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News Alerts | Sad demise of YSR a blow to rural development

Sad demise of YSR a blow to rural development

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published Published on Sep 3, 2009   modified Modified on Sep 3, 2009

The tragic demise of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy is a blow to the rights approach to development in India. YSR, as the medical doctor-turned-CM was popularly known, was a pioneer of at least one hundred path breaking rural schemes such as the NREGS and old age pensions that were offered to the poor not as dole but as a matter of right.

For records, the first pilot of the new avatar of the NREGS was conducted in Anantpur, one of the state’s poorest and most backward districts, before it was introduced in 200 districts in 2005 and then extended countrywide two years later. It was his election winning two-rupees-a-kilo rice scheme which later entered the Congress manifesto everywhere and eventually became the model for distribution of food grains under the proposed Right to Food scheme. His rural health scheme for the BPL families, Arogyam, which allows them treatment at a choice of hospitals, is widely seen as a success.
 
It was through his rural thrust, that YSR outsmarted his popular and techno-savvy arch-rival Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra politics, not once but twice in a row. Though AP is behind other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in terms of Human Development Indicators (HDI), its recent progress in almost all counts is remarkable.

India’s rural development practitioners and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) were of late cut up with him for proposing direct cash transfers as a viable way to poverty mitigation; but even they would remember him as someone who introduced social audits with extraordinary zeal. YSR virtually handed over to an adversarial civil society the right to assess his government’s functioning at the grassroots. The process accorded a unique and inbuilt provision of participation, vigilance and accountability in public works. YSR knew it was not perfect but he was willing to wait and make things work.

Social audits have been conducted in over 2000 gram panchayats in AP and the specially constituted teams have audited NREGS works worth more than Rs 500 crore. It was through YSR’s own initiative that the Right to Information was sought to be integrated with the NREGS implementation. The state of Andhra Pradesh has so far trained 5000 people in the art and technique of conducting social audits under his leadership.

Following links tell the whole story of his indefatigable efforts to take development schemes to the masses and the leading role that AP has played under his leadership in implementing them:

Social Audits in Andhra Pradesh: A Process in Evolution by Karuna Vakati Aakella, Sowmya Kidambi, November 24, 2007 Economic & Political Weekly,
http://www.righttofoodindia.org/data/aakella-kidambi2007so
cial-audits-in-ap-evolution.pdf
.
 
Transparency and accountability in employment programmes: the case of NREGA in Andhra Pradesh by Neera Burra,
http://www.levy.org/pubs/EFFE/Transparency_and_accountabil
ity_in_employment_programme_Final_version.pdf

YS Rajasekhara Reddy: A friend of rural people by Naagesh, N., Microfinance Focus, 3 September, 2009,
http://www.microfinancefocus.com/news/2009/09/03/ys-rajase
khara-reddy-a-friend-and-pioneer-of-rural-people/comment-p
age-1/

The Congressman with a mass following and appeal by P. Sainath, The Hindu, 4 September, 2009,
http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article14812.ece

The Bottom Of The Pyramid by Anuradha Raman and Sharat Pradhan, Outlook India,
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?240591

Rajiv guiding force behind State schemes: YSR, The Hindu, 20, August, 2009, http://www.hindu.com/2009/08/20/stories/2009082061410600.htm

 

 

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