Over 2 Lakh Gram Panchayats to hold simultaneous gram sabha today

NEW DELHI: More than 2 lakh village panchayats will hold a simultaneous gram sabha on Friday to look at convergence in all schemes meant for rural India and the poor. The national mahagramsabha on Gandhi Jayanti is part of the Narendra Modi government's plan to take governance to the doorstep, especially in rural areas. The exercise will also draw in experts from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and use the Social Economic and Caste Census (SECC) to develop specific poverty-alleviation tools.

“We will now firm up our strategy at the micro level to target poverty and deprivation in each and every household and gram panchayats will be leading this movement,” a senior official told ET. States including Bihar, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh will not be holding the gram sabhas due to code of conduct restrictions ahead of upcoming assembly and panchayat elections. The rural development ministry has written to industry groupings as well asking them to take up developmental work in villages under their corporate social responsibility programmes.

The gram panchayats, with the assistance of self-help groups, will go on a door-to-door campaign and assess the reason for deprivation in each household. Accordingly, benefits will be extended to them under prevalent schemes for housing, the rural jobs programme and skill development on a priority basis. After SECC data showed that a third of India’s rural households are landless and depend on manual labour for an income, the government decided to increase spending on the skill development programme.

The rural development ministry has also started its Livelihood for Employment Programme (LIFE) providing skill-development options for those seeking self-employment or livelihood upgradation. The government is also asking states to conduct social audits to monitor whether schemes are being implemented properly and without corruption or lapses. “We get complaints from almost all states of irregularities. Hence, we are trying to strengthen our monitoring mechanisms and moving processes online as well to ensure transparency,” said the official cited above.