Author:
By, Dr. Alok Pandey, Deputy Director PRIA
Villagers of Dondaro Gram Panchayat are ready to get piped drinking water supply at their door steps, in the next couple of days. This is happening because of the efforts made by the villagers, who have been able to develop their plan by using participatory methods of planning. Villagers, especially women of Dondaro are very happy and ready to tell the stories related to this development.
The story starts after election of Santoshi Bai as Sarpanch of Dondaro Gram Panchayat. As a native of Donadaro Santoshi Bai knew that in spite of having the river Bela, which is a perennial river that flows across the Gram panchayat region, the villagers struggle to get safe drinking water at their home. She also used to see that open defecation was rampant in the area because people found it very difficult to bring water from the river for toilet purposes. Keeping all these things in mind she wanted to take some measures that could ensure availability of water at the door steps of every villager.
Santoshi Bai got an opportunity to attend a training programme of PRIA that was organised in 2012 under a project âAction Research on Implementation of Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (PESA), 1996 in Chhattisgarh (with special focus on Water)â. During the programme she learnt about the provisions that give spaces to Gram Sabha and community people for planning and implementation of a particular project.
After some time Santoshi Bai, with the support of a local NGO (SROUT, which was supporting PRIA to implement the project in Dondaro) formed a Technical Support Group (TSG). She also engaged the Junior Engineer of the Block in this group to get timely technical inputs. Members of TSG were able to develop a Vision document on the basis of discussion held with the villagers and elected representatives of Dondaro Gram Panchayat. TSG members also organised several rounds of meetings to assess the strength of the area and opportunities that could support them to fulfil the vision of the villagers. They collected the information related to various schemes from where resources could be mobilised.
Finally, the TSG members along with the villagers were able to develop a Nal-Jal Yojana with an estimated cost of Rs. 70 Lakhs (approx.). They submitted their plan to the block level officer of the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) with a resolution passed by Gram Sabha. The block level official sent that that plan to the district level officials, with all the technical notes required to get it sanctioned. The district level officials vetted that plan and approved for implementation of the plan in the financial year 2013-14.
The construction of the over-head water tank has been completed and pipe line is installed in the village. The people of Dondaro are ready to move towards a new milestone of panchayati raj.
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India’s Gram Panchayats today govern at a time of profound transition. Climate change is intensifying floods, droughts, and heat stress, public health risks such as water-borne diseases are becoming more frequent, rural youth migration is hollowing out local economies and digital systems are expanding faster than local capacities to use them meaningfully.
