JM Financial Foundation

Impact Assessment of the Integrated Village Development Program

Partner/Client
JM Financial Foundation (JMFF)

Sector
CSR Foundation

Location
Maharashtra

JMFF is the CSR arm of JM Financial Foundation and its work spans areas from education, to rural livelihoods, healthcare, and disaster relief.
Since 2018, JMFF has been operating a comprehensive development program called the Integrated Village Development Program (IVDP), working in 7 villages of Mokhada block as part of their CSR initiative. The program facilitates access to government schemes to promote agricultural productivity and profitability among farmers. Deepak Foundation was their implementation NGO.
4th Wheel Social Impact conducted an impact assessment of this program to analyze socioeconomic impacts which have resulted owing to the work carried out through IVDP, with 909 farmer households in the 7 villages over 3 years (2018-21).
The timeline of the study was December 2021-August 2022.

APPROACH

In-depth interviews were conducted with 246 farmers from 7 villages, and a few others like implementation team members, local leaders, help desk managers, and government officials. Focused Group discussions were conducted with 16 Self Help Groups, composed primarily of women.
Data collection was done through on-field visits to villages in the Palghar district.
Respondents were categorized based on gender and the areas of intervention they had participated in.
The interventions done by JMFF, namely assistance with access to government schemes, provision of seeds and saplings, irrigation support, soil testing, vermicompost support, and farmer training programs, were assessed for their effectiveness.
The program process and implementation were evaluated based on the OECD/DAC criteria.

The villages under study were located in mountainous terrains and therefore assisting in building irrigation structures was a challenge and most farming was rain-fed.
JMFF gave an impetus to cluster farming, which led to many farmers growing perennial crops like cashew, mango, jasmine, and drumsticks.
The farmers who were able to observe an increase in income or a reduction in the cost of cultivation because of JMFF attributed it to receiving seeds/saplings, agricultural equipment, fertilizers, and vermicompost beds through government schemes and training like the one on System of Rice Intensification (SRI).
It was observed that forming SHGs did encourage women to save, promoted banking literacy, and also incentivized banks to lend to them. However, out of the 16 SHGs, only one had an active business showcasing the need to strengthen entrepreneurial activity.

For the farmer program, the recommendations included building robust data management systems to trace program interventions with farmers, redesigning the soil testing program to ensure farmers understand test results and adopting relevant practices in their fields, and using micro-irrigation systems suited to local contexts. Promoting organic farming, and improving the logistics of the government scheme assistance help desks would also add immense value.
To strengthen the SHGs, more support was needed in terms of financial inclusion and enterprise development.