand, who have been waiting for over a year for their agricultural insurance pay-outs following the drought of 2015.

In October 2015, volunteer reporter for Mobile Vaani Srinarayan Mahto reported the sorry state of Durga Puja celebrations in Jarandi in Bokaro, thanks to poor monsoons that had made farmers dizzy with worry over their crops. “There is no happiness,” he mentioned, even at a time of festivities.

Jharkhand was ravaged by a drought in 2015, with the state government declaring the entire state drought-hit in December that year. A report by the state agriculture department indicates that nearly half of all blocks in the state suffered at least 40 percent loss in their crops[2].  The state government demanded over INR 2,000 crore for drought relief from the centre. News reports stated that farmers across the state had to resort to eating weeds and grass to fill their stomachs in the absence of any earnings from harvests.

Agricultural insurance has been promoted by central and state governments in the country as one of the key ways farmers can minimise the damage caused to their finances because of losses and poor harvests. In Jharkhand, Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) are an oft-used mode to access agricultural insurance for farmers. As did the rest of the state, over 5,000 farmers in the Kasmar block in Bokaro, Jharkhand, had been paying premiums at the rate of INR 172/acre through PACS for a state-sponsored agricultural insurance scheme through 2015. The insured amount to be paid by the state in case of a claim was at the rate of INR 4,092/acre.

Following the declaration of drought in 2015, these farmers claimed their insurance pay-out from the government, which the government was to pay after a Circle Office report verifying the farmers’ claims against their land ownership.

As of December 2016, the farmers had not been reimbursed for their crop losses.

Enter Mobile Vaani.

Diwakar Mahto, a leader of a local farmers’ collective, brought this situation to the notice of Kamlesh Jaswal, a Mobile Vaani reporter from Kasmar. Following verification discussions with farmers that this was indeed the case, Kamlesh reported the news on Mobile Vaani on December 20^th 2016, and forwarded this to Shri Yogendra Prasad, MLA for the Gomia Assembly constituency, under which Kasmar falls.

Following this, MLA Shri Yogendra Prasad raised the issue at the Vidhan Sabha, questioning the pending repayment of claims to farmers in Kasmar. In response to the question asked by the MLA, a response was received on January 7^th, 2017 through a memo from the agriculture department. As stated in the memo, compensation of INR 1,91,22,989 will be paid to 5,068 farmers at the rate of INR 4,092 per acre, after an investigation to be carried out by the Deputy Commissioner of the Bokaro district.

Speaking to Mobile Vaani reporter JM Rangeela, Shri Yogendra Prasad said that following receiving information from Mobile Vaani reporter Kamlesh Jaiswal, he raised the issue during question hour in Vidhan Sabha, asking why payments in Kasmar block were delayed while formalities in other blocks have been completed.  Shri Prasad said that he has also raised the issue with district-level officials to ensure all due processes to speed up payments are completed.

Will the smiles return?

While the state has benefitted from a better-than-average monsoon in 2016, farmers are still struggling to cope with their losses from 2015. Insurance pay-outs will be enormously beneficial in helping farmers plan their upcoming cropping seasons. Kamlesh Jaiswal, reporting for Mobile Vaani from Kasmar in Bokaro, indicates that farmers in the region are delighted to hear that they are likely to get their payments soon.

Mobile Vaani’s dedicated field team will continue to follow up on the news to ensure the Circle Office files its verification report to lead to speedy disbursement of insurance pay-outs to affected farmers.