Page 6 - MGMG July to December 2019 Special Issue

bottlenecks and help discover the impediments that need to be resolved to put the PRIs to a smooth and
fast track.

The other themes of the programme too are similarly tailored. While doubling farmers? income remains
a national goal, the objective of ensuring 100% coverage of individual beneficiary oriented schemes like
PM-Kisan, Pension and Scholarship schemes and Ayushman Bharat has been neatly woven in the
texture of the Back to Village programme. The entire philosophy behind the effort is to use this huge
public outreach and connect not only to collect genuine information from the ground but also to assess
the local level impediments that actually prevent developmental programmes from fully reaching the
beneficiaries. It is thus as much assistance to the local administration as an evaluation of their effort. The
smartly designed questions in the booklet include - how much time does it take for a pension case to be
sanctioned; how frequently does a Patwari visit the village, how many people have applied for PMAY
house but have not yet got one, how many MNREGA works are of poor quality etc.

In this way, by deputing over 4500 senior gazetted officers to the villages, 600 of whom are from the
secretariat, the entire programme is a bold attempt to cut out all the administrative intermediaries and
reach out straight to the Panchayat and the Gram Sabha and hence to the people. In that sense, it is
indeed a unique people?s programme, a celebration of grassroots democracy, decentralized development
and a genuine partnership between the administration and the people.

While the entire exercise looks quite simple, this may be deceptive. The programme required meticulous
planning, coordination of a number of departments and agencies and a tight plan. To begin with, given
that practically every officer in the Civil Secretariat was being deputed, it required the virtual shutting
down of the Civil Secretariat for a full working week. Then there was the coordination between the task
of assigning officers to specific Panchayats and distribution of material and kits to them. This required
election style preparations, appointment of nodal officers, setting up control rooms, centralised printing
of booklets, questionnaires and information brochures. Finally, there was the task of getting officers to
physically reach their designated Panchayats. This was no less onerous given the challenging geography
of Jammu and Kashmir and practically every mode of transport from the humble mule to the helicopter
had to be pressed in action. Deputy Commissioners set up control rooms, appointed guides and nodal
officers and liaised with their police counterparts to ensure that officers reached their Panchayats and
once there, stayed safe and protected. There were training sessions, briefing modules, logistics and
transport plans and contingency arrangements.

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