The year witnessed the organization executing
several important projects including the first phase of
a three-year research programme on income generation aspects
in the North-East and also organizing workshops on women
and child development modules in five states—Assam, Meghalaya,
Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim. As a result of extensive
work in the NE during the year, a huge network was developed
at the grassroots. It encouraged the organisation to build
a mechanism to facilitate new avenues and assignments for
local NGOs, and the proposed NE Coordination Centre in
New Delhi is coming up soon.
Section 1
A Research Programme On Identifying Reasons For Low Income
Generation In The North East And Its Impacts
Media Management Group for Literacy and Development successfully
completed the first-year of the three-year research programme,
identifying the factors affecting the income generation
aspect of the people of the region. The project, supported
by Indian Council of Social Science Research, tried to
uncover reasons for (a) large-scale drop-out from schools
and colleges, (b) increase in frustration level among youths
and (c) failures of initiatives like self-employment etc.
to take off successfully.
Initial Initiatives
During the year 2002-03, the research was undertaken at
four states of the region viz. Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal
Pradesh, and Sikkim. The second year of the project will
be taken up in Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.
The third and final year of the project is, however,
reserved for documentation—both print and audio-visuals—and
also for holding seminars to discuss the emerging issues
in a more holistic way.
Inputs for policy makers
In-depth research, uncovering reasons of the above-mentioned
problems, is expected to help both government and non-governmental
organizations in rethinking their strategy to address
those issues. The findings should be of immense importance
for the policy makers to go deep into evolving a solution
to the growing rate of drop-outs and increased level
of frustration among youths. The research also highlighted
the menace of growing unemployment and attempted to trace
the origin of prevailing frustration among youths, which
is largely considered to be the root cause of the insurgency.
Methodology
A field-based research was adopted to get information directly
from the concerned groups—students, teachers, planners,
officials, bankers etc.
While
collecting the basic data for the final report, a team
of research assistants was engaged under a coordinator.
The questionnaire to collect the requisite data included
some of the basic parameters such as:
(a) Rate of school and college drop-outs,
(b) Graduation-job connectivity
(c) Opportunities for self-employment
(d) Support from state and central governments in undertaking
innovative initiatives for income generation avenues
of people
(e) Career information at schools and colleges
(f) Scholarship-student ratio
(g) Outward flow of students for more opportunities
(h) Support from banks and other financial institutions
for small-scale and other village-based industries etc.
The core research team members interviewed and recorded statements of the
respondents in four states of the region and compiled the first part of the
report during
2002-03. The schools and colleges, which were covered by the study during
the year, were mostly under North Eastern Hills University, Shillong, (Meghalaya),
Gauhati University (Assam), Arunachal University (Arunachal Pradesh) and
Sikkim
University, Gangtok (Sikkim).
Section 2
Training workshops for NE NGOs for developing project
proposals
As a part of the programme to train NGOs, institutions
and individuals of the North - East to write sound and
quality projects, five workshops were organised in Assam,
Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim during
this year. Organised with the support of the Department
of Women and Child Development, Government of India, those
workshops received massive response from local NGOs. Sessions
were addressed by a group of resource persons. The workshops
delivered on-the-spot projects of excellent quality. The
other three workshops in Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura
are slated to be held in the year 2003-04.
The state governments invited NGOs, institutions and individuals.
In certain cases, more participants were selected than
were originally planned. The idea was not to disappoint
enthusiast local social workers, who were eager to put
hours for the job but didn’t really know how to go about
it. The resource persons had the expertise to make the
participants understand the art of project formulation
and project writing. As officers from the Department of
Women and Child Development were present during the workshops,
those workshops turned out to be important platforms for
introducing Central Government schemes to the prospective
NGOs. Interestingly, several quality projects emerged straight
out of those workshops.
Assam Workshop
Organised on December 2, 3 and 4, 2002, the workshop was
attended by as many as 170 NGOs from all over the state.
The state government invited the NGOs. MMGLD conducted
the programme of sensitizing those NGOs about various government
schemes, in addition to imparting training for preparing
sound project proposals.
The inaugural session was addressed by Prabir Dutta, Chief
Secretary, Government of Assam, V.K Pipersenia, Joint
Secretary, Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD),
Government
of India, Ms. U. Hazarika, Deputy Secretary, MHRD, Harish
Sonowal, Secretary, Social Welfare, Government of Assam,
and A.D. Sarmah, General Secretary, MMGLD.
It was a unique exercise in the state, which was repeatedly
mentioned by the speakers. Resource persons A Bhuyan and
Sanjeev Kakoty imparted training to the NGO personnel and
many project proposals were prepared during the workshop
itself. Many of those on-the-spot proposals were later
submitted to the state government for its consideration.
Interestingly, the MMGLD had an informal interactive session
with the NGOs coming from different parts of the state.
It was decided that some of those NGOs would sustain the
relationship with this organisation on a long-term basis.
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