District Planning in Kerala
Encyclopedia
District Planning is the process of planning covering all local governments in a district based on a district level development policy and integrating the district and sub-district plans of all the local governments into a consolidated district plan which will later be integrated with the state plan. The District Planning process will take into account the resources (natural, human and financial) and the extend of legal responsibilities assigned to the district and below level governments, during the preparation of the district plan.http://www.scribd.com/doc/11512336/District-Planning-Lessons-from-India-Planning-Guide-1995.
The history of district planning in Kerala
is that of intermittent attempts, partial successes and long neglect. It doesn't show any promising growth pattern. But there were many attempts started with sincerity and ended without any worthy output, All those attempts were good learning examples worthy of learning the bottlenecks. A brief history of those attempts were as follows.:-
plan document giving district
wise break-up of the annual plan began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That could be the first event in the lineage of district planning exercise in Kerala
. Each department prepared district-wise break up of schemes divisible among districts. That district-wise break-up of schemes has been consolidated into a single document by the Kerala State Planning Board
for better monitoring of the State Plan at the district level. There was neither any sort of district planning nor any attempt for integration of sectoral schemes at the district level during the period. Those district plans were mere compilations of departmental or similar programmes into a single volume. They were useful for coordination and monitoring, but do not deserve the status of district plans.
In 1976, a District Planning Unit was set up in the Kerala State Planning Board
. Later, it was transformed into Decentralized Planning Division in the State Planning Board. In the year 1979, the district planning offices were set up in all the districts except in Wynad.
were entrusted with the task of creation of database
for each district, by compiling all available secondary data
. Kollam
district conducted a resource potential survey and went ahead with district planning as a pilot project with focus on industrial sector.
A District Planning Committee
was set up with District Collector
as Chair Person to formulate the district plan. District Development Committee (DDC) - an advisory body of officials and non-officials including the MLA's and MPs in the district, headed by the District Collector, was expected to function as the local planning machinery in the district. The dormant grama panchayats and municipalities were the existing elected local government
s below the district level. Eleven technical committees were constituted for each of the major development sectors. Block Planning Committees (BPCs) were formed at every block consisting of the Chair Person of the Block Development Committee, Presidents of all the Panchayats in the block area and officials of different development departments of the concerned blocks.
The district planning exercise in Kollam district
was divided into two stages.
Stage I: - Assessment of resource endowments and the development
potential of the district which included:-
Stage II: - Preparation of the district plan by involving people's representatives and local government officials.
The District Development Committee(DDC) had set up the planning bodies, BPC meetings were convened and the planning
procedures were explained to all actors. Panchayats were requested to discuss and decide their resource endowments, identify development problems, the schemes and projects to be included in their plan and to involve the experts available locally in the execution of the process. Panchayats were able to complete the tasks in two/three meetings. The BPC met again after a month to review the proposals from the Panchayats. They reviewed, modified or supplemented the projects to make them complete or perfect and transmitted those plans to the technical committees at the district. The technical committees held several rounds of discussion to make them conform to the standards of the state level schemes. New proposals were then formulated by the technical committees, whenever needed. The strategies for development of the sector were also evolved by those technical committees.
The procedure evolved in this experiment formed the basis of the guidelines for preparation of district plans by Kerala State Planning Board
later.
The Seventh Five-Year Plan visualized decentralization of planning process from the State-level to the level of districts in the first phase, and then further down to the block level, to increase the effectiveness in implementation
of the anti-poverty programmes and to ensure balanced regional development
. So the Planning Commission suggested the State government to formulate comprehensive district plans in two or three districts as an experiment.
Modality of the process
As per the guideline, the exercise of district planning had to start with a resource
survey and preparation of a resource inventory based on secondary data as well as through primary survey for both natural and human resources
. It was followed by an assessment of the felt needs of the district and formulation of a set of priorities consistent with the State and National priorities. After that, an assessment of the financial resources covering 'untied funds', flowing to the district from state and central schemes as well as the institutional finance, has to be made. The guidelines suggested for the preparation of a perspective plan that should show the long-term development needs and the development potential of the district. The next step was to draw up five-year and annual plans. Such district plans were then to be integrated with the State Plan.
