Discontent and misgovernance as Tamil Nadu postpones panchayat elections

Overturned decisions, denial of central funds and lack of public say in budget planning and other crucial panchayat activities are setting back development and citizen participation across nearly 10,000 panchayats in the state. Chennai, Tamil Nadu: Four and a half years ago, the Muthugapatti gram panchayat in Namakkal district stopped private water tankers from illegally extracting its groundwater. Now, with no elected representatives to hold the fort, tankers are gradually resuming extraction, and residents are helpless, said former panchayat president Arul Rajesh. Like Muthugapatti, thousands of gram panchayats in Tamil Nadu are now losing the gains they made thanks to the state government taking over the panchayats’ administration since January 5, when the term of the elected panchayats ended. With the state government postponing the elections in 28 districts, citizens at the grassroots have little say in their daily affairs now.No elections in 9,624 gram panchayatsTamil Nadu currently has panchayat representatives in only nine districts where the elections were held in 2021. In 28 other districts, a total of 91,975 posts are vacant across the three-tier panchayat system, according to the Institute of Grassroots Governance (IGG). This includes 9,624 gram panchayat president posts, 76,746 posts of gram panchayat ward members, 5,090 block councillor posts and 515 district councillor posts.As of now, the state government has designated Block Development Officers (BDOs) as special officers to govern panchayats.IGG and other civil society organisations like Thannatchi and Voice of People have built a coalition demanding quick elections so that panchayats can function effectively by organising gram sabhas, implementing schemes properly and empowering elected representatives from marginalised communities. The coalition held a campaign in panchayats across 26 districts between January 26 and March 8. They also organised a protest in Chennai on March 30, demanding quick elections, in which about 230 people from these panchayats, including farmer leaders, SHG members, and former panchayat representatives, participated. Yet, the government has not responded, according to the coalition. While the Tamil Nadu government has delayed the elections in the name of delimitation, the coalition said this violates the Constitution and several court orders. Particularly, they point out a 2022 Supreme Court judgement on the delay in panchayat elections in Madhya Pradesh. The court ruled that such delay “borders on the breakdown of the rule of law”, and specified that delimitation cannot be a reason for delaying local body elections. Yet, Tamil Nadu has continued its practice of postponing panchayat elections this time too. Even the previous 2019 election was held after a three-year delay.Arul Rajesh, former president of Muthugapatti panchayat (Photo sourced by Navya PK, 101Reporters)Panchayat councils’ previous decisions overturnedIn the absence of elected councils, several panchayats are seeing their previous decisions being overturned or becoming ineffective. The BDOs who are now in charge each handle 10-15 or more panchayats, which means they hardly interact with the residents of each panchayat or understand their concerns. Residents have no platform to air their grievances either. Nandakumar Siva, Vice President of the NGO Thannatchi, said, “For example, T Kallupatti block in Madurai has more than 40 gram panchayats. The BDO is the only decision-making authority for all these panchayats, so there is a centralisation of power. Such centralisation also leads to a lag in development projects and even routine works.” In Muthugapatti village, private tanker owners used to draw water from wells 100-140 feet deep, which caused water levels to plummet in household and panchayat wells that were only 40-45 feet deep, said Arul Rajesh. “They mostly took water from their private land in the panchayat, but supplied it to industries 40-60 km away. As per rules, the panchayat can’t permit a commercial well within 100 m of a panchayat well. I stopped them from drawing water based on this.” He said he has complained to the BDO after the tanker owners gradually resumed water extraction recently, but there has been no action.During his term, Rajesh also held a special gram sabha to build a new panchayat well since the water table in the existing wells had gone down. “Because of the conflict between the panchayat and the tanker mafia, contractors were unwilling to do this work, fearing obstruction at some point. So I crowdsourced funds from residents and returned it to them later when we got money for the project under the MGNREGS in phases,” he said.But Rajesh complained that the operators who supply drinking water from the new well to households are not doing so diligently now in the absence of ward members. “Earlier, every house used to get water once in seven days as ward members monitored the system and spoke to operators regularly. Now it’s once in 15 days.”In another gram panchayat, Vavipalayam in Thiruppur district, the BDO overturned a decision by the previous panchayat council to deny NOC for a factory. Former panchayat president K Kalamani said, “I rejected the company’s application in 2023 as