Planning Tools

Decentralized Planning

Decentralized planning affirms primacy of local communities and their institutions in deciding their development agenda in accordance with felt needs and priorities. Attempted first during the seventh plan, it has now become mandatory for all the districts in the country to claim eligibility for grants under twelfth finance commission and central schemes. CYSD has been involved in the planning process of Sundergarh district in Orissa. It has developed a comprehensive range of tools and check list to capture stake holder perspective and needs while designing districts vision five year and annual plans. The tools have been quite useful in mainstreaming communities’ priorities in agriculture as well as social and economic infrastructure. The organization has experienced resource persons, skilled man power, training modules, analytical framework as well as sector specific tools which can be shared with CSOs and Govt. agencies interested in community centric bottom up planning.

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Citizen Report Card (CRC)

Citizen Report Card (CRC) is a tool to benchmark public service delivery. It is now widely recognized as a simple and widely replicable method to improve efficiency, transparency and public accountability. With end-user feedback, the method on which Citizen Report Cards determine the quality of service delivery, it is possible to rank service providers on their performance. Citizen Report Cards can then be used to stimulate collective action by citizens and provide organizational leaders with an opportunity to strategically prepare themselves to address gaps. In collaboration with Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore, CYSD has the experience of conducting such studies in Orissa. The expertise developed on the Citizen Report Card tool may be used by others working for enhancing performance and quality of service delivery in respective area of specialization.

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Community Monitoring

Much of the problem in project implementation process can be ascribed to the lack of effective community monitoring. Villagers and city dwellers still have the beneficiary outlook and seldom approach the issues in a citizen perspective. They become stake holders when they are conscious of the stakes involved and prepared to guard encroachment against their rights. Community monitoring derives its strength from citizen vigilance on implementation processes. CYSD has mainstreamed community monitoring as a key element in its projects and programmes. Going a step forward it has successfully piloted community managed projects transferring executive and financial authority to the project beneficiaries. Long years of action research in this theme have contributed a rich body of documentation on good practices which need replication at a wider scale.

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Social Audit

Of late, social audit has gained prominence in development discourse as a tool to advance transparency and accountability. For the first time, it has gained legal sanction figuring prominently in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Civil society has seized this opportunity to empower rural communities who lacked a say on the quality and outcome of projects which affected their lives and well-being. CYSD is piloting a World Bank supported process driven community led social audit project capturing the diverse dynamics and challenges in the trajectory. The emphasis is on prevention and not post mortem for witch hunt. The social audit manual, training material and analytical tools developed under this project certainly adds to the rich collection of best practices available on the subject.

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Sustainable agriculture

The craze for reckless use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has devastating consequences on soil quality, agricultural productivity and environment. Increasing number of farmer suicide cases from green revolution areas like Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra send very grim signals which are difficult to ignore. CYSD believes in incremental transition to organic farming trough a carefully laid process of integrated use of chemical inputs. The vast livelihood programme of the organization spreading over six operational districts of the state has given a good deal of optimism to achieve the objectives of sustainable agriculture. The learning and innovations hold lot of promise for environment friendly agriculture economy providing long term sustenance to the dependent communities.

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Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Rapid industrialization is taking place in Orissa with huge investments especially in mineral based industries. The main cause of concern is extra ordinary rise in levels of environment pollution in coming years. Most of such projects require environmental impact assessment (EIA) prior to their installation and environment audit/watch in the later stage during implementation. In response to these challenges CYSD has included disaster preparedness and environment as a key theme in the organisational strategic plan. CYSD has skilled personnel and tools for undertaking consulting assignment on EIA. So far CYSD has completed two global research projects on impact assessment of development programmes which have been published in edited volumes separately

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Socio-economic baseline survey

Baseline information serves many purposes meeting the needs for planning and evaluation of mega projects in terms of change and impact. CYSD has been engaged in a number of surveys with the support of national and international agencies. It has perfected tools for multi stake holder consultation and interviews to map the ground realities with maximum objectivity. It has undertaken some of the assignments in consortium.