BHUBANESWAR: The State government will soon have a governance atlas of gram panchayats providing a detailed analysis of the progress of implementation of different schemes which will help the administration track growth of individuals, households and communities.
The project will be launched by the Poverty and Human Development Monitoring Agency (PHDMA), the apex monitoring and evaluation body of the State government. All the 6,794-gram panchayats will be covered by October 2, 2023. In the first phase, the initiative will bring out a governance atlas of 4,056 panchayats by March 5, 2023.
Under the project, teams will visit each panchayat and involve themselves through continuous monitoring, which is the ‘the Mycelium Way’ and prepare reports on what works for the people of Odisha, what should be worked on and what their aspirations. The Mycelium Way refers to the wisdom of the people shared with PHDMA through immersing with them and listening to them.
The PHDMA teams will be mobile in the field for the next one year to see, listen and understand what is working, what needs to be worked on and what the people want. The project will not only nudge the institutional mechanism to address the existing issues but also keep track of progress happening on the ground and ensure capturing of positive deviance.
The governance atlas is a systematic tracking of access, availability and utility of priority schemes, projects, programmes and benefits at household, individual, cohort, sectoral and institutional levels. It will also capture people’s aspirations in all gram panchayats to put in place a robust redressal mechanism. It will also be shared with stakeholders for resolution and necessary policy actions and inputs.
Member secretary of PHDMA Roopa Roshan Sahoo said that the project is a way to participate in processes of poverty eradication towards human development through listening. Deep listening will not be about hearing words but embracing, accepting and resolving, she said and added that the compilations of governance realities through narratives, immersive observations and pictures on the ground will be the governance atlas of the State.