Complete essay on the History of rural development

There is a shift in Government’s approach towards development. Instead of relying only on increase in general affluence to enhance the living standards of citizens, the approach is to consider acquisition of minimum levels of education, health, employment and nutrition as basic entitles and recognize the key role of the state in providing them to every needy citizen in the country, essence, the shift is towards universalization and entitlements.

There is also increased emphasis on promoting balanced development in which all regions in country have the opportunity to develop evenly. This equity-promoting role demands that gr resources be allocated to the backward regions to remove gaps in the provision of basic services human development.

As a result, large investments will flow to those districts of the country w are classified as backward. Admittedly, these are the most difficult districts to implement develop programmes because of poor governance structures, low organizational capacity, weak infrastructure and unequal power structures. If the programmes can be implemented with a modicum of sue in these backward regions, it would have garnered mainstreaming of development in the parts of the country.

There is also a fundamental change in how government programmes are funded and executive increasingly key programmes are being funded by the Union Government and executed by S Governments. This ensures that on the one hand, no entititlement programme is made to suffer to resource constraint and, on the other, funds are available with greater regularity to implement districts, blocks and Panchayati Raj Institutions so that programme outcomes can be seamless achieved with local participation, ownership, initiative and supervision.

Since these flagship programmes are bound by the common objective of delivering entitle on a universal scale, it is necessary that they converge at the grassroots and their individual plan’ systems are integrated harmoniously. Such integration would ensure common implement at’ framework for all the schemes.

Above all, adequate and appropriate administrative and institutional arrangements are essential for the success of these programmes. In their design, these programmes provide for a multi-t’ structure of administrative and institutional arrangements for implementation and monitoring specified roles and responsibilities. The agencies involved are the respective ministries of the Union Government, departments of the State Governments and the local governments.

The structure of implementation and monitoring, both elaborate and complex, underscores the criticality of various institutional structures working in tandem: at the minimum, what is required for the successful implementation of the programmes is both vertical coordination of different tiers of governments and horizontal coordination across departments for execution of the programmes through the local government.

Of the seven flagship programmes, the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (hereinafter referred to as MGNREGA or simply ‘the Act’) is certainly the largest in terms of its outlay, coverage and expected outputs. In particular, suitable administrative and financial management systems need to be put in place in order to achieve the desired objectives of MGNREGA in terms of the benefits of the programme reaching the intended groups to build capacity to implement the Scheme at decentralized levels and create a proper information system not only to implement the Scheme effectively but also to ensure accountability and transparency.

Evolving appropriate administrative and financial management systems is the key to the success of MGNREGA. The Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) attaches the highest importance to these systems because once they are tried and tested in the implementation of MGNREGA; lessons can be drawn and used for other flagship programmes as well.

It is in this context that ARC undertook a study of strengthening of administrative and financial management systems for effective implementation of MGNREGA. To initiate a process of wide consultations, the ARC and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) jointly organized a National Workshop which was inaugurated by Dr. C. Rangarajan, Chairman, and Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.

The Workshop was attended by representatives from ministries/ departments of the Union Government, Secretaries of the State Governments in charge of Rural Development, officers from the districts, academicians, economists, activists from NGOs and other stakeholders.

The list of participants and recommendations of the Workshop are at Annexure 1(1), and l(4) respectively. Another workshop was organized jointly with governments Foundation with participation of government functionaries, international experts with domain knowledge and representatives of a number of NGOs. The list of participants and recommendations are at Annexure l(5), and l(6) respectively.

The Commission formulated a comprehensive questionnaire reflecting several aspects concerning the implementation of the Act and circulated it to the State Governments seeking responses from Panchayats, Chief Executives of District Panchayats/Collectors and NGOs {Annexure l(7)}. The Commission visited some of the states and held discussions with government functionaries and other important stakeholders. In order to assess the situation at the ground level, the Commission conducted field visits in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Bihar and Rajasthan. Based on all these inputs, the Commission has identified issues and constraints and has suggested solutions and made recommendations.