5 years after starting the ADATS/SCNZ programme, coverage now stands at 121 villages (up from 119 six months back) and 3,411 Member Coolie families (down from 4,151 six months back). Every single village in Gudibanda taluk has crossed the 1st 3 year Coolie Sangha Formation phase and some are well into the 2nd 3 year Formalisation phase. ADATS paid Community Workers have been withdrawn from all 12 Clusters and elected Cluster Secretaries are slowly being initiated into their role of preparing for independent functioning.
Gudibanda saw a rise of 4 in the number of villages, but a huge drop of 478 families. These were families who were simply being “carried along” for almost 2 years.
The Taluk Coolie Sangha finally decided to drop them in the interest of building authentic CSUs. Had this tough decision not been taken, these families would anyway have dropped out when the Sangha Tax & membership retention system was introduced.
Mittemari saw a drop of 2 village CSUs and 262 Member families. But the increase in the number of Cancelled Members is only 34 families. We can therefore conclude that there was a data mistake in the previous Progress Report. Since each and every one of them is a Sangha Tax paying Member, we can safely say that the days of uncertainty are over, and the figures now represent a real membership level of serious and committed families.
The number of family memberships in women’s names has sharply risen in the past 6 months. If these are not just token memberships, they indicate a positive gender shift in favour of Coolie women.
But population coverage has reduced from a comfortable 36% to a less than favourable 29% in Gudibanda taluk.