Mission Antyodaya

In Context 

• This article argues that with the right momentum ‘Mission Antyodaya’  can help to transform rural India  in terms of development and social justice.

Background 

• Constitutional Mandate: 
  • The Indian Constitution mandates local governments to prepare and implement plans for ‘economic development and social justice’ (Articles 243G and 243W).
• Complementary institutions and measures:
  • The gram sabha to facilitate people’s participation.
  • The District Planning committee (DPC) to prepare bottom up and spatial development plans.
  • The State Finance Commission (SFC) to ensure vertical and horizontal equity
    •  one-third reservation for women (in most States, now 50%), population-based representation to Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe communities, and so on were introduced to promote this goal. 
• Failure of decentralisation reforms:
  • India’s decentralisation reforms have failed to take the decentralisation process forward in delivering social justice and progress in rural India.
    • India spends more than ?3 trillion every year for the rural poor from the Central and State Budgets and bank-credit linked self-help programmes. 

Stats Analysis 

• The statistics brought into the public domain by the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 were ‘demanding’ remedial intervention. 
  • 90% of rural households have no salaried jobs, 53.7 million households are landless.
  •  6.89 million female-headed households have no adult members to support.
  •  49% suffer from multiple deprivations, 51.4% derive sustenance from manual casual labour, 23.73 million are with no room or only one room to live, and so on cannot be easily dismissed by any democratic government. 

• Therefore the ‘Mission Antyodaya’ project was a needed intervention.

About  ‘Mission Antyodaya’ 

• It was adopted in the Union Budget 2017-18.
• It is a convergence and accountability framework aiming to bring optimum use and management of resources allocated by 27 Ministries/ Department of the Government of India under various programmes for the development of rural areas. 
• It is envisaged as a state-led initiative with Gram Panchayats as focal points of convergence efforts.
• The Ministry of Panchayati Raj and the Ministry of Rural Development act as the nodal agents to take the mission forward.
• It aims to eradicate poverty in its multiple dimensions among rural households.
• Annual survey in Gram Panchayats across the country is an important aspect of Mission Antyodaya framework. 
  • It is carried out coterminous with the People’s Plan Campaign (PPC) of the Ministry of Panchayat Raj .
  • Its purpose is to lend support to the process of participatory planning for the Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP).
  • It helps to assess the various development gaps at the gram panchayat level, by collecting data regarding the 29 subjects assigned to panchayats by the Eleventh Schedule of the Constitution.

Objectives 

• Ensuring effective use of resources through convergence of various Government Schemes with Gram Panchayats as the basic unit of planning.
• Work with a focused micro plan for sustainable livelihood for every deprived household.
• Conduct an annual survey on measurable outcomes at Gram Panchayat level to monitor the progress in the development process across rural areas.
• Supporting the process of participatory planning for Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP), which will improve service delivery, enhance citizenship, create pace for an alliance of people’s institutions and groups and improve governance at the local level.
• Encourages partnerships with a network of professionals, institutions and enterprises to further accelerate the transformation of rural livelihoods.

Issues Highlighted

•  Infrastructural gaps
  • The ‘Mission Antyodaya’ survey in 2019-20 for the first time collected data that shed light on the infrastructural gaps from 2.67 lakh gram panchayats, comprising 6.48 lakh villages with 1.03 billion population. 
  • For an insight into the gap report,the State-wise break-up of the score-values may be used .
    • The maximum score values assigned will add up to 100 and are presented in class intervals of 10. 
      • No State in India falls in the top score bracket of 90 to 100, 1,484 gram panchayats fall in the bottom bracket. 
      • The total number of gram panchayats for all the 18 States that have reported adds up only to 260, constituting only 0.10% of the total 2,67,466 gram panchayats in the country. 

• Composite index data
  • The composite index data(a sort of surrogate for human development) are also not encouraging.
    •  Although only 15 gram panchayats in the country fall in the bottom range below 10 scores, more than a fifth of gram panchayats in India are below the 40 range. 
  • Building ‘economic development and social justice’ remains a distant goal even after 30 years of the decentralisation reforms and nearly 75 years into Independence.

• No serious effort to converge resources
  • The scope to reduce the growing rural-urban disparities is tremendous.
  • There is no serious effort to converge resources (the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the National Rural Livelihood Mission, National Social Assistance Programme, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, etc.) and save administrative expenses.
  • Another lapse is the failure to deploy the data to India’s fiscal federalism, particularly to improve the transfer system and horizontal equity in the delivery of public goods in India at the sub-State level.
    • Evidently the Fifteenth Finance Commission has missed it. 
• Nearly four years have passed since the Mission was launched with the specific target “to make 50,000 gram panchayats poverty free by 2019.
  •  Nothing happened but the goal posts have been moved to 2022.

Way Forward 

• Mission Antyodaya’ bears great promise to revive the objectives of great democratic reforms. 
  • The Ministry of Panchayati Raj and the Ministry of Rural Development act as the nodal agents to take the mission forward.

The constitutional goal of planning and implementing economic development and social justice can be achieved only through strong policy interventions.