Small-scale forest-based enterprises (SSFBEs) are enterprises that utilize any material or product that is derived from forests, woodlands, or trees outside of forests and woodlands for income generation. Characteristically, they are small, rural, household-based operations that are technologically simple, requiring limited skills and little capital investment. Little attention has been paid to the importance of these enterprises in supporting rural livelihood in developing countries. At the same time, the income earned from SSFBEs provides an incentive for forest dwellers to manage their resources at a sustainable level, as well as helping to alleviate rural poverty. SSFBEs are, however, not without their problems. They face unstable markets, lack of raw materials, few financial resources, poor market access, and constraints on forest use and control, to name a few. The purpose of this paper is to provide a qualitative overview of SSFBEs by discussing their role in and importance to rural communities in developing countries, their significance in poverty alleviation and forest conservation, problems they face, and possible solutions. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

This dissertation explores the relationship between land tenure and livelihoods in pre-Saharan Morocco as an ethical struggle over subsistence rights and the definition of community. Research in an oasis valley of southern Morocco indicated how changing land use practices framed contestations over community, political authority, and social hierarchies. The dissertation specifically examines the extension of settlement and cultivation from the oasis into the arid steppe. The research methodology contextualizes household decision-making around land use and livelihood strategies within the framework of land tenure regimes and other regional, national, and global processes. Households with the resources and prestige to navigate customary tenure regimes in their favor used these institutions to facilitate land acquisition and investments in commercial agricultural production. Rather than push for capitalist land markets, they invoked a discourse of communalism in support of customary regimes. In contrast, marginalized families without access to land mobilized to divide collective lands and secure individual freehold tenure. This complicates a prominent critique in agrarian studies that privatization signals the immersion of peripheral lands into neoliberal tenure regimes. The research shows that in southern Morocco, resistance to communal tenure regimes favoring elites was rooted in a discourse of subsistence rights and ethical claims to membership in a just community rather than a simple acquiescence to the power of neoliberal property relations. The dissertation therefore explores the shifting fault lines of social differentiation and the political and cultural embeddedness of land in processes of "repeasantization," the resurgence of rural peasantries in the context of the growing industrialization of global food production. The research draws on cultural anthropology, geography, and political economy to explore an understudied issue in the anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: the economic and environmental dimensions of agrarian livelihoods and rural social dynamics from a critical theoretical perspective.

Climate change has varying effects across the world. In North America, arid and semi-arid regions are subject to creeping warming together with more extreme climate variations, decreasing precipitation, and decreasing river flows that risk livelihoods of human populations living in these areas, and push their capacity to adapt beyond known boundaries. Environmental impacts act together with effects of socio-economic globalization and challenges imposed by institutional and policy events. These multiple forms of globally-driven changes interact with local communities and produce winners and losers depending on their levels of vulnerability and adaptive capacity, as well as on the specific stressors and shocks affecting the livelihood resources on which they depend. Rural communities often are hot spots of global change impacts because many livelihoods depend on the community’s natural resource base, and in several cases, they are also subject to market fluctuations and crashes due to their participation in international chains of food and producer goods. They will face a larger burden of the global change impacts due to this multi-tiered exposure. The socio-economic and institutional changes affecting rural communities have also produced de-agrarianization of livelihoods. Diversified livelihoods based on extractive industries and manufacturing or urban-based jobs coexist with traditional small-scale ranching and farming. In terms of water and land access and use, the modifications in user sectors and necessities, combined with increased demand by social and ecological components of the watershed systems, creates more complexity of environmental governance regimes and institutions. The purpose of this research is to identify and understand how rural communities of arid Northwest Mexico—with reference to the San Miguel Watershed (SMW) in central Sonora State—experience and respond to globally driven environmental, socio-economic, and institutional changes. The SMW is in a rapidly changing arid transboundary region, and exhibits a variety of institutional arrangements for land and water management, which makes it a case suitable for the study of adaptation in the face of global change. The study employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in three municipalities representing the upper, middle, and lower SWM. Rural households and producers, governmental agents, and local leaders were the participants of direct data collection, while documentary analysis and a broader literature review on rural adaptation in Mexico and the arid Southwest United States complemented primary data. The main contributions of the research are: 1) identifying multiple types of rural livelihoods and their importance in understanding adaptation to global change; 2) emphasizing institutional events and factors acting as both stressors and regulators in these adaptation processes, 3) describing how interactions between institutions can produce diverse governance outcomes in terms of access and management of resources for livelihoods' adaptation; and 4) providing empirical evidence for improving adaptation policies in rural arid Northwest Mexico, and other rural arid communities of the world. The study also includes a series of findings and lessons regarding advances in understanding human adaptation in rural communities, contributions to the theory and methods of adaptation science, and policy guidelines based on the findings.

