Recent Projects

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The project has collaborated with a multi-sectoral platform of police and community-partnered NGO, institutionalised as the Community Policing Resource Centres (CPRCs) at the Punjab State and District levels to address Violence Against Women (VAW). The CPRCs provide a range of citizen services including a victim assistance and grievance redressal cell, but have yet to incorporate the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act. The project was undertaken in a three-phased process. A gender analysis of CPRC and functionaries (including health, education, women and child, panchayat, SC and OBC Departments, civil society members and NGOs) of the delivery system contextualised in the backdrop of the Domestic Violence Act formed an evidence-based documentation to evolve training instruments for civil and police functionaries and basis for dissemination of information for the community on gender-friendly support services and the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act for women

Food security has become the central focus of political discourse. It has, therefore, been imperative to look at the various facets of grain producing machine i.e. Punjab. In this study, the current farm debt situation has been captured. The time series analysis has shown that total farm debt in ten years (i.e. 1997 to 2008) has multiplied by five times and debt per farm family has gone up six times over the same period. The burden of interest payments on the farm sector now eats up almost 14 per cent of annual farm income of the state. It must be mentioned that this study is strictly confined to estimation of incidence and amount of farm debt, its structure and composition, and burden on the farm sector. The more important, but also more complex and contentious issues of causes, consequences and solutions of farm debt problem are not even touched in this study. Not because of any lack of interest in these important aspects of farm debt question, but owing to these being more difficult to deal with even at a lesser degree of scientific rigour. These aspects of farm debt problem are influenced by so many macro economic, sociological and political factors that it is difficult to disentangle their effects to arrive at any meaningful conclusion.

Conflict prevention and peace building are increasingly becoming central to development, with peace as an essential precondition to alleviate poverty to provide livelihood and entitlements to the people on the margins, to promote the rule of law and to safeguard human rights and allow for inclusive multiculturalism. South and South-East Asia, in particular, are facing challenges of new economic formations and developments in politics, culture and the region. These challenges have a bearing on human security, poverty, population mobility and distributive justice. What are some practical ways for youth to understand and address the complex multi-cultural reality? The initiative maps and provides guidelines for youth stakeholders.

Punjab Nirman Programme was launched by the Punjab Government in the year 2005-06 and was continued in 2006-07 as well. The main objective of this programme was to make a special and concerted effort to improve the living conditions of the people in urban and rural areas by creating the needed infrastructure works. The main focus was to provide funds to create and complete sanitation and drinking water projects, housing for homeless, street lighting and repair of community centers etc. An amount of Rs. 1,093 crore was sanctioned and given to the Deputy Commissioners to implement this programme. With more than a year having passed since the completion of this programme, the Government approached IDC to assess the impact of this programme and to evaluate it.

The average utilisation performance of rural scheme was 84.90 per cent, which can be rated as barely satisfactory and in the urban areas the schemes/work wise allocation priorities were quite similar to rural area.

Healthcare and education are building blocks to combat poverty and strengthen community development. In tune with empowering the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), the decentralisation of services came under the ambit of PRIs (Zila Parishad). This project is concerned with the PRIs management of health and education services and in identifying gaps in service delivery. The scope of the study covered the functioning of rural dispensaries and schools under the management and control of Zila Parishads and in identifying inputs to strengthen the role performed by PRIs.

Quantitative inputs concluded that more than 20 patients per day are beneficiaries of SHCs. The preventive service was also gaining impetus and importance as reflective in rural people awareness. Consciousness of availing of healthcare services being provided for them exists. Similarly, findings also revealed an overall improvement in enrolment, drop out, migration and success rate of primary school children. But with 43 per cent vacancies for teachers, 89 per cent schools without peons, 66 per cent schools without adequate seating facility for children, primary education is unable to provide a strong foundation for the entire edifice of education system of our country.

The concept of governance since its evolution in the 1990s, has taken different forms and meanings depending upon specific contexts and situations. Basically it implies a shift from hierarchies and markets to networks; from formal authority of the state power to steering and coordinating, from actions of the state to interplay of plural actors.

In the context of rural areas, one tends to speak of rural development and the need to develop local self governing institutions which are yet to find their niche in the practices and processes of governance, despite various constitutional provisions. Even though the PRIs appear to be well placed for integration of sectoral, social and spatial priorities in rural areas, most of the states in India are far from developing self governing mechanisms, not to speak of extension thereof to integrated partnerships with civil society.

