rural of women in rural of livelihood 200 words
Answers
Livelihoods refers to the means of making a living, or simply a way of life, which includes all aspects of a person’s life.
It consists of economic activities embedded in a society that is governed by social, political as well as cultural processes. If you do not address all of them and, instead, just focus on the economics of living, change will not happen. Conceptually this theory of livelihoods being a result of interdependencies between economics, politics, society and culture was great. But to put it into practice, we needed to understand the optimal unit of action–at what level should the interventions happen?
In 1991, Robert Chambers and Gordon Conway published a paper called ‘Sustainable Rural Livelihoods,’ which integrated learnings from the Brundtland Commission report while also arguing that livelihoods decisions are taken at a family level based on their aspirations and access to resources.
This was contrary to prevailing (and current) thinking in economics , which treats the individual as a self-interested economic agent. The hypothesis is that s/he maximises their own benefit. However, it is not so. It is the family that takes the decision, which sometimes may be suboptimal compared to normal economic choices.
Therefore, any institution trying to improve the well-being of people must approach it through the lens of livelihoods, and make appropriate interventions in areas that pose the biggest hurdle.