Increased domestic and international demand for aquatic foods have greatly enhanced aquaculture practices and production in Bangladesh, which is reflected in the national economy. However, the impacts of a fast growing aquaculture sector through the involvement of stakeholders, poorer sections throughout the value chain and broader rural livelihoods are largely underdeveloped and have frequently been ignored. The present study explores the impacts of dynamic aquaculture sector on stakeholders at production level and supply chain and test the hypothesis that aquaculture is enhancing rural livelihoods and benefiting the poor. Three aquaculture production systems in three areas of Bangladesh were selected for the study. These were prawn production in gher system in Jessore, pond fish culture in Mymensingh and rice-fish farming in Dinajpur. This selection allowed analysis both the impacts of domestic and export marketing of aquaculture products. Participatory research data collection tools; focus group discussions and participatory mapping were commonly used along with questionnaire surveys to ensure participation of stakeholders. Aquaculture, in general, found to have had significant impacts on rural livelihoods. The greatest effect of aquaculture on farming households were observed in income and consumption. Integrated aquaculture systems were the regular source of fish and vegetables and constitute more than half of the fish and vegetables consumed by farming households. While income from aquaculture was the highest among the several household income sources, the main cash crop differed between the systems studied. Prawn, fish and rice was the main cash earning crops for gher farming, fish farming and rice-fish farming respectively. Qualitative investigation suggested that aquaculture not only increased income through greater production volume, but also improved farmers’ assets through income diversification to farm and non-farm sources. The other important outcomes of aquaculture were the enhancement of social safety nets through increased sharing of inputs and labour among farmers. Commonly the aquaculture systems were found to be more intensive with an increasingly commercial attitude over the last ten years, which affected the intra-household labour distribution leading to a greater role for women in production management. While the three activities; fish feed preparation, feeding and growing vegetables performed by vast majority of women could be attributed to their inherent involvement with agriculture, hard physical work like harvesting ponds and pond construction were mostly carried out by the women from poor households as a strategy to reduce hired labour cost. The women’s’ increased involvement in aquaculture not only increased their overall workload, but also empowered them in household decision making to some extend. However, involvement in decision making was related to the level of involvement in production activities. The impacts of aquaculture spread beyond the farming households to the broader rural livelihoods. Wage labourers and fishers (harvesting teams) two of the poorest groups of people directly involved were benefited most over the last ten years. Intensification of aquaculture increased the demand for hired labour leading to a structural shift in the agricultural wage labour market in farming communities. About half of the agricultural labourers were found part-time employed in aquaculture activities in Jessore and Mymensingh. In Dinajpur intensification of rice cultivation had a much higher effect on the demand for labour than aquaculture. Increased employment in rural areas increased real labour wages by about one fifth over the last ten years and subsequently improved livelihood outcomes. Declining fish catch due to both decreased natural fish stocks and more restricted property rights, professional fishers benefited by diversifying their livelihoods into the aquaculture sector. While, many of the fishers permanently changed their profession to prawn marketing in Jessore, the rest were full-time or part-time employed in harvesting ponds and/or retailing fish in markets. Such diversification of income greatly reduced seasonal vulnerability and improved livelihood outcomes. The role of fish marketing, which is a critical institution in rural livelihoods, was found to facilitate the growth of the aquaculture sector. High demand of aquatic products and the diverse options of marketing fisheries enabled farmers to meet their initial requirements. More commercial operations of aquaculture increased farmers’ awareness and linkages to markets. However, typically the worse-off farmers were the slowest to capture new market opportunities, often due to their poor resources and human capital. Fish marketing was found to be run by the private sector and government provided the infrastructure facilities, except prawn processing plants, which were developed by private