Community Ownership and Development - Towards Sustainable Livelihoods!

Ration card holders were disturbed and tensed for not receiving their monthly ration from the ration shop. The shopkeeper instead of giving them the full information on the issue or the actual reasons for denying them their rights of Food Security demeaned and sent them empty hand. The men and women from Pali-Uttan flocked to the CCO office where the members contacted the ration shop secretary of Chowk and informed them about the misbehaviour of the shopkeeper. The authorities called up the shopkeeper to know the reason. They were told that in the Bio metrics the meter number of the 283 BPL (below poverty line) card holders were not showing. Therefore they needed to submit all the required missing documents whose names were in the ration card. The CC (core committee) and SC (subcommittee) members along with CCO staffs collected documents and registered 185 BPL beneficiaries since their income was below Rs. 59000/-. After submitting the required documents and receiving an...

At ration office Submitting forms to rationkruti   The CC (core committee) & SC (subcommittee) members along with the CCO staffs visited the ration office at Bhayander to submit their forms for the ration issue. On 20th March four members of the CC had a brief discussion with the ration officer on the issues they faced. The officer promised them of permitting the BPL (below poverty line) stamps for 100 card holders. The CCO staffs gave some of the members the responsibility of preparing a list of approximately 15 card holders from each ward who needs the BPL stamp on their ration cards.   The last day for the submission of the list of 100 names was declared to be 18th April 2018. With this the people are now aware of 60% of their rights of Food Security Act 2013.

The Core committee monthly meeting facilitated by CSA was held at Pali on 7 th Feb 2018 with 19 CC members & CCO present. The main objective was to plan, decide and allot responsibilities for women’s day, evaluate on three issues with the 3 subcommittees and allot responsibilities among CC members for ration camp. The meeting began with reading the previous minutes report and the agenda was discussed in detail with the CC members. 8 th March was decided as the day to celebrate women’s day. The theme chosen was based on the three main issues of Pali village in East Indian language namely “Dur karavachya Han aaplya gavachya adchani, pahilya ghetlyan smasysa ration, aarogya aani Pani”. It means To remove the difficulties of our village, by solving the issues of ration, health and water. The anchoring will be done by two CC members. The theme was decided on the three main issues of Pali village in East Indian language “Dur karavachya Han aaplya gavachya adchani, pahil...

Pest Control in Dongri and Tarodi Date: Dongri - 27 th Oct. 17 and Tarodi - 13 th Oct. 17 As the follow up of Uncleanliness, the issue of last year taken by the Core Committee.   The Core Committee had the visit to MBMC related to this issue. The members met the Commissioner and the result of it, immediately the next day the MBMC workers came with their tempo to do the pest control. They did it in two villages (Dongri and Tarodi) on different dates. The result of it there are less mosquitos in the villages and because of this people do not get often sick. The MBMC workers come at regular basis. Before coming tot eh villages the MBMC workers inform the Core Committee members that we are coming.  

  The lack of information ration subcommittee along with CC members organized an informative seminar on ration issue which was held on 16 th Dec. 2017 at Church hall Pali. A total of 87 head of the families participated in the meeting in order to solve their rationing issues. The main objective of the session was to provide information on food security act and to make people realize the strength in unity while dealing with issues. The resource person for the session was Mrs. Taruna Kumbhar, member of the Rationing Kruti Samiti(RKS), works on issues related to the Public distribution system and Food Security. Mrs. Taruna began with highlighting the rights of a ration card holder.  People asked many questions in relation to the ration distribution, the basic rules and regulations, the procedure for getting beneficiary stamp etc. All the questions and doubts were cleared.  She promised that (RKS) will guide to fill the form in the camp, but the beneficiaries should ta...

The CC members of two subcommittees shared their follow up meeting and action report in the meeting held at Church New hall, Pali on 3 rd  Dec 2017. The CC member of cleanliness subcommittee had met twice to take the issue of the septic tank near Anganwadi, which wasn’t in a good condition, and so drafted a letter to the Nagar Sevak, who sent his workers to clean up the septic tank. Since the capacity of the septic tank was too small with broken cover, the members drafted an additional complaint letter with the signatures of people at ward no.4. The procedure of signature continues.  Also, the pest control in each ward continues as the CC members and ward leaders’ monitor the action. The rationing issue subcommittee drafted and submitted the RTI form to the Public Information Officer and a reply was received within 25 days. The rationing information seminar is scheduled for 16 th  Dec. 2017 at 1pm. Also, the subcommittee on irregular water supply decid...

Villagers taking the responsibility of cleaning A list of seventeen issues was created, amongst the rest, one of the most concerning issues was the repairs of road and the pathways leading to the seashore. Fifteen CC and sub-leaders was present for the meeting. The main objective was solving the problem of the villagers. After Cleaning A survey was done and the necessary information related to the pathways of seashore in the Chowk village was collected. A corporator and a contractor visited the site to examine the pathways. A gathering at the village level also took place in order to create awareness of cleanliness at the seashore. Finally, the permission to repair eight of the pathways has been granted and the Core-committee has taken the responsibility to write an application to the corporator.  

On 27 th Oct 2017 a meeting on action plan was held at Uttan Church. Seventeen members from the subcommittee and core committee participated to discuss on the issue of extra expenses incurred during festivals and celebrations. The occasions highlighted were Festivals like village feast, parish feast, and Christmas. They decided to have a common social gathering to celebrate these festivals at a village. Since it would be difficult to stabilize this initiative from the start, it was decided that few festivals like the parish feast or village feast can be started through each village and later taken up to a common level gathering. Mr. Jude, CC member who has applied this strategy in his zone, gave the example of Mothagoan a village nearby which has a common celebration for the last 3 years. There has been a good response from the villagers for the same and has resulted in a lot of savings. Mr. Dayanand Patil, CSA staff guided on how to go forward with the issue and convince th...

A coastal cleanup drive was setup at Uttan on the 26 th of Sep and the 29 of Sep, 2017 in Patan, Navikhadi, Mothagaon and Devtalav respectively by the CCO staff and Core Committee. 400 people from the village participated in the drive all of whom came to the seashore and cleaned their respective areas. Both men and women helped each other in difficult times during the clean up. In Devtalav it was difficult to bring the vehicle to collect the garbage but the men of Devtalav came forward and helped the women to take out the garbage.  In all the villages there was good response from the people. On the first day of the drive there wasn’t good response from the MBMC staff and the garbage which was collected by people was lying as it is on the seashore almost for three days. The situation was the same on the second day of the drive. The commissioner was contacted and all the related MBMBC head-members. With this the commissioner immediately sent the head of the cleanliness departm...