Panchayat Adhayan an insight into Saurath Panchayat

A brief report of Drishtee

Drishtee Foundation functions in the area of research and promotions for ICT in rural areas. This involves specialized approach towards utilizing the research tools as they have to be customized for implementation in the rural sector and ICT. There is an ongoing quest to reduce the digital divide which has continuously deprived the poor and needy rural people in various villages of India from the benefits offered by ICT. To carry out its mission to serve the rural community, a village level study was taken up by Drishtee at Saurath Panchayat of Madhubani District of Bihar. The study primarily focused on collecting micro-level data for better understanding of the problems and issues at village level and their needs related to ICTs Services, so as to understand the demand potentiality of various rural services like Micro Finance, BPO, e-Health health insurance, preventive health checkup package etc. and help develop a demand estimation model for these services in villages that could be replicated in other gram panchayats by understanding some basic parameters over there. Since the study evolved the comprehension of all issues related to one panchayat therefore it was named as Panchayat Adhayayan. Panchayat Adhyayan aims to gather very specific and micro-level data and also build linkages within the communities through continued interactions in order to make Drishtee moreknowledgeable about the socio-economic and socio-political order or disorder and understand how Drishtee can make a long-term impact on the same by taking more well-informed decisions and derive a long-term strategies for successful implementations. We tried to harness the information about various parameters, services demand and job opportunities for the rural educated mass within the village. Saurath is a gram panchayat of Madhubani District in Bihar. Madhubani is famous for its folk art popularly known as 'Madhubani Paintings' or 'Mithila Paintings'. Saurath with 1382 nos. households has a total population of 6162, population density of around 1130 people per square km, and average family size of 4.5 members. The literacy rate in Saurath is 50.2%, which is appreciable as compared to the Bihar state statistics (National literacy rate 73.08% & state literacy rate 47.53%). Agriculture is the main source of income, 51.3% of the total households having agriculture or agri-labour as their prime source of earning. Sugarcane, Wheat and Rice are the main agriculture produce of Saurath. The land-holding pattern among the residents shows that only 0.7% households have land more than 10 Bighas and around 42% of the households have below 5 katta of land. This indicates the presence of very few big farmers and landlords.
Land Holding Pattern
2.7% 7.8% 42.0% 0.4% 0.3% 9.9% 0-5 Katta 6-10 Katta 11-15 Katta 16-20 Katta 1-2 Beegha 3-5 Beegha 6-10 Beegha 11-20 Beegha 16.5% 5.0% 5.2% 10.1% More than 20 Beegha Not Applicable

Main Source of MHI

0.2% 2.6% 6.0% 1.3% 3.6% 11.4% 35.3%
Farming A gri Labo ur Small B usiness Sho p Keeper B usiness P vt. Jo b Go vt. Jo b Do mestic Help Retired/P ensio n

3.9% 14.3% 0.9% 2.5%

2.1%

16.0%

Unskilled labour (Daily wage labour) A rtisan (Karigar) Student (B o th wo rking and studying) Others

Approximately 48% of the total households belong to below poverty line and there are around 590 nos BPL households.The monthly households income varied from Rs.1000 to more than

