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Strategic Objective 5:
Enhanced Opportunities for Vulnerable People

	Problem		Geographic Focus
	Constraints		Impact Measurement
	Rationale		Intermediate Results
	Comparative Advantage		Relationship to Other Strategic Objectives
	Assumptions		Donor Coordination
	Target Groups

Problem
For India to realize its full potential, equal participation of vulnerable populations in society must be advanced, giving the poorest and most marginalized greater access to and control over the resources and benefits of development. For this to happen, significant changes in systems at the societal and household levels are necessary. Though laws are in place to protect marginalized groups in India , implementation of laws varies widely across the country. While the country is rich with government and NGO programs promoting women's empowerment and protecting victims of rights abuses, the scale and scope of many efforts remain limited. Key among the many constraints to improving the status of vulnerable people are: inadequate access to basic (elementary) education; lack of access to the judicial system; and unmet social and economic opportunities to improve livelihoods.

Access to Basic Education
Policy reforms in the mid-1980s led to increased access, enrollment, retention and quality of elementary education. About 94% of the country's rural population now live within one kilometer of an elementary school. Literacy increased from 52% in 1991 to 65% in 2001. The relative share of girls' enrollment to total enrollment at primary level increased from 28% in 1950 to 43.6% in 2000.

Despite these achievements, India 's primary education sector faces considerable challenges before it will realize the "universal education" goals of enrolling all children in school by 2003 and increasing the literacy rate to 75% by 2007. Underscoring these challenges, India's Tenth Five-Year Plan concludes, "Our performance in the field of education is one of the most disappointing aspects of our developmental strategy."

About half of the states and territories, as well as urban areas, were untouched by the educational reform process, resulting in a tremendous diversity in performance. Performance gaps also exist across and within states; between groups of children, with educational outcomes differing considerably between girls and boys; between the poor and the better-off; and between children of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and other children.

The challenges of the basic education sector are broad and deep. They include finding ways and means to address:

• The impacts of rapid urbanization;
• High drop-out rates as children are needed to earn income for family support;
• Large numbers of rural villages without reasonable access to schools;
• Stubbornly high rates of child illiteracy (56% of females and 31% of males age 6 and above ) that threaten to continue the legacy of high rates of rural adult illiteracy;
• Inadequate school infrastructure;
• High rates of teacher absenteeism;
• Low competence, motivation, and performance among teachers;
• Outdated textbooks, syllabi, and curricula; and
• Weak or non-existent community linkages.

Access to Justice
Despite extensive constitutional and statutory safeguards, large sections of the Indian polity remain disadvantaged in their quest for equitable treatment under the civil and criminal judicial systems. Human rights abuses are often generated by intense social tensions that disproportionately touch women, unscheduled castes, the poor, religious minorities, and other disadvantaged groups. For example, despite the strong women's movement and revision of rape laws, most perpetrators of rape still go unpunished. Bonded labor is also illegal, but it continues to persist.

The Indian judiciary is independent, generally renders good decisions, and actively protects rights. In the face of executive and legislative branch failure, NGOs increasingly and successfully use the technique of public interest litigation to defend rights. The judicial system, however, is hampered in its efforts to ensure rights and provide an adequate forum in which citizens can resolve their disputes with each other or with government.

The challenges to better access to justice are numerous:

• Police are stretched too thinly in many states and police abuse is widespread, partly a legacy of an inability to conduct proper investigations;
• Legal literacy is low and access to advice is insufficient;
• Justice system personnel are either not as aware of some aspects of the law as they need to be or hold attitudes that hinder the rights of some citizens. For example, to understand crimes such as violence against women, trafficking, and rape, and how the law might be used to combat them, judges, prosecutors, state-funded legal aid providers and police need training and sensitization;
• Reliable databases are lacking to aid prosecution;
• An inability to provide protection while investigations are underway is prevalent; and
• Case backlogs are huge and processing times are so long (particularly at the lower court level) that justice is effectively denied.

The poor suffer disproportionately in the legal system. Because they cannot post bail, many poor serve more time in jail waiting for their trials on petty charges than they would have served had they been found guilty. In Delhi's Tihar jail, for example, only 2,000 of the 11,000 inmates are convicted criminals; the remaining 9,000 are all awaiting processing.