people had objected to it due to the possibility of water pollution.” After the BDO’s approval recently, the residents held several protests, forcing the project to be put on hold, she added.The protest organised by the NGO coalition in Chennai on 30 March demanding panchayat elections (Photo - Nandakumar Siva)The most vulnerable groups are rendered powerlessFor women and people from Scheduled Castes who are largely excluded from political power, the thousands of reserved seats in panchayats present an opportunity to make themselves heard. Rajesh and Kalamani, both from SC communities, are keen to contest again but are unable to. “I hail from a habitation that the police historically designated as a black spot village (areas said to have high levels of illicit activities, caste violence). In case of any crime, the police first interrogate people in these villages. But as panchayat president, I proved that I am not a black spot village person and am perfectly suitable for this society,” Rajesh said. “During my term, the government’s State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD) also selected Muthugapatti as one of the 10 Panchayat Learning Centres (PLCs) in the state.” PLCs are supposed to be models for other panchayats due to their best practices and initiatives. Panchayats may lose central grants, Gram sabhas, MGNREGS schemes derailedNGOs also say that, in the absence of elected councils, Tamil Nadu panchayats are likely to lose grants from the Central Finance Commission (CFC) that make up a significant part of their annual budgets. According to operational guidelines for awarding CFC grants to panchayats, released by the Finance Ministry in 2021, gram panchayats will be eligible for the grants only if they have elected councils. Nandakumar cited the example of panchayats in Gujarat that didn’t receive CFC grants last year for this reason.Since January, BDOs should have held two gram sabhas, but NGOs say the minutes and resolutions of these meetings are not being recorded properly.M Gurusaravanan, Chairperson of IGG, which has studied gram sabhas in Tamil Nadu, said, “Generally only 200-300 out of the 12,000-odd panchayats in Tamil Nadu hold gram sabhas in the spirit intended and according to the rules. In the remaining panchayats, elected representatives used to write their own resolutions. Now BDOs are doing the same.”BDOs are also preparing this year’s gram panchayat budgets, which could impact how schemes get utilised, he added. “For example, the panchayat budget has a component called labour budget for which the panchayat has to bring MGNREGS workers together and prepare the list of works for the year.”Generally, only a few panchayats prepare labour budgets as per this process. But this year, BDOs have reduced the number of large-scale works and have prepared schemes that involve minimal workers, says Panchayati Raj activist Dinesh Kumar. He also points out that since February, MGNREGS workers in blocks such as Thellar in Tiruvannamalai have been paid daily wages as low as Rs 30 without even an option to complain. This is because the union government has not released sufficient funds to cover all MGNREGS works in the state since December.“In Thellar, MGNREGS work has stopped due to non-payment of wages. MGNREGS website shows that in February and March, workers in several other blocks were paid less than Rs 110 (which is only about a third of the actual wage of Rs 319),” said Kumar. “If panchayats had elected representatives, they would have petitioned the authorities, put pressure on them to start new projects this year, and communicated the reasons for the delay to workers.”Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Additional Chief Secretary at the Rural Development & Panchayat Raj Department of Tamil Nadu, has not responded to our questions regarding the complaints about governance in panchayats or the government's plans regarding elections. Several panchayats don’t want to be part of municipalitiesSeveral gram panchayats are also resisting the government’s delimitation plan that would involve merging them with municipalities. The main reason is that these panchayats are dependent on farming and MGNREGS. In Cuddalore district, Lalpuram gram panchayat has been protesting in recent months against the plan to make it part of the Chidambaram municipality. Zakir Hussain, former union councillor of Melbhuvanagiri block, which includes Lalpuram panchayat, said that nearly a fourth of the panchayat residents depend on MGNREGS for their livelihood. “Lalpuram also has 400 acres of agricultural land, which will gradually get converted for other purposes if it becomes part of the municipality.” He said the panchayat’s ongoing implementation of rural housing schemes and setting up facilities like drinking water would also be disrupted.“Our demand is that delimitation should only be done 10-15 years later so that the panchayat is developed enough to become part of the municipality by then,” said Hussain, adding that the government has not responded to their protests.Once part of municipalities, these panchayats will have no gram sabhas. And Area Sabhas, the urban counterpart of gram sabhas, still largely remain on paper in Tamil Nadu. NGOs say the state government should have done the delimitation exercise while the panchayat councils were still in power, so that they could have raised their objections formally.While the lack of panchayat councils has far-reaching consequences for citizens, the Tamil Nadu government continues to give little importance to timely panchayat elections. Meanwhile, panchayats in several other states, such as Rajasthan, Telangana, Jammu & Kashmir and Manipur, have been suffering poor governance and denial of central funds due to delayed elections.Cover Photo - Rural women demanding panchayat elections as part of a statewide campaign by the NGO coalition (Photo - Nandakumar Siva)

