Seva mandir

Dr.Mohan Singh Mehta a social worker and an educationalist,founded Seva Mandir From its inceptionin the year 1968, Seva Mandir has sought to help the poor change their circumstances of deprivation. In the early phase of Seva Mandir's work, the focus was on promoting adult literacy among poor peasants. It was believed that with literacy, the poor would become more aware of their rights and entitlements. It was not long before Seva Mandir was made to realise that this single-minded stress on literacy was not enough. The organisation, therefore, extended the scope of its work to include developmental programmes that would benefit people in economic terms

Giving impetus to local governanceBy the late seventies, people associated with Seva Mandir's programmes had become popular and well respected within their communities. Some of them successfully competed for elected office in the village council and other tiers of local self-government. Seva Mandir at that time felt that these developments would lead to improvements in the functioning of the village councils and also in the government agencies responsible for delivering development services. The experience subsequent to their gaining office however belied expectations. Most of the elected representatives, albeit sponsored by the community of poor peasants, could not bring any meaningful change in the institutions responsible for development. Their inability to change these structures of governance was a consequence of the fact that their substantive authority, control and negotiating power over resources was dependent on getting along with authorities in the higher echelons of the political and administrative structures. By not conforming with those in the power structure they ran the risk of losing what little support and patronage was available for development from the State, and if they conformed they became indistinguishable from the people they replaced on grounds of their being corrupt and neglectful of the poor.

Building village level groups Looking to these structural problems and to the fact that the nature of people's participation (in Seva Mandir's programmes) had a patron client dimension to it, Seva Mandir tried to redress these imbalances by building village groups in the early eighties. The intention behind this was to enable villagers to demand accountability from their representatives in the village councils and to pressurise the government to expand the actual scope of people's entitlements. These groups were also encouraged to solve their (community) problems by co-operating among themselves. However, except for a few exceptions, most of these groups were not able to generate sufficient pressure to make a significant difference to their situation. Apart from the fact of acute poverty, the villages in this region are small and dispersed, which made co-ordinated action extremely difficult. Thus while people lacked the institutions and resources to bring about their own development, the hierarchical systems of the government, even with the best intentions, were inherently incapable of responding to the localised needs of the village groups.

What We do Seva Mandir seeks to institutionalise the idea that development and governance is not only to be left to the State and its formal bodies like the legislature and the bureaucracy, but that citizens and their associations should engage separately and jointly with the State.

This is achieved through the following overlapping strategic objectives:

To create and strengthen institutions for development (at the village, organization and society levels)

To enhance people’s capabilities for self-development (both at individual and community level); and

To create sustainable improvements in the livelihoods base;

These three objectives form the basis for Seva Mandir's three program sectors. Each of these programs, in achieving its respective goals, is also designed to build values and social capacities needed to achieve development and democracy for the poor. The 3 program sectors have the following activity components: 1)Livelihoods 2)Capabilities 3)Institution

varies development activities are carried out in these domain

Livelihood : Natural Resource Regeneration,farm/non farm income generation Natural Resource Development Programme

Through the Natural Resource Development (NRD) programme, Seva Mandir works with communities to restore the highly degraded natural resource base and to provide technical inputs that will enable them to adopt more secure and sustainable livelihood options. The NRD programme encompasses: (a) Dry land management – which includes the treatment of private and common lands through watershed development and the establishment of both private and common pasture lands; Water resource development – in the form of both constructing water harvesting structures and installing community managed irrigation systems; Forest protection and management – by working with both communities, through Forest Protection Committees, and the Forest Department as per the Joint Forest Management scheme; Enhancing the profitability of natural resources – through the provision of agricultural extension services, horticulture and vegetable cultivation trainings, animal husbandry trainings and cattle camps.

Objectives:Optimise the productivity of natural resources, especially wastelands, forests and agricultural landsStrengthen and encourage village institutions for better land governance and appropriate management of the enhanced natural resources.Increase ecological security by balancing rural livelihoods and environmental processes Status :

To date, through its work on Natural Resource Development, Seva Mandir has treated 12,343 hectares of degraded common and private pastureland. It has also worked on the protection, plantation and management of more than 1,000 hectares of forestland under the Joint Forest Management scheme, in collaboration with the Forest Department. atershed treatment work has been completed on 8,959 hectares of land spread across 27 sites. Seva Mandir has also constructed 3 masonry anicuts (water harvesting structures) and helped to establish 33 community managed lift irrigation systems. Through its agricultural extension work, Seva Mandir has helped farmers establish more than 1,000 vermi-compost units and hundreds of horticulture nurseries. The organization has also conducted close to 100 animal camps.