sector. While the fish market transactions were fairly efficient, markets facilities and infrastructure were commonly poor and need of government investment for improvement. A gradual growth of fish and markets in the rural areas was observed in the study; this was driven by the increased demand for fish through increased population and supply from aquaculture. The marketing intermediaries provided important services despite their small share of consumers’ price and ensured a fair share for farmers. The auctioneers provided a vital role in running the supply chain with investment and credits, which ensured fair competition in the pricing process. Marketing of aquatic products was not only a mechanism of product transaction, but also provided critical livelihoods for rural poor. On average about one hundred people, including retailers were involved in auction markets and eight people in prawn depots. Importantly the number of people in marketing was found to have increase over the years. Access for different groups of poor people to marketing jobs was found to be significant in rural livelihoods. The asset base and daily earning indicates that more than three quarters of the marketing intermediaries were poor; some of them were from poorest and low cast Hindu society. Greater flexibility of entry and exit to the jobs enabled the poorer sections to diversify their livelihoods, which enabled to cope with seasonal variability of opportunities and stable income. The marketing employment provided then increased livelihood welfare and social security. Finally, it can be concluded that the promotion of aquaculture not only increased much needed food availability but also generated critical livelihoods and marketing is not just a mechanism of product flow, but also providing livelihoods welfare to poorest sections of the society. The micro level findings of the study regarding impacts of aquaculture indicate that aquaculture production and marketing have significant impacts on enhancing rural livelihoods in Bangladesh.

The socioeconomic context of many biodiversity rich countries is argued to be heavily dwarfed in current conservation and development debate, resulting in that projects that intersect complex issues of development and conservation are often simplistically deemed as being unsuccessful. The aim of this research has therefore been to attain a more profound understanding of how socioeconomic conditions and local neoliberal contexts effect ICDP projects and to an extent also agroecological transition. In this case study ten qualitative life-story interviews were carried out during a minor field study in rural Las Pavas, Nicaragua. These were further analyzed through the use of the sustainable livelihood approach in order to identify what impacts the local socioeconomic contexts had on participant livelihoods and also what prospects and challenges C.I.P.P’s permaculture project presented in this regard. The empirical evidence shows that participant livelihoods were subjected to several constraints that were buttressed by the neoliberal development context which signified a great reliance on cattle raising as main financial activity at the expense of other important natural assets such as forest and water. Furthermore, demonstrating that permaculture projects had to provide the widest range of benefits with the least amount of risk in order to be adopted.

Essa pesquisa foi desenvolvida no município de Biguaçu, litoral de Santa Catarina, especificamente na localidade de Três Riachos, e visou compreender o quão sustentáveis são as maneiras com que famílias de agricultores aí residentes conduzem suas vidas em meios rurais, que estão associados a duas práticas particularmente associadas: a agricultura de corte e queima e a produção de carvão. Esses agricultores familiares movimentaram historicamente um sistema social e ecológico do qual estiveram fortemente subsidiados por recursos florestais, um ativo particularmente importante para essas pessoas. De um ponto de vista multidimensional, ancorado pelo conceito de desenvolvimento como liberdade e da capacitação de pessoas em acessarem múltiplos recursos, ou ativos, nos propomos discutir possíveis respostas para as perguntas que seguem: possuem qualidade de vida essas pessoas? São sustentáveis seus meios de vida? Procuramos descrever as particularidades sociais e ecológicas do contexto de estudo através de dados coletados com etnografia e observação participante, confrontá-los com dados secundários e discutindo-os com bibliografias pertinentes. Para tal, levamos em consideração o acesso a cinco tipos de ativos relacionados, capital natural, capital humano, capital financeiro, capital social e capital físico e mais um associado, o capital cultural. Concluiu-se que as características particulares de cada ativo/capital que aumentam ou diminuam a sustentabilidade dessas pessoas são: para o capital natural: a possibilidade de utilização de recursos