From ice cream to Kole wetlands: How a Kerala panchayat is tackling poverty with planning and participation

The story of Malappuram district’s Perumpadappa panchayat is one of how local institutions, when they plan, prioritise and are supported by the administration, can be a vehicle for grassroots economic change Malappuram, Kerala: Two decades after she quit her job as a primary school teacher to take care of her children, Fathima VV (48) stepped out of her home to work again. This time, not in a classroom, but as the head of a small ice cream manufacturing unit in Kerala’s Malappuram district. With a grant from the Perumpadappa Panchayat, Fathima’s business, Blueberry, has grown to employ four people and supplies ice cream to shops across the district. A former panchayat ward member herself, she hopes to grow her distribution statewide soon. In 2022-23, the year in which this coastal panchayat won the second prize in the ‘poverty-free and enhanced livelihoods’ category of the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Panchayat Satat Vikas Puraskar or the National Panchayat Awards, Fathima's was one of three women-led enterprises which received Rs 5 lakhs cumulatively to invest in their business; one of the other grantees, an SHG, expanded their paper bag unit. “After Covid, our focus was on livelihoods and poverty alleviation since many people had lost their jobs during the pandemic,” Bineesha Mustafa, president of the Perumpadappa panchayat, said. “Some homemakers were interested in working outside the home, so we helped them start businesses as well." Since then, 24 Gulf-returnees have also been identified to receive Rs 31 lakhs in total under the state government’s Kudumbashree Mission to start new businesses; some of them now rent out boats for tourism. Fathima’s immediate goal is to buy a generator for her factory and about 25 freezers that she can supply to shops to store Bluberry's products. Stocking her merchandise in existing freezers in shops is affecting her profits. These new purchases would cost her Rs 10 lakh, and she plans to apply for a subsidy from the panchayat again this year to cover part of the costs. According to Sunil M, Vice Chairman of the panchayat’s Planning Board, “Panchayats can provide subsidies of up to 40% for women-led self-employment ventures,” like Fatima’s ice cream factory, which she now manages herself after the exit of her two male business partners. “We got Rs 3 lakh subsidy from the panchayat, and another Rs 1 lakh loan from the bank. This has covered 10% of our cost so far,” she says. The subsidy is structured so that entrepreneurs receive it only when they repay their bank loans, ensuring “the panchayat’s money doesn’t get wasted in loss-making ventures”, according to Village Extension Officer, Roopesh C. During the award-winning year, the panchayat spent Rs 2.7 crore out of its 4 crore annual budget on poverty alleviation, focusing on livelihoods. It is for this effort that Mustafa received the award from President Droupadi Murmu in New Delhi in December 2024.Sunil explained that the panchayat’s recognitions are not due to one single project, but rather the consistent and efficient implementation of different schemes and said “any panchayat can do this”. “Only if local officials of all the departments cooperate,” he added, saying, “In Perumpadappa, we have a good team of administration officers to implement whatever initiatives we decide, and it is our biggest advantage.”Bineesha Mustafa, president of Perumbadappa gram panchayat, receiving the award from President Droupadi Murmu (Photo sourced by Navya PK)Groundwork for growthAt Perumpadappa panchayat – home to approximately 33,000 people, spread across nearly 7,600 households – poverty alleviation is not just about helping people make money, it’s about helping them save, reclaim and rebuild. The panchayat’s main initiatives that year, apart from funding women entrepreneurs, included subsidising farming and livestock management, housing subsidies for landed Schedule Caste families, and healthcare, including ensuring access to medicines for the chronically ill in need.Perumbadappu’s achievements are a result of the long, hard work that went into their five-year plan that began in 2019, which prioritised housing, drinking water and farming. Of the 420 homes that were identified for the housing subsidy due to their dilapidated conditions, 300 have already benefited. Drinking water has been supplied to all households through the Jal Jeevan Mission, says Sunil. And farming and livestock remain the panchayat’s main ‘productive’ sectors. The Kerala government hasn’t given instructions for a fresh five-year plan in 2024, but Perumpadappa has continued