Village plans

All panchayats are expected to fulfill the mandatory requirement of constituting a Village Development Committee by September 10, with those panchayats which have already formed the panels getting another opportunity to review the constitution of their committees. VDCs will act as agencies to propose, shortlist and finalise the projects to be implemented under ‘Niyojit Amcho Gaon, Nital Amche Goem' scheme. The constitution of the committee and getting the right people on board however remains a huge challenge for panchayats. Key people from the village, including professionals in respective fields may not involve themselves in the gram sabhas. There is a minuscule segment of people who are part of the gram sabhas. Keeping in mind the holistic development of the village, there should be a broad mechanism in place to involve prominent and knowledgable individuals beyond the gram sabhas.
The panchayats face a bigger hurdle when the preparation of project report comes into play. Panchayats are not equipped to prepare a technical report on the projects planned and have to rely heavily on the Block Development Officer for technical support. The BDO does not have the wherewithal to provide logistical and technical support for all the panchayats. Take the case of Salcete, where a single BDO office is handling files from 30 panchayats in the area. The engineers or technical staff available with the BDO is currently entrusted with the job of preparing project reports and due to the severe manpower crunch the files are getting held up for months. The government should work out alternate mechanisms to hasten the process. Panchayats should be allowed to prepare project reports and estimates by hiring private engineers or should rope in technical personnel from other departments. Merely constitution of these committees will not help, rather the need of the hour is providing them with proper logistical support to take their plans forward.
Another interesting issue which has been ignored and which has been the case in many panchayats is when the committees stop functioning. As in the past, many committees after being formed have been confined only to record books with members failing to meet even once after its formation.
While the panchayats are expected to fulfill the mandatory requirement of constituting a Village Development Committee, there appears to be no safeguards in event the committees stops functioning and stopping of grants under 14th Finance Commission certainly cannot be a quid pro quo since the villagers will have to suffer for no fault of theirs.