naturais advindos da própria propriedade da família e a capacidade de regeneração, ou renovação desses recursos naturais; para o capital humano, físico e financeiro: o trabalho excessivo e insalubridades relacionadas às suas atividades, a precariedade da infraestrutura e dos processos produtivos, a falta de conhecimentos para acessarem tecnologias e políticas públicas para melhorar essa infraestrutura; para o capital social: as relações de confiança e reciprocidade entre as pessoas das comunidades, a possibilidade de melhorias das relações de confiança com o público externo; no capital cultural: as características de cuidado dos agricultores que fazem com que eles estabeleçam relações de reciprocidade para com pessoas externas, seus clientes, sendo que para isso, depositam um esforço para que seus produtos sejam de boa qualidade. A busca de meios de vida sustentáveis é a maneira de se criar sistemas sócioecológicos resilientes. A sustentabilidade social e ambiental dessas famílias possuem potenciais positivos e negativos, e que certamente possuem desafios para que sejam reproduzíveis em sistemas sócioecológicos resilientes. A pesquisa contribuiu com o esforço de gerar dados para a compreensão dessa realidade complexa. A gestão de sistemas sociais e ecológicos deve levar em consideração um portfólio de ativos sociais, econômicos, ecológicos, humanos e culturais para que seja possível constituir sistemas sócio ecológicos resilientes. / This research was conducted in the city of Biguacu, Santa Catarina coast, specifically in the town of Três Riachos, and aimed to understand how sustainable are the ways in which families residing farmers lead their lives in rural areas, that are associated with two practices particularly associated with: a cut and burn agriculture and charcoal production. These farmers historically handled a social and ecological system of which were heavily subsidized by forest resources, a particularly important asset for these people. A multidimensional perspective, anchored by the concept of development as freedom and empowerment of people to access multiple resources, or assets, we propose to discuss possible answers to the following questions: have quality of life these people? Are sustainable livelihoods? We try to describe the social and ecological characteristics of the study context through data collected with ethnography and participant observation, confront them with secondary data and discussing them with relevant bibliographies. To this end, we consider access to five types of related assets, natural capital, human capital, financial capital, social capital and physical capital and another associate, the cultural capital. It was concluded that the particular characteristics of each asset / capital that increase or decrease the sustainability of these people are for natural capital: the possible use of natural resources from their own family property and regeneration capacity, or renewal of these resources natural; to the human, physical and financial capital: overwork and? insalubrity related to its activities, poor infrastructure and production processes, the lack of knowledge to access technologies and policies to improve the infrastructure; to social capital: trust relationships and reciprocity between people of the communities, the possibility of improvements in trust with the general public; the cultural capital: the care of characteristics of farmers who make them establish reciprocal relations to external people, your customers, and for that, deposit an effort to make its products are of good quality. The search for sustainable livelihoods is the way to create resilient ecological systems partner. The social and environmental sustainability of these families have positive and negative potentials, and they certainly have challenges that are playable on resilient ecological systems partner. The research contributed to the effort to generate data for the understanding of this complex reality. The management of social and ecological systems must take into account a portfolio of corporate assets, economic, ecological, human and cultural so that you can be resilient ecological systems partner.

Essa pesquisa foi desenvolvida no município de Biguaçu, litoral de Santa Catarina, especificamente na localidade de Três Riachos, e visou compreender o quão sustentáveis são as maneiras com que famílias de agricultores aí residentes conduzem suas vidas em meios rurais, que estão associados a duas práticas particularmente associadas: a agricultura de corte e queima e a produção de carvão. Esses agricultores familiares movimentaram historicamente um sistema social e ecológico do qual estiveram fortemente subsidiados por recursos florestais, um ativo particularmente importante para essas pessoas. De um ponto de vista multidimensional, ancorado pelo conceito de desenvolvimento como liberdade e da capacitação de pessoas em acessarem múltiplos recursos, ou ativos, nos propomos