The Community-Led Local Entitlements and Claims Tracker (COLECT) initiative of Praxis has brought to light gaps in access to entitlements. Ramu Anand, founder of Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar 
Jharkhand Dalit Vikas Samiti, which has been proactively working on the ground for issues related to the poor and marginalised, shared that through the process of collecting data under ‘COLECT’, they got to know that the PDS dealer was not distributing ration as per the assigned norms to the community members in one of the villages in Jharkhand. There were also issues related to the quantity of ration given per month. The concerns were shared with the circle officer against the dealer and a strict warning was given to him which changed the situation. “At present the dealer is providing ration properly to all ration card holders there has been a lot of improvement. Earlier there were disparities in terms of ration distribution but now it has resolved”, said Ramu Anand. Ramu was one of the panelists at the webinar on “COVID-19 Pandemic: Voices from Margins” organised by Praxis in partnership with Partners in Change.
Munni Begum, EkSaath Abhiyan programme, Sahyog, Lucknow, shared that in the 10 villages where the survey was undertaken, children did not to get any facilities from the Anganwadi. After the survey, a discussion was held with the village head and a written complaint was given to the Child Development Project Officer (CDPO). As a result, children started getting nutritious food in the Anganwadis. She and her group were also successful in connecting 27 people with Kisan Samman Yojana under MGNREGA, linking 62 labourers and migrant laborers with Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Department of Agriculture, for providing training related to business, and also in opening zero balance account of 29 people under Jan Dhan Yojana. Domestic violence and abuse against women and adolescent girls were also discussed with officials in police station to ensure immediate action to reduce violence. “We have seen that in such cases reports were not written or any action was taken, but now we are interacting with administration for women help desk”, said Munni Begum.
Ponnuchamy, State Coordinator, Tamil Nadu Labour Rights Federation (TLRF), and founder of Anal FolkArt Troupe, shared that on the basis of the data collected they filed a petition on behalf of TLRF to the District Magistrate regarding the monitoring and regularisation of programmes run for young women and pregnant women which provided sanitary napkin and nutrition tablets along with monthly testing. A list of 11 questions regarding the number of unorganised and construction workers and the details of the corona relief fund provided to them was sought and collected from the Social Security Project Officer under the Right to Information Act 2005. Also, a petition was sent to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu regarding the full availability of rice lentils for dry food items in the nutrition programme announced by the Government instead of nutrition for students in schools, and a signature campaign of 6593 female workers demanding to close the Tasmac stores, which is the major reason for domestic violence and sexual violence against women, was also given to the Chief Minister. Lastly to create an equal space for children in rural areas in accessing online education, a letter was sent to the Chief Secretary and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Project Director to facilitate internet provision of technical tools for school children to participate fully in the online class.
Chandra Devi, member of the Gethu Workers-led Think tank, Tamil Nadu, who has been working with supply chain workers from garment sector, shared that the study provided them an opportunity to meet 1000 workers in the textile sector and understand the living conditions, health, and their livelihood problems. Sadly, the workers were not provided with masks and other safety equipment in many units and most of the workers did not have an understanding and awareness of the unorganised workers’ Welfare Board and its schemes.
“Considering the outcome of the study, the Gethu group intervened in the field and provided masks and safety equipment to more than 100 workers and 27 knitting workers were registered with the Tailors Welfare Board”, said Chandra Devi.
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The Gethu Group also created awareness among workers in the textile and manufacturing industries about their rights and government welfare schemes and were guided to use their EPF, ESI account number and secret code number by linking it to their mobile number.
Presenting the situation in Ahmadabad, Atish Indrekar, belonging to the Chhara community, shared that the development of leadership among the youth is another positive point of the initiative of data collection. “The Madari community has been living here since past 50 years and have facing eviction and through the youth group we are trying to build our case to restrict this eviction. There is a plan of demolishing one of the slum areas for which we have spoken to the authorities the authorities feel that the location does not come under slum area. However now we are ready to file a PIL and there is much more advocacy among people”, he shared. Speaking of youth empowerment, Bimala Bardhan, Secretary cum Director of Community Movement for Education (COME), a south Odisha-based NGO appreciated the electronic way of collecting the data which she believed was a useful and powerful tool that can be further taught to the volunteering youth at the grassroots helping them present their issues more effectively in the online medium.