The guideline suggested an effective monitoring mechanism at the district and the State level to monitor the implementation of the district plan, in terms of finance, physical achievements, devolution of appropriate administrative / financial powers and preparation of district budget. The last item in the nine-point guideline envisaged "involving Panchayat Raj Institutions and enlisting the co-operation of the voluntary agencies in the process of decentralised planning".
among the developed and Kannur
among the backward – were selected. DDCs were entrusted with the overall responsibility of drawing up district plans. A small executive committee was constituted with District Collector as the chairperson, Chairperson of DDC as the member-secretary, and selected district officers as members to assist the DDC in drawing up the plan. Blocks were proposed as the primary units for the district planning exercise. Block Planning Committees (BPCs) were constituted with one of the district level officers of the development departments as chairperson and BDO as member-secretary. The role of District Planning Officer was to help the DDC in preparing the block-level inventory of resources & infrastructure
and to make a report on the prospects of development. The BPCs had to assess the felt needs of the different Panchayats through discussion and dialogue with representatives of local people. Since the elections to the Panchayats were not held, they were not associated with this district planning exercise. The procedures for enhancing people’s participation
and details of development analysis to be made were determined by the concerned DDC.
The Planning Commission of India
later modified the earlier guideline stating that the financial assistance for the exercise could be made only if the study would be entrusted to private consultancy organizations. Accordingly, the above modality was abandoned and the Institute of Management in Government (IMG) and Kerala Statistical Institute (KSI) were entrusted with the responsibility of drawing up district plans, respectively for the districts of Kannur and Kottayam. The exercise was, however, kept outside the purview of planning in the State or in the districts in the matter of Five-Year Plan
and Annual Plan formulation and was undertaken only as an experimental 'model' in the district planning.
Kottayam District Plan
The KSI started working on the district plan of Kottayam
district from December 1988, with focus on land use planning
. The resource inventory was prepared based on secondary data. The exercise focused on the preparation of schemes from below in consonance with the felt needs of the people in different localities. As there were no elected bodies at the block and the district levels, meetings of the BPCs consisting of elected MLAs, Panchayat Presidents, officials, other non-officials and Municipal Councilors, were convened regularly. The committees were expected to put forth development proposals considering the overall development needs, potentials and the felt needs of the people in the region.
During that time, the official preparations for district level plans, as part of the Eighth Plan of the State started in the districts. The outlay for Kottayam district in the Eighth plan was Rs. 90 crore. KSI decided to make use of the list of schemes which was being prepared for the government
. It invited proposals from the Panchayats based on the list and dovetailed the output to suit an estimated financial outlay of Rs. 100 crore for the public sector as calculated by them. Discussions were held in the BDCs. The panchayat presidents were entrusted with holding discussions in the Panchayats before making suggestions regarding the schemes. The block level discussions were over by January 1989 in all the 11 blocks of the district. By February, meetings were also held in the municipalities. Approximately 700 persons attended those meetings held throughout the district. By July 1989, around 40 Panchayats had submitted their proposals in the prescribed formats and in total 73 Panchayats submitted their projects by the end.
Simultaneously, main problems and priorities of the Panchayats, particularly with reference to infrastructure
facilities, were collected from the Panchayat Presidents with the help of a questionnaire. KSI also undertook a sample household survey to understand the felt needs of the people, to supplement this input. Four Panchayats and one Municipality
were chosen for the sample survey
from among the 73 Panchayats and the four Municipalities. The schemes collected from the Panchayats and the blocks, with the data supplemented from Krishi Bhavans, Panchayats and household survey, formed the basis of the district plan report. Some of the proposals were of good quality, whereas some others were the 'usual type' consisting of construction of roads and bridges. KSI dovetailed them within the fixed total outlay of Rs.100 crore and prepared the final district plan.
The district plan was not exactly a compendium of finally selected projects; rather it was an account of the understanding of the consultants regarding the felt needs of the people as expressed by different actors involved in the planning process and the consultants' assessment of the resource endowment of the district.
The proposals from below sought to have a lower allocation for agriculture
while proposing higher outlays for the allied agricultural sectors such as animal husbandry
, dairy
, and fisheries in contrast with the actual district sector outlays of the State plan. The allocation demanded for rural development
, which perhaps covered anti-poverty and employment generation schemes, was also much higher than the actual allocations. The substantially lower allocation proposed from below on roads was surprising. On the other hand, housing figured prominently in the KSI plan than the actual allocation available for the district. At the same time, the allocation for SC/ST welfare was much lesser than half of the actual allotment.
The conclusion of the exercise was not very encouraging. It underlined that in the task of identification of schemes and projects of local significance and in presentation of them with adequate details such as importance, costs and benefits, the general public can make very little contribution. The people's participation at the panchayat level was very limited.
