The consensual government launched its most ambitious programme, ‘Gramashakthi’ with the goal of poverty eradication by 2030 through empowerment of village. This is a programme that mobilizes the public sector and private sector together with active participation of the people. The programme combines learning from successful elements of all key poverty reduction programmes of the country as a national effort of all concerned to reach the sustainable development goals ending hunger poverty and halving all forms of poverty by the target year.
Sri Lanka has achieved impressive progress in extreme poverty reduction and the proportion of the population in poverty is down to 6.7%. However, the regional disparities range from 3% to 29% and the share of the total household income of the poorest 20% is 4.5% and it is 52.9% for the richest 20%. The bottom segment of 40% receives only 13.7%. Those whose income is closer to the poverty line run the risk of falling back due to shocks of climate or other unforeseen changes.
Despite certain progress, most of the factors causing poverty eradication difficult still continue in Sri Lanka. Dependency mentality expecting everything from the government cripples self esteem and discourage positive attitudes for innovations. Women although comprise 50% of the population are not adequately represented in decision making in resource allocation. Plans for community development are prepared by those who are less sensitive on the realities of the suffering of the poor and such plans imposed on them from the top become less effective. Savings of the poor are taken away to the urban centres and hardly reinvested to improve livelihoods of them or the place they live in. Access to capital is inadequate. The suffering of the poor 40% having difficulties to make ends meet in providing for the basic needs such as food, clothing, healthcare and education and with less for fulfilling the growing needs of the families and their children increase social unrest in already divided in the lines of race, religion, caste and political affiliations.
Resources for development
It has been well tested with positive outcomes in Sri Lanka that if information with required policy support, capital resources and decision making power on resource allocation are provided, communities would effectively use such resources for development. Poor families face difficulties in making strong investment decisions as individual households.
When such families are organised formally in inclusive and accountable institutions giving priority to the poor, to women and youth to collectively engage in overcoming poverty would be more effective. Also, it would allow such decision making going beyond decisions by simple majority to decisions guided by prior agreed and institutionally recognized set of values and principles creating simultaneously a prosperous economic person and a responsible, accountable and rights conscious person in the same individual.
Economic growth should be inclusive to benefit those who are left out of the markets and keeping away from benefiting and participating in the production of that growth. Interventions are needed to directly and positively affect the investment behaviour and interrelationships of individuals and enterprise in the micro economy through micro level economic institutions partnering with the organised private sector. The character and strength of the community platforms of the workforce is the basis for such inclusive growth. Gramashakthi movement aims to build such platforms for inclusive growth for poverty reduction.
The vision of Gramashakti is to strengthen, empower and formally organise Sri Lankan community actively towards the path to progress overcoming poverty. It aims at providing facilitation to people living in 5,000 Grama Niladhari Divisions to fulfill the basic needs and the growing needs individually and collectively by providing information, decision making power and resources by 2020 and contributing to reach the national sustainable development goal of eradicating extreme poverty and halving all forms of poverty by 2030.
Gramashakti methodology
• Building up economic organisations as people’s companies with legal acceptance following the accepted principles and core values of good governance in 700 Grama Niladhari Divisions (GND) in divisional secretariat division of the districts that are considered poorer in 2017.
• Declare a village development fund for the 700 divisions computed as Rs 8,000 per capita investment and release funds based on achieving milestones annually.
• Update legal status of existing 2,040 Gemidiriya organisations by the end of 2017 and help them institutionally join Gramashakthi movement.
• Cover 300 selected GNDs in improved supply/value chains of growth potential crops/products/services leading to exports or reducing imports through government, private and peoples sector partnering in micro economies with divisional secretariats as the central organising and coordination institution to increase coverage over 1000 GNDs by 2020.
• Cover all GNDs progressively to contribute to the achievement of the National goal of poverty free Sri Lanka by 2030.
The strategy:
• The operations will be undertaken through a three tear organisational mechanism comprised of Divisional Grmashakthi Operational Committee (DGOC) in each Divisional Secretariat, joint district and Provincial Gramashkthi Operational Committee (PGOC) in the 9 provinces and a National Gramashakthi Operational Committee (NGOC) at the presidential secretariat at national level. The NGOC will maintain a resource pool of experienced personnel on community driven development as a network to provide required services by the other committees.
• Capacity building support will be provided at all the three levels to the relevant stakeholders adopting community driven and collaborative development methodologies.
• Community organisations will be made to become inclusive and accountable economic institutions providing strong and credible platforms for converging various programmes and resources from public and private sector institutions to communities and to where they live.
• Access to capital will be provided mobilizing community savings and investments through micro finance.
• Strong communication strategy will be adopted efficiently and effectively to communicate right messages and feedback and sharing information among the stakeholders countrywide using information technology advancements available in the country.
It has been widely recognized that the respect to rule of law needs to be combined with respect to ethical existence by all citizens for sustainable development. By definition sustainable development requires resource use by the present generation without jeopardizing opportunity for the same for the future generation. The ethical dimension of respecting the humanity is clear.
Gramashakthi will mobilize communities to express willingness to follow rules before the communities are selected to join the movement. It is a precondition and a necessary part of self selection of a demand driven process.
The five non negotiable principles to follow in decisions are:
1. Inclusiveness – All households in a community has the right to join the organisation without any discrimination on race, religion, caste, creed or political affiliation
2. Equity – Priority to the poor, to the women and to youth
3. Transparency – Disclosing information
4. Accountability – Being answerable on decisions, actions and results
5. Cost sharing – community contribution to capital cost not depending fully on others
- The writer is Director (Research & International Media) Presidential Secretariat.
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