India Poorest Areas Civil Society Programme

Introduction

The India Poorest Areas Civil Society Programme (PACS) supports civil society organisations working in India.

Aims

The purpose of the PACS programme was to build capacities of CSOs in the most backward and poorest districts of India to be more effective in facilitating the poor realise their entitlements. The PACS programme concentrated on 100 poorest districts with the lowest social, economic and political indicators across the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Maharashtra.

Initiated in 2001, PACS supported a network of CSOs working on areas aimed at increasing the capacity of poor people to demand and use political, economic, and social and human rights instruments and services to improve their lives.

The programme envisaged to achieve this by:

• Strengthening self-governance, women’s empowerment, policy advocacy, social cohesion and self help to meet basic needs.
• Effective partnership of civil society
• Lessons learnt and disseminated.

The first phase of the programme, which ended in April 2008, covered over 19,564 villages in 94 districts of 6 states through a network of over 665 civil society organisations.

It has:

• Reached over 6 million poor and marginalised people in six states in India and helped citizens claim more than £125 million worth of entitlements. 
• Strengthened and improved Panchayati Raj (local government) institutions, making them more responsive and increasing the representation of women.
• Achieved a strong focus on gender equality – 74% of PACS1 projects had a gender theme and formation of women’s self help groups was large scale – 81% of the 35,000 community based organisations formed.

DFID has developed a second phase to build on the gains made in the first phase and make these impacts more sustainable. The second phase will be launched in mid 2009