Rural Livelihoods Development Through Community Based Financial Organisation CBFO

Abstract

The World Poverty Report 2011, a comprehensive study shows: Despite improvements newline over the past 30 years that have improve the scenario of rural livelihoods, lifted more newline than 350 million rural people out of extreme poverty, global poverty remains a massive newline and predominantly rural phenomenon with 70 per cent of the developing world s 1.4 newline billion extremely poor people living in rural areas. The report suggested that it is essential newline to improve the overall environment of rural areas, including infrastructure, services and newline governance. It is vital to enable rural communities to manage risk and reduce the level of newline risk they face. There is an ongoing debate to reduction in rural poverty through strengthen newline the collective capabilities, particularly through their membership-based community newline organizations. Community-based Financial Organizations (CBFO) gives people newline confidence, security and power all invaluable attributes for overcoming poverty (IFAD, newline 2011). newline The North Eastern Region (NER) in India is the biodiversity hotspot which ranks 5 th in newline the world. But in recent years, North East states are experiencing an extensive process of newline forest fragmentation, degradation, and outright deforestation which initiates negative newline effect in rural livelihoods. newline Since agriculture and allied activities are the backbone of rural livelihoods, it is evident newline that initiatives towards reducing poverty need to have a strong focus on increasing newline productivity, while carefully taking into account the diverse ecological conditions in the newline NE region as well as the complex social fabric of communities. To address the issues of newline rural livelihoods, Government of India has implemented several community development newline projects in the region with relevant experiences in the region and outside. SGSY, NRLM, newline AACP etc, and externally funded livelihoods projects of World Bank and IFAD have newline emerged CBFOs in different models e.g. SHG, Village Federation, Farmers Producers newline Organization, Community Development Group etc. The objective to form CBFOs is to newline improve rural livelihoods, production and marketing of local livelihoods activities, newline affordable lending in rural areas (NEC, 2011).iii newline The study follows the DFID s Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF), where a holistic newline understanding of rural livelihoods practices among different communities has analyzed. newline Study on existing research works on livelihood in different states of NER, shows that newline these have addressed stand-alone subjects and that none of them have taken a holistic newline view of the overall situation of rural livelihood issue in Sikkim. newline SLF ensures a holistic and participatory approach to understanding the various newline interactions of livelihood capitals, policies and institutions, and risk and vulnerabilities, newline which determines the livelihood strategies of a community. This study has, therefore, newline focused on revealing the livelihood status of the communities and the role played by newline different CBFOs in livelihoods development in Sikkim. The study attempts to learn the newline effectiveness of various initiatives in rural livelihoods through different types of CBFOs newline viz. SHG Federations, and Farmers Clubs for sustainable livelihood generation of rural newline poor. The study also attempts to study the barriers and constraints faced by the CBFOs in newline livelihood development. Finally, drawing from the finding from the data analysis, the