Rs.10,000 per month, with 60% households having monthly household income below Rs. 2000. Although the panchayat is electrified, but just 25% households have electric connection with poor electricity availability of around 2Hrs. per day only. We tried to understand the problems faced by general people of Saurath in day to day life so as to have better identification of core issues which need attention of the administration. Not only did the people came up with their problems but also envisaged the solutions for those problems. During the interaction with the villagers it was found there are numerous problems and the situation is grave. Majority of the households are still reeling for electricity connections, even the households with electricity do not have electricity for more than 2 to 3 three hrs a day. Roads are in bad shape, with majority of roads being Kuccha. Roads have poor drainage system and the situation changes from bad to worse in the rainy season due to flooding of the roads. Transportation is another problem cited by many people, which cause problems to the villagers and students in particular who have to go outside village due to unavailability of high school and college in village. Poor medical facilities in the village level and absence of employment opportunities are amongst most cited problems. People feel that administration can play a much wider role by looking into these problems and with collaborative help of local population and administration, above problems could be solved. Opening of schools, providing good transportation facility and easy access to electricity, water and sanitation should be among the top priorities of the administration. This will improve peoples quality of living. A study on earning members per household showed that due to the lack of employment opportunities in the district majority of the young people from this village have moved outside (to nearby or distant cities) to earn their livelihood. This has lead to reduction in the number of males in the village, particularly in age-group of 21 to 35 years. Around 7% people work outside to earn their bread, which constitutes 33% of total earners population of Saurath. The money flowing in from these outsiders to their families constitutes around 25% of the total monthly households incomes of Saurath. The monthly income of the household holds the key to its spending behavior, the ability to spend money on various heads for the family, their savings and their ability to pay for any particular service. It is observed that family expenses on Food and Medical Care together constitutes 50 to 70% of the MHI (monthly household income). Rural E-health At Saurath, the health services are no different from any other panchayat in India. People use to visit quacks, RMPs and PHC for their medical ailments. People are not satisfied by the quality of medical services provided at PHC and in order to have access to better services (through Govt. hospital, Big Pvt. Hospitals) villagers have to travel distances. Due to low income and financial constraints most of the villagers cannot avail good medical facilities available at District level. Most of the households prefer to visit Darbangha (neighboring district) incase of emergency or severe chronic diseases. This traveling causes an increase in their total expenses on medical treatment, which the poor families cannot afford. e- Health or Tele-medicine is the modern on-line medical care services or real-time consultation with doctors using internet and ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) that can be provided to distantly located village patients through their village ICT Centre by remote doctors/specialty hospitals. In India, it is a very new concept of using the internet as a means to provide medical aid and consultancy in rural areas. The e-health service delivery mechanism envisaged by Drishtee consists of three tiers with each having its own defined position and roles. The three layers will include doctors and prestigious hospitals acting as back end, information kiosks (at village level) as middle layer and the Kiosk Operator or trained RHW (rural health worker) as front end. The village kiosk will have all the technical support to bridge the gap

between the villagers and online consulting doctors. The kiosk operator and RHWs will be trained to help the on-line doctors in diagnosis and to consult effectively with the patient. The Rural e-Health Model from Drishtee will also have health insurance and preventive health checkup package, designed specifically for the rural populace, along with the Telemedicine (e-health). The model is in its finalization stage and is so designed that the rural populace is not deprived of the opportunities on better and modern health-care as-well-as for their well being. Preventive health checkup and health insurance will act as supporting blocks for health insurance model. At present only 10% households visit medical service providers for preventive checkup. Preventive health checkup not only helps in early diagnosis of the disease but also reduce the probability of major health ailments and thus reducing the risk of high expenses faced by family. Health insurance is not a much known concept in rural areas. Even in Saurath only 37% households are known to health insurance. Only 12.5% households have insurance policies; with none of them having health insurance. For a health insurance policy to be availed and accepted by rural community, it is must that there should be a nearby hospital or good medical health unit which could act as back-up for the above policy and provide quality medical health care services to villagers. Drishtee is already in the process to identify its back-end medical service providers or channel partners and a dialogue in this regard has already been initiated with Apollo and Fortis. It is found that total 432 (33.7%) households in Saurath have the history of someone being hospitalized in last six years. The average hospitalization cost is approximately Rs. 13,350 per hospitalization. Due to high medical and hospitalization expenses, there is pressing need for an insurance model custom designed to cater the need of rural people. The health insurance will not only make sure the quality service being provided to the poor through networked hospitals but it will also absorb the economic impact of any hospitalization. Since the e-health services will be provided to villagers at reasonable fee, therefore the acceptability of the model was enquired amongst villagers. On acceptability of the above e-Health model amongst villagers, it was observed that around 90% of the villagers are willing to avail it from Drishtee and more than 80% are willing to pay for such services. Similar readiness was found amongst the village households for preventive health checkup and health insurance service package. Among the various facets offered by ICT; rural e-health model was tested in Saurath for their understanding and inductance into the life styles of rural populace. With the analysis of the medical spending pattern of surveyed households, it can be observed that e-health model holds the answer for the long term health service delivery which will be lower in its cost over long term and provide better quality medical services to the villagers. Rural BPO India is fast becoming the hub of BPO services (Business Process Outsourcing) for the world. Due to this the concentration of BPO players has increased many folds in India recently, but mostly in the metros and cities only. With the BPO players looking for alternatives to cut their operations cost to sustain operations and on other side with the growing numbers of educated/computer literates coming up in rural areas, it provides opportunities to leverage ICTs for creating BPO jobs at rural level. Rural BPO is considered as next wave in BPO industry; big corporate houses consider this as an opportunity as-well-as potential for low end computer jobs (data entry, DTP, scanning,

