Activities in the First Year (2017-2018)

In the first year, the State would be facilitated to develop perspective plan for the region, develop strategies for capacity building and M&E, initiate baseline survey by involving third party agency and conducting training and exposure visits for the entire group of Stakeholders including SHG Collectives, PRI Functionaries, BDOs, NREGA Nodal Officers, CBOs, NGOs and SRLM.

The State will create a pool of 1500-Rural Watershed / LivelihoodsExperts (Dhara Sevak) who would be supporting Panchayats in the implementation: The office of the MGNREGA Commissioner would be actively involved in the selection, training and promotion of Rural Watershed Experts. Educated rural youths (both women and men), drawn from Jangal Mahal region, would be trained to undertake the roles of rural watershed experts. They will be tagged with 150-panchayats to assist the PRI functionaries and the local community in participatory planning, implementation and monitoring of the tasks. Post-watershed implementation, these experts would be actively involved in supporting farm sector based livelihood activities for the small and marginal farmers.

Initiate engagement in 11 Intensive blocks: The focus here would be to come up with a framework of implementation with involvement of multiple stakeholders—Panchayats as Implementation bodies, Offices of the BDO and Panchayat Samity as the execution agencies, CSOs as facilitation agencies to build community collectives and create capacities among stakeholders. This initiatives would help to firm up methodologies for decentralized, participatory planning exercise, help to assess various technological options suitable to the context and create proof of concept for the state and other stakeholders to galvanize around the idea. The office of the MGNREGA Commissioner will provide overall support by ways of policies, administrative means and handholding. These 11-intensive blocks would be the immersion grounds for the Dhara Sevaks and the entire group of stakeholders to take the learning to other non-intensive blocks subsequently.

PRADAN may perform nodal roles at two levels

• Anchor the interface with the State. The GIS and MIS experts could be hired by PRADAN and placed with the office of the MGNREGA Commissioner. Given the volume of the tasks, it is proposed to keep provision for at least 200 expert-days in the initial two to three years. In subsequent years, the number of expert-days will taper. PRADAN will create a panel of experts / consultants (well-known freelance experts / experts drawn from reputed organizations such as ACWADAM, WASSAN, AKRSP etc.) who may be engaged on specific assignments to support the State. Further, PRADAN can commit to allocate experts from its internal pool for up to 100 days in a year in the initial 3-years. The interface with the State, engagement and coordination with experts and recruitment and placement of GIS / MIS experts could be integrated by PRADAN.
• At the field level, here it would be worthwhile to mention that PRADAN has extensive presence in Western part of the State of West Bengal. There will be 5-PRADAN teams to engage in the project. PRADAN will support in building a network / consortium of 6-NGOs, who will be engaged in facilitating implementation on the ground. These NGOs would be trained to effectively engage with CBOs, PRIs and the block offices to support decentralized planning, preparation of DPRs, implementation of plan by the PRIs and setting up systems for participatory monitoring. The consortium would undertake joint planning, regular review and reflection. PRADAN will provide technical and accompaniment support to the partner NGOs. A common reporting format will be developed in consultation with BRLF and introduced among partners.

Activities in the Second Year (2018-2019)

From 2nd year onwards, the State would like to initiate activities in all the remaining blocks, taking the salient learning of the ‘Intensive Blocks’. PRADAN, along with 6-other CSOs would collaborate with the State to cover remaining 43 Non-Intensive Blocks. The CSOs will extend their support to the MGNREGS implementation apparatus such as Panchayats and the Block Development Office. The roles of the CSOs would be to

• Support community mobilization of the women specially in the Intensive Blocks and create community interface with Panchayats and Block Administration. (This would not be the major role for Non-Intensive Blocks)
• Facilitate participatory planning exercise in the villages and panchayats
• Support in DPR Preparation
• Setting up systems for monitoring progress
• Support community to embark on livelihood activities post-implementation of the land and water assets
• Support communities and the government to improve grievance redressal through reducing information asymmetry

The process of planning in the villages, preparation of labour budget, consolidation and ratification by the Gram Sabhas, preparation of shelf of activities and the upstream processes of job allotment and wage payment would continue to be in the domains of the Panchayat, Block and District Administration. The office of the MGNREGA Commissioner would continue to monitor key processes, remove bottle-necks and aid in the implementation processes by ways of issuing administrative orders / circulars, listening to and acting upon grievances.

BRLF will facilitate periodic reviews, reflection and training / workshops at the State level, involving all the stakeholders,to help in distilling learning and adoption of best practices across locations. BRLF will anchor the Baseline, mid-term and end-term evaluation processes.

PRADAN would have `Intensive’ operations in 5-blocks. The CSOs would have `Intensive’ operations in 6 blocks (each with one block). Together, there will be 11 `Intensive’Blocks. The engagement processes in Intensive Operations have been discussed in the project document. PRADAN teams will extend support to additional 17-blocks. 6-CSOs will cover an additional 26-blocks under non-intensive operations. Therefore, a total of 43-blocks (17-Blocks for PRADAN + 26-Blocks for CSO) to be covered through extending support by CSOs.

Altogether, there will be 55-Blocks to be covered through the efforts of CSOs. CSO-wise detail of block coverage is depicted in a table.

Under non-Intensive blocks, the PRADAN / CSO teams will engage with Block Resource Teams to develop Annual plans, setting priorities, training of PRI functionaries, demonstrating decentralized planning, preparation of DPRs and taking part in monitoring and evaluation.

A significant engagement of PRADAN teams would be to build capacities of CSO partners and provide accompaniment support in the field. PRADAN will also play roles in building the CSO consortium to develop Annual plans, undertake joint actions to create demonstrations, facilitate reflection, learning and adoption of best practices and build linkages with relevant stakeholders.