Development: Through the Government Policies

I always used to believe that carrying out any work by government system is next to impossible. I surmise that the government structure is too complex to bring about any change on the ground. However, this belief got shattered when I got an opportunity to work on the ground with Hon’ble Member of Parliament Mr Dushyant Chautala.

            The journey of this thought change begins when I landed in Hisar, Haryana constituency of Hon’ble M.P around 2 months ago. Hisar is one of those typical districts of Haryana and has all the traits of Haryanvi. It is one of the oldest districts and is 3^rd largest in Haryana.  In my first meeting with him, He shared his thought about development. He said that the true development of a region only happens with the development of the villages. His statement “Till the time farmer of this country is poor, this country will be poor” got stuck in my mind. He then directed me to focus on developing village by creating model village under Sansad Aadarsh Gram Yojana. He said that one model village inspires 50 other surrounding villages. It was a dream project for me. I always thought of doing this. Although the miracle happens when I begin my work.

            As per the plan, I visited a village called Bhiwani Rohilla which is adopted under SAGY. I spent a week inspecting various issues of the village. I interacted with the community and discussed their problems at length. After the detailed knowledge of the village, I prepare the Village Development in accordance with the SAGY guidelines. VDP is prepared in consultation with the community as I believe that community involvement is the most crucial element to carry out any developmental work. Based upon the VDP, all the concern officials were called in the village to discuss the issues and solution for it. This has happened for the first time in Hisar that 46 A-class officers came to that village. The VDP was categorised into 4 categories i.e Human Development, Economic Development, Environmental Development and Infrastructure Development. There was total 68 task got finalised, proceedings are prepared and then instructions is sent to respective officers.

            I begin meeting various officers and discusses the execution of the tasks. Things started moving very fast. Till date around 14 camps has been set up in last 1 month. Doctors are now visiting on weekly basis, Veterinary Surgeon is coming every Tuesday, awareness camp for digital banking, farmer cooperatives, ITI training, Animal Insurance happens. Dress Designing course for women is started in the village where 60 women are getting trained in tailoring. Survey of the village has been carried out by Executive Engineer (XEN) wherein plan to develop infrastructure work of worth rupees 1 crore is prepared. It includes construction of street, repair of panchayat bhavan, Animal Hospital, renovation of ponds and construction of the park. There is also 8 lakhs worth of MNREGA work is finalised. All this activity happens in last one month and now I can proudly say that village is developing. This all was carried under one or the other government schemes. A facebook page is made especially to track the work done in the village.

            There are 70 plus central government schemes and around 40 haryana govt schemes. There are lot of money is invested by the government. I just feel that there is disconnect between the deprived people and the government policies. This SPARC fellowship is giving me the best platform to fill that gap and catalyse the development at grassroots. I look forward to utilize the existing government schemes to bring much bigger impact on ground.