Unnathi:

Towards the end of the first decade of IKP in the year 2009, it was observe¬d that 20% of poor were still untouched, majority of whom belonged to socially vulnerable groups (SC/ST) and thus needed intensive handholding support. To address this critical gap, SERP evolved a more targeted and focused approach under IKP, to fight the poverty of the poorest known as Unnathi.

Objectives:

The objective of Unnathi is to enable every poorest of poor family in the state to come out of poverty with increased and sustainable livelihood opportunities established with the aid of an intensive handholding support. The same has to be done in a focused and phased manner starting with organizing them, strengthening their institutions, increasing their asset base, mitigating risks, expanding the livelihoods and increasing their incomes. In concise, enhancing the income of POP family to an annual income of Rs One lakh over a period and a significant improvement in human development aspects are considered the twin mandates of the proposed strategy.

The need for Unnathi was further confirmed by the data from the baseline survey that was carried out immediately after the identification of PoP households. Detailed information was gathered about each and every PoP household on all important livelihood, human development and quality of life aspects. The baseline of PoP families doubly confirmed the need for exclusive strategy which was rightly put in place by SERP in the name of Unnathi.

Implementation Process:

• Identification of PoP Households: Inclusive strategy was applied for targeting i.e. all SC/ST households, except those employed in Govt. service, were straightway taken as PoP households. The identification of PoP households has been done jointly by the concerned VOs.
• b. Baseline survey: Thorough understanding of the target population is required before starting any development initiative. As POP strategy aims at enhancing the incomes and human development of the identified POP families, it was decided to have a detailed baseline survey of them on indictors given below. This was carried out with the help of trained POP CAs & VOAs and the collected data was later digitized with the support of exclusive web based software application for further analysis.
  • Critical Human Development Indicators viz. Literacy, Education, Health
  • Access to various Govt. schemes and benefits
  • Asset base including land, livestock etc.
  • Credit availed and its utilization
  • Annual family Cash flow
• Prioritization of households: IKP SERP has surveyed 22.1 lakh SC/ST household under SCSP-TSP Act -2013. For each household, scores were given for the following:
  • Family members (Number of girl children)
  • Vulnerability (Bonded Labour, Joginies, Women headed etc)
  • Assets (Housing, Assets of household etc)
  • Land Assets (Dry land, Wet land, cultivable etc)
  • Employment (Skilled, Full time, Part time, Contract etc)
  • Migration (family members gone for migration)
  • Ultrapoor Households
  
  The SC/ST households in a Village Organization, based on their Assets, Vulnerability score, employment, incomes were prioritized based on the score. The families top ranked were the most vulnerable (Ultrapoor HHs) having less assets and income. The priority list is made available to all staff and CBO members.
• Household Livelihood Plan: The VOAs’ prepare the HLPs for the prioritized SC/ST household. The same will be uploaded in the Website. As per the Household livelihood plan.
• Support to livelihood activity: The whole process is driven by the VOs. The loan request is sent as IVRS Requests or in the Web Application given in the Mandal Logins. After approval of the loan requests, the loan is sanctioned on the name of the SHG member and disbursed from Stree Nidhi to Village Organizations.
• Entitlements: The PoP facilitators have taken advantage of Rachchabanda program of Govt. of AP to facilitate sanction of entitlements to the PoP households. The PoP CAs has facilitated the households requiring different entitlements to file applications in Rachchabanda-1 program and most of them were sanctioned in Rachchabanda-2.

Grounding of livelihoods:

Purchase Committees are formed at the VO level for asset transfer. The Committee along with the beneficiary buy the asset. The utilization certificates for the grounded livelihood activity have to be collected by the VOA and the same has to be captured in web and there is provision for uploading scanned copies. The POP fund is given as loan to the member from Stree Nidhi. If the member repays regularly, VLR will be applicable to those SHG members.
Livelihoods practiced by the poor are generally chosen in such a way that it complements the other livelihoods practiced by the household. The same was witnessed in the POP fund grounding too. When the nature of livelihood assistance opted by PoP is observed, two thirds of families have opted for livestock with major thrust on smaller ruminants, while 15% preferring agriculture related. One fourth of the families have preferred petty business from a basket of available options.