Dilemmas of development- reflections on a visit

[Ranjani K.Murthy]

I visited Khandwa district, Madhya Pradesh, India this month with the impressive NGO Eficor

There were remote villages untouched by 'mainstream development'. There were also villages near the town of Khalwa where industries had come up and health services were accessible. Interestingly children were better nourished (records of ICDS- weight by age) in the remote area, than the accessible one. Institutional delivery was however higher in the developed area. The remote villages combined agriculture, with animal husbandry and forestry. The people in nearby villages were dependent on migration and agriculture based livelihood. They did not earn through non-timber forest produce. In both areas Korku and Gonds predominate. To sum up, industrial growth and infrastructure may lead to improvement in some domains of development and not others. Unless policy makers understand this we are not going to reach post 2015 SDGs -

Another lesson is that growth does not reduce son preference. In both places bride price was the norm. However there was pressure to produce children till a male child was born

with EFICOR, 

Ranjani