Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana

Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) is a village development project launched by Government of India in October 2014, under which each Member of Parliament will take the responsibility of developing physical and institutional infrastructure in villages.

Under the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) framework, the development of Gram Panchayats is envisaged through implementation of existing Government Schemes and Programmes in convergence mode and mobilization of community and private resources.

Goal

The goal of Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) is to translate this comprehensive and organic vision of Mahatma Gandhi into reality, keeping in view the present context - three Adarsh Grams by March 2019, of which one would be achieved by 2016. Thereafter, five such Adarsh Grams (one per year) will be selected and developed by 2024.

Values of Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana

Far beyond mere infrastructure development, SAGY aims at instilling certain values in the villages and their people so that they get transformed into models for others. These values include:

• Adopting people’s participation as an end in itself – ensuring the involvement of all sections of society in all aspects related to the life of village, especially in decision- making related to governance
• Adhering to Antyodaya – enabling the “poorest and the weakest person” in the village to achieve well being
• Affirming gender equality and ensuring respect for women
• Guaranteeing social justice
• Instilling dignity of labour and the spirit of community service and voluntarism
• Promoting a culture of cleanliness
• Living in consonance with nature – ensuring a balance between development and ecology
• Preserving and promoting local cultural heritage
• Inculcating mutual cooperation, self-help and self-reliance
• Fostering peace and harmony in the village community
• Bringing about transparency, accountability and probity in public life
• Nurturing local self-governance
• Adhering to the values enshrined in the Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Duties of the Indian Constitution.

Objectives

The main objectives of SAGY are:

1. To trigger processes which lead to holistic development of the identified Gram Panchayats
2. To substantially improve the standard of living and quality of life of all sections of the population through
• Improved basic amenities
• Higher productivity
• Enhanced human development
• Better livelihood opportunities
• Reduced disparities
• Access to rights and entitlements
• Wider social mobilization
• Enriched social capital
3. To generate models of local level development and effective local governance which can motivate and inspire neighbouring Gram Panchayats to learn and adapt
4. To nurture the identified Adarsh Grams as schools of local development to train other Gram Panchayats.

Approach

In order to achieve these objectives, SAGY would be guided by the following approach:

• Leveraging the leadership, capacity, commitment and energy of the Members of Parliament (MP) to develop model Gram Panchayats
• Engaging with and mobilizing the community for participatory local level development.
• Converging different government programmes and private and voluntary initiatives to achieve comprehensive development in tune with people’s aspirations and local potential.
• Building partnerships with voluntary organisations, co-operatives and academic and research institutions.
• Focusing on outcomes and sustainability.

Activities in an Adarsh Gram

An Adarsh Gram should evolve out of people’s shared vision, using their capacities and available resources to the best extent possible, duly facilitated by the MP, the Gram Panchayat, civil society and the government machinery. Naturally, the elements of an Adarsh Gram would be context specific. However, it is still possible to broadly identify the important activities. They would include:

Personal development:

• Inculcating hygienic behaviour and practices
• Fostering healthy habits including daily exercise and games
• Reducing risk behaviour- alcoholism, smoking, substance abuse, etc.

Human Development:

• Universal access to basic health facilities consisting of health card, medical examination
• Total immunization
• Balancing the sex-ratio
• 100% institutional delivery
• Improving nutrition status for all, with special focus on children, adolescent girls, pregnant women, and lactating mothers
• Strong focus on the special needs of Persons with Disability (PWD), especially children and women
• Universal access to education facilities up to Class X and retention
• Conversion of schools into ‘smart schools’. Smart schools will have IT enabled classrooms, e-libraries, web based teaching and will make all students e-literate required for providing quality education
• Adult literacy
• E-literacy
• Village libraries including e-libraries

Social development:

• Activities for promotion of voluntarism like Bharat Nirman Volunteers
• Building the capacity of the people to fully participate and contribute to local development
• Activities for honouring village elders, local role models especially women, freedom fighters and martyrs
• Activities for violence and crime free villages such as:
  • Setting up Citizen Committees
  • Sensitization, especially of youth
• Village sports and folk arts festivals
• Having a village song to instil a sense of pride among the people
• Celebrating ‘Village Day’
• Proactive steps for inclusion and integration of socially excluded groups, especially Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes

Economic Development:

Promoting diversified agricultural and allied livelihoods, including livestock and horticulture, through-

• Organic farming
• Soil health cards
• Crop intensification such as SRI
• Setting up of seed banks
• Collection and value addition to Non Timber Forest Produce, Livestock development including Gobar Bank, cattle hostel
• Livestock development including Gobar Bank, cattle hostel
• Micro-irrigation
• Agro-service centres

Rural industrialization like:

• Post-harvest technology applications
• Micro-enterprises
• Dairy development and processing
• Food processing
• Traditional Industries

Skill Development of all eligible youth for self-employment and placement

Village Tourism including eco-tourism

All the above activities should focus particularly on lifting households out of poverty, for which organising and federating women SHGs, providing employment to all workers, and bringing about financial inclusion are very important.

