Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty

Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) is an autonomous society of the Department of Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh. SERP is registered under the Societies (Telangana) Act, chaired by the Chief Minister as the ex-officio Chairman of the General Body (GB). This body has broad representation from key stakeholders, government and NGOs. The General Body consists of twenty-five members, with 5 ex-officio government officials and 20 representing leading agencies and individuals contributing to rural development, community mobilization and poverty alleviation

The management of SERP is entrusted to an Executive Committee (EC), of which an eminent non-governmental person is President and the State Project Director is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The President of EC is the Vice Chairperson of the GB. The EC consists of seven members with three ex officio government officials and four drawn from the civil society.

The SERP is implementing Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP), a statewide community driven rural poverty reduction project to enable the poor to improve their livelihoods and quality of life through their own organizations. It aims to cover all the rural poor households in the state with a special focus on the poorest of the poor households.

Vision Statement of IKP

The disadvantaged communities shall be empowered to overcome all social, economic, cultural and psychological barriers through self-managed organizations. They will attain higher productivity with improved skills and asset base and utilize resources to full potential and gainful access to services.

SHG Movement in Andhra Pradesh

The Self Help Group (SHG) movement in India represents a highly innovative approach to financial intermediation and combines access to low-cost financial services with a process of self-management and development for the SHG members. The concept of women as group members coming together to make small savings contributions regularly and lending individuals for various needs has proved to yield immense benefits, both economical as well as social. This paved the way for Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP), a state-wide poverty reduction project in Andhra Pradesh, India to enable the rural poor to improve their livelihoods and quality of life through their own organizations. IKP aims to cover all the poor households in the 22 rural districts of Andhra Pradesh with a special focus on the 30 lakh poorest of the poor households. The IKP programme is implemented by the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty through District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs) at the District level. Presently, SERP works with 4,76,930 Self Help Groups federated into 28,080 Village Organizations (VO) and 700 Mandal Samakhyas (MS) with the primary obligation to build strong institutions of the poor and enhance their livelihood opportunities.

Functional Areas of SERP

SERP’s mandate to eradicate the rural poverty in Andhra Pradesh is achieved by a relentless pursuance of success in various functional areas that have been deemed important for the poor to break the shackles of poverty. Each of these functional areas caters to poverty elimination in its own unique way through providing livelihood opportunities, financial assistance for setting up businesses, Health related benefits etc.

SHG Bank Linkage

To complement the process of SHGs lending money for the group members for their needs on a priority basis, the Bank Linkage programme intends to bring the commercial banks into providing credit to the poor. Banks as formal credit agencies have the necessary resources and through Self Help Groups, there is also the willingness on their part to provide credit to people with limited means as the viability of the SHGs is not in doubt. Facilitated by NABARD, SERP has been largely successful in providing the rural poor with access to loans resulting in the SHGs scaling up their operations.

Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA)

The CMSA department of SERP works on ecological alternatives in agriculture which make best use of local resources and encourage the farmers to reduce the use chemical pesticides. This is done through advocating Non- Pesticidal Management (NPM) of insect pests. The poor are encouraged to adopt sustainable agriculture practices to reduce the costs of cultivations thus increasing net incomes. Other major causes of agricultural distress among the rural farmers in India such as displaced local knowledge, unsustainable agricultural practices like mono cropping and imperfect markets are also addressed.

Institution Building

This segment works at building Community Based Organisations (CBOs) that aim to bring together the poor women and assist them to work collectively towards sustainable development. These CBOs; Zilla Samakhyas at district level, Mandal Samakhyas at mandal level, Village Organisations at village level and SHGs at the group level, form the basic structure on which the foundations for the growth of rural poor are laid.