discutir possíveis respostas para as perguntas que seguem: possuem qualidade de vida essas pessoas? São sustentáveis seus meios de vida? Procuramos descrever as particularidades sociais e ecológicas do contexto de estudo através de dados coletados com etnografia e observação participante, confrontá-los com dados secundários e discutindo-os com bibliografias pertinentes. Para tal, levamos em consideração o acesso a cinco tipos de ativos relacionados, capital natural, capital humano, capital financeiro, capital social e capital físico e mais um associado, o capital cultural. Concluiu-se que as características particulares de cada ativo/capital que aumentam ou diminuam a sustentabilidade dessas pessoas são: para o capital natural: a possibilidade de utilização de recursos naturais advindos da própria propriedade da família e a capacidade de regeneração, ou renovação desses recursos naturais; para o capital humano, físico e financeiro: o trabalho excessivo e insalubridades relacionadas às suas atividades, a precariedade da infraestrutura e dos processos produtivos, a falta de conhecimentos para acessarem tecnologias e políticas públicas para melhorar essa infraestrutura; para o capital social: as relações de confiança e reciprocidade entre as pessoas das comunidades, a possibilidade de melhorias das relações de confiança com o público externo; no capital cultural: as características de cuidado dos agricultores que fazem com que eles estabeleçam relações de reciprocidade para com pessoas externas, seus clientes, sendo que para isso, depositam um esforço para que seus produtos sejam de boa qualidade. A busca de meios de vida sustentáveis é a maneira de se criar sistemas sócioecológicos resilientes. A sustentabilidade social e ambiental dessas famílias possuem potenciais positivos e negativos, e que certamente possuem desafios para que sejam reproduzíveis em sistemas sócioecológicos resilientes. A pesquisa contribuiu com o esforço de gerar dados para a compreensão dessa realidade complexa. A gestão de sistemas sociais e ecológicos deve levar em consideração um portfólio de ativos sociais, econômicos, ecológicos, humanos e culturais para que seja possível constituir sistemas sócio ecológicos resilientes. / This research was conducted in the city of Biguacu, Santa Catarina coast, specifically in the town of Três Riachos, and aimed to understand how sustainable are the ways in which families residing farmers lead their lives in rural areas, that are associated with two practices particularly associated with: a cut and burn agriculture and charcoal production. These farmers historically handled a social and ecological system of which were heavily subsidized by forest resources, a particularly important asset for these people. A multidimensional perspective, anchored by the concept of development as freedom and empowerment of people to access multiple resources, or assets, we propose to discuss possible answers to the following questions: have quality of life these people? Are sustainable livelihoods? We try to describe the social and ecological characteristics of the study context through data collected with ethnography and participant observation, confront them with secondary data and discussing them with relevant bibliographies. To this end, we consider access to five types of related assets, natural capital, human capital, financial capital, social capital and physical capital and another associate, the cultural capital. It was concluded that the particular characteristics of each asset / capital that increase or decrease the sustainability of these people are for natural capital: the possible use of natural resources from their own family property and regeneration capacity, or renewal of these resources natural; to the human, physical and financial capital: overwork and? insalubrity related to its activities, poor infrastructure and production processes, the lack of knowledge to access technologies and policies to improve the infrastructure; to social capital: trust relationships and reciprocity between people of the communities, the possibility of improvements in trust with the general public; the cultural capital: the care of characteristics of farmers who make them establish reciprocal relations to external people, your customers, and for that, deposit an effort to make its products are of good quality. The search for sustainable livelihoods is the way to create resilient ecological systems partner. The social and environmental sustainability of these families have positive and negative potentials, and they certainly have challenges that are playable on resilient ecological systems partner. The research contributed to the effort to generate data for the understanding of this complex reality. The management of social and ecological systems must take into account a portfolio of corporate assets, economic, ecological, human and cultural so that you can be resilient ecological systems partner.