to prepare its annual Gram Panchayat Development Plan in the spirit that it is intended, with stakeholder inputs and a current survey. Each year, four standing committees — made up of ward members — draft the budget according to the government norms. The draft is reviewed by the panchayat’s planning committee, which includes implementing officers from line departments, i.e the administration.Once this internal review is done, the draft budget is taken to the people through the gram sabhas. In Kerala, gram sabhas are held at the ward level due to high population density. Participation in gram sabhas can vary. “Some wards have more participants than required, whereas in a few wards we have had to reschedule gram sabhas because of low turnout (If the quorum of 10% of voters isn’t met),” said Sajan C Jacob, Secretary, Perumpadappa Panchayat. To ensure consensus, two representatives from each ward are chosen to attend the annual development seminar, where the budget is finalised.Currently, one major roadblock in effective planning is the panchayat's lack of updated digital records of local administrative data. "Sometimes the data is not clear, and only during implementation do we realise that the project isn’t feasible and has to be revised," says Sunil.To fix the gap, this year the panchayat has allocated Rs 12 lakh to hire an external agency to do a comprehensive survey. “The idea is to have all of the panchayat’s data available online, including taxation data. We will also give an Annual Maintenance Contract to the agency for five years to update the data,” says Sunil. He believes this will help the panchayat plan schemes better, raise more revenue, and provide services to more people.The funding puzzleA pie chart showing the budget funds of the panchayat Farm to pharmacyIn 2022-23 alone, according to a press note from the panchayat, they spent Rs 70 lakh on healthcare, including medicine supply for patients below the poverty line (especially kidney patients) and covering the salaries of one additional shift doctor and pharmacist at the PHC and a palliative nurse at the panchayat's palliative care unit. What stands out is a creative balancing of funds from the centre, state and the panchayat’s revenues to meet the state’s mandates as well as community needs. “In 2022-23, we used mainly state grants, and a small part of the central grants, for the poverty eradication programmes,” says Sunil, with the Centre’s tied funds going to cleanliness and drinking water, and untied funds going towards construction of the new panchayat building, in line with their theme for the year which was infrastructure development. This project also used most of the panchayat’s own revenue that year, which comes mainly through taxes. The year the panchayat was able to subsidise housing for 40 families, with Rs 4 lakh given to each family under funds from the three-tier panchayat system, the state government and HUDCO loans. Since the beneficiaries were fewer in number, the panchayat was even able to reduce the loan burden by tapping into the state's Plan General funds, in addition to the Special Component Plan funds, meant specifically for the welfare of Scheduled Castes. On the 300 hectares of Kole wetlands that come under the panchayat, farmers are being assisted to continue the traditional practice of below-sea-level paddy farming. This Ramsar site is a unique ecosystem which acts as a natural reservoir during the monsoon, storing excess rainwater and helping prevent floods. In the dry season, when water levels recede, the land is used for cultivation. “Generally, paddy farming is not so profitable, and in the absence of government support, farmers may stop doing it,” Sunil said. To encourage cultivation, the panchayat purchases seeds and fertilisers and supplies them free of cost through Krishi Bhavans. It also provides individual subsidies to partially offset labour costs, he added. In the livestock sector, subsidies were granted for buying livestock, providing treatment and vaccinations, supplying nutritious feed, and assisting dairy farmers.Additionally, to expand cultivation under paddy as envisioned under the panchayat’s five-year plan, proposals have been submitted to the Kerala Land Development Corporation Ltd (KLDC) to convert barren private land into cultivable plots. The KLDC undertakes infrastructure works like bund construction and electrification using state funds. According to Sunil, most barren land in the panchayat is now cultivable. They are usually taken on lease by entities like Kudumbashree, who farm there with MGNREGS workers.Sunil adds, “Even during fund shortages, we ensure that the budget for productive sectors is protected. We instead reduce spending on areas like road works. That’s because the productive and welfare sectors affect people’s lives the most."Edited by Tanya ShrivastavaCover Photo - Perumbadappa panchayat has encouraged paddy farming through subsidies to farmers (Representational image - Bobinson, CC BY-SA)

NIRDPR funding puzzle raises question of to be or not to be

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 aheadNIRDPR 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 disengagementSince 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 solutionNIRDPR 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)