translation, market surveys, editing, content writing etc.). Panchayat Adhayan at Saurath was also aimed to test the acceptability of Rural BPO concept among the villagers and assess the skill set availability in the village as-well-as to understand and help develop a sustainable business model for rural BPO. Drishtee has conceptualized the business model for the rural BPO. This model will help village kiosk owner and local computer literates to work as entrepreneurs. This will not only improve the entrepreneurial behavior of the panchayat but also provide local job opportunities thereby reducing the migration of the rural educated youths. Drishtee as a major partner in the model will take the lead role and initiate the process to set-up a rural BPO Centre at Saurath with the interested partners and also provide necessary guidance, training, help in infrastructure requirement and flow of work orders to the partners/people engaged in it. During survey it was found that 9 nos. computer literates present in the village showed their willingness to participate in the BPO job and were also interested to invest for it. Drishtee has planned to set-up and run a pilot BPO in the village, so as study further and help develop a sustainable business model for rural BPO Services that can be scaleable and replicable in other parts of rural India as-well-as encourage and create job opportunities for rural educated youths and help develop their potentiality for better earning and for sustained livelihood. Micro-Finance Microfinance is the category of financial services offered to lower-income people, where the unit size of the transaction is usually small (micro), typically lower than the average GDP per capita. It is typically for self-employed, low-income entrepreneurs in both semi urban and rural areas. Rural people in India, especially the poor farmers, have little access to finances/loans from formal sources (like banks) mainly due to time taking and lengthy/complicated procedures. In order to understand the current status on Micro-Finance and Loans in the village as-well-as to assess the potentiality of this market in the village, responses were collected from households on MicroFinance and Loans, during Panchayat Adhayan in Saurath. Study revealed that rural households avail loan mainly from sources like Banks, Money lenders, Friends/Relatives and Financial Institutions. Approximately 69% households have taken loan in the past from the different sources for business or medical or urgent personal needs, of which majority of the households preferred to avail loan from Friends and relative or Pvt. Financial institutions though the interest rate charged is high (5 times more than the bank); the reason being easy to access and no mortgage required. Banks have been preferred by less than 10% of low income group households (MHI less than 2000) in Saurath. Apart from the reasons mentioned above, the other major reasons of low accessibility to Banks for loans by lower income group could be: Rural banks do not provide flexible products and services to meet the income and expenditure patterns of small rural borrowers. As noted, small rural borrowers have irregular/volatile income streams and expenditure needs, and therefore, prefer to borrow frequently, or repay in small installments, but most banks do not offer such products. The transaction costs of dealing with formal banks are high. Also the distance of the nearest bank also affects the accessibility of the poor.

Bank loans were availed by households mostly for business or agriculture purposes (as agri-loan). Repayment performance details revealed that most of the households (approx. 75%) who have availed loan did not repay their loans regularly. The irregularity in the repayment of the loans is responsible for the 41% of households still reeling under loans.