Frequently, the use of courts by marginalized groups is constrained by traditions that result in members of lower castes not challenging members of higher castes; or by legal illiteracy that assumes the lack of rights and options for redress. Experimental "women's courts" and "people's courts," often administered by retired judges, may provide an alternative to strengthen the access of the poor to justice, but it is unknown yet how well these mechanisms work and who uses them. In addition to the poor, small businesses in both the formal and informal sectors also lack a mechanism for the settlement of business disputes.

Access to Social and Economic Opportunities
Discrimination against women remains entrenched in India. Deep-rooted cultural beliefs and traditional practices deprive women of education, health care and nutrition. Violence against women is widespread, and includes infanticide, child abuse, rapes, and pyre burning of widows on their husbands' funeral pyres. The specter of the "missing women of India" (for every 1,000 men there are only 927 women) is a serious indictment of the neglect of the basic rights of women, ranging from the very top to the very bottom echelons of Indian society. Women are seriously underrepresented in all levels of government and elective office. Self-employment, under-employment, and low wages largely characterize women's work. Their significant contributions to family subsistence and earnings, especially in poor households, are unrecognized and poorly reflected in official statistics. Household responsibilities, lack of education, and cultural norms severely restrict women's working hours and mobility, and this tends to focus women workers in technologically unsophisticated sectors.

Compared to men, Indian women generally have significantly less access to and control over productive assets, employment and training opportunities, basic social services, and information and decision-making at home and in their community. Despite the fact that the GOI and donors have in place numerous programs aimed at promoting opportunities for vulnerable people, these programs have largely focused on health, literacy, and credit services. While generally valuable, they are far from sufficient to change the disempowering discrimination against Indian women. For example, India has made little progress in improving women's rights to land. While micro-credit programs continue to target poor women and other vulnerable groups, these programs do not go far enough to encourage and show women how to increase their income by developing enterprises. Finally, little investment has been made in developing effective ways to reach special target groups-such as rescued trafficking victims and families affected by HIV/AIDS-with economic opportunities for regaining their dignity or safeguarding and increasing their assets.

Few effective schemes exist to respond to the growing numbers of adolescents with low education levels who are facing difficulties supporting themselves. For these children, opportunities to acquire literacy skills or training that can help them earn livelihoods and gain access to credit will be important to assuring their ability to move out of poverty and into more productive segments of society.

Constraints
The Government of India recognizes that "large numbers of our population continue to live in abject poverty and there are alarming gaps in our social attainments even after five decades of planning." It further calls for a more aggressive balancing of the push to accelerate economic growth with an emphasis on "enhancement of human well being," emphasizing ".access to basic social services especially education, health, availability of drinking water and basic sanitation..." and including, ".the expansion of economic and social opportunities for all individuals and groups, reduction in disparities, and greater participation in decision making."

India recognizes the importance of broadening its efforts reach those states, parts of states or municipalities previously untouched by educational reforms. Additional strategies to address the hardest to reach children are needed, yet state and local governments do not have the expertise and, especially in poorer states, the resources to establish the frameworks and build the infrastructure needed for both basic and alternative educational models. Some states have experimented with residential camps, transitional courses, support schemes for families unable to afford the costs of educating children, and private sector partnerships to introduce technology, such as computers, to train students and teachers, as well as to support the development of better education management information systems. But these efforts are limited and need to be further scaled-up to bring out-of-school children back to schools and provide them with meaningful education and skills. Further efforts also are needed to ensure that the quality of education is enhanced, not only in the formal structures, but as well in short term alternative education systems (e.g., bridge schools) that are being established to reintegrate drop-outs and child laborers.

Studies in low-literacy districts in eight states found that the gender gap in elementary-level achievement was exacerbated by the absence of female teachers, the absence of single-sex schools, the location of schools more than two kilometers from home, inadequate teaching and learning materials, and lack of separate toilets for girls. Parental attitudes discriminate against girls' education. Indian families often prefer to invest in the education of a son, since the returns to this investment will remain with the family, while the returns to investment in a daughter's education will typically flow to her husband's family. Also affecting household decisions on schooling is the opportunity cost of children's time; surveys indicate girls spend 15-30% more time working than boys.

A broad and active network of civil society organizations is working to improve women's access to economic opportunities and pushing for a national debate on rights issues. However, their attempts to influence policy or advocate for responsive programs are often stymied by the lack of access to reliable supportive data and information, such as gender-disaggregated poverty statistics and broadly accepted indicators of the gender impacts of economic liberalization. Increasingly, these civil society organizations serve as implementing agencies for government or donor-funded programs that target poor women, children and other vulnerable groups. However, the limited absorptive capacity of these groups constrains their ability to broadly replicate successful interventions, while also continuing their critical advocacy roles.

