Focus Area
Pastoralism
Pastoral communities are among the most marginalized and less-talked-about people in the country, with their huge diversity and constant movement. Yet they are an integral part of our social, economic, and cultural life and ethos. The CPC has prioritized six to seven communities in Vidarbha and works with them on livelihoods, institutions, and justice issues, among others.
Agriculture and allied initiatives
The agrarian crisis has been an area of great concern in India. In Vidarbha, where the CPC has a focus, farmers have been dying by suicide in their thousands. What is the way out? The CPC’s focus is on collective models that are financially and ecologically sustainable. We are advocates of landscape and food systems approach with biodiversity at its core.
Forest Rights Act
The Forest Rights Act, we at the CPC believe, can be a game changer for both, the forest dwellers and conservation. We put the communities at the heart of our conversation around the forest landscapes of India. Vidarbha, a region blessed with mixed forests, with rich flora and fauna, but saddled by governance and institutional bottlenecks, is among the CPC’s major engagement areas. We handhold and support communities at the forefront of FRA implementation as a knowledge partner with a form view that the implementation of this landmark legislation will undo the historic wrong of marginalizing the forest dwellers and augment their income and livelihoods in a sustainable manner.
Water
India’s water governance is in shambles, but there are growing and encouraging examples of community-driven water sharing and governance models, many of them with a legacy behind them. Examples: The Participatory Irrigation Models of eastern Vidarbha’s Ma-Ma or Ex-Malgujari tanks, water sharing models in the drought-prone areas of western Maharashtra. The CPC wants to support the PIM in new command areas by putting the village and urban communities at the centre of institutional water governance.
Collective social enterprise
Between the State and the Markets, people’s collective social enterprises have the potential to transform the socio-economic landscape..the CPC wants to promote and support just social enterprise for rural communities, by coming a new framework of ‘Small within Big.