Dr. C.M. Seth
One of the best and innovative initiatives which have happened in the Governance and delivery of service to the villagers is the order issued by Governor’s administration, “Back to Village” mission, taking administration and administrative officers at the doorstep of villagers to redress the development and governance deficit in villages. Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave also dreamt of taking governance and development at the village level. Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of rural development revolved around creating model villages for transforming Swaraj to Su – Raj. As per 2011 census 68.84% Indians live in 6,40,867 villages. Prosperity of India lies in the prosperity of villages. This was realized by the Modi Government and several social welfare schemes were rolled down for the poor and remote villages of the country like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Free cooking gas, Atal pension scheme, Shranew Yojna, Sansad Adrash yojna, Ujjwal Yojna, Jan Dhan Yojna, Saubhagya Yojna, etc. The villagers benefitted with these rural based schemes and reflected their confidence in good governance in the recent held elections which enabled Modi Government to come again for second time with the expectations and hopes that new government will focus on the development of villages and strike a balance between Urban and village development.
In Jammu and Kashmir State, there has always been administrative and governance deficit. In past several experiments were tried like Single Line Administration and posting of additional Development Commissioner in districts for development but all these experiments were bureaucratic without delivering good governance at the door step of villagers. Even new districts, sub divisions, tehsils and blocks were created to make smaller units of governance. These also failed to achieve the desired results for delivery of governance at the doorstep of villages. Villagers continue to suffer due to administrative and bureaucratic apathy. I am reminded of one experience during militancy days when I was in Government service. During militancy most of the Government offices shifted to the safe district headquarters and the rural areas were left to the mercy of militants.
One such district was Reasi where all the engineering, Forest, Medical and other offices closed their offices at Mahore, Darmari and other remote areas and shifted to Reasi. Other district was Ramban where all government offices from Gool Gulabgarh were closed and shifted to Ramban. I was then conservator forests west circle with headquarter at Rajouri. I planned a visit to Mahore with my DFO and other forest staff. On reaching Darmari, I saw divisional forest office building in shambles. All doors, windows and furniture was either taken away or damaged. Same was the condition with other Government buildings. There were more than ten daily wagers shown as working in adjoining nursery and getting payment but actually they have taken control of Darmari and surrounding areas and working for militants on government funds. I asked my DFO and other staff that why you are not functioning from Darmari Mahore. They said that one of our Forester has become the Area commander of Mahore and he is virtually running the administration and issuing orders on the letter heads of different militant groups to all the Government Departments. I asked his name. He was a local forester from a village near Sungdi. I knew him personally as he had worked with me when I was DFO in the area. He was good worker, very humble and good subordinate. I sent him a message that I would like to meet him. He sent a slip through one of the villagers saying that he will come to Mahore after a week and meet me.
He also conveyed that come alone in the identified place in forest at about 4 am in the morning. I reached the spot on scheduled date and time. Forester was standing there and saluted me. I asked him that you have taken over as the Area commander of Mahore. He very proudly said, yes Sir. I asked him why you have chosen this dangerous path. He replied that Sir you should be thankful to me, atleast, people come to me and I help them to get their work done through different departments. He said there is no Government office or official in this area. All offices are abandoned. Where people will go for their redressal and works to be done. He further said that officers like you go to the villages and remote areas but not many officers like to visit these areas and there is deficit and total lack of governance in these areas. From today you are our commander and I continue as a Forester and give you full cooperation and safety in the area.
I am thankful and glad that with his cooperation I was able to reopen my DFO office at Darmari and Range office at Gool. With his efforts, all those daily wagers working over ground for militants at Darmari and Gool joined there work in nurseries and left working for militants. Since then both the offices are working regularly in these areas. Other Government offices lateron also followed and reopened their offices. Therefore, this innovative initiative of government ultimately is going to address the issue of governance deficit in the remote areas of J&K State. Youth in rural areas join militancy when there is no officer to listen to them in these villages and officers don’t stay in villages and sit with them to listen to them and redress their chronic problems of development and employment. There is no Government officer to tell them about the benefit of different Government schemes.
“Back to Village” experiment should have happened right from the First five year plan which took seventy years to think about villages and their problems. Infact, development of governance and political systems in any country are the evolutionary and continuous process. Back to Village experiment is just like commune system of China. Outstanding growth of China happened because of commune or community system in the villages. Communes in China are just like Village Panchayats in India where village Panchayats are empowered to take decisions for their Panchayats. When Mao Zedong, great revolutionary leader of China, took over the governance of such a huge population and country in Chinese civil war, he realized that people in villagers are living in extremely poor conditions, malnourished and suffering with diseases. There was no development, no health services, no infrastructure and no schools. He called all officers from different line departments who were posted in these villages one by one and asked that you are such a qualified and trained officers why these villages were still backward and people are suffering. All of them replied Sir no body in Government asked for physical performance on ground, they only asked for targets and achievements and we were submitting reports faithfully on papers.
