Diary of a Rural Manager!

It's fine to have people working in development sector with degrees from the elite colleges. But even if they are good at statistics and analysis, they cannot be decision-makers without a grassroots experience. Problem with today’s education is that it doesn't have any relationship to the real world. Images get reinforced over time with newspaper, media and cinema. Innocent Villagers, Shrewd Businessmen, Corrupt bureaucracy and Selfish Political leaders become stereotype. Such perception breaks with each intersection and performance in the field. Living in the village with no other business but to follow native life in the present day of social media buzz and 24*7 connectivity seems bizarre. But one sees the traditions, ceremonies and transactions over and over again. What it leaves one with temporary chaos in the beginning. In addition to fostering mutual understanding, perpetually curiosity and occasionally confused volunteer start to see the way of living of a community....

Government is so agile to implement e-governance solutions for improving its tax collection system, but prefers neolithic methods for cash disbursal decisive and purposeful governance.  The government’s budget is a mess. Subsidies have been overdone and not properly targeted. In the current year, total subsidies will be over 2.8 trillion rupees. Instead of making the direct cash transfer, all of the welfare scheme has been turned into a giant procurement exercise. That is why, Reserve Bank of India governor  Raghuram Rajan made a strong pitch for direct cash transfers  to the poor, saying this would help reduce corruption by breaking the "cycle of dependence". A cash transfer is a development project stripped of any active management costs, and its performance tracks the success or failure of the individual recipient. Cash Transfers are examples of certain transfer payments include welfare (financial aid), social security, and government making subsidies for certain busi...

India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi's slogan "minimum government, maximum governance" is a serious goal. Its implementation on the grass root level will be tried and tested, and that is where most of the government’s schemes fail. There are myriads of difficulties faced by the government in properly designing and implementing of the public policy. Continuing from the previous article: ' Why Government Schemes Fail? ', I will examine same question from another angles. Design:  Let us start with the design of the government schemes. What works well in the coastal belt of Kerala is unlikely to work in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh, or for that matter, hilly lands of Garhwal. Hence, one size fits all schemes must be carefully reviewed. There is a strong tendency for planners to go in for prestige and grand projects. Through this they can leave monuments to their activity, even if defunct. The visibility is major emphasis than actual proposed work. It ...

“By means of deep meditation and magical power it may be possible to sleep on fire, but it is impossible to sleep with an empty stomach in a situation of poverty.” - Thiruvalluvar (50 B.C.) New poverty line has been redrawn by Rangarajan Committee. It is Rs 32 for rural India and Rs 47 for urban India . The earlier poverty line figure was Rs 27 for rural India and Rs 33 for Urban India.  Columnist T N Ninan has given us glimpse on the approach taken for defining poverty line - "The Rangarajan committee, set up two years ago to take a fresh look at poverty issues, has according to a newspaper report recommended a radically new way of deciding who is officially poor. New in India, that is, because the approach that the committee has reportedly recommended is already in practice in the US and Europe: poverty is defined, not as an absolute level of income, but relative to the average levels of income. The US says all those whose income is 40 per cent or less than the average (median...

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has inaugurated the Xavier University on the outskirts of the Capital city of Bhubaneswar. Report by Odisha Diary bureau can be read in the  weblink here . Congratulations to my Alma Mater for inauguration of "The Xavier University, Bhubaneswar" !