Without broad, supportive economic structures and social mobility programs, women will have difficulty escaping the poverty trap. Victims of trafficking and prostitution can easily be forced back into the sex trade for economic reasons. As reported crimes against women increase, women's organizations have been effective in campaigning for more aggressive actions by the all-women police stations (AWPS) and family courts. However, the AWPS are unable to keep up with increasing caseloads. As a result, the press reports that victims are frequently advised to return to abusive situations because other options are not available.

Unless significant investments are made to address these constraints, India's reform agenda and efforts to integrate more fully into the global economy, threaten to further increase the vulnerability of women, children, members of lower castes, minority religious groups, and tribal people.

Rationale
USAID India's Vulnerable People Strategic Objective is consonant with the Agency's Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance pillar and consistent with India's constitution that guarantees equality across gender, caste and religion, and promotes a rights-based, democratic framework. Notwithstanding this impressive framework, large elements of the population are regularly denied their rights. Social acceptability of this discrimination and abuse, combined with weak or non-enforcement of the democratic framework, limits opportunities for vulnerable populations, especially women and children.

Creating and increasing access for the poor and marginalized to education and the country's judicial systems are critical to breaking the vicious cycle of abuse, discrimination and poverty, and realizing economic development. Education is key to enabling the future workforce of men and women to embrace technological changes that can boost their productivity and earnings, and provide escape routes from poverty. Education is also critically important in furthering democratic values such as tolerance and equality.

Better access to the country's judicial systems by the disadvantaged is equally critical to achieving more equitable development. Building constituencies, institutions and processes that allow greater citizen participation in and protection under the justice system can be a powerful complement to increased educational opportunity.

It is clear from the GOI's own analyses, and from recently conducted USAID gender, education, and democracy and governance assessments, that substantial, sustained government and donor commitments are required to achieve progress on India's empowerment and equity issues. It is equally clear that the GOI and civil society organizations perceive the value of having international donors, such as USAID, as stakeholders in promoting these essential human rights values.

Comparative Advantage
USAID has considerable experience in working with social equity activities in India and worldwide. USAID India has had more than five years of experience in implementing special, modest initiatives that explore approaches to remedying the gender equity imbalance and promoting child rights. These include domestic violence research and advocacy; microfinance support for women; and girls and child labor elimination activities. More recently, as participants under the South Asia Regional Initiative on Equity (SARI/Equity) regional anti-trafficking program, USAID has initiated support to a limited number of community-based prevention efforts targeting these core issues. USAID India also has valuable experience in planning urban services and has extensive networks with municipal officials, communities, and urban settlements.

In technical areas that are outside of USAID India's experience base, such as justice, it will draw on USAID Washington support arrangements and Indian technical expertise to help refine strategies, conduct additional analyses, and design implementation support programs.

Assumptions
Achievement of the SO is based on the following key assumptions. They will be monitored for their continued validity and relevance during program implementation, and will be updated, as appropriate. These assumptions address issues that are well beyond the direct influence of this SO, such as advocacy to increase political will, engagement of women politicians, and international donor support, but they will be critical to scaling-up successful interventions.

• Increased advocacy within India and the US public, including among non-resident Indian (NRI) Americans, for addressing the needs of the most vulnerable, will strengthen the political will for action, particularly at the state level;
• The justice system will be willing to collaborate with other donors in making improvements;
• International donors will sustain their investments in the GOI's national elementary school reform agenda, anti-trafficking efforts, and programs that promote opportunities for deprived women, children and vulnerable groups; and
• SO 1 and SO 4 will lead to economic reforms needed to free up government funding for investment in a pro-poor agenda.

Target Groups
This SO targets the following broad sets of beneficiary groups, key representatives of which were consulted in developing this strategy:

Education activities will target:

• Out-of-school children in rural and urban areas, with a special focus on girls;
• School administrators and policy makers in the education sector; and
• Teachers and teacher training facilities and local communities.

Access to justice activities will target:

• Judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and potentially the police;
• Panchayat leaders and community organizations; and
• Law schools.

Activities supporting new and expanded measures to promote social and economic equity will target:

• The poor;
• Victims of trafficking, domestic violence and other abuses; and
• Community groups and partner organizations.

