The Krishi Grameen Vikas Kendra (KGVK) was started with an objective of raising the incomes of tribals in the region to reduce the imbalance between those with jobs and others who could not find gainful employment. ``On one hand, those who worked within the company had jobs and enjoyed a relatively improved standard of living, but on the other, the majority did not have jobs and barely survived. Somewhere down the line, there was a misplaced feeling that this income disparity was growing andUsha Martin was the culprit,'' says C S Bansal, president and chief executive officer, Usha Beltron Ltd.

Beginning with assisting the villagers in agriculture, it moved on to develop watershed models for better irrigation and now extends micro-finance to the villagers. ``Social responsibility is an indispensable part of our growth plans. Mr B K Jhavar, our chairman, has been emphasising it for very long. At a time when nobody took the concept seriously, we decided to carve out an independent community welfare unit in the form of KGVK,'' stresses Bansal.

KGVK is a separate unit independent of the company's corporate identity. It has a distinct fund allocation, with an annual corpus of Rs 50 lakh per annum, approximately.

As part of a broader fiscal discipline, KGVK encourages the villagers to save compulsorily. Every family is encouraged to save Re 1 per month for eight months. Once group savings reach Rs 1,000, KGVK coordinates the procurement of a loan, which is four times its account. With a totalfund base of Rs 5000, a `bank' is started. The bank terms are formulated by the local committee and a woman manager is appointed from amongst the beneficiaries.

``The role of the woman manager is vital to inculcating the saving habit. She is not just a rubber-stamping official, but examines the viability of a project after a due diligence process before passing a loan. The procedure followed is akin to obtaining institutional funding by a corporate,'' says Bansal.

Things were not as easy when the company began its community efforts. KGVK began by buying better seeds to improve the rice yield and supplement the income of villagers not employed by Usha Beltron. But the move came in for a lot of criticism. They were accused of having an ulterior motive behind distributing the seeds. Those who took seeds from them were compelled to uproot the saplings and throw them away.

``The only sustainable solution to change the lopsided growth was imparting skills, which the unemployed could use on their onlycapital-land,'' recalls Bansal. ``The best way to proceed, we concluded, was in convincing our employees with land holdings to experiment with better seeds on their holdings. We also purchased an extra patch of land for experiments in dairying. Further, we converted some of the relatives of our workers to self-employed individuals,'' he adds.

Since animals and their flesh play a vital role in tribal culture, cattle and pig rearing is a principal occupation of the villagers. The eating habits are related: No celebration is complete, for instance, until pork is consumed. With assistance from KGVK, 27 piggeries and cattle-rearing units have been established in six villages. These are highly remunerative, too. The cost of raising each piglet is Rs 300. After eight months of rearing, each fetches a price of Rs 1,500.

A major breakthrough of the centre has been in the area of watershed development. ``Our watershed programme works on the the theory of self-help and people's participation,'' says Colonel SubhashBakshi, who has been heading the organisation since 1993. The area, sustaining 2365 families was divided into six watershed zones based on the drainage pattern. ``To irrigate two to three crops a year instead of merely one Kharif crop, rain water is trapped through dams, walls and ponds,'' claims Bakshi.Another important focus area for the centre is health. They have developed a farm-clinic programme, which centres around mobilising specialists to visit villages-medical doctors for health check-ups, a veterinary doctor for animal care, and an agriculture specialist to disseminate relevant facts to farmers. They are supported by extension officers and community workers-cum-volunteers.

A number of companies have undertaken community development programmes around their plants. KGVK, independent of such strings, is a rare oasis of progress, in one of the poorest states of the nation.