Essa pesquisa foi desenvolvida no município de Biguaçu, litoral de Santa Catarina, especificamente na localidade de Três Riachos, e visou compreender o quão sustentáveis são as maneiras com que famílias de agricultores aí residentes conduzem suas vidas em meios rurais, que estão associados a duas práticas particularmente associadas: a agricultura de corte e queima e a produção de carvão. Esses agricultores familiares movimentaram historicamente um sistema social e ecológico do qual estiveram fortemente subsidiados por recursos florestais, um ativo particularmente importante para essas pessoas. De um ponto de vista multidimensional, ancorado pelo conceito de desenvolvimento como liberdade e da capacitação de pessoas em acessarem múltiplos recursos, ou ativos, nos propomos discutir possíveis respostas para as perguntas que seguem: possuem qualidade de vida essas pessoas? São sustentáveis seus meios de vida? Procuramos descrever as particularidades sociais e ecológicas do contexto de estudo através de dados coletados com etnografia e observação participante, confrontá-los com dados secundários e discutindo-os com bibliografias pertinentes. Para tal, levamos em consideração o acesso a cinco tipos de ativos relacionados, capital natural, capital humano, capital financeiro, capital social e capital físico e mais um associado, o capital cultural. Concluiu-se que as características particulares de cada ativo/capital que aumentam ou diminuam a sustentabilidade dessas pessoas são: para o capital natural: a possibilidade de utilização de recursos naturais advindos da própria propriedade da família e a capacidade de regeneração, ou renovação desses recursos naturais; para o capital humano, físico e financeiro: o trabalho excessivo e insalubridades relacionadas às suas atividades, a precariedade da infraestrutura e dos processos produtivos, a falta de conhecimentos para acessarem tecnologias e políticas públicas para melhorar essa infraestrutura; para o capital social: as relações de confiança e reciprocidade entre as pessoas das comunidades, a possibilidade de melhorias das relações de confiança com o público externo; no capital cultural: as características de cuidado dos agricultores que fazem com que eles estabeleçam relações de reciprocidade para com pessoas externas, seus clientes, sendo que para isso, depositam um esforço para que seus produtos sejam de boa qualidade. A busca de meios de vida sustentáveis é a maneira de se criar sistemas sócioecológicos resilientes. A sustentabilidade social e ambiental dessas famílias possuem potenciais positivos e negativos, e que certamente possuem desafios para que sejam reproduzíveis em sistemas sócioecológicos resilientes. A pesquisa contribuiu com o esforço de gerar dados para a compreensão dessa realidade complexa. A gestão de sistemas sociais e ecológicos deve levar em consideração um portfólio de ativos sociais, econômicos, ecológicos, humanos e culturais para que seja possível constituir sistemas sócio ecológicos resilientes. / This research was conducted in the city of Biguacu, Santa Catarina coast, specifically in the town of Três Riachos, and aimed to understand how sustainable are the ways in which families residing farmers lead their lives in rural areas, that are associated with two practices particularly associated with: a cut and burn agriculture and charcoal production. These farmers historically handled a social and ecological system of which were heavily subsidized by forest resources, a particularly important asset for these people. A multidimensional perspective, anchored by the concept of development as freedom and empowerment of people to access multiple resources, or assets, we propose to discuss possible answers to the following questions: have quality of life these people? Are sustainable livelihoods? We try to describe the social and ecological characteristics of the study context through data collected with ethnography and participant observation, confront them with secondary data and discussing them with relevant bibliographies. To this end, we consider access to five types of related assets, natural capital, human capital, financial capital, social capital and physical capital and another associate, the cultural capital. It was concluded that the particular characteristics of each asset / capital that increase or decrease the sustainability of these people are for natural capital: the possible use of natural resources from their own family property and regeneration capacity, or renewal of these resources natural; to the human, physical and financial capital: overwork and? insalubrity related to its activities, poor infrastructure and production processes, the lack of knowledge to access technologies and policies to improve the infrastructure; to social capital: trust relationships and reciprocity between people of the communities, the possibility of improvements in trust with the general public; the cultural capital: the care of characteristics of farmers who make them establish reciprocal relations to external people, your customers, and for that, deposit an effort to make its products are of good quality. The search for sustainable livelihoods is the way to create resilient ecological systems partner. The social and environmental sustainability of these families have positive and negative potentials, and they certainly have challenges that are playable on resilient ecological systems partner. The research contributed to the effort to generate data for the understanding of this complex reality. The management of social and ecological systems must take into account a portfolio of corporate assets, economic, ecological, human and cultural so that you can be resilient ecological systems partner.