ABSTRACT
Local people have certain capacities and systems that have evolved over centuries and this capacity, system and knowledge have been tested over time and proven to be sustainable and effective in reducing vulnerabilities to disasters and managing hazards. Therefore, there is a need to study and strengthen indigenous capacities and good practices to increase people’s resilience. In this regard, for centuries local people have been using the idea of Community Grain Bank to ensure continuous food availability for survival during the hard times of drought or lean seasons.
In Drought prone areas, even in today’s times, every year on average small farmers suffer from the food deficit for three to four months, particularly in the months of July to October before the harvesting. Also, a larger weaker section of the population is left from the government’s food security programme. The condition worsen in the slow onset disaster prone areas, where lack of any community based plan to ensure their food security, brings them in serious food insecurity which leads to the malnutrition and starvation, and forces them to migrate to the cities, and wraps them in to the clutches of the excessive rates of local money lenders. But, having a system like grain banks can help these agrarian communities in the battle the starvation. Community Grain Banks can also reduce the dependency of the poor villagers on the local money lenders or traders for borrowing grains during the lean season at exorbitant rates of interest. This system also develops the habit of the self help among the weaker section specially the ST and SC communities. Community Grain Banks can also strengthen community empowerment by developing people’s sense of self reliance and reduce the dependency on the external help or relief distribution.
Hence, this qualitative study would be exploring the role of grain banks in mitigating the impact of drought on the communities and the various systems through which issue of equity and the loan recovery is handled by the beneficiaries of the grain banks. It will also look at various methods and techniques used by communities to strengthen their grain banks. Most importantly the study would explore in detail the various factors that influence the success and failure of grain banks so that such kind of programmes can be implemented more effectively and issues could be taken care of while replicating them in to the other areas.