Apart from understanding the current financial liabilities of the households in terms of loan availed, the study also tried to identify the possible customers of future who would like to avail loan (from any source). Small rural clients prefer to borrow frequently, and repay in small installments; one could usefully explore the possibility of offering new and more flexible loan products, like those offered by microfinance, to villagers. Drishtee along with its partner ICICI Bank have tied up to offer custom designed micro loans to the rural people, which will help them to start and improve their economic activities. On being told about Pvt. Banks providing loan facility to villagers, the preference of the households for it was assessed. It was found that 45% of households are willing to avail loan from reputed Pvt. Banks. Women Entrepreneurs Rural women have not been able to take lead roles in business ventures mainly due to low literacy rate and dependence on the male counterparts for financial support. To provide selfsustenance to the women of villages it is necessary that they should become financially independent. In Saurath women could start small business like making Mithila Paintings; selling packaged Food or home-made products etc. Study revealed that around 62 households in Saurath have women entrepreneurs. Around 26% Households like to support women in their family to take up such entrepreneurial ventures in future. This shows that people have started to understand the position of women in the society and are willing to come up for their support which is a good sign for the development. Still none of the household showed interest to invest in the women entrepreneurs; this may be due to their financial constraints or their lack of confidence in women to run a business. Hence banks or other financial institutes may come forward by providing small loans to help these women entrepreneurs in starting their business. Local administration could also help by running training centers for women entrepreneurs to develop the necessary skills required for such ventures. Society cannot be changed over night it needs a collective effort of the population and the administration to come forward for a common cause. Drishtee in its own is trying to identify the women entrepreneurs who can actively and confidently run village kiosks or other small businesses that adds value to the community and provide sustained livelihood. This will help the women to not only uplift themselves, but the community as a whole. To conclude, the Panchayat Adhayan in Saurath has not only provided Drishtee an insight into the villages, but has helped to harness the information about various socio-economic parameters, to understand and analyze the need and demand for useful services that benefits the rural community and provides job/business opportunities for their sustained development aswell-as helped also in developing sustainable business model for future services like rural BPO and e-Health model to roll out in rural India. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some general statistics on Saurath village, based on the 1282 households survey data analyzed, have been summarized MHI-wise and provided below in tables for reference.

General Statistics
MHI>>>(Rs) Mean Family size Mode SC (HH Nos.) ST (HH Nos.) OBC (HH Nos.) Literate Male (Nos.) Female Electrified Household Nos. Number of HH having women entrepreneurs % HH willing to support women entrepreneur. % HH willing to invest for women entrepreneur venture HH having telephone connection (Nos.) HH having Mobile (Nos.) HH having tractor (Nos.) HH having generator (Nos.) HH having two wheeler (Nos.) Less than 1000 3.78 2 38 6 58 258 163 33 (12.5%) 14 24.3%(64) 0 8 4 (1.6%) 0 1 63 (23.9%) 1001-2000 4.63 4 115 9 134 657 462 104 (19.9%) 26 30.3% (158) 0 6 10 (2%) 3 (0.6%) 0 210 (40.3) 2001-3000 5.58 5 50 3 56 384 255 62 (30.1%) 15 31.1%(64) 0 11 20 (9.7%) 3 (1.6%) 2 111 (53.8%) 3001-6000 5.96 7 25 1 34 304 235 70 (47.9%) 6 23.9%(35) 0 19 19 (13.2%) 10 (6.8%) 3 102 (69.9%) More than 6000 5.81 4 4 0 8 206 168 58 (74.4%) 1 21.8%(17) 0 23 32 (41.1%) 6 (7.7%) 1 62 (79.5%)

Table: Age and MHI-wise Gender details

Age (Yrs) Gender Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Less than 1000 217 181 93 111 88 122 64 101 10012000 596 495 224 302 220 268 130 135 20013000 256 211 119 143 107 134 76 64 30016000 172 144 115 117 72 78 68 71 More than 6000 65 54 72 66 46 55 44 33

1 to 15 16 to 30 31 to 50 More than 50

Table: Education Qualification

Education qualification Illiterate Literate but didnt went to school Class 1-9th 10th Class (11th included) 12th Graduate Post Graduate

MHI Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.) Male (Nos.) Female (Nos.)

Less than 1000 223 342 43 43 148 98 35 18 12 2 17 2 3 0

1001-2000 503 738 70 76 427 314 90 57 31 11 32 3 7 1

2001-3000 183 295 45 56 203 141 75 42 23 11 32 5 6 0

30016000 112 183 29 17 144 133 42 47 29 9 52 27 8 2

More than 6000 19 39 10 26 59 69 32 40 34 18 47 15 24 3

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