Patliputra Organisation for Socio-economics Development

Labour and Employment

Livelihoods consist of both generation of income as well as the ownership of assets that reduces the vulnerability of marginalized communities. A majority of the population is still dependent upon the agricultural sector for their income and the income derived from farming is too little to improve their economic status. The rural poor often are unable to save and do not have access to credit to invest in creating assets. As a result, there is overexploitation of natural resources such as water and forests in people’s attempts to increase inputs into their agricultural production. Secondly, as rural people are unable to live off their incomes in rural areas they migrate to urban centers in search of employment that will sustain them. Most of these people are unskilled and so find only low-paying manual labor and they also lack the capital to establish themselves in the cities.

POSED’s livelihood program in India focuses on strategic interventions to improve the quality of livelihood opportunities currently available and to provide alternative livelihood opportunities to ensure that poor people in rural and urban areas have adequate resources to sustain themselves. POSED is particularly focused on the empowerment of women as increasing their incomes and assets has tremendous multiplier effects on the socio-economic indicators of their families and communities.

Access:

The reasons for children being out-of-school are to do with lack of physical access as well as social access. In several parts of the country, especially in small, remote habitations, children still do not have access to schooling facilities and thus remain out of school. Seasonal migration of families in search of work for several months every year is another reason which deprives children the chance to go to school. In addition, a sizeable proportion of children live in villages and habitations where formal schools exist, but due to social reasons such as caste and gender they are either not allowed to go to school, or not given the proper treatment in school.

Retention:

This is an issue of serious concern. According to statistics 53% of children drop out of school before completing the elementary level, or grade VIII. This high drop out is due to poor functioning of schools, for example, dilapidated school buildings, overcrowded classrooms, irregular attendance of teachers and children, lack of teaching learning materials, ineffective teaching, unintelligible language used by the teachers and the discriminatory attitude of teachers towards children of the marginalized sections of society.

Quality:

Many studies have shown that children who do complete primary schooling attain abysmal learning levels. A majority of grade V children are estimated to be at a level no higher than grade II or III. The causes stem from the poorly functioning educational system which are transmitted down to the schools.