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is considered as important tool to empower rural people with the ability to communicate instantaneously facilitating rural development process and information needs. In developing countries potential of ICT4D still not understood, what ICTs can do in rural people life and how ICTs are used by rural people, so it has become area of discussion.The study was conducted in rural Nangi village of Ramche VDC at Myagdi district of Nepal which is located at the height of 2300 m in western part of Himalayan region. Qualitative case study research design was adopted for the study. Research study manages structured interview with hundred fifty five users and non-users of ICTs. To provide supplementary information for data collected from individual interviews, four FGD (four focus group discussion) were conducted including both ICTs user and non-user of Nangi village of Ramche VDC. Semi-structured interview was conducted with two telecenter operator, two health workers and one NWNP project responsible person to know in depth of ICTs use and its effect on life of rural people. Majority of ICTs users were male having higher secondary education (Grade 11 & 12) while minorities were female in study area.Telecenter have failed to consider underrepresented groups in the provision of ICTs services in study area. Necessary conditions to access ICTs exist while sufficient conditions such as ICTs skill, and awareness still lacking. In Nangi village of Ramche VDC, technologies do not support socio-economic development totally but have some effect on various aspects of livelihoods. Socially, technologies help for better communication, and knowledge sharing. Economically, technologies help for better income generation, savings and technologies facilitate for better access to information, and ICTs literacy as human capital. Language problem (illiteracy), lack of ICTs skill, lack of time, lack of electricity supply, low bandwidth of internet with timely disconnection, terrible road and poor infrastructure were found significant obstacles for effective use of ICTs in telecenter.The study recommends NWNP project leader and telecenter operator should do regular information need assessment of poor, disadvantaged and underrepresented groups to redesign or restructure the program to bring them in provision of ICTs service instead of looking them as passive users of ICTs services. There should be collaboration between telecenter program and LDC (local development committee) to develop localized application for rural people. The developed localized ICTs application should meet needs of rural people to serve them efficiently and effectively.

Poverty is an extremely significant issue for Indian society with some estimates suggesting that up to 75% of the Indian population may be poor and deprived of basic necessities to sustain a normally healthy life. Microfinance and social protection are considered as important micro-level strategies to reduce poverty. Literature reveals that both strategies suffer from significant service delivery constraints causing exclusion of a large majority of poor households from access to microfinance, and inclusion and exclusion errors and elite capture of social protection programmes. This research explored whether outreach of microfinance and impact of social protection may be enhanced if microfinance products are built on the provisions of social protection for the poor households, and services of microfinance and social protection are synergistically delivered leveraging on the strengths of each other. The research further explored if it is feasible to employ a State institution, India Post, towards such synergistic service delivery. In order to further these research objectives, financial needs of poor households were estimated, and structures and mechanisms causing the exclusion of the poor from microfinance were investigated, by drawing empirical data from three Indian states. States were sampled while acknowledging that the poor are largely excluded from microfinance in two states of UP and Gujarat, and are almost totally included in the state of AP. This provided me with an opportunity to identify structures and mechanisms excluding the poor from microfinance provisions in UP and Gujarat, and contrast it with the situation in AP to further refine and enrich our understanding. Philosophical basis for design and methodology for this research is provided by critical realism, according to which the goal of social research is to understand the world in order to change it for better. The research is primarily based on the data collected through qualitative research methods as such methods are more suited than quantitative methods to critical realistic intensive studies, attempting to uncover underlying structures and mechanisms causing a social phenomenon. Research findings suggest that the financial needs of poor households in UP and Gujarat either remain unmet, or are met through informal mechanisms which are costly and exploitative. Poor are also not able to entirely access their entitled benefits from social protection programmes; as such programmes generate their own financial needs, which remain largely unmet. It was observed that social protection programmes have a favourable political environment in India and are being increasingly employed as a means to fight poverty. Such programmes therefore constitute an important aspect of the financial environment of the poor. Microfinance programme in AP reaches the poor partly because it is also meeting the financial needs generated by the provisions of social protection and thus the poor households find it useful. Poor also become attractive clients for microfinance due to the assured benefits they receive from the social protection programmes. Thus it addresses both demand and supply side constraints which keep a majority of the poor out of the ambit of microfinance in UP and Gujarat. Such social protection-linked service delivery of microfinance was further observed to be enhancing the impact of social protection as well as of microfinance. It is further argued that India Post is suitably located to deliver such social protection-linked microfinance services due to its close proximity to the rural population, and its personnel being known to and trusted by the local communities. India Post network also has a long and rich experience of delivering financial services. Being a government department, it is in a better position than similarly placed agencies such as banks and NGOs, to coordinate with other government departments offering social protection. Moreover, it has a valuable information-capital on the households that can be leveraged to efficiently identify the prospective recipients of the social protection programmes.