Kannur District Plan
The Kannur District
Plan was more a methodological exercise than an operational one. It was submitted on December 1992, almost two years after the Kottayam Plan when the first elected District Councils of Kerala had assumed power. The purpose of the plan was to refine the procedural aspects in district planning.
The first step in the planning
was to make an analysis of situation, which included preparation of district profile, resource inventory through secondary data
collection and mapping techniques, and also through primary survey whenever needed, especially using RRA techniques.
The second step in the planning process was to have a sectoral and spatial analysis
of the district, which included identification of watershed, geo-climatic typologies, spatial profile of poverty
and unemployment
, sectoral review of potentials, etc.
In the third step, formulation of objectives and strategies based on the situation analysis made earlier was done. The plan reflected the felt needs of the Panchayats / Non Governmental Organisations and contained the long-term and short-term objectives, as well as sectoral strategies.
Preparation of development programmes and development projects for inclusion in district plan was the fourth step. A quantitative and spatial schematic plan was drawn up based on a development dialogue with the District Council regarding the financial resource
position and development priorities. But this had never happened at all. The experiment met with a premature death.
District plans in 2000
In the third year of the much acclaimed Peoples Planning in Kerala, an attempt was made to draw up the district plan for each district in order to complete the cycle of decentralized planning.
The basic objectives of the above said district planning experiment was threefold.
% to make an assessment of the district, its resources and to provide a macro perspective for district development
% to consolidate local government plans
% to formulate guidelines for local planning for subsequent years
Based on those objectives, district plans were drawn up in the districts with the following three parts or sections.
The Part I of the district plan was proposed to be prepared once in five years at the beginning of the five-year plan. Part II and Part III of the district plan were expected to be prepared every year.
The district plan for each of the 14 districts in Kerala
was prepared in the year 2000. The integration of local plans
revealed the duplications, gaps and contradictions in the people's planning. As well, it provided guidelines for the preparation of the next years annual plans in the district.
The exercise indicated that district plan, in the absence of clear objectives, proper methodology and meticulous preparation can degenerate itself into a bundle of statistics
and schemes, without any coherence, direction and integration. So the district planners should have a through knowledge of the objectives of the state and national planning and should customize the district plan in tune with the objectives of the higher level plans while balancing with the projects arising from below.
The history of district planning in Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
is that of intermittent attempts, partial successes and long neglect. It doesn't show any promising growth pattern. But there were many attempts started with sincerity and ended without any worthy output, All those attempts were good learning examples worthy of learning the bottlenecks. A brief history of those attempts were as follows.:-
Early initiatives
Bringing out a districtDistrict
Districts are a type of administrative division, in some countries managed by a local government. They vary greatly in size, spanning entire regions or counties, several municipalities, or subdivisions of municipalities.-Austria:...
plan document giving district
District
Districts are a type of administrative division, in some countries managed by a local government. They vary greatly in size, spanning entire regions or counties, several municipalities, or subdivisions of municipalities.-Austria:...
wise break-up of the annual plan began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That could be the first event in the lineage of district planning exercise in Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
. Each department prepared district-wise break up of schemes divisible among districts. That district-wise break-up of schemes has been consolidated into a single document by the Kerala State Planning Board
Kerala State Planning Board
The Kerala State Planning Board is an advisory board under the Government of the State of Kerala, India. It was constituted in 1967 with Chief Minister as Chairman and a non-official as part time Vice-Chairman. The board assists the state government in formulating a development plan based on a...
for better monitoring of the State Plan at the district level. There was neither any sort of district planning nor any attempt for integration of sectoral schemes at the district level during the period. Those district plans were mere compilations of departmental or similar programmes into a single volume. They were useful for coordination and monitoring, but do not deserve the status of district plans.
In 1976, a District Planning Unit was set up in the Kerala State Planning Board
Kerala State Planning Board
The Kerala State Planning Board is an advisory board under the Government of the State of Kerala, India. It was constituted in 1967 with Chief Minister as Chairman and a non-official as part time Vice-Chairman. The board assists the state government in formulating a development plan based on a...
. Later, it was transformed into Decentralized Planning Division in the State Planning Board. In the year 1979, the district planning offices were set up in all the districts except in Wynad.
Kollam District Plan
The District Planning Offices in KeralaKerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
were entrusted with the task of creation of database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
for each district, by compiling all available secondary data
Secondary data
Secondary data is data collected by someone other than the user. Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, surveys, organizational records and data collected through qualitative methodologies or qualitative research...
