Indian Non-Profits and Poverty in India
Livelihood enhancement is a central focus at many non-profit organizations working in India including both AIF and my AIF Banyan Impact Fellowship Host Organization, the Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development Interaction (VIKSAT). By working in livelihoods, they are making tangible and purposeful progress within the communities where they work towards the first UN Sustainable Development Goal—No Poverty.
The impact of the work done by VIKSAT, AIF, and other non-profit organizations is visible by the decreasing poverty rates in India. From 2015-2016 to 2019-2021, the number of multidimensionally poor people in India decreased by 9.89%, from 24.85% to 14.96%.[1] Multidimensional poverty decreased particularly rapidly in rural areas of India with a 13.31% decrease from 32.59% to 19.28% in the same time period.[2]
U.S. Non-Profits and Poverty in the U.S.
In the United States, most non-profit organizations focus on alleviating the symptoms of poverty rather than challenging the existence of poverty. These organizations provide important services such as temporary shelter for an unhoused veteran, legal advice for an elderly tenant facing possible eviction, or food for a mother struggling to feed her children. For the 37.9 million Americans living under the poverty line,[3] these services are a vital life-line. But, they do little to bring Americans out of poverty.
I agree with Desmond that, if adopted, these policies probably would alter the fact that the percentage of Americans in poverty has virtually remained unchanged in the last five decades.[7] But, in the face of government inaction, it is time that American civil society takes a page out of Indian civil society’s playbook and faces poverty head-on.
VIKSAT’s Example
Founded in 1977 as an initiative of the Nehru Foundation for Development (NFD), VIKSAT currently works in five major thrust areas: Land and Water Management, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH), Sustainable Livelihoods, Institutions and Capacity Building, and Environment and Climate Change.[8] VIKSAT implements all of its rural development initiatives to “[foster] sustainable development” by working through a network of People’s Institutions (PIs), or groups of community members with shared interests.[9] Primarily, this work is done through a three-tiered structure of Self-Help Groups (SHGs), Village Organizations (VOs), and Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs).[10] SHGs are groups of 12-15 women engaged in savings, credit, and intra-loaning. The SHGs in a village combine to make a VO where village-wide concerns can be discussed and addressed. The VOs in a region combine to form an FPO, which provides benefits to members such as “forward and backward [market] linkages” like access to banking services, access to quality seeds, and access to processing facilities for produce.[11]
By working with PIs, whose members seek income augmentation, VIKSAT ensures poverty eradication is a key part of its sustainable development and natural resource management work. For example, the Lakhpati Kisan Programme, which VIKSAT implemented in the Khedbrahma Taluka (Block) of the Sabarkantha District and in the Danta Taluka of the Banaskantha District of Gujarat with the support of Axis Bank Foundation, HDFC Bank, Collectives for Integrated Livelihoods Initiatives, and Hindustan Unilever Foundation, “[aimed] to bring 12000 [households] irrevocably out of poverty.” [12] In 2021-22, VIKSAT’s interventions included a diverse set of activities from training PI members on the best sowing practices for wheat or maize, vaccinating cattle and goats, installing drip irrigation systems, building check dams that help recharge groundwater, providing farm equipment like chaff cutters, to installing solar pumps for water irrigation and assisting in the installation and management of vermicompost units.[13] These interventions successfully increased incomes in VIKSAT’s project area in the Sabarkantha and Banaskantha Districts of Gujarat from an average of 73,667 rupees annually in 2018-19 to 112,187 (1.12 lakh) rupees annually in 2021-22.[14]
With augmented incomes, members of PIs become positioned to make investments that can help them to improve their standard of living and even increase their incomes further. Previously impoverished households can build a permanent roof for their homes, invest in additional agricultural equipment, buy a scooter, or send their children to school. When they are successful, investments by organizations, like VIKSAT, that work in livelihoods can break the generational cycle of poverty.
Next Steps for the U.S. Non-Profits
Livelihoods intervention will look much different in the American context than the Indian context, but there are important lessons for American non-profit organizations to learn from the livelihoods work of VIKSAT and other Indian non-profit organizations.
The first step for American civil society organizations is prioritizing poverty eradication. One way to do this is by securing greater access to government welfare schemes for the programs’ intended beneficiaries. While I was at Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA), the public benefits program was largely scaled back due to loss of funding. Even when grant funding for these initiatives is limited, I would like to see legal aid organizations like MLSA make it a greater priority to use their discretionary funds to provide public benefits advice, emergency rental assistance help, and other legal assistance that puts money in their clients’ pockets.
Desmond points out that “for every dollar budgeted for [Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF)] in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents.”[15] While government welfare programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid are much more efficient in distributing assistance—“roughly 85 percent of the [SNAP] budget is dedicated to funding food stamps” and “almost 93 percent of Medicaid dollars flow directly to beneficiaries”[16]—improving the efficiency of TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid by just a few percentage points each would put billions of dollars in the pockets of the poorest Americans.
This would mean more domestic violence survivors would have the financial stability to leave dangerous situations, more renters could make their rent payment each month, and more people could live without crippling debt. It would mean less Americans in poverty.
Footnotes
[1] “National Multilevel Poverty Index- A Progress Review 2023,” United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), July 18, 2023, https://www.undp.org/india/publications/national-multidimensional-poverty-index-progress-review-2023.
[2] “National Multilevel Poverty Index- A Progress Review 2023,” United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), https://www.undp.org/india/publications/national-multidimensional-poverty-index-progress-review-2023.
[3] “National Poverty in America Awareness Month: January 2024,” United States Census Bureau, January 2024, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-month.html.
[4] “Figure 1. Number in Poverty and Poverty Rate Using the Official Poverty Measure: 1959 to 2022,” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2023/demo/p60-280/figure1.pdf.
[5] Matthew Desmond, “America Is in a Disgraced Class of its Own,” The New York Times, March 16, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/opinion/poverty-abolition-united-states.html.
[6] Desmond, “America Is in a Disgraced Class of its Own,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/opinion/poverty-abolition-united-states.html.
[7] Desmond, “America Is in a Disgraced Class of its Own,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html.
[8] “Who We Are,” Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development Interaction (VIKSAT), Accessed January 6, 2024, https://viksat.org/who-we-are/overview.
[9] “Annual Report 2021-2022,” Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development Interaction (VIKSAT), 2022, 24.
[10] “Annual Report 2021-2022,” VIKSAT, 24.
[11] “Who We Are,” VIKSAT, https://viksat.org/who-we-are/overview.
[12] “Annual Report 2020-2021,” Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development Interaction (VIKSAT), 2021, 4.
[13] “Annual Report 2021-2022,” VIKSAT, 2022.
[14] “Annual Report 2021-22,” VIKSAT, 11.
[15] Matthew Desmond, “Why Poverty Persists in America,” The New York Times, last modified April 3, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html.
[16] Desmond, “Why Poverty Persists in America,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html.
