Rehabilitation of Socially Alienated under RSVY

Rehabilitation of Socially Alienated under RSVY

By Saumitra Mohan

Rashtriya Sam Vikash Yojana (RSVY) is a initiative by the Planning Commission of India with a view to address the problems of high poverty, low growth and poor governance by putting in place programmes which would remove barriers to growth and accelerate the developmental process. RSVY offers adequate flexibility to tailor projects and schemes compatible with the socio-economic and cultural context of the region.

The Jalpaiguri district has taken this opportunity seriously and has systematically worked to evolve programmes and schemes with the active participation of various stakeholders including the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and the institutions of civil society. This has made the projects and programmes realistic and contextually more relevant.


Development has not reached every corner evenly. This is true for the country, this holds good for the district of Jalpaiguri as well. There are regional variations and contextual differences. Some of the societies and communities have better absorbing capacities than the others and, therefore, the developmental processes influence them differently. While, we make a study on the growth process of the regions of a district, it is noticed that some of the pockets or some of the areas still lag behind other regions of the same district. Jalpaiguri is not an exception to this. The progressive Government of West Bengal, through its pro-poor initiatives, has endeavoured to distribute the fruits of development evenly across regions and communities. In a bid to do so, Jalpaiguri, with a fairly large scheduled caste and scheduled tribe population, has made an attempt to identify regions/pockets within the district, which are less developed requiring added development impetus. Following this, the district has identified some areas/pockets, which are more economically backward than the others.

A bitter truth, as acknowledged above, is that developmental juggernaut does not criss-cross all the regions evenly or even if it does, because of the executional variations, some regional advantages and differences in the capacities of the local people to respond to particular developmental initiatives, some regions benefit more than the others resulting in regional imbalance in economic development, which is, more often than not, unintended. Such unintended consequences of the developmental processes leave a section of the people high and dry. With education, awareness and demonstration effect, popular expectations are today definitely much more higher than the available resources would otherwise allow to cater to the same. This ‘Revolution of Rising Expectations’, when left unattended and unsatisfied, gives rise to a sense of alienation and sometimes they find themselves divorced from the mainstream of life. Over the years, such alienated communities have expressed themselves with a strong sense of hostility and bitter feeling giving rise to a series of subversive activities which blocks creative expression of their potential.

It is with a view to positively respond to this situation, and with a view to reach the fruits of development to such persons and to such areas that some positive steps and endeavours have been planned under RSVY. RSVY offers opportunity to address the problems of high poverty, low growth and poor governance and is aimed at bringing an accelerated growth in the economy of the backward areas. The fact also remains that the district itself was considered as one of the most backward and was accordingly selected by the Planning Commission of India to be brought under the aegis of this programme.

The project document on RSVY observes, “The district, along with the surrounding districts is facing a rise in militant activities in the form of the so-called ‘Kamtapur Movement’. In the last two-three years, the militants allegedly belonging to Kamtapur Liberation Organization (KLO) have targeted political leaders and school teachers who are very important in the panchayati raj institutions. If the militant activities gain ground and engulf more areas in the district or intensify their activities, it is likely to severely lower the moral (sic) of the panchayati raj institutions, political activists, and the common public and thereby hamper the implementation of the development schemes. In fact, if people get involved with the militant movement, it is likely to completely derail the development process in the district”.

Large number of such militants, over the years, has preferred to join the mainstream and work towards a constructive living. It is an encouraging development and the district is quite alive to the situation. It has organized a couple of initiatives for the estranged youths and has had a positive impact. The number of such persons, inclined to lead a normal family life, is constantly rising. The police have also joined hands and readied for a role reversal-from an arm-twisting role to a role of being a friend, philosopher and guide. The PRIs have shown willingness to support such activists in integrating with the society and offer all possible institutional support.

Aware of this reality as a sub plan of the RSVY, the district administration of Jalpaiguri created a special mission named ‘Nava Disha’ to rehabilitate approximately 1200 socially alienated persons/surrendered militants and bring them into the mainstream. The strategy inter alia included:
Identification and selection of the SAPs (socially alienated persons)/Surrendered Militants through police records;
Organisation of training for reorientation and capacity building;
Hand-holding support in the field;
Actual implementation, with the programme support offered to them;
Field level participatory monitoring, evaluation and review.


RSVY as an opportunity

Taking things as they emerge, the district saw the RSVY as an opportunity to offer a constructive alternative to the SAPs/Surrendered Militants by channeling their creative energies towards productive initiatives and activities. The district administration decided to play the role of a facilitator towards the realization of this goal. The RSVY components are well within their envisaged scope to serve the requirements of the SAPs in the scheme of their rehabilitation. The sub-components further emphasize capacity building imputes so that the project initiatives create better absorbing capacity for a sustainable impact. The capacity building imputes have been well designed and fine tuned to meet their special requirements of firing imagination, creating sensitivity and arousing creativity.