Geographic Focus
Beyond its broad support to other SO teams in advocating for the integration of gender concerns into their programs, the specific activities of this SO will link with other USAID programs in health, microfinance, state fiscal reform, and humanitarian assistance. In particular, the SO team will coordinate with other SO teams in targeting states with a desire to reform and with relatively low social and economic indicators, such as absolute numbers of poor and marginalized, low literacy rates, and highly inequitable distribution of resources and services to the poor.

Preliminary target states are Karnataka, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh.

Impact Measurement
The success of the Vulnerable People SO will be measured by the following illustrative indicators, which will be finalized following approval of the strategy:

• An increase in the number of primary school years completed (for the bottom quintile if possible);
• An increase in primary school exam pass rates;
• Decreased tolerance among citizens and public sector institutions of domestic violence;
• Increased sense among victims of domestic abuse that they can get help;
• Increased assets or income for vulnerable populations;
• Increased pro-poor expenditures by selected states (overlap with SO 1);
• Increased sense among the poor that they can access the legal system (formal and informal mechanisms) and get justice;
• Faster case processing time in the courts; and
• Improved safety nets in place for key vulnerable groups (e.g., street children, trafficked women and the poor).

Intermediate Results

IR 5.1 Improved Access to Education for Vulnerable Children
Activities will promote better access to education for out-of-school youth, strengthen retention capacities of schools, and foster creative decentralized approaches to education. USAID will emphasize investments that can build the base of local and international support for alternative school systems so that more out-of-school children can be reached. Options for linking alternative systems into the national elementary system will be explored and supported. Depending on the level of resources available, USAID will explore opportunities to support the GOI framework for universal education, with a focus on one or perhaps two states.

Illustrative Activities

• Develop and test bridge courses and preparatory education for "never enrolled" older children (8-12) and children needing second and third chance opportunities to return to mainstream education;
• Launch community mobilization and sensitization initiatives for Village Education Committees, Parent-Teacher Associations, and Mother-Teacher Associations;
• Expand the formal school system's capacity to absorb and retain out-of-school children;
• Improve basic infrastructure in schools to retain girls;
• Promote use of interactive media (TV/radio) for teachers' education and in-service support, with a particular focus on gender concerns in rural communities and multi-grade schools;
• Strengthen Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) by providing hardware and software; and
• Support technical exchanges on EMIS and Geographic Information Systems, data-based planning and budgeting systems, projection and modeling tools to improve planning for education systems, including primary to secondary linkages.

Illustrative Indicators

• Increased enrollment of children in bridge courses;
• Decreased drop-out rates of girls from alternative and formal schools (possible class level focus);
• Increased number of classrooms and girl-friendly facilities, e.g., toilets;
• Increased percentage of children finishing elementary school and entering secondary school, by gender; and
• Increased number of effective private (including alternative) and public school interfaces, e.g., curriculum development and teacher training.

IR 5.2 Better Access to Justice
Activities will focus attention on the justice needs of the bottom quintile of the population, while assisting these people to gain: an understanding of their rights; access to stronger coalitions capable of advocating for the protection of their rights; and access to more responsive and effective mechanisms of delivering justice. The focus will be primarily on a narrow band of social and economic rights that, when abused, constrain the participation of the poor, women, children, businesses in the informal sector and other disadvantaged groups in the development process. If possible, however, USAID will look more broadly at the functioning of the criminal justice system and will seek to add GOI-sponsored reform efforts.

USAID will help develop broad-based coalitions that can effectively monitor and lobby government for needed reforms. These loose but powerful and broadly representative coalitions, comprised of civil society, bureaucratic, and political actors, will use research, public opinion polls, and other tools to critically analyze rights issues based on what is actually happening in the country. Ideally, these coalitions will foster national, regional, and state policy discussions with affected groups on key issues, in the press or other public fora. The aim is to forge a consensus on selected issues and advocate for enforcement and adoption of new initiatives, procedures, and legislation that will advance social justice and opportunity. USAID will also strengthen key public and private sector institutions that can increase legal literacy, provide advice and resolve complaints.

Illustrative Activities

• Expand legal literacy training for community-based and other intermediary support organizations that work with vulnerable groups;
• Assess and build (lower) court capacity to address case backlogs, including process reengineering and computerized case management;
• Assist the GOI in revising the criminal procedures code and in implementing a new code;
• Support research on efficiency and strengthening alternatives (people-based) and "fast track" systems for delivery of justice;
• Upgrade knowledge and skills of judges, prosecutors, police, and advocates in new, key areas, e.g., anti-trafficking and child prostitution laws, child labor regulations, and the recently produced ethics code;
• Conduct research and analysis to document enforcement of key existing laws aimed at protecting women and children; and
• Disseminate information and promote advocacy to support enforcement or other changes needed to strengthen rights protection.

