FES is a recipient of Elinor Ostrom International Award on Collective Governance of the Commons
(2013) and many more awards.

About the Programme
Through Prakriti Karyashala model, the program aims to enable better governance and restoration of common-pool resources including water resources in 7500 villages benefitting at least 15,00,000 people.
It proposes to build the capacity of 2000 program actors, including government functionaries, to create impact at scale.

After realizing that it is not feasible to work at scale without pivoting their existing approach, FES has ventured into the journey of re-imagining capacity building in their programs and are deploying solutions to enable desired shifts.

Arghyam’s support to FES
● Re-imagine the CB approach in three different regions (Odisha 3500 villages, RJ 2000
villages, AP-KNK 2000 villages)
● Embed the new approach in the existing funded programmes (OLM-5 districts, ABF-2 districts, HUF-2
districts)
● Organise training sessions, provide access to atomised content, deploy attestation application
● Resolve issues during implementation through virtual guided mentoring model
● Encourage peer-to-peer learning in virtual mentoring sessions
● Monitor progress through dashboards

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It is expected that the unprecedented nature and scale of the epidemic will have a long term and wide spread impact on livelihoods and natural resources like water. Thus, it is important to create a reliable channel of communication that allows collection, collation and analysis of factual data and information to flow that will augment the government and civil society’s efforts for targeted intervention in a proactive manner, even as the crisis unfolds across the country. This information will be critical to first understand the change on the ground and then realign the policies of government as well as strategy of funding and implementing organisations.

In this context, the consortium of 20 civil society organizations having a collective outreach of over 1.2 million families has reached out to the donor community including Arghyam for financial support as well as leveraging resources that can strengthen the consortium to be more effective in its work.

The consortium has come up with three-pronged response strategy as below:

1. Direct Action – support to vulnerable communities, including migrant workers, through an existing cadre of 10,000 CRPs for raising awareness, support GPs, extend reach of government programmes, organize relief (food & medicines), support health workers with PPE/ quarantine facilities etc.
2. Action Research – to generate usable knowledge for better understanding of the public health as well as the economic crisis both in the short and long term in rural areas. This would entail building contextual understanding in multiple geographies as well as various vulnerable communities, for designing and implementing effective coping strategies.
3. Support to Elected Representatives and Policy Advocacy – to complement the efforts of the democratically elected representatives from the local self-government (GPs), MLAs/ MPs as well as Niti Aayog. This is for making relief and rebuilding efforts more community based, targeted and humane. The collective advocacy is aimed to inform policy of both national and state governments as well as for funding organisations.

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The GP Organization Development project was conceived to look at capacity building from an organisational perspective, trying to address one fundamental question: How do we strengthen the Gram Panchayat as a self governing body, as constituted under Article 243?

The project was executed at two levels: At one level, it was to understand, observe and critique the design and functioning of institutions involved in governance and service delivery to rural citizens. At the second level, with a view to test our various hypotheses as well as to evolve, pragmatic solutions which are implementable in the real context, we worked with two Gram Panchayats in Karnataka, facilitating real time change in an action research mode.

The framework of the GPOD project is based on Organisation Development (OD) principles. The rationale for the using OD framework is its focus on organisation as a whole, and not on standalone components. The premise is that successful change occurs when all components of an organisation are aligned, i.e. the vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan and results.  Our work with the two Panchayats has helped us evolve certain key foundational principles. (1) We believe that the GP is pivotal in improvement of service delivery and governance at the last mile. (2) The focus of capacity building should be on building a strong GP organisation, which will enhance their absorptive capacity to leverage different efforts and resources directed at them. (3) Elected representatives can contribute significantly towards the GPs performing their mandated roles. (4) Lastly, a number of policy changes have to be instituted to create an enabling environment for the GPs to function as equal intergovernmental bodies.

In addition to its current efforts in Karnataka, Arghyam is also looking at scaling up this project with the help of a few academic institutions and the Government of Karnataka.

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