Friday, December 26, 2008

Achievements/Inititatives of Ministry of Panchayati Raj in 2008


 

Year End Review 2008


The Panchayati Raj Institutions in India have an electorate of around 52 crore. The number of grassroots institutions is about 2.40 lakh and the number of persons elected in the Panchayats is about 28 lakh. In terms of the empowerment of women at the grassroots, this is the greatest experiment in democracy ever undertaken anywhere in the work at any time in history. 

More than 10 lakh women have been elected to our panchayati Raj Institutions, constituting some 37 per cent of all those elected and rising to as high a level as 54% in Bihar. Reservation of seats for the persons belonging to the scheduled casts, the scheduled tribes and in some State for the other backward classes has been legally enforced in proportion to their share of the population in each panchayat area. 

The mandate of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj is enshrined in part IX of the Constitution (“The Panchayats”) read with Article 243 ZD of Part IXA relating to the District Planning Committees and the Eleventh Schedule which illustratively sets out a list of 29 matters, which might be considered by State Legislatures for devolution to the Panchayats in respect of the planning of economic development and social justice as well as the implementation of “entrusted” schemes of economic and social development in such a manner as to ensure that they function as “units of self-government.” 

Major achievements and initiatives of the Ministry in the year 2008 are as under: 

The 3-day National Convention of Chairpersons of District and Intermediate Panchayats: The Convention was held from 22nd to 24th of April 2008.It was inaugurated by Mani Shankar Aiyar Union Minister of Panchayati Raj.. 

Around 8000 delegates from 26 States & 5 UTs participated in this National Convention. This included around 1500 women. The delegates were mainly the Chairpersons of District and Intermediate Panchayats. The15th anniversary charter on Panchayati Raj was unanimously adopted by the delgates.The Charter focuses on “inclusive growth through inclusive Governance. The Charter recommends consolidating all schemes into single Panchayat Sector Window for the budgets of ‘Line Departments’ to ensure the flow of funds to each tier of Panchayats. Other recommendations relate to Functional empowerment of Panchayats, Financial empowerment of Panchayats, improving the capacities of Panchayats through devolution of functionaries, training, Panchayat level office infrastructure and provision of technical support, provision of staff for the Panchayats, provision of adequate remuneration for elected Panchayat representatives, training for Panchayat elected representatives and officials, provision of Physical infrastructure and Information Technology for Panchayats, decentralized planning and implementation, Constitution of District Planning Committees by States in conformity with the provisions of Article 243ZD of the Constitution, arranging technical support for DPCs to prepare district plans. The Charter was on the concluding day handed over the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. The Prime Minister assured that the recommendations on improvement of the Panchayati Raj system will be considered. 

Rural Business Hubs: MoUs have been signed for setting up 162 RBHs in 15 States. RBH initiative is aimed at linking the rural products / producers with the national/ international markets through establishing business relationship and assured buy back arrangements. The role and responsibility of the different stake holders are clearly defined in the MoUs. Work on 30 RBHs has started so far in different parts of the country. These RBHs have facilitated the cultivation and marketing of Jatropha in Haryana, Assam, Tripura and Jharkhand with assured buy back of seeds based on a transparent pricing mechanism. Through the RBHs, market linkages have been established for passion fruit in Manipur, fruit and vegetables in Uttrakhand, pulses and chillies processing in Rajasthan and lac and tamarind in Jharkhand. RBHs have also provided marketing avenues in sericulture, dairy products, vermi compost and compressed bricks in Tamil Nadu. Besides these, hand knotted carpets in Rajasthan, bell metal and wooden handicrafts in Chhattisgarh and folk arts in West Bengal are being marketed through RBH initiatives. 

The RBH initiative is taking the benefits of economic development to the rural areas of the country through promotion of Public-Private-Panchayat Partnership. This will also help in developing a holistic and integrated partnership between decentralized rural production units and larger marketing entities. 

While the present RBH initiative is focused in 33 districts identified in consultation with the State Governments and services of Gateway Agencies have been made available to these districts for hand holding the Panchayats in getting the projects going, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, in partnership with State Governments, plans to expand coverage to each of the 6100 intermediate Panchayats of the country. 

