Question

What are the activities suggested to strengthen the Panchayats?

Answer 1

• States to issue detailed guidelines in the form of a Hand Book to enable Panchayats at different levels to perform the roles and responsibilities.
• Cluster Facilitation Teams and Voluntary Technical Corps should be provided for groups of Village Panchayats.
• To provide additional support, Community Resource Persons, both on the technical as well as on the accounting and audit side may be attached to Village Panchayats. They may be drawn from the SHGs and suitably trained and assigned necessary powers and responsibilities.
• The 6 per cent provision for administrative cost should be apportioned to the Panchayats also according to the need to meet additional expenditure on staffing, procuring stationery and so on.
• The State should work out a formal partnership between the Village Panchayats and the network of SHGs.
• The Labour Groups formed under MGNREGS should work in association with the Village Panchayats and Intermediate Panchayats.
• The process of decentralised planning should be integrated with the preparation of the Labour Budget to ensure local priorities taken into account even while generating employment for the workers.
• To harmonise the processes and procedures of MGNREGS with those prescribed under the State Panchayati Raj Acts a detailed operating systems may be laid down
• Progress of MGNREGS should be reviewed once in a month by each level of Panchayat.
• A Help Desk may be set up in SIRDs with helplines to provide facility to Panchayats to get information on different aspects of the Scheme and to clarify doubts.
• A formal grievance redressal system may be put in place at the district level for the Panchayats.
• Monthly meetings of Village Panchayats may be organised at the level of the Programme Officer and of the Intermediate and District Panchayats at the level of the DPC to review progress and sort out problems.
• Social-audit like sessions may be organised by the Programme Officer once a year to all the elected representatives of Village Panchayats and Intermediate Panchayats. These sessions would conduct detailed assessment of the performance of the roles and responsibilities of the Programme Officer and DPC, respectively following broadly the methodology of Social Audit of the scheme.
• SIRDs may prepare a Training Plan to cover all elected representatives and heads of the three-tier Panchayats.
• It is necessary that each State may develop comprehensive action plan for strengthening Panchayats using MGNREGS and publish it.