During last 70 years of constitutional governance there have been efforts by the Government to minimise the gap between rural and urban areas and also to improve the access of the marginalised social groups to public utility of the villages.
The reality is a vast majority of rural population has been deprived of basic amenities in the absence of adequate public infrastructure. However, despite five-year annual plans, schemes and dedicated departments, still there have been efforts to fill up the gap. Prime Minister Modi in 2014 on the birth anniversary of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan has introduced Saansad Adarsa Gram Yojana (SAGY) which has been implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development.
The SAGY aims to realise the concept of ideal village visualized by Mahatma Gandhi and the scheme is to be led by the Members of Parliament in their own constituencies and States. It is said in the guideline that the MPs of both the Houses will motivate the communities to implement not only physical development activities but also to impart the values of equality and human dignity against the many forms inequality and social discrimination in the villages.
The scheme guideline drafted by the Union Ministry of Rural Development reaffirms its faith in Gandhi’s idea of ideal village which he discussed in 1937 and 1942 in his famous journal “Harijan" and also in his correspondences with others.
Gandhi had given much priority to cleanliness and sanitation of the people of the village and proposed to ensure house of worship, common meeting place, good road, playground and theatre hall, common grazing land for cattle, co-operative dairy and school with industrial education for all village. Gandhi also imagined that the ideal village must be self-sufficient in production of grains, vegetables, milk, Ghee and its own Khadi. He also added that the panchyats will settle the disputes and there must be compulsory education and harmony among different communities and complete abolition of untouchability.
He said to reconstruct the villages with all facilities of cities so that it may be easy for anyone to live there. After so many years of independence still many of our structural issues have not been resolved to the desired extent.
It is good that the scheme aims to ground the vision of Gandhi into reality. Taking a cue from Gandhi the scheme has also adopted many contemporary ideas and emerging new challenges while giving thrust to participation of people from all sections in village in decision making process of development and governance. It has made provisions for ensuring empowerment of the poor and marginalised households in the village on principles of social justice including gender equality with pro-active steps for inclusion and integration of socially excluded groups, specially SCs and STs.
The scheme proposes to have cattle hostel, drinking water pipeline to each household, drainage, CCTV in public places, smart green schools, E-library, adequate solar street lights and extensive use of broadband connectivity and networks as part of an ideal village.
With the holistic idea of building an egalitarian society, the scheme spells out the importance of reviving the values of dignity of labour, spirit of community service, voluntarism, self-help, mutual cooperation and self-reliance which are slowly fading away with emerging challenges of individualism, growing caste and religioun based identities and capitalist mode of economic changes.
It is good that the scheme has to be implemented by all MPs irrespective of their party affiliation because elected peoples representatives have a great role in building an ideal society which must start from their own constituencies where they have been enjoying the support and confidence of the people as well as command over local administration as elected representatives. Let’s see how it works here in the State of Odisha having 21 Loksabha and 10 Rajya Sabha MPs representing the State from BJD, BJP and Congress.
Ideally, the State should have 155 ideal villages by 2024 if each MP adopt five villages of their choice. These ideal villages can be model school for others to follow and slowly expand to all other villages of the State.
It will improve the socio-economic condition of the poor and change the overall social and economic environment which has been the cherished dream of the villagers. But why in spite of available schemes, resources and institutions, we lack leadership to ensure advancement to all its people.
Unfortunately, the Ministry of Rural Development report says the identification of villages in Odisha has not been completed yet for such an important Central scheme while many other States have such as Manipur, Kerla, Chhatisgada,TN and UP have almost completed their second phase SAGY-II identification. Why the MPs from Odisha are not serious about such initiatives while the other States are preforming well?
As it is the responsibility of the MP to identify suitable GP for developing an Adarsa Gram having population of 3,000-5,000 in plain areas and 1,000-3,000 for hilly and tribal areas. The MPs have a major role in the whole process from identification to facilitation, monitoring and to fill up the critical gaps in grounding the scheme through convergence and mobilizing resources from existing State and Central schemes and also from other sources such as CSR fund and from own MPLAD also. The scheme can become successful with active involvement of Panchyatraj institution, district administration and the elected representatives, specially the MPs.
The Ministry of Rural Development is the nodal agency for the implementation while the Chief Secretary of the State heads the empowered committee for its execution. There is also a provision to include the civil society members and experts in such committees and award best performers those who have proved best in practice.
It has been observed that many Central schemes such as SAGY have been neglected by not only the State Government but also by the MPs of different parties.