. Kollam
Kollam
Kollam , often anglicized as ', is a city in the Indian state of Kerala. The city lies on the banks of Ashtamudi Lake on the Arabian sea coast and is situated about north of the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram...
district conducted a resource potential survey and went ahead with district planning as a pilot project with focus on industrial sector.
A District Planning Committee
Planning committee
A planning committee in the United Kingdom is a committee of local authority councillors that sit as the local planning authority to determine planning applications....
was set up with District Collector
District collector
The District Collector is the district head of administration of the bureaucracy in a state of India. Though he/she is appointed and is under general supervision of the state government, he/she has to be a member of the elite IAS recruited by the Central Government...
as Chair Person to formulate the district plan. District Development Committee (DDC) - an advisory body of officials and non-officials including the MLA's and MPs in the district, headed by the District Collector, was expected to function as the local planning machinery in the district. The dormant grama panchayats and municipalities were the existing elected local government
Local government
Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...
s below the district level. Eleven technical committees were constituted for each of the major development sectors. Block Planning Committees (BPCs) were formed at every block consisting of the Chair Person of the Block Development Committee, Presidents of all the Panchayats in the block area and officials of different development departments of the concerned blocks.
The district planning exercise in Kollam district
Kollam district
-Climate:Kollam's temperature is almost steady throughout the year. The average temperature ranges from 25 to 32 degrees Celsius. Summer usually runs from March until May; the monsoon begins by June and ends by September. Kollam receives an annual average rainfall of around...
was divided into two stages.
Stage I: - Assessment of resource endowments and the development
Regional development
Regional development is the provision of aid and other assistance to regions which are less economically developed. Regional development may be domestic or international in nature...
potential of the district which included:-
- Identification of local natural resources
- Survey of infrastructureInfrastructureInfrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
, and - Review of development of different sectors and ongoing schemes in the district
Stage II: - Preparation of the district plan by involving people's representatives and local government officials.
The District Development Committee(DDC) had set up the planning bodies, BPC meetings were convened and the planning
Planning
Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior...
procedures were explained to all actors. Panchayats were requested to discuss and decide their resource endowments, identify development problems, the schemes and projects to be included in their plan and to involve the experts available locally in the execution of the process. Panchayats were able to complete the tasks in two/three meetings. The BPC met again after a month to review the proposals from the Panchayats. They reviewed, modified or supplemented the projects to make them complete or perfect and transmitted those plans to the technical committees at the district. The technical committees held several rounds of discussion to make them conform to the standards of the state level schemes. New proposals were then formulated by the technical committees, whenever needed. The strategies for development of the sector were also evolved by those technical committees.
The procedure evolved in this experiment formed the basis of the guidelines for preparation of district plans by Kerala State Planning Board
Kerala State Planning Board
The Kerala State Planning Board is an advisory board under the Government of the State of Kerala, India. It was constituted in 1967 with Chief Minister as Chairman and a non-official as part time Vice-Chairman. The board assists the state government in formulating a development plan based on a...
later.
The Seventh Five-Year Plan visualized decentralization of planning process from the State-level to the level of districts in the first phase, and then further down to the block level, to increase the effectiveness in implementation
Implementation
Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy.-Computer Science:...
of the anti-poverty programmes and to ensure balanced regional development
Regional development
Regional development is the provision of aid and other assistance to regions which are less economically developed. Regional development may be domestic or international in nature...
. So the Planning Commission suggested the State government to formulate comprehensive district plans in two or three districts as an experiment.
Modality of the process
As per the guideline, the exercise of district planning had to start with a resource
Resource
A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is produced, typically of limited availability.Resource may also refer to:* Resource , substances or objects required by a biological organism for normal maintenance, growth, and reproduction...
survey and preparation of a resource inventory based on secondary data as well as through primary survey for both natural and human resources
Human resources
Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
. It was followed by an assessment of the felt needs of the district and formulation of a set of priorities consistent with the State and National priorities. After that, an assessment of the financial resources covering 'untied funds', flowing to the district from state and central schemes as well as the institutional finance, has to be made. The guidelines suggested for the preparation of a perspective plan that should show the long-term development needs and the development potential of the district. The next step was to draw up five-year and annual plans. Such district plans were then to be integrated with the State Plan.
