Mission Antyodaya may come to rescue of Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana

NEW DELHI: The Central government’s Mission Antyodaya will now come to the rescue of the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, which is struggling to find its feet even in phase II.

The villages chosen under the SAGY will now be included in the first set of 50,000 gram panchayats that will be picked by the government to catapult them to a minimum level of well-being within the next 30 months, reliable official sources confirmed to ET.

Thirty-three government departments will make a concerted effort in effecting visible and real change across these grams over the remaining term of the Modi government.

The 50,000 grams will be selected in time for Gandhi Jayanti so the targeted programme can take off. 2,200 villages are to be developed as model villages under the scheme by 2019.

Modi government had announced Sansad Adarsh Gram scheme soon after taking over in 2014, asking each MP to adopt a village and bring transformational change there, albeit without any additional funding but through existing government schemes.

MPs, in fact, have been complaining of fund scarcity and the wherewithal to bring the Adarsh (ideal) parameters to a village. Rural development minister Birendra Singh had last year also drawn the PM’s attention to the need for a separate funding mechanism in order to salvage the scheme.

The route found, it seems, is to have the rural development ministry take the MPs villages under its wing and target them with consolidated schemes to help improve the report card.

Being closely monitored by the Prime Minister’s Office, Mission Antayodya was reviewed only last week by the PM.

20 per cent of the Gram Panchayats in the country are in the process of being chosen for the fast-tracked and focused version of Mission Anatyodya to reach a ‘minimum level of comfort’ measured on 21 parameters and the Sansad Grams have been automatically added to the list. The 21 parameters cover enabling the creation of infrastructure and access to services, social development and protection mechanisms and economic development and livelihood diversification avenues.

“The idea is to effect a well thought out and thoroughly planned convergence of all existing government initiatives and schemes in these 50,000 Gram Panchayat areas to start with, so we can make things achievable within 30 months. Besides, the Sansad Grams, the other GPs will be chosen on the basis of citizen participation- the social capital demonstrated by them in their area”, a senior official associated with the programme confirmed to ET.

A crucial part of this exercise will be the effective use of the Socio-Economic Caste Census data- 2011 to target the most deprived households and reach benefits to them directly.