Who bears the Responsibility?
Last year on 2 September 2024, an order was circulated by Jeevika, Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, Department of Rural Development, Government of Bihar, notifying that there will be successive phasing out of the honorarium paid by the Government to ‘community cadre’ such as community mobilisers, Lekhpals (bookkeepers) and Bank Mitras. Starting 1 June 2024, the Government’s contribution will come down from 100% to 80% and then decline progressively with each passing year to 60%, 40%, 20% until it is completely phased out (0 %) by 1 June 2028. The gap between stipulated honorarium and Government’s contribution was expected to be fulfilled by community institutions, that is, Self Help Groups (SHGs), Village Level Federations (VOs) and Block Level Federations (CLFs). This caused a huge outrage among the ‘community cadre’ leading to several protests that forced Jeevika to suspend the order by November 2024. However, the threat continues since the order was merely suspended, not withdrawn. What does this mean for the ‘cadre’ and the Jeevika system as a whole?
Jeevika comprises 10,58,618 SHGs, 70182 VOs and 1669 CLFs across Bihar with millions of poor rural women as members who save money, take loans, get training on skills and group management, engage with livelihoods and gain access to various Government schemes (Jeevika Annual Report, 2023-24). This vast network is managed by 1,57,874 ‘community cadre’, mostly rural women, who help in formation of SHGs, book-keeping, bank linkage, and a host of other activities including access to certain schemes (Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India). Without the work put in by the ‘community cadre’, this huge edifice will crumble affecting not just the cadre but millions of rural women who depend on Jeevika for financial inclusion and access to schemes and livelihoods for themselves and their families. Despite problems and challenges, SHG networks supported by the Government help in keeping usurious money lenders and commercial microfinance interests at bay. With the Government’s withdrawal, the responsibility for honorarium falls on community institutions. The crucial questions are: do community institutions have the capacity to pay? Whose responsibility is it to pay for development? Why are the ‘community cadre’ finding themselves in this vulnerable situation?
Many SHGs, VOs and CLFs of Jeevika in Bihar and other state rural livelihood programmes under the aegis of National Rural Livelihoods Programme (NRLM) are struggling with issues of non-repayment of loans, dormant SHGs, apathy of commercial banks to give loans to SHGs, all of which put huge financial strain on community institutions. Thus, the total funds raised through member savings, interest payments and bank loans are not enough to meet collective credit and honorarium requirements. Government funds help meet the gap and keep the system functioning. Withdrawal of the Government in this context would lead to a collapse of the system. The only way to manage this phasing out of honorariums by Government would be progressive dismissal of the ‘community cadre’ or levying additional contributions from individual SHG members. In the first case, there will be competition for limited funds, services rendered by ‘community cadre’ will stop and this will lead to a collapse of the system. In the second case, many members, unable to bear the additional financial burden, may drop out leading to lesser overall funds, more dormancy of groups and collapse of the system. Thus, currently the system certainly does not have the capacity to pay for the honorariums.
Will the community institutions ever have the capacity to pay? Should they? Whose responsibility is this actually? The neoliberal development paradigm of which NRLM and its state chapters like Jeevika are a part, individualizes poverty and underdevelopment instead of treating it as a structural issue and then goes on to put the onus of development on the individual herself. It focuses on a functional idea of self-help without directly addressing structural inequalities, macro-economic policies or discriminatory social norms. The idea of the collective or community institution often relates to loan decisions and monitoring rather than social action and change. As a result, such institutions and interventions focus on incremental improvements at the individual level which does not automatically lead to radically changed capacities, whether economic or social. For example, rural women who have been socialized into gender-caste norms, who have historically been denied access to resources or decision making within the family and community, find it extremely difficult to claim ownership and control of their loans and incomes, let alone own and manage the administration and finances of institutions. As long as development interventions ignore structural inequalities or targeted social action to change those inequalities, communities should neither be expected nor asked to pay for their development. In the context of continuing inequalities and discrimination, the state needs to fulfil, at the minimum, the responsibility of ‘welfare’. The move to phase out contributions towards honorariums should be seen as an abdication of the state’s responsibility rather than a shift towards community ownership.
Why is it that the state finds it easiest to withdraw through phasing out contributions towards honorariums? This is because such payouts relate to the most important, yet the most unrecognized and vulnerable group of workers in the system i.e. the ‘community cadre’. The ‘community cadre’, mostly rural women from socially and economically marginalized backgrounds, hold up the entire system through their hard labour but are not even recognized as workers. This is true not just of NRLM but of other development programmes such as the National Health Mission. For some time now, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA workers) have been demanding the status of workers and salaries instead of honorariums. One wonders whether the decision of the Government to withdraw from paying honorarium is a preemption of similar demands from the side of Jeevika workers. Thus, the fight against Government’s withdrawal from honorarium payment is not just the community’s fight for its right to welfare but also the right of workers for recognition and remuneration. Development programmes built on the back of women's cheap labour must give women the recognition, dignity and security as workers.
