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More ground to cover

P Devarajan

FROM Khategaon bloc in Dewas district to Harangaon and Chandpura villages is about 22 to 25 kms but the Trax took well over five hours to make the distance. It had to bump over sun-baked mud road, foot-deep trenches and two rivulets w hich flow to the brim when the rains hit the area. This year the rains arrived ahead of schedule and disappeared and everyone is looking up at the skies for signs of a revival. Readings of the weather bureau make little sense to these people who h ave no access to the media.

Even if they had it would not have made much sense as most of them are unaware of the Hindi alphabet. Ms. Kala at Harangaon village says, during the monsoon the 75 tribal families in Chandpura village and Harangaon are cut off from Khategaon bloc for at least six months. The rains start from June and go on till November when the private operators review the stretch to run buses into this sector. Most of the time only tractors manage to cover the distance provided they do not get stuck in the slush.

With a smile Ms. Kala, mother of two kids whose husband works in Rajasthan, says, ``We walk in knee deep mud and slush, and wade through over-flowing rivulets for six hours each way to do any work during the rains. Saab, it is worst for the sick or the c arrying mothers as no medical aid can reach them for six months. Every year at least four to five women die while delivering kids as there is no way to rush them to hospitals and the villages do not even have a Primary Health Centre. ''

The Jamner river flows through the Chandpura village into the Narmada. It has two tributaries the Chhoti Aamner and Badi Aamner. Eklavya has built about 18 mini stone dams along the course of the Chhoti Aamner though if the number of gully plugs and the rest are taken into account the total number of structures breaking the flow of water could be anywhere over 100. Like in some areas of western Rajasthan or at Ralegaon Siddhi in Maharashtra, the village community along with Eklavya have over the year bu ilt strong stone dams which have stood up well to the first rains in the current year. On a rough estimate a mini dam costs around Rs. 6,000 with usage restricted to local materials and labour.

In the early stages, Eklavya lost a few lakhs thanks to the advise of some engineers who dismissed the utility of stone structures. But Dr. Jafri says, ``We have more or less learnt the game and if the village community can maintain the structures, the w ater tables could rise and help augment water supplies in the wells apart from yielding better crops.''

Ms. Kala has started a micro savings scheme while in Ratanpura gaon the farmers have formed a seed bank called the Hariyali Beej Samiti. Ms. Kala admits, ``the poor can go only this much and their efforts will have to be complemented by some government h elp.''

After the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution, the Madhya Pradesh government passed the Panchayati Raj Act giving panchayats a constitutional status. The Digvijay Government has set up a State Training Committee to train around 32,000 sarpanchs and 4.30 lakh panchs with the help of Eklavya and other NGOs.

The same government recently set up an empowered committee of some politicians and NGOs which in a way has stalled the training process. Dr. Jafri admits that the grand idea has got stuck and one wonders whether politicians and officials are afraid of lo sing their hold on the poor if panchayati raj ever comes into being.

But Dr. Jafri of Eklavya is not giving up and the official word is that the training programme will start after the monsoon. Eklavya has prepared a 150-page Panchayat Ki Kitab and the state level training structure will help prepare master trainers to wo rk out local programmes at the village levels. ``Looked any way, the experiment is vast,'' admits Dr. Jafri.

At least for this writer the organisational structure sounds a bit confusing with state level core and resource groups forming a two-tier structure. A three-layer organisation is to plan and implement the State Level Panchayat Training Programme at the s tate, district and bloc levels. At each level there shall be a small core group (CG) for co-ordination and selection and a more broad-based resource group (RG) for planning and implementation of the training programme.

Would it not be better to have a single compact group at each level? Going by the paper, `State Level Gram Panchayat Training Programme -- A Summary of Progress', core teams have been set up at each district with the District Chief Executive Officer as c o-ordinator. District core teams have been trained at the regional level and will carry out overall co-ordination, selection of bloc level teams and organise training of bloc level master trainers.

The bloc level resource group consisting of about 20 master trainers per bloc will be trained at the district level by a District Resource Group. Altogether 10,000 to 12,000 bloc level master trainers are to be trained for Madhya Pradesh who in turn will train panchs and sarpanchs numbering 4.80 lakhs.

The training of district core groups stands completed in April 2000 and the stage is set for Bloc Level Training of trainers followed by the training of panchayat representatives at cluster level. About 10 districts have prepared their master trainers an d are planning to conduct panchayat training. The overall training process is expected to cost around Rs. 10 crores and is to be raised from all the village panchayats at the rate of Rs. 200 per village panchayat.

``Since the panchayats will be paying for their own training, they will take it more seriously and make the bloc level master trainers more responsible. The final decision regarding raising of the panchayat funds and printing of the Panchayat ki Kitab aw ait a decision by the State Level Empowered Committee by the end of May 2000,'' says the note on Summary of progress.

Today the training programme is stuck and this would translate as delay in progress of development. While coming back to Bhopal Dr. Jafri said the northern states are at least 100 years behind the southern states. It may be safer to say they are a millen nium behind with the south another millennium away from the developed world.