Resources and Livelihoods Group

Prayas (Pune), India

Initiatives in Health, Energy and Learning & Parenthood

Policy and Governance:

Analysis & Advocacy

Development and Governance

 Discourse

Development and Governance

 Practice

Initiative in

System Dynamics

Policy and Governance Advocacy 

The 'Policy and Governance Advocacy' Stream was initiated by the ReLi Group with the objective of influencing policies, programs, and especially governance related processes of mainstream institutions, which have direct or indirect bearing on interests of poor and disadvantaged sections of society. ReLi's experience of working on grassroots-level 'practice' issues as well as on discourse-level 'conceptual' issues prepared the ground for taking up activities under this stream.

The main strategy guiding activities of the stream is two-pronged: (a) to evolve a strategically-relevant knowledge-base on the issue in hand, and then, (b) to use this knowledge-base either to directly undertake advocacy, campaign, or public education activities or to provide knowledge-support to similar activities by other individuals or organizations. One of the ways in which the advocacy activities are supported is by providing a variety of advocacy products that are tailor-made for a particular section of decision-makers, policy-makers or public. Sometimes, even facilitation of collaborative processes among civil society organizations through knowledge-support is undertaken under this stream of activities. In a way, this could be called as analysis or knowledge-based advocacy model.

During the course of the last three years (from December 2003 to December 2006), the ReLi group worked on four advocacy issues: (a) efforts for influencing the process of the Below Poverty Line (BPL) Survey, (b) efforts for facilitating the process of articulation of civil society's response to the draft policy document of the central government on tribal development, (c) efforts for influencing the policy and practice of the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) in Maharashtra as well as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), and (d) efforts for influencing the post-disaster interventions and policy-making in the field of disaster management (DM).

While efforts in BPL and Draft Policy on Tribal Development were short-term initiatives during the initial years, efforts on DM, EGS, and National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Scheme (NREGA/S) are long-term initiatives.

Since the latter part of the 2006, the ReLi Group started exploring needs and possibilities of working on emerging water sector reforms. Gradually, the efforts turned into a more systematic, coherent programme focused on reforms and new regulatory systems in different sub-sectors such as surface irrigation, drinking water, and ground water. In later part of the 2007, the scope of activities has expanded to include research and capability-building of CSOs and other actors.