how the village must develop over the next
five years. After eight public meetings in all wards of the
village, they came out with a five-year plan.
"The sincerity of our panch members will be gauged by the
alacrity with which they carry out the proposals in the
people's plan. The gram sabha and all villagers of
Chandor-Cavorim expect the panchayat to immediately start
working out the cost of implementing the proposals outlined
here," said Tiago Miranda.
THE FIRST STEP
The Five-year People's Plan for the Sustainable Development
of Chandor (2007-2012) was presented to the village gram
sabha (village council meeting) on December 10, 2006 in the
panchayat hall.
Accepting the plan, the chair of the gram sabha, the
sarpanch, announced that the panchayat would soon call a
special, or extraordinary, gram sabha to discuss the plan.
However, that has still not happened, but villagers have not
lost hope. People have various demands, and these, form an
integral part of the People's Plan for the Sustainable
Development of Chandor (2007-2012). They have short term and
long term plans.
The villagers propose to have a waste reduction and recycling
system before June 2007, 100% literacy before 2008, village
land cooperative by June 2007, increase locally generated
income to at least 50% of total village income, raise two
crops by 2012 through natural, ecologically-sound organic
farming, set up a gas agency, a petrol pump and a bus service
through the village cooperative before 2008 and make the
village Panchayat totally people-friendly by December 2007.
HOW TO ACHIEVE THIS
Give the economy a little push by promoting agriculture,
tourism, dairy farming, horticulture, poultry, and animal
rearing. Encourage people to go for natural farming, using
organic manure and farm as a cooperative, treating all the
Communidade land as an indivisible, collectively owned unit.
Also restore the vil1age to a point in time when myths seemed
natural enough, to attract tourists. Also promote backwater
tourism. Keep the village centre and tintto (market) clean,
less crowded and unpolluted as possible and plan sub-markets.
Besides, build a new structure to construct a new identity
that people immediately connect with Chandor. Also promote
dairy farming as an important economic activity in the
village, with the panchayat promoting welfare of "dairyists".
Also consider a cooperative dairy farm in the village and
provide "dairyists" a common site for their milch animals, to
pre: vent inconvenience to nearby residents.
Dedicate most of the non-paddy Communidade and private land
to a mix of horticulture, poultry, animal husbandry and
piggery projects. Rush mat weaving, using the Iou reed found
over large stretches near the marshy areas around Cotta and
Guirdolim, is another possibility considered in the plan.
The Handicrafts Corporation and the Industries Department
make funds available for conducting training in rush mat
making. Develop small fisheries projects, using government
schemes for inland nurseries
WASTE REDUCTION AND RECYCLING
A recycling unit could generate fertilizer for the
cooperative farm and create a couple of jobs too. The
panchayat has enough funds funds.
Also attempt to reduce the amount of garbage created in the
village, particularly in the market place and in the church
environs and come up with waste reduction systems. At least
ten compost stations to be dug up at various points in the
village immediately.
THE PANCHAYAT
Attract more government funds by pulling in more welfare
schemes into the village. Taxes are another source of income
the panchayat needs to pursue seriously.
The increased income may be spent on a free anti-rabies
vaccination pro¬gramme for all registered dogs in the
village. They also talk about the role and importance of
Panchayat, Sarpanch, panchas and Gram Sabhas.
THE VILLAGE CO-OPERATIVE
With the Communidades of Cavorim and Chandor proving
incapable of protecting village interests, the villagers
suggest that it is time for all Chandorcars (villagers of
Chandor) to take over the task of safeguarding the physical
integrity of the village and of the means of sustenance by
forming a villagers' cooperative to oversee the egalitarian,
sustainable and cooperative development of our village.
NON-RESIDENT CHANDORCAR INCOME
Channel some of the foreign money into income-generating
projects in the village. Ensure some enriching activity, for
Non-Resident Chandorcars when they return home for their
vacations.
MORE ROADS AND PARKING PLACES
Early commencement of and completion of the proposed bridge
over the railway tracks near New Township. While planning
more roads and new bridges, ensure safety on roads. Provide
proper parking place, bus service and electricity.
PEOPLE MATTER
They also talk about empowering children and women. Besides
improving school infrastructure, provide for an outdoor
badminton or tennis court, gymnasium, table tennis, a
community TV set, computers, newspapers, magazines, and even
dancing in the corner if some people feel inclined to move a
leg.
"After all, the development and prosperity of our village is
the responsibility of all Chandorcars," added Fernandes.
---
This article was first published in the Gomantak Times issue
of February 25, 2007, under the title "People's Plan --
Chandor" and is authored by Preetu Nair.