Illustrative Indicators

• Increased civil society (including media) understanding of rights abuses, e.g., violence against women and land inheritance;
• Increased number of civil society organizations promoting legal literacy for vulnerable groups;
• Improved and expanded alternative dispute resolution (ADR) systems in place to serve the vulnerable, as judged by numbers of users in key categories;
• Increased awareness of key rights among target groups;
• Numbers of users of legal aid programs;
• Increased public awareness of key problems such as domestic violence and bonded labour;
• Justice system personnel more knowledgeable and sympathetic on key issues;
• Courts computerized and case tracking systems in place;
• Improved criminal procedures code drafted, passed, and implemented; and
• Better integrated responses to domestic violence and trafficking from the public and private sectors (health professionals, police, courts and legal professionals, NGOs, panchayats, the media, and think tanks).

IR 5.3 New and Expanded Opportunities for Vulnerable Groups
This is a "learning IR," with less of an implementation blueprint. Instead, it is deliberately structured to provide USAID with the requisite flexibility to: promote cutting-edge opportunities, respond quickly to new and critical issues, and stimulate innovative programming for social and economic empowerment. Interventions will strengthen government and private efforts to address equity issues at the community and national levels. As a phase 1 (18-24 months) priority, USAID will focus on the needs of higher-risk groups, e.g., trafficked women and children, poor families affected by HIV/AIDS, victims of domestic violence, landless women, poor women without access to credit, and adolescents with minimal levels of education. Subsequent interventions will depend upon the initial results, which will be carefully assessed. Accordingly, performance measures under this IR will evolve in a flexible, process-related manner.

Illustrative Activities

• Girl's adolescent livelihood programs in high-risk trafficking and domestic violence zones;
• Cutting-edge research on issues, such as the quantification of women's unpaid work, the impact of macroeconomic policy reforms and trade liberalization on gender, and the economic costs of violence;
• Innovative microfinance interventions for trafficked or destitute women and victims of HIV/AIDS; and
• Design and introduction of social and financial services for high risk groups, e.g., business development services, to complement existing investments.

Illustrative Indicators

• Increased number of microfinance schemes for high risk groups;
• Increased number of effective support services for high-risk groups and the victims of trafficking and domestic violence; and
• Research conducted and findings nationally disseminated on emerging issues.

Relationship to Other Strategic Objectives
This strategic objective will provide a strong demonstration of the US Government's concern for the poor and other vulnerable groups of India . This SO is strongly linked to the economic growth SO , whose emphasis on microfinance regulation and policy reform could provide a platform for increased success of this SO. A potential link exists between women's livelihood options nurtured under this SO and humanitarian assistance responses that target women and other vulnerable groups (e.g., the landless poor) affected by disasters. Support services for victims of trafficking, domestic violence, and adolescent youth with low educational levels will likely reinforce USAID's HIV/AIDS and reproductive health activities.

Donor Coordination
During the development of this SO, USAID coordinated closely with other donors that are currently or may become engaged in targeted areas of assistance. This coordination will continue during strategy implementation to avoid duplication and maximize the benefits of synergy.

• In the social and economic equity sector, USAID has worked with United Nations Development Program (UNDP), UNICEF, UNIFEM, and British Department for International Development (DFID) over much of the past decade, and is an active member of the India Intra-Agency Women in Development Working Group;
• In the education sector, USAID will coordinate closely with the World Bank; Lok Jumbish, an NGO funded by CIDA; UNICEF; Janshala, a community-based primary education project begun by UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, and ILO; and the District Primary Education Program, supported by the World Bank, EC, DFID, and the Government of Netherlands;
• In the area of access to justice, USAID will likely coordinate closely with DFID and the World Bank. DFID is helping set up a Center for Good Governance in Andhra Pradesh (AP) and will likely support social justice-related initiatives in one to two states. The World Bank is considering supporting court reform in Uttar Pradesh and AP; and
• DFID, CIDA, UNICEF, UNIFEM, UNDP, and ADB have a common interest in the issues of trafficking and domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, land tenure and inheritance, and gender equality in the workplace.

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