Documents of ADATS - Book 6

2nd Reply to DLDP Queries (23 March 1993)

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The very title we chose for the next project we implemented to give an added emphasis to the poorest of the poor and ensure that everyone had sufficient income to live with dignity by enhancing the CCFs, promoting coolie entrepreneurship and making fundamental changes in the culture of the poor — the DLDP 2nd phase — shows the continuity of the dry land development project which was completed in 1989.

Elements of this new emphasis through the DLDP 2nd phase got immediately incorporated into all the “regular” programmes of ADATS. So much so that we opted to not implement a separate DLDP 2nd phase in the Gulur Area of Bagepalli before withdrawing from the taluk. Instead we have merely asked EZE for an adjustment to the sanctioned budget of April 1991 so that savings made in the regular Coolie Sangha Formalisation phase can be used to increase CCF capitals in the GEP Area.

Evidence of this incorporation can even to be found in the Coolie Sangha Formalisation application we submitted to you in January 1992, in the pending DLDP proposal itself, and in the general policy of ADATS/DDS with regard to gender and the wider political economy.

The questions raised in the DLDP Completion Report of December 1989 cannot be outright answered except through long term monitoring which we immediately incorporated into our annual exercise. We can already make an impressionalist statement that coolie production is still on the rise, but this could well be due to the increased net volume of crop loans given out in 1992. There still appears to be a sensible balance between food and cash crops, but it is to be seen if this lasts. And the rush to take on at least one offfarm venture suggests that there is a steady diversification in their sources of income.