Environmental Development:

• Activities for a clean and green village consisting of:
  • Providing toilets in each household and in all public institutions and ensuring their proper use
  • Appropriate solid and liquid waste management
• Roadside plantations
• Tree plantation in accordance with local preferences in homesteads, schools and public institutions – including green walkways
• Social forestry
• Watershed management especially renovation and revival of traditional water bodies
• Rainwater harvesting- rooftop as well as others
• Reducing local pollution of air, water and land

Basic amenities and services:

• Pucca houses for all houseless poor/poor living in kutcha houses
• Drinking water, preferably treated piped water with household taps
• Internal all weather roads with covered drains
• All weather road connectivity to the main road-network
• Electricity connection to all households and street-lights including from alternative sources of energy, especially solar
• Pucca infrastructure for public institutions- Anganwadis, schools, health institutions, Gram Panchayat Office and libraries
• Civic infrastructure including community halls, buildings for SHG federations, playgrounds and burial grounds/ crematoria
• Village markets
• Infrastructure for PDS outlets
• Micro mini banks /post offices/ATMs
• Broadband connectivity and Common Service Centres
• Telecom connectivity
• CCTVs in public places

Social Security:

• Pensions for all eligible families- old age, disability and widow
• Insurance schemes like Aam Aadmi Bima Yojana
• Health insurance- RSBY
• PDS- universal access to all eligible households

Good Governance:

• Strengthening of local democracy through strong and accountable Gram Panchayats and active Gram Sabhas
• E-Governance resulting in better service delivery
• Provision of UIDAI cards to all
• Ensuring regular and punctual attendance of government and panchayat staff
• Time bound service delivery in line with Department’s Citizens Charter
• Holding of Mahila Gram Sabhas before every Gram Sabha
• Holding of a Gram Sabha at least 4 times a year
• Holding of Bal Sabhas every quarter

Proactive disclosure of all information pertaining to the implementation of the programme in the public domain and through wall-writing, notice boards in the local language. This should necessarily include the list of beneficiaries, item-wise budgets and expenditure.

• Gram Panchayat acting as an information facilitation centre
• Timely redressal of grievances filed by people, such that:
  • Grievances of all nature to be submitted to the Gram Panchayat / Charge Officer and dated receipt to be given
  • Grievances to be redressed within three weeks along with written reply
  • Institutionalization of regular open platforms for airing of grievances and their redressal, coordinated by the Gram Panchayat

Half yearly Social Audit of the programme implementation by the Gram Sabha facilitated by the Social Audit Units set up under MGNREGA.

Identification of Adarsh gram

A Gram Panchayat would be the basic unit. It will have a population of 3000-5000 in plain areas and 1000-3000 in hilly, tribal and difficult areas. In districts where this unit size is not available, Gram Panchayats approximating the desirable population size may be chosen.

The MP would be free to identify a suitable Gram Panchayat for being developed as Adarsh Gram, other than his/her own village or that of his/her spouse.

The MP will identify one Gram Panchayat to be taken up immediately, and two others to be taken up a little later. Lok Sabha MP has to choose a Gram Panchayat from within his/her constituency and Rajya Sabha MP a Gram Panchayat from the rural area of a district of his/her choice in the State from which he/she is elected. Nominated MPs may choose a Gram Panchayat from the rural area of any district in the country. In the case of urban constituencies, (where there are no Gram Panchayats), the MP will identify a Gram Panchayat from a nearby rural constituency.

The Gram Panchayats once selected by members of Parliament (whose tenures have ended on account of resignation or otherwise) would be continued as such under SAGY irrespective of whether activities have already been initiated in the GP under SAGY or not. The newly elected MPs will have the option to select the GP of their choice and two more subsequently by 2019.

Primarily, the goal is to develop three Adarsh Grams by March 2019, of which one would be achieved by 2016. Thereafter, five such Adarsh Grams (one per year) will be selected and developed by 2024.

Frequently Asked Questions - SAGY

Source: Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana