With the Centre allocating only Rs 1 lakh in the coming financial year for the national institute dedicated to building gram panchayat capacity, verdict is still out on whether it should continue grassroots engagement by generating resources on its own or wind up operations
Hyderabad, Telangana: In
this year’s budget, the Union Finance Ministry almost completely slashed its
grants to the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj
(NIRDPR), the only national institute dedicated to building gram panchayat
capacity for local self-governance. The institute’s allocation this year is a
meagre Rs 1 lakh, or 0.01% of its usual annual spending of around Rs 75 crore. Once
the new financial year (FY) kicks in on April 1, NIRDPR will have only Rs 1 lakh the
entire FY to pay salaries and pensions of 800-odd people.
An
autonomous body under the Ministry of Rural Development, NIRDPR works as a
think tank, creating the frameworks and guidelines for local self-governance of
panchayats. To cite a few examples, it played a key role in creating roadmaps
to devolve powers to panchayats after the 73rd Constitutional Amendment of
1993. It also developed the methodology for social audit of the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme, which allows
beneficiaries to monitor the scheme and its fund utilisation.
Every year, NIRDPR trains around 40,000 master trainers, who then
go on to train elected representatives of various panchayats. Other
organisations that train panchayats, such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
and the State Institutes of Rural Development (SIRDs), often rely on the
framework given by NIRDPR.
Since the 65-year-old NIRDPR is the only national institute that
performs these functions, shutting it down would further curtail India’s
fledgling decentralised governance system, say activists and panchayat
representatives. The panchayati raj system came into effect in the 90s, but
most panchayats still do not function independently as MLAs and state-level
officials control their planning and finances. Even gram panchayat elections
often get delayed by years.
The fund
cut is not a one-off problem, but a part of the government’s larger plan to
disengage with NIRDPR. It may now need to generate its own
funds to survive. Experts say this would be challenging, if not impossible.
This
week, NIRDPR Employees’ Association plans to be in Delhi as the Parliament’s second
leg of the budget session began on Monday. “Some MPs have assured us that they
would raise the issue in the session. Employees are very worried about their
salaries in April. Our immediate demand is only to protect employee salaries
and pensions,” association president D Rama Krishna tells 101Reporters.
Since the budget cut, employees and pensioners have held multiple
protests and have given representations to MPs and Union ministers, including Finance
Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. However, none in the government has responded to
them.
Disruptions ahead
NIRDPR
relies on government grants to cover its training and research programmes,
staff salaries, pensions and campus maintenance. It conducts 1,200 to 1,500
training programmes each year, with about 30 people per batch, says a faculty member of NIRDPR Hyderabad on condition of anonymity.
“These sessions are mostly for people from SIRDs and Extension Training
Centres [ETCs], and district and block level officials, who will then train
gram panchayat representatives. The institute offers training for free, and provides food
and accommodation during the training period. It also gives some funds to SIRDs and ETCs to train others,”
says the faculty member.
Panthdeep
Singh, a third-time sarpanch of Chhina panchayat, Gurdaspur, Punjab, has
immensely benefited from around 10 NIRDPR training sessions. “Panchayat representatives
generally do not know their rights. I learned about the Panchayati Raj Act,
government schemes, and the process of preparing the annual Gram Panchayat
Development Plan [GPDP] through these training sessions,” says Singh, whose
panchayat recently received multiple awards, including for GPDP preparation.
“In my
panchayat, women could not work under MGNREGA earlier because of social norms. I
was able to resolve it, thanks to NIRDPR training. We also learnt to manage our wastes, form SHGs and launch initiatives to become carbon
neutral,” notes Singh, who particularly benefited from the discussions held on pan-India level solutions/case studies while attending the training.
NIRDPR also
trains resource persons on using upgraded IT systems of schemes such as
MGNREGA, besides training representatives from African and Eastern European
countries on rural development.
The fund
crunch could affect training sessions and research projects. “No agency will
pay for research on poverty, women empowerment and rural employment. It is the
responsibility of the state to pay for this," says the faculty member quoted earlier.
The fund
cut will also affect the salaries of about 500 people, including daily wage workers,
across NIRDPR’s main campus in Hyderabad and its two other centres in Delhi and Guwahati,
as well as pensions of 300 retirees. In its wake, the institute’s courses could
also get derailed or become costlier to cover salaries.
Overall,
about 210 students attend NIRDPR’s PG diploma course in rural development and
four distance education programmes. This year, the institute was set to launch a
PhD programme in Rural Development and a School of Excellence in Panchayati
Raj.
Shift to disengagement
Since 2018,
the Union government has been shutting down or merging autonomous institutions
based on a report submitted by the Ratan P Watal committee, which had
recommended rationalising a third of its 679 autonomous bodies by reasoning
that they provide no useful services. The government has already dissolved several institutions based on this report in the last few years,
and has been proposing to disengage with NIRDPR too.
During their
meetings, NIRDPR’s General Council, headed by Minister of Rural Development
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and Executive Council have discussed disengagement. However,
employees say they have received no communication from the NIRDPR
administration about the proposal. In response to an employee’s recent Right to
Information application, the Rural Development Ministry said that the details
of the disengagement proposal could be shared only after a final decision is
taken.
The faculty member says the institute’s administration, headed by its director general, plans to double
or triple the number of trainings and to request various ministries to fund
these under their rural schemes. But such funding is not guaranteed, and
sufficient trainers and trainees are unlikely. NIRDPR is
already heavily understaffed, with two-thirds of its 120 faculty positions
being vacant.
NIRDPR Director General Dr Narendra Kumar did not respond to our questions on the disengagement proposal and the way forward.
With
disengagement seemingly inevitable, faculty members submitted a proposal this
January to the Rural Development Ministry requesting five years’ time for the
transition, and suggested four options for the institute’s functioning after
this period. They have not heard back from the ministry yet.
Flaws
exist, but closure no solution
NIRDPR does
have shortcomings, but nearly everyone agrees that the government needs to
strengthen rather than abandon it.
“This is
the only forum where training and consultations with panchayat functionaries
happen. They create frameworks for rural governance and pass it on to the
SIRDs,” says Binoy Acharya, member secretary, NGO Unnati, Gujarat. He points
out that NIRDPR developed the methodology for social audit of MGNREGA scheme, ways to incorporate the UN Sustainable Development Goals into
panchayats’ planning, framework to map the devolution of power to panchayats,
etc.
Retired bureaucrat and former NIRDPR director general SM Vijayanand has worked extensively on developing Kerala’s panchayati raj system. He says that some autonomous institutions [under the Centre] may be non-functional, but painting all of them with the same brush is wrong. "Without funding, how will NIRDPR generate resources for training? State governments will not pay for it."
He agrees that NIRDPR does have shortcomings in its functioning as a think tank: “There is no
other institute as NIRDPR with so much knowledge of the rural development and
panchayati raj system. However, they need to develop capabilities in various
sectors like livelihood and climate change. The solution is to build up these
capabilities, as rural development needs a new direction when the country is
urbanising.”
WR Reddy, another retired bureaucrat who was a former NIRDPR director general, believes the institute cannot run training programmes on local self-governance on a commercial scale.
However, T R Raghunandan, a Karnataka-based former bureaucrat who now works on strengthening decentralised governance, tells 101Reporters that NIRDPR’s training does not address panchayat representatives’ practical challenges in maintaining their autonomy. “Today, panchayat representatives in Karnataka are well-educated and aware. The panchayats are collecting huge amounts as property tax too, but senior IAS officers are issuing illegal directions to them on how to spend this money. NIRDPR’s training does not address these issues; it is generic and is about getting panchayats to perform agency functions on behalf of higher level governments.” Besides, he says, the institution hardly analyses data on fiscal decentralisation in its research.
In the
absence of government support, he says the institute should develop
demand-based content, and provide online and even subscription-based courses.
“Panchayat representatives are in the hot seat, and there is demand among them
for such courses,” Raghunandan notes.
NGO Mission Samriddhi works with NIRDPR to develop training content. Its founder Arun Jain says these are valid concerns. “NIRDPR has largely been doing level 1 training that covers basics such as the role of representatives, various schemes, GPDP, etc. Whereas the Kerala Institute of Local Administration under the Kerala government does a structured three-level training programme for the state’s panchayat representatives, which include how to conduct gram sabhas, resolve conflicts, etc.”
“The need is for level 3 training, but in the Indian scenario even NIRDPR’s level 1 training should be accelerated manifold because most representatives, especially in less developed regions, are unaware of their role. Only a fraction of them are getting any training at all,” he adds.
According to Jain, there are huge disparities among states in terms of development and decentralisation. “The scenario in Karnataka, for example, is a lot better than that in Bihar, where representatives would benefit from level 1 training. So instead of shutting down NIRDPR, the government should set up six to seven such institutes for different regions of the country. They should develop separate training programmes based on the needs of the panchayats in each region.”
But for now, NIRDPR's fate hangs in the balance as they await a response from the Union government.
Caption: The academic, non-academic, contractual employees, pensioners of the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), along with their family members staged a peaceful dharna at Dharna Chowk, Domalguda, Hyderabad, on March 9 (Sourced)
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