Rural areas studies generally focus on assessment of specific sectors and programmes, rather than on rural governance. Practically no work has been done even in respect of urban governance in the states north of Delhi. Keeping the existing scenario in mind the Institute for Development and Communication (IDC) took up a series of studies on governance starting with urban governance in medium and large towns in Punjab. The present study is second of the series and covers rural areas on the ‘edge’- three villages located at the peripheries of the states of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.

In accordance to the new Punjab Police Act, 2007, the Punjab Police solicited the formulation of a Five-Year Strategic Police Plan for systematic modernisation and upgradation of existing police capacities. IDC prepared and submitted this strategic plan for 2008-2012 incorporating the vision, goals and objectives for effective and efficient policing attuned to promoting the safety and security of citizens. The plan which is expected to serve as a roadmap for policing in Punjab discusses aspects of police functioning in accordance to the Supreme Court directives for police reforms. It has laid down procedures for selection and promotion for functionaries at different levels, personal management system, working conditions for police personnel, community-oriented policing initiatives and oversight incorporating grievance redressal mechanisms.

CPRCs have been set up in Punjab as a collaborative effort of the civil society and the police. The first CPRC was established in 2003 and subsequently these were opened in 24 police districts of the state. This unique model of community policing was conceived by the Institute for Development and Communication (IDC) which was adopted by the State Government. After four years of its launch the state government has asked IDC to evaluate this experiment, for its implementation at the sub-division and police station levels.

Each CPRC is an autonomous registered society collectively managed by representatives of the community and police functionaries. It provides citizens dignified access to police-related services and a forum to implement community-oriented programmes. The CPRC is a system of policing in partnership with the community, managed through committees having representatives of the civil society, specialists, NGOs, police functionaries and the civil administration.

The main focus of evaluation is to investigate the issues relating to ownership of the CPRCs and how far these participator systems structured for planning and management promote transparency, accountability and ownership. It would also be worthwhile to examine representation of diversity reflected in planning and operational functions and nature and level of community response to services provided by CPRC.

The food security of the country, therefore, will remain dependent on the main surplus grain producing region of Punjab-Haryana in the coming years as well, as it has been in the past four decades. So to maintain food self-sufficiency wheat and rice production in the Punjab-Haryana region has not only to be sustained at the present high level, but also to be expanded further. For accomplishing that, wheat and rice production in the region has to be paid much greater attention than has been the attitude of the central government policy makers in recent years. The profitability of wheat and rice production in the region has been eroding since the beginning of the current decade due to the stagnation of yield rates, rising cost of farm inputs and slow growth of the minimum support prices of wheat and paddy. The persistence of this negative trend in profitability of wheat and rice production would have certainly endangered the sustainability of production of these grains at the present scale in the Punjab-Haryana region.

The Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) is a comprehensive programme launched in the year 1986 with the objectives of improving the quality of life of rural people and providing privacy and dignity to women. The concept of sanitation was expanded in 1993 to include personal hygiene, home sanitation, sewage water and disposal of garbage, human excreta and wastewater.

The purpose of the evaluation study is the effective execution of the scheme, the funds allocated and distributed and the transparency and accountability in the implementation of the scheme.

The Police Station Visitors Week (PSVW) is a unique global event organised by Altus to assess the quality of service delivered in the participating police departments, to identify some of the best practices in use by police, and to strengthen the accountability of police to the local citizens whom they serve. A system of annual visits by groups of citizens to local police stations, coordinated globally and designed to produce comparable annual scores on five dimensions of police service: Community Orientation, Physical condition, Equal Treatment of the Public, Transparency and Accountability, Detention conditions. The overarching goal of the program is to measurably improve the quality of local police service according to international standards as interpreted by local communities, especially those who are poor and marginalised. This, in turn, contributes to improving trust and cooperation between police and communities, leading to greater reliance on police by crime victims and improved access to justice.

The structure of competition in farm credit market in Punjab has undergone considerable charge in the last 40 years, since the beginning of green revolution. The volume of farm credit has grown manifold. Now almost every farm is using credit money to finance farm operations and capital investments on the farm. To regain and further expand the share of cooperative institutions in farm credit in Punjab, a thorough examination of their present position, working methods and sources of funds etc needs to be assessed. Only on the basis of a correct diagnosis, an effective strategy for their reorientation and reorganisation can be devised to regain and expand their share and increase their role in the farm credit in the state. The present study is an attempt in that direction.