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Panchayats overhaul soon to smoothen rural schemes by Devesh Kumar

With a huge amount of funds riding on various rural development programmes, the Manmohan Singh government has now turned its sights on reforming and strengthening the panchayati raj system. And the task is going to start at the level of the gram panchayats, which are the vehicle for the implementation of most of the rural development projects.

The ministry of rural development and panchayati raj institutions is presently in the midst of preparing the blueprint for overhauling the lowest tier of the rural administration hierarchy. With decentralisation and capacity-building serving as the broad parameters, the ministry is working on developing and augmenting three critical aspects —human resources, infrastructure and connectivity. ``The idea is to build mini-secretariats in all the two-and-a-half lakh gram panchayats across the country, which would serve as the nodal point for the execution and monitoring of all the rural development programmes,’’ a senior official said.

"Strengthening the gram panchayats is the primary task,’’ the official added. And the starting point for such an endeavour, it was realised, had to be the creation of proper infrastructure. ``At present, only 60,000 gram panchayats have proper buildings. The remaining have to make do with make-shift structures,’’ the official pointed out.

Providing connectivity to these buildings and developing the man-power to run them presents the next big task. ``All the gram panchayats will have to be ICT-enabled. Under the existing panchayati raj laws, gram panchayats can spend 6% of the permissible administrative expenses on connectivity. But they’re allowed to breach this ceiling for buying computers, getting them installed, and training the personnel to operate and manage them.

The ministry is simultaneously working on ways to strengthen the personnel content of the gram panchayats. ``It’d not only entail recruiting engineers, accountants and other categories of people, but also aim at professionalising the management, so to say,’’ the official said. It was felt that each gram panchayat would need to avail of services of engineers to measure the work done under the various programmes, point out shortcomings, if any, and suggest improvements. Similarly, accountants would be needed to audit the programmes, maintain the records and keep an eye on the flow of funds. The task of monitoring the execution of the schemes would, in a sense, be gradually passed on to the gram panchayat level itself.

"Development of capacities to plan and use the funds being distributed under the various rural development projects at the panchayat level —that is the main task before us,’’ the official said. The panchayats, it was argued, are now getting huge amounts of funds each year. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had, while presenting the general budget for 2010-11, set aside Rs 40,100 crores for the implementation of MGNREGA. ``Since the UPA government’s flagship rural development programme, as also other projects such as the Indira Awaas Yojana and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, were being executed by the gram panchayats, it was felt the strengthening the administration at the lowest-level of the hierarchy would have to be the primary effort,’’ the official reasoned.

Rural development minister C P Joshi, who also holds the panchayati raj portfolio, has, in the past few weeks, spelt out his vision, and efforts are on to give it a proper shape.