The guideline suggested an effective monitoring mechanism at the district and the State level to monitor the implementation of the district plan, in terms of finance, physical achievements, devolution of appropriate administrative / financial powers and preparation of district budget. The last item in the nine-point guideline envisaged "involving Panchayat Raj Institutions and enlisting the co-operation of the voluntary agencies in the process of decentralised planning".
Subsequent experiments
In order to experiment a pilot exercise in district planning, two districts - KottayamKottayam
Kottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
among the developed and Kannur
Kannur
Kannur , also known as Cannanore, is a city in Kannur district in the Indian state of Kerala. It is the administrative headquarters of the District of Kannur and 518km north of state capital Trivandrum. During British rule in India, Kannur was known by its old name Cannanore, which is still in...
among the backward – were selected. DDCs were entrusted with the overall responsibility of drawing up district plans. A small executive committee was constituted with District Collector as the chairperson, Chairperson of DDC as the member-secretary, and selected district officers as members to assist the DDC in drawing up the plan. Blocks were proposed as the primary units for the district planning exercise. Block Planning Committees (BPCs) were constituted with one of the district level officers of the development departments as chairperson and BDO as member-secretary. The role of District Planning Officer was to help the DDC in preparing the block-level inventory of resources & infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
and to make a report on the prospects of development. The BPCs had to assess the felt needs of the different Panchayats through discussion and dialogue with representatives of local people. Since the elections to the Panchayats were not held, they were not associated with this district planning exercise. The procedures for enhancing people’s participation
Participation (decision making)
Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions - and ideally exert influence - regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including...
and details of development analysis to be made were determined by the concerned DDC.
The Planning Commission of India
Planning commission of India
The Planning Commission is an institution in the Government of India, which formulates India's Five-Year Plans, among other functions.-History:...
later modified the earlier guideline stating that the financial assistance for the exercise could be made only if the study would be entrusted to private consultancy organizations. Accordingly, the above modality was abandoned and the Institute of Management in Government (IMG) and Kerala Statistical Institute (KSI) were entrusted with the responsibility of drawing up district plans, respectively for the districts of Kannur and Kottayam. The exercise was, however, kept outside the purview of planning in the State or in the districts in the matter of Five-Year Plan
Five-Year Plans of India
The economy of India is based in part on planning through its five-year plans, which are developed, executed and monitored by the Planning Commission. The tenth plan completed its term in March 2007 and the eleventh plan is currently underway...
and Annual Plan formulation and was undertaken only as an experimental 'model' in the district planning.
Kottayam District Plan
The KSI started working on the district plan of Kottayam
Kottayam
Kottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
district from December 1988, with focus on land use planning
Land use planning
Land-use planning is the term used for a branch of public policy encompassing various disciplines which seek to order and regulate land use in an efficient and ethical way, thus preventing land-use conflicts. Governments use land-use planning to manage the development of land within their...
. The resource inventory was prepared based on secondary data. The exercise focused on the preparation of schemes from below in consonance with the felt needs of the people in different localities. As there were no elected bodies at the block and the district levels, meetings of the BPCs consisting of elected MLAs, Panchayat Presidents, officials, other non-officials and Municipal Councilors, were convened regularly. The committees were expected to put forth development proposals considering the overall development needs, potentials and the felt needs of the people in the region.
During that time, the official preparations for district level plans, as part of the Eighth Plan of the State started in the districts. The outlay for Kottayam district in the Eighth plan was Rs. 90 crore. KSI decided to make use of the list of schemes which was being prepared for the government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
. It invited proposals from the Panchayats based on the list and dovetailed the output to suit an estimated financial outlay of Rs. 100 crore for the public sector as calculated by them. Discussions were held in the BDCs. The panchayat presidents were entrusted with holding discussions in the Panchayats before making suggestions regarding the schemes. The block level discussions were over by January 1989 in all the 11 blocks of the district. By February, meetings were also held in the municipalities. Approximately 700 persons attended those meetings held throughout the district. By July 1989, around 40 Panchayats had submitted their proposals in the prescribed formats and in total 73 Panchayats submitted their projects by the end.
Simultaneously, main problems and priorities of the Panchayats, particularly with reference to infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
facilities, were collected from the Panchayat Presidents with the help of a questionnaire. KSI also undertook a sample household survey to understand the felt needs of the people, to supplement this input. Four Panchayats and one Municipality
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
were chosen for the sample survey
Sampling (statistics)
In statistics and survey methodology, sampling is concerned with the selection of a subset of individuals from within a population to estimate characteristics of the whole population....
from among the 73 Panchayats and the four Municipalities. The schemes collected from the Panchayats and the blocks, with the data supplemented from Krishi Bhavans, Panchayats and household survey, formed the basis of the district plan report. Some of the proposals were of good quality, whereas some others were the 'usual type' consisting of construction of roads and bridges. KSI dovetailed them within the fixed total outlay of Rs.100 crore and prepared the final district plan.