No authority, ever checked our works on ground. We got ourselves transferred alongwith post to district or provincial HQs and submitted reports from there. Exactly same situation which we are facing now in state. China at that time was suffering with corruption, nepotism without transparency and accountability. People were addicted with drugs and lethargy without doing any work. Mao changed old habits of Chinese with his Cultural Revolution for agriculture and industrial growth. He did not send these officers to their homes. He said you will not go to your home, now onwards village is your home and the villagers are your family. We will take care of your family. He started his cultural revolution with the concept of Village Communes. He put all these groups of specialist or expert officers and officials under village commune to help in their areas of Agriculture, Horticulture, Forestry, Education, Health, Engineering, Poultry, Sericulture, etc. as technical help to Communes and directed village communes to get work from them in all sectors to change the face of villages and bring prosperity. GDP and growth targets were fixed for each commune and were asked to achieve the same. This is how China developed its economy from villages to the country level. All officers and officials of that commune are answerable to Village commune. They have the powers to disburse salaries and right their ACRs. Any Commune which do not achieve the laid down targets is disbanded and all officers are removed from Government service. In their place new team takes over who have achieved outstanding performance in some other commune. In the initial stages even officers were not given salaries. Communes were directed to take care for their shelter and food. Officers were not allowed to come to their homes till village commune achieved the physical targets and the economy of the villages improved.
I happened to visit China for one month on the invitation of Government of China in the year 2013. We were taken to the villages, cities, industrial areas, growth centres to study their growth model, commune system, decision making, implementation of government programmes, concept of fixing GDP targets for every commune, forestry, medicinal plant industry and other sectors. After completion of our one month study tour we were asked to comment on their growth model suggesting whether it is sustainable and if not but new innovation can be suggested. We were experts in different fields from more than fifty countries. When I returned back from China, I wrote to GOI and State Government for thinking some model like China where Government departments and their officers are made to go to villages and work for the villagers.
Panchayati Raj Act was introduced in India with 73rd amendment in constitution based on the traditional Panchayat system of India. Elections wereheld in all Panchayats. Other states moved fast in this direction but our state moved at snail’s pace. In J&K State elections for Panchayats were held successfully in 2018. When these Panchayats were empowered, I used to say that we are leading towards China’s model of commune system and this has happened with the notification of “Back to Village” mission where senior officers have been designated to go to 4483 Panchayats covering about 6553 villages.Main focus of Back to Village scheme is to focus on four goals viz; Energizing Panchayats, Feedback on Government schemes, Capturing economic potential and assessing needs of people. Next step will be putting these officers from all line departments and SMS under the village panchayats. Ultimately this team of elected Panchayats and the officers and officials of that particular panchayat will be the real model of Village development and grassroots governance. In India in last seventy years our development model was centralized and skewed towards urbanization and urban growth which has made our cities unsustainable and State Governments and National Governments are finding it difficult to meet the infrastructure requirements of huge migrating families from villages to cities. It is expected that Back to village mission will solve the problem of governance, equitable development, stop migration of villagers to cities and ensure balanced growth of both urban and rural areas. This will help in reducing urban and rural divide. In J&K State, other dimension of the scheme is that it will help in containing militancy and reduce new recruitment of disgruntled youth into militancy.
People have lots of expectation and hopes from this mission. State Government has announced seven days programme from 20th to 27th June 2018. It is to be seen how successfully programme is implemented. It should not remain a ritual of events for seven days only, but, it should be a continuous process in a mission mode. Back to Village project of Governor’s administration should be supported by all in the Government, by all employees unions and federations and by the civil society. It is expected that on one side this scheme will make administration accountable and transparent and on the other all public services shall be delivered at the village level. In coming years, if this concept is strengthened by the new popular Governments, I believe it is going to be the foundation of Ram Rajya. All government employees should happily and voluntarily go to the villages to serve the villagers and leave City Syndrome from their mindset. In J&K State, it is generally reported that teachers, doctors, revenue, block officers and officials from other departments do not like rural and remote area posting and pressurize Government machinery to get posting in cities. Most of the district field staff in all departments gets suspended by respective District Commissioners for being absent from their duties. All Government employees are engaged to serve the people and not rule the people. They shall have to come out of four walls of their air-conditioned cosy office rooms. Public is under distress and villagers have to waste time in Secretariat or different department for their problems. Even after wasting much of their time and money they do not get relief.
Ao Sare Gaon Chalein and make Back to Village mission a great success.
(The author is former IFS Officer)
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