Private teams out to collect feedback on government’s Gram Swaraj Abhiyan-2

NEW DELHI: Teams from private research organisations have been sent out to the field by the government for a “special monitoring” of the second edition of the Gram Swaraj Abhiyan (GSA) that is concluding on Independence Day.

The extended GSA — an outreach programme to deliver welfare schemes to villages — started on June 1 and is already being monitored by more than 750 central government officers. These officials are tasked with ensuring that the benefits of seven central schemes have reached all the needy in almost 49,000 villages identified in 115 “aspirational districts” by August 15.

The special teams of national-level monitors that have been sent out from August 5 comprise research experts empanelled with the government. They will do field visits till August 11covering 10 Gram Panchayats in the allotted districts in each state and collect feedback on the execution of GSA-2. Areport will then be given to the Centre.


GSA-2 has been instrumental in the government achieving the cumulative landmarks of five crore LPG connections under the Ujjwala scheme and one crore electricity connections under the Saubhagya scheme last week, a senior government official told ET.These two are among the seven schemes covered under the initiative. However, the GSA-dashboard shows less than 60% saturation on the Saubhagya scheme and 38% on the Ujjwala scheme in the selected villages.