Nalini Tarakeshwar, Program Director of UBS Optimus Foundation, shared that the one lesson for all the foundations and CSOs was to do better in terms of planning ahead for unforeseen circumstances. The other learning had been that the programmes which were run in empowered communities where the leaders are themselves the agents of change worked well even during the pandemic. In terms of future she seemed hopeful as the bank clients through whom they raised fundswere still interested in philanthropy. Nalini added, “But we also know that we have to prioritise, which means we have to look for programmes that have multiple co-benefits. Programmes that are not only evidence based, that actually see multiple benefits across multiple areas.” “Collaboration among NGOs and donors is really the key, and in this way, I think we can see greater change for a concentrated pool of resources”, said Nalini.
Ginny Bauuman, Senior Programme Manager, Freedom Fund, praised the concept of online webinars which had been crucial in giving a clear of what really was going on in the places that mattered and were left untouched and unheard. “The promotion of a wider perspective has been one of the great things about these webinars and the 
challenge that has been left with us is to find ways to help people get the messages through to the policy makers in business, in government, in a direct way in their own voice”, she said. Moreover, according to her, the pandemic proved the importance of the community structures and the frontline initiatives that at some places had been the only line of defense for the marginalised people. Ginny Bauuman concluded by stating a need to get the resource or the funding agencies to work together with other resource agencies so as to become reliable, long-term allies in order to help the frontline organisations and local activists to go beyond having bilateral relationships.
Highlighting the woes of a common man and bringing in a gender perspective Suruchi Aggarwal from SIDBI shared that addressing the concerns of marginalised communities related to quality health care, sustainable livelihood, fair wages, access to organised credit, etc. is crucial to help India move forward towards a more resilient economy. Secondly, she stressed the concerns related to the safety and equality of women should be at the center of all the economic policies.“This pandemic is not the first one to hit on the human race and definitely not the last one too, hence we need to ensure that the situation that we all have gone through and were grappling with are not repeated,and in order to do so the focus should be on innovative, scalable and resilient models that can decrease the shocks of future pandemics”, she concluded.
Dr Joseph Sebastian, Director, Faisal and Shabana Foundation, highlighted that because of COVID the striking realities from the ground has clearly come in front of the common world.“Participatory and local understanding of realities are very important because top-down approach just doesn’t work and specifically in the pandemic type of situation where the total network snaps, you need to have people who understand the local realities and respond to those local realities. We found that the groups that we worked with who are grounded who are working with the communities at the grassroots level were the first to take off and work with the team”, he said.
Talking about the government sector, certain departments were pro-active in giving access to services and getting the project back on track, while for the others COVID became one more reason for them to delay the process.
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Sharing about the impact of the lockdown Dr Joseph highlighted that a few months of ‘sleep time’ created a lot of roadblocks on the way as certain unachieved goals started a chain reaction for causing the delay for the long-term goals. Moreover, since the government interventions during the time of COVID had vacuums in their responses, Dr Joseph believed that reworking into geographies where the need was much more than in relation to others was crucial. For a better monitoring system when movement was restricted, he suggested to take help of the online systems which can project the work that has been happening in the field level through case studies and videos. Further, Dr Joseph said, “Moving forward we are looking at we still want to engage with the government because if a government machinery is changed the impact on the society is much larger and the Foundation looks at creating larger impacts. Secondly we would continue to work with the non-profits which have got very good understanding of the local realities and which follows participatory approach in terms of taking it forward.”
Praxis, along with Partners in Change, has been conducting series of webinars on “COVID-19 Pandemic: Voices from Margins”. The series, which started on 8 April, brought to light various issues of people from the margins like migrant workers, women, sex workers, sexual minorities and daily wage labourers.
