The Hindu Business Line : Rs 772-cr TN project to fight rural poverty

The Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Project (TNEPRP), covering 15 districts and 2,300 panchayats, will be community-driven to reduce rural poverty resulting in social and economic empowerment of the poor.

The project aims to improve the livelihoods and quality of life of the rural poor.

The overall goal of the project would be to support the State's strategy of reducing rural poverty through support for productive activities and investments, using the community demand driven (CDD) approach, according to a source.

The project would support the poor by building pro-poor local institutions and groups and financing productive demand-driven sub-project investments and building their skills and capacity, according to information available on the Tamil Nadu Corporation for Development of Women Ltd Web site.

It would have various elements, including transferring control over decision-making and resources to the community and local institutions (identify, appraise, implement, monitor and evaluate sub-projects) and focus on the poorest - the vulnerable, the destitute and the disabled members of the community.

The project will also focus on building and empowering community institutions and organisations, establishing linkages between the elected village institutions and the community organisations so that there are no parallel institutions, focusing on employment generation and livelihood improvement in the project area, and building downward accountability and transparency at all levels.

The project would be to empower the village community and their organisations to plan, implement, manage and monitor livelihood project, and negotiate access to resources and services from the various service providers in a transparent, accountable and cost-effective manner.

The CDD approach is aimed at shifting the power of decision-making and resource control to local communities, building partnerships among local communities, Government agencies, private sector and NGOs, and strengthening the capacity of local communities to manage their own development priorities and mobilise resources.

The project will have an external human resource company to design a selection procedure and advertise, screen, select and recruit district-level teams and cluster-level project facilitation teams from the open market based on their job description and requirement. "This is a huge and challenging project," said an official of a placement agency.

The recruitment at district level shall be for 105 posts and at cluster level for 1,050 posts.

Each cluster will comprise of 12 panchayats and it is proposed to have a five-member project facilitation team for each cluster. The project is likely to have about 200 project facilitation teams.

All appointments shall be only on a two-year contract basis initially with the District/State Society reserving the right to terminate the contract at one month notice, according to the Web site.

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