Co-operation between India and Afghanistan in Local Governance: A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Government of Republic of India and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on Cooperation in the field of Local 

Governance was signed by the Minister of Panchayati Raj, Government of India and the Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, Government of Afghanistan on 17th May, 2008 at Kabul. To operationalize the MoU, a set of agreed conclusions were also signed. 

The salient features of the MoU are as under: 

(a) The parties shall set up, at the official level, an India-Afghanistan Joint Working Group on Local Governance (JWG). 

(b) The JWG will recommend a schedule of activities for bilateral exchanges between India and Afghanistan to the Joint Forum on Local Governance with the Minister of Panchayati Raj of the Government of India and the Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, Government of Afghanistan as its Co-Chairs. 

(c) The JWG will also recommend technical assistance programmes for strengthening local self governance in Afghanistan including capacity building of individuals, institutions and elected representatives of local administration focusing on areas relating to micro-planning, devolution of powers and funds, as well as mobilization of resources. 

Both Afghanistan and India will stand to benefit from sharing of their respective experiences in the area of Local Governance. It will also be a step in the direction of improving bilateral relations between the two SAARC countries. 

MoU signed between Ministry of Panchayati Raj and KVIC 

A memorandum of cooperation was signed between Ministry of Panchayati Raj and Khadi and Village Industry Commission (KVIC) in the presence of Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar, Minister of Panchayati Raj and Mr. Mahabir Prasad, Minister of MSME in August 2008. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj and KVIC have come together under the Rural Business Hubs (RBH) initiative to promote Khadi and Village Industries in rural areas by providing proper role to the Panchayats in this initiative. 

Objectives of this joint working include generating rural employment, higher and sustained income for rural producers by better marketing of products through convergence of Schemes and efforts of KVIC and Panchayats. 

Under this initiative, Panchayats and KVIC/KVIB will jointly identify potential projects that can be supported under KVIC schemes and also extend marketing support through the corporate members of industry working on the RBH initiative. For this purpose, District level meetings are being arranged in the selected districts in which the relevant schemes will be familiarized to the Panchayats. KVIC will also extend the services of its Rural Industries Consultancy Services (RICS) to potential beneficiaries for project formulation and linkages with banks. Such proposals will be processed through the fast track system. Wherever required, skill development/skill upgradation training will be provided to the potential beneficiaries by KVIC through accredited training agencies. Ministry of Panchayati Raj will facilitate the Panchayats to set up Common Facility Centres and other minor infrastructure by converging resources from various schemes. Panchayats will also provide backward linkages in terms of identifying genuine beneficiaries for the KVIC Schemes. 

E-governance at grass roots 

Stage is set for people in the rural areas to look forward to getting services like birth and death certificates, use of tax payments, e-mail etc. in their gram panchayat offices itself through e-governance. The Gram Panchayat President or Sarpanch will soon be able to monitor panchayat centric schemes, do financial accounting and reporting, keep records of gram sabha and panchayat meetings’ on her computer in the panchayat office through the induction of information and communication technologies (ICTs). 

The Expert Committee on Information Technology for Panchayati Raj submitted its recommendations to the Minister of Panchayati Raj, Shri Mani Shankar Aiyar in January 2008. The report recommends use of information and communication technologies to be an integral part of multi-mode training and capacity building. The Committee has given extensive recommendation on hardware and system software, application software, open standards, connectivity, domain specific Data and Meta Data Standards, capacity building, adoption of national panchayati portals (NPP), and facility management. 

Introduction of ICT at Panchayat level will not only allow experimentation with the technology but will also give immense opportunity to the people to handle technology, be it relating to software, hardware, networking, power supply or any other issue due to which such technology has been traditionally denied to them. Such an initiative will create large-scale job opportunities at the grassroots level, as it has done in urban areas, in the form of operational services, maintenance and many other ancillary areas. The initiative would permeate a culture of ICT usage in rural areas to such a magnitude which probably no other initiative would match. The initiative will also throw up totally new challenges to ICT technology developers as they gear up to meet the requirements of technology diffusion in the villages. Finally, it is likely to create an improved cyber space covering the entire government spectrum of the country, where information could flow seamlessly.

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