WHY RURAL INDIA FAILS TO PROSPER? (Part I)
We pay taxes and make the Government accountable for work. Govt allocate budgets, makes some policies, and thinks that bureaucrats will implement. Then where things fail.
Let us take one example. Each Village gets a budget in crore per annum for development. The policy is that there will be one Gram Panchayat head “Pradhan”/”Sarpanch” elected by the people and there will be around 11-13 other elected members (depending on the number of wards) to pass any proposal and one will be Govt servant called Secretary. The policy is that there should be regular open meetings in each village and any proposal should be finalized when the majority of the members passed that proposal. Now where is the problem?
Let us go more deeper. In most of the villages, the elected Gram Panchayat “Pradhan” manipulated these members. Most of these members are uneducated, poor, and elected from each ward of the villages. It is always easy to influence them by making one or two offers, e.g. one solar light, hand pump, underground drainage, etc. Open Meetings are never called in villages but are always maintained on the register for showing to senior district officers, RTI replies, etc. Then what?
Then the all problem goes on and on. Every five years, a new Government is elected but poor farmers & villagers suffer more or less in the same manner. The budget comes to the villages, sometimes half of the budget might be used also with low-quality work but mostly it gets distributed from the Village Pradhan, Secretary, and higher officers (and sometimes local politicians also take commission on certain tender/contracts).
Let us move to the positive side. We (on behalf of FARF) adopted a few villages to start rural development work. In all villages, we demanded that open meetings not happen and it should be done. First, the reply we got from authorities is that meetings are happening on time and recorded in the register. We again asked for the details of meetings (details, timing, proposals, etc) and also asked why not the budget/expenditure has been displayed in public places as per rule. Later, the meeting was scheduled in one of the adopted villages called “Bhikharirampur”. The meeting was canceled because no villagers were informed but since our FARF team members were there in the meeting, it was rescheduled again. The second time, the same thing happened again. The meeting was rescheduled again for the third time. This team, our team member took the responsibility to inform everyone in the village. Finally, we made one such history and successfully organized one open meeting on 9th October 2017. The meeting was so successful that all participants told us that such a meeting never happened in their village. Long way to go! India cannot change without rural development and Rural Development cannot happen without our contribution as a responsible citizen.
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