Social Discrimination Elimination Project (SDEP) is a sub project under VELUGU, operational in 7 mandals of Mahabubnagar district. The seven mandals in which Dalit Samakhya is working are Kosigi, Daulatabad, Bommaraspet, Pangal, P.K pally, Dharur and Maldakal. Under this project, Dalit Samakhyas are formed at village, mandal and district level. For every mandal there are three cluster organizers and one mandal coordinator. At district level there is one project coordinator. This project team plays key role in organizing and strengthening dalit Samakhyas.

Meeting with SDEP

On 5th September 2006, discussions were held with the project team on the implementation status of CLDP, emerging issues and possible action points to strengthen the program. As most of the assignees are dalits and almost 50% of landholders under CLDP program are dalits, strengthening the ongoing program forms important agenda for the project. Team members shared their experiences and observations on the implementation of the program

• CIGs of assignees are not formed properly

• Development plans are not with the assignees, but only with engineer

• Involvement of velugu staff is very less and also Mandal Mahila Samkhyas

• Para workers are not properly identified and capacity building of para workers is inadequate

• Works are decided by the engineers rather than by assignees as per their needs

• No transparency maintained in the implementation of the program

• Corruption

It was decided to take up this agenda and work towards addressing above issues to strengthen the program. The action points emerged are

• Basic orientation to SDEP team members on CLDP

• Communication campaign for creating awareness among assignees and also for mobilisation

• Taking up CLDP agenda in the project related forums - village, mandal and district dalit samkhya meetings.

• Initiating mandal level CIG forums to address the emerging issues and also to ensure transparency and accountability

Orientation program on CLDP for SDEP team

As decided in the above meeting, a two-day orientation programme was conducted on 22 - 23rd September in Mahabubnagar for the functionaries of SDEP. 25 members from seven mandals participated in the programme

The context, objectives, principles and implementation arrangements of the programme are discussed and compared with the actual implementation on ground.
 

Also the participants arrived at three point agenda for next three months:

1. Orienting the assignees on the program through communication campaign and regular meetings

2. Ensuring that Para workers are identified, trained and functioning in every village

3. Ensuring that land development plans and records are available with CIG

It is proposed to work on these three points through village, mandal and district dalit Samakhyas. For that, the team also uses the Mandal mahila samakhya forum. Also some songs and draft plays are prepared on CLDP.
 

Though SDEP project works in 7 mandals, WASSAN involved intensively in three selected mandals, i.e Bommaraspet, Daulatabad and Kosigi.

Review meetings:
 

Representative form WASSAN is attending the review meetings of SDEP staff regularly to follow-up on the above agenda. Till now four meetings were conducted on 4th and 24th October and 3rd and 17th November. In these meetings the details of the blocks visited by the SDEP staff were collected and also oriented on the information to be collected. From these formats the progress in pursuing the three point agenda is being reviewed. In the new CLDP blocks the SDEP team facilitated identification of Para workers in 5 blocks.

Building awareness: 

For taking the program into the assignees, a kalajatha programme was designed along with SDEP cultural teams. A script along with the songs was prepared along with the mandal cultural teams during workshops conducted on 6th, 11th and 12th October. It was planned to conduct programmes in 15 villages @ 5 villages per mandal. The cost for performing each programme was worked out at Rs. 2,000. To that effect thirty thousand rupees for 15 programmes were paid to Zilla Dalit Samakhya. In addition costs of conducting workshops and video documentation were met by WASSAN. After completion of the programme, Zilla Dalit Samakhya submitted a report along with photo and video documentation.
 

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