BHUBANESWAR : A decade after the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) was launched, the central government has begun an exercise to assess the progress and impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet initiative.
The move comes in the midst of ground-based reports that much has not changed in the villages adopted by the MPs under the scheme in terms of their all-round development.
The MPs were tasked to pick a village each under their constituency and ensure its holistic development, including basic amenities like proper roads, water supply and sanitation along with other infrastructure and facilities.
Official sources said in Odisha, seven-gram panchayats in Angul, Jagatsinghpur, Kalahandi, Bhadrak, Khurda, Nabarangpur and Nayagarh districts have been included in the nationwide study that will continue till November 27.
Those included from the state are Andharua GP (Khurda) adopted by Rajya Sabha member Sasmit Patra, Bhatangpadar (Kalahandi) adopted by former RS member Sujeet Kumar and Lunahandi (Angul) adopted by former MP Nitesh Ganga Deb.
Other panchayats selected for the study are Arana (Jagatsinghpur) adopted by former MP Rajashree Mallick, Ambaroli (Bhadrak) adopted by former MP Manjulata Mandal, Badakumuli (Nabarangpur) adopted by former MP Ramesh Chandra Majhi and Rasanga (Nayagarh) adopted by former MP Achyutananda Samanta.
The assessment will include how the villages have been transformed after adoption by their MPs under SAGY. If there has not been much improvement, it will seek reasons and fix accountability.
“The study will find out the bottlenecks in the implementation of the programme which will ultimately help devise new and effective strategies. Wherever it has been a success, the best practices will serve as models,” sources said.
“The study team will also ascertain why the MPs were not identifying GPs at the desired pace even though they are aware of the benefits of the scheme. They will collect suggestions for revision of the scheme and explore solutions to remove investment barriers and promote private investments in such GPs,” the sources said.
As per the SAGY portal of the Ministry of Rural Development, as many as 1,440 panchayats were selected in 2014-19 and 1,921 panchayats in 2019-24 while more than 2.29 lakh projects have been completed under village development plan (VDP).
Odisha is placed at 16th position among states and UTs in terms of progress of VDP with around 72.86 per cent projects getting completed. Gujarat and West Bengal topped the chart with 100 per cent completion rate.