Dissemination Jankar Brings About Change In West Bengal

The experience of Karmatanar, a village of Maurjangalpur cluster under Hura Block of Purulia district in West Bengal, highlights the role of Prasar (Dissemination) Jankars in Community Development. The village is dominated by tribal population. Asgar Anhsari, a Prasar Jankar, used to visit Jabarrah, a nearby cluster where a GVT project was ongoing, regularly and he gained knowledge about ideology and the process and ideology of the project.

During his visits. Asgar frequently discussed these issues with the villagers, who told him about the importance of group formation. He was initially suspicious, but was finally convinced when he saw how the group became empowered enough to take decisions and initiate processes on their own, without the help of GVT.

Asgar set about convincing his village community about initiating group formation for development. The process was slow, and Asgar initially was threatened with death, as the people refused to believe that these processes, taken up at their own initiative, would help improve their livelihood options when even the government had failed.

A few motivated people took some vegetable seeds from GVT and sowed them in a compact area of approximately 1 acre. All of them contributed labour, and the experiment was extremely successful. Having witnessed this, the community formed two SHGs, which have now initiated numerous activities to improve the economy of the village.