Nair is a senior reporter at the Gomantak Times and can be
contacted via email or at the newspaper offices at Sant Inez
in Panjim, Goa 403001. Her blog is at
Linken Fernandes can be contacted at Chandor via phone
0091.832.2784784
Chandor shows us what development from the grassroots really
looks like
By Rahul Goswami
The community of Chandor has made and delivered an emphatic
statement. The 'Five Year People's Plan for the Sustainable
Development of Chandor (2007-2012)' is a document whose
importance cannot be overstated for Goa. A work-in-progress,
for that is what it is, it contains the spirit and confidence
of a community in itself, awareness of its location as a unit
and of the desired future of that unit, and it shines with a
sense of belief, enthusiasm and community solidarity. Chandor
has gifted Goa a model of thought and intent, no less.
Even as, through 2006, the sound and fury about Goa's
Regional Plan 2011 gathered and grew, the Chandor Development
Forum was putting in place the very mechanisms, the very
processes, that had been found to be absent in the
state-level plan.
"A development plan is ideally prepared with the active
participation of all the people for whom it is intended,"
states the preface to the Chandor document.
"It was therefore proposed that the views of all the
residents in the village should be sought and their
aspiration and hopes understood before the plan was
finalised. Subsequently, some villagers took it on ourselves
to go around every corner of Chandor and ask people for their
views on how our village must develop over the next few
years."
How very different, how much more truly democratic, more
genuinely representative than the 'official' plan for the
state of Goa, which was dislodged only via popular outrage,
public protest and legal challenge.
Indeed, independent of state-sanctioned departments and
methods -- and of the the reformed planning paradigms that
are only very slowly taking root in the country -- the
Chandor Development Forum has shown how 'participation' must
work in theory and practice.
The Planning Commission, in its direction to the state of
India for the preparation of district level plans, wanted
that "the early part of the year 2006-07 should be devoted to
preparing for each district a vision, through a participative
process starting from the grassroots, as to what would be the
perspective for development over the next 10 to 15 years."
The articulation of such a vision is best done in each
planning unit, right down to the gram panchayat level,
stating with respect to each area what the needs and
potential are, what the attainable levels are and what the
goals to be reached could be.
A basic requirement, the Planning Commission tells us, is
that the preparation of the vision is not conditioned by
schemes and programmes. I shall repeat that for the benefit
of Goa's 'monntris' (ministers, or, losely, politicians) who
spawn schemes and programmes with the speed and alacrity of
the anopheles mosquito -- community vision is not equal to
socio-political bribery.
This vision is needed to primarily articulated in terms of
goals and outcomes and would address basically, three aspects
of development: human development indicators, infrastructure
development and development in the productive sector.
The Chandor document is excellently articulated (Linken
Fernandes and comrades, take a bow) and it has put in place
the structures that will enable the community --
Chandor-Cavorim and Guirdolim -- to fill in the three aspects
of development.
The idea is that the envisioning process, being
participative, builds a spirit of teamwork and begins the
process of breaking down the departmentwise 'planning' that
is now dominant and which plagues Indian national and state
planning.
Are we happy living the way we do now? Does Chandor's
physical environment and living spaces promote a healthy,
stress-free life for our children and us? Are all the
conditions present that can ensure that our lives will
continue to flourish?
Are the institutions which have such a big influence on our
lives locally -- the school, the panchayat, the comunidades,
the fabrica -- performing optimally and in our best
interests? These are the key questions that the Chandor
document asks and then proceeds to find answers to.
At the national level, such a question-and-answer approach is
called 'envisioning' and incorporates ideas of attainment
regarding vital social needs such as education, health, water
supply and sanitation.
At a central level, the means for inclusion of women in
development planning and implementation is to ensure that
part of sectoral funding is available and used for women.
However, equality has to be built into the envisioning
process as a whole by ensuring that women have an important
role in the design of the entire panchayat/community plan,
rather than only in the 'womens' component'.
For example, in surveys involved in the planning process, it
needs to be ensured that womens' views are especially sought,
including through focus group discussions.
Women community leadership will need to be identified and
included in committees that may be formed under various
sectors, to ensure that women are included in planning for
sectors other that social development, such as
infrastructure, use of common lands, natural resources and
employment.
In ensuring meaningful participation of traditionally muted
and excluded groups like tribals, dalits, women and
minorities in the envisioning exercise, there is need for
special capacity building for them. Networks of elected women
members ought to be encouraged so that they can exert
collective pressure as well as throw up leadership.
Chandor's example has shown that what was brought about by
design in Kerala -- the democratic decentralisation of
economic planning -- is now 'development from below' in Goa.
Choices of local development projects need to be left to the
community, for they are th best placed to assess and judge.
Projects are to be conceived, formulated, implemented, and
maintained by the local self-governments, including those
empowered under the Panchayati Raj Act. In such a process of
change, the role of the state government in local level
development will be reduced -- as is the case in Kerala -- to
that of a facilitator providing funds and guidance.
This is a landmark for the state, and Goa's 189 panchayats
must make -- right now -- a reading of the Chandor document
mandatory for themselves and their communities.
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