Objectives

Mission Nava Disha envisages integrating rural youths with the mainstream development. A good number of rural youths, today, suffer the following disabilities. They include:

1. Deficient basic life skills and capabilities resulting primarily from the dysfunctions of education and disharmony between high level of expectations, consequent to media-generated demonstration effect, and their under-realization or non-realization.
2. Lack of awareness about the existing opportunities.
3. Inadequate guidance and counseling.
4. Low self-esteem.
5. Lack of entrepreneurship.
6. Inability to harness the fruits of sundry governmental development programmes.

In the absence of adequate opportunity for channeling their positive instinct, they tend to suffer from:
Alienation and indifference.
Helplessness.
Simmering discontent.
Looking for opportunity to ventilate the discontent.
Subversive manifestation.

The programme components

Mission Nava Disha is an outcome of the district's endeavor to identify the most vulnerable groups and support them with the adequate capacity building inputs so as to enable them to articulate, design and implement relevant programmes for themselves. The programme components as envisaged include the followings:

· Livelihood based training including
§ ◙ Horticulture
§ ◙ Organic farming
§ ◙ Irrigation
§ ◙ Bamboo farm-cum-work sheds
§ ◙ Social forestry
§ ◙ Animal husbandry and
§ ◙ Social fishery

Capacity building for implementation

The above set of programme components could primarily be divided into:

· Individual based approach and
· Group based approach

Considering the focused and need based approach, as envisaged under RSVY, it was decided to organize the capacity building activities in a systematic manner and develop a strong institutional anchorage and support system to:

1. Envision
2. Articulate
3. Design
1. Implement and
2. Follow-up

RSVY College and its approach

RSVY takes a holistic view of its programmes and hence, it was decided to initiate a long-term measure for capacity building. RSVY also adopts a multi-pronged approach where different agencies are involved in the design and implementation of the programmes. Jalpaiguri police administration also came forward with the related training inputs and thereby provided support for organizing the proposed school. The police feel that it is better to adopt a social policing approach than to have an arm-twisting approach. It has joined hands with the district administration to share the rehabilitation responsibilities so as to preempt the divisive tendencies through constructive, pro-active measures. The police, as an indispensable law and order instrument have fairly good understanding about the dynamics leading to deviation of youths. They offered to use their experience and learning in orienting the youths toward adopting constructive development programmes. Other agencies involved in organizing and managing the affairs of the schools include:

District Rural Development Cell, Zilla Parishad, Jalpaiguri.
An NGO-Center for the Development of Human Initiatives (CDHI) and
Different Line departments of the district administration.

The basic approach of the RSVY School was to provide supportive and enabling environment for a holistic development rather than programmatic learning. This means that the college would take care of the:

1. Personality development
2. Socio-psychological development
3. Dynamics of deprivation
4. Skill development including technical and managerial
5. Entrepreneurial development
6. Linkages and networking
7. Self-management capacity for various activities including cooperative management of kitchen, teashop, laundry, etc. during the residential training itself.



Family support and emotional anchoring

Many of the socially alienated youths were married and had children and family to look after. Their family must have suffered because of their being away in wilderness. There could have been emotional breakdowns as well. Programmes related to the support to the wives, children and parents were deemed to be significant for offering emotional anchorage. The support could include:

Health
Education
Family reunion at the training center
Support under the existing government programmes on priority
Under the RSVY programme training inputs were fine-tuned with each of the programme components. A detailed syllabus was prepared for the purpose.

Organizational Structure and core group

The training was organized under the joint collaboration of the Zilla Parishad, the District Administration, District Rural Development Cell, Jalpaiguri Police and an NGO-Center for the development of Human Initiatives (CDHI) Jalpaiguri.

To organize and offer policy support inputs, a core group consisting of Zilla Parishad Head, Divisional Commissioner, Inspector General of Police, North Bengal, Deputy Inspector General of Police, District Magistrate, Superintendent of Police, Additional Executive Officer, Zilla Parishad and representative of CDHI.

Talking about the overall impact of the rehabilitation programme under RSVY, one can say with certitude that this was one of the most successfully run rehabilitation programme for the socially alienated persons any where in the country where a whole extremist movement namely Kamtapur Liberation Movement for the establishment of a separate state comprising some areas of North Bengal was almost peacefully brought back to the national fold and rehabilitated. Similar such constructive initiatives can take off from the initiative taken by the progressive Government of West Bengal in the district of Jalpaiguri.
Saumitra Mohan is an IAS officer, presently working as Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, West Bengal.

Contact Address: Saumitra Mohan, IAS,
Sub-Divisional Officer, Alipurduar,
Jalpaiguri, West Bengal-736122.
Phone/Fax:03564-256391/2