“India lives in its villages” – Mahatma Gandhi
Giving Better Lives through Development schemes by GoI
Over the years, the Indian government has introduced several schemes that have not only helped the Indian citizens improve their economic situations, but have also addressed their physical needs. Poverty being the root cause of every tiff. The insufficient skills and illiteracy compel the poor section of the society to put more than extra physical efforts. This is how they earn their living. Despite sweating hard, they manage to earn daily wages only. Unfortunately, many of them don’t get to work daily and neither able to sufficiently save for future. To uproot them form this vicious cycle of poverty, the Indian government introduced schemes and poverty reduction programmes to up-skill the disadvantaged communities.
CNI SBSS along with DBSS has been working with the communities to access the Government schemes and reap their benefits. Thereby supporting them to progress ahead in life and concentrate on things that value for their growth and development.
Golok Mondal and his wife Abirbala at Durgabati village in Bishnupur-1 block in DBSS Barrackpore, West Bengal also fulfilled her dreams of owning a house. Their house fell apart during the monsoon season and made it difficult to live in it. Repairing the house each time made it difficult to sustain. The family got to know about the housing scheme and after a successful approval of application they were able to construct their new house within a budget of Rs.80, 000 provided by the government.
The government expenditure involved in implementing the PMAY project in a span of 3 years from 2016-17 to 2018-19 is Rs.81975 crore. It is proposed that one crore households would be provided assistance for construction of pucca house under the project during the period from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
DBSS are not only linking the community with schemes but also helping to solve issues which hurdle in reaping its benefits. At SEDP Amritsar, Shanti from Bhalapind village had been struggling to get approval for her Widow Pension since last four years after his husband’s death in 2015.
In the past, she applied for Widow Pension twice but due to red-tapism and corruption in the local governance system, she was denied her due pension among local governance she was denied her due pension. After approaching MAS, SEDP helped her infiling a fresh application and ensured that the process was duly followed up. Within two months, Shanti succeeded in getting her Widow Pension at Rs. 750/- per month starting from January 2019.
At DBSS Chotanagpur in Torpa block, Kamda Panchayat is 7 kms away from the block office. In this Panchayat there are few notorious men who create hurdles due to which the benefits of the development programs were not able to reach the beneficiaries. For every scheme they try to take commissions and corruption is widely prevalent, especially in MGNREGA job card, PDS ration card (Public Distribution Scheme) and irrigation scheme for farmers etc. Although he scheme gets implemented but the labourers working under the scheme do not get their wages on time and most of the benefits under the schemes are shut down without notice. The community has been facing this issue for quite some time and shared their issue with the DBSS. The DBSS staff with the community took up the issue with the Zila Parishad member and Kamda Panchayat President. A Janta Darbar (Common Man’s Court) cum Vikas Mela (Development Festival) was held on 21st February 2019 in the block office premises in which a special camp was organised to help commu ity fill up forms for different state schemes like old age pension, widow pension, Ration card, MNREGA job card, labour card for labourers who are doing labour work outside the state, agriculture loan, caste-income certificate, Pradhan Mantri Awas yojna, and Sukanya yojna. In this way, with the removal of middlemen, the community was linked with the various government schemes.
“India lives in its villages” – Mahatma Gandhi
This famous observation made by the Father of the Nation many years ago, still holds true. Villagers comprise the core of Indian society and also represent the real India. And it is for these villagers that we need to make sure we build a system that delivers basic social infrastructure in an effective manner. In order to ensure that the fruits of India’s progress are shared by all sections of the society, the government has identified several elements of social and economic infrastructure, critical to the quality of life in rural areas and is working towards it.
