Approximately 750 officers have been deployed by the government at the Center with the task of implementing seven government schemes in almost 45,000 villages in 115 ‘aspirational districts’ by 15th of August. This comes in the second edition of the GSA which is being closely monitored by the PMO.
While each district has been assigned a ‘Prabhari Officer’ to carry out the duties of a joint secretary; 322 directors and deputy secretary officers, and another 322 under-secretaries have also been assigned the jobs of ‘nodal officers’. Somewhere between four to 10 such nodal officers have been asked to tag along with each Prabhari Officer to their assigned villages for tour scheduling and coordinating the visits of nodal officers.
The government schemes to be implemented span under five priority areas—education, health, nutrition, skills, and agriculture. A control room has been set up in New Delhi’s Krishi Bhawan for real-time monitoring of the progress by the Prabhari Officers. The highest number of targeted villages are in the states of Bihar (8,569), followed by West Bengal (7,981), Jharkhand (6,512), UP (5,130), and Madhya Pradesh (3,048).
The nodal officers have been asked to provide observations from the field as well, to analyse citizens’ awareness of the schemes in question, or whether any scheme has been perceived as expensive, suitability of schemes, and any malpractices detected at the grass root level. The biggest job at hand is for the power ministry, to cover 56.83 lakh
un-electrified households in the targeted 45,136 villages under the ‘Saubhagya’ scheme.
The Union Ministry of Petroleum and Gas is also faced with a challenge as it has only been able to provide 7.77 lakh LPG connections under Ujjwala Scheme as opposed to the set target of 10.29 lakh connections in 16,000-odd villages under Phase 1 of the GSA (Gram Swaraj Abhiyaan) that took place from April 14 to May 5, 2018. The highest-ever number— 35.17 lakh LPG connections were given out across the country in this phase of GSA, and the government plans to further build on that in Phase 2 of GSA.
The government will have 12-hour operational help desks in Delhi to sort out any issues. The very staff deputed for implementation of the MNREGA Scheme in districts will also be providing field support for GSA-2.
State level coordination is being provided by state chief secretaries. “You would agree that the saturation of seven schemes in aspirational districts, requiring mobilisation of government agencies at different levels, would catalyse the implementation of action plans of these districts under the Aspirational Districts programme,” Rural Development Secretary Amarjeet Sinha had written to all chief secretaries for the 115 districts. The program kicked off from 1st of June.
Other schemes that are to be implemented in these districts are the immunisation programme for children and pregnant women under Mission Indradhanush; PM Jan Dhan Yojana; PM Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana; PM Suraksha Bima Yojanax, and Ujjwala Yojana for distribution of LED bulbs.