The district plan was not exactly a compendium of finally selected projects; rather it was an account of the understanding of the consultants regarding the felt needs of the people as expressed by different actors involved in the planning process and the consultants' assessment of the resource endowment of the district.
The proposals from below sought to have a lower allocation for agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
while proposing higher outlays for the allied agricultural sectors such as animal husbandry
Animal husbandry
Animal husbandry is the agricultural practice of breeding and raising livestock.- History :Animal husbandry has been practiced for thousands of years, since the first domestication of animals....
, dairy
Dairy
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting of animal milk—mostly from cows or goats, but also from buffalo, sheep, horses or camels —for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on a dedicated dairy farm or section of a multi-purpose farm that is concerned...
, and fisheries in contrast with the actual district sector outlays of the State plan. The allocation demanded for rural development
Rural development
Rural development in general denotes economic development and community development actions and initiatives taken to improve the standard of living in non-urban neighbourhoods, remote villages and the countryside...
, which perhaps covered anti-poverty and employment generation schemes, was also much higher than the actual allocations. The substantially lower allocation proposed from below on roads was surprising. On the other hand, housing figured prominently in the KSI plan than the actual allocation available for the district. At the same time, the allocation for SC/ST welfare was much lesser than half of the actual allotment.
The conclusion of the exercise was not very encouraging. It underlined that in the task of identification of schemes and projects of local significance and in presentation of them with adequate details such as importance, costs and benefits, the general public can make very little contribution. The people's participation at the panchayat level was very limited.
Kannur District Plan
The Kannur District
Kannur district
Kannur District is one of the 14 districts in the state of Kerala, India. The town of Kannur is the district headquarters, and gives the district its name. The old name Cannanore is the anglicised form of the Malayalam name Kannur. Kannur District is bounded by Kasaragod District to the north and...
Plan was more a methodological exercise than an operational one. It was submitted on December 1992, almost two years after the Kottayam Plan when the first elected District Councils of Kerala had assumed power. The purpose of the plan was to refine the procedural aspects in district planning.
The first step in the planning
Planning
Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior...
was to make an analysis of situation, which included preparation of district profile, resource inventory through secondary data
Secondary data
Secondary data is data collected by someone other than the user. Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, surveys, organizational records and data collected through qualitative methodologies or qualitative research...
collection and mapping techniques, and also through primary survey whenever needed, especially using RRA techniques.
The second step in the planning process was to have a sectoral and spatial analysis
Spatial analysis
Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes any of the formal techniques which study entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties...
of the district, which included identification of watershed, geo-climatic typologies, spatial profile of poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
and unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
, sectoral review of potentials, etc.
In the third step, formulation of objectives and strategies based on the situation analysis made earlier was done. The plan reflected the felt needs of the Panchayats / Non Governmental Organisations and contained the long-term and short-term objectives, as well as sectoral strategies.
Preparation of development programmes and development projects for inclusion in district plan was the fourth step. A quantitative and spatial schematic plan was drawn up based on a development dialogue with the District Council regarding the financial resource
Resource
A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is produced, typically of limited availability.Resource may also refer to:* Resource , substances or objects required by a biological organism for normal maintenance, growth, and reproduction...
position and development priorities. But this had never happened at all. The experiment met with a premature death.
District plans in 2000
In the third year of the much acclaimed Peoples Planning in Kerala, an attempt was made to draw up the district plan for each district in order to complete the cycle of decentralized planning.
The basic objectives of the above said district planning experiment was threefold.
% to make an assessment of the district, its resources and to provide a macro perspective for district development
% to consolidate local government plans
% to formulate guidelines for local planning for subsequent years
Based on those objectives, district plans were drawn up in the districts with the following three parts or sections.
- Perspective for district development
- Consolidated plans of the local governments
- Guidelines for future
The Part I of the district plan was proposed to be prepared once in five years at the beginning of the five-year plan. Part II and Part III of the district plan were expected to be prepared every year.
The district plan for each of the 14 districts in Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
was prepared in the year 2000. The integration of local plans
Local Plans
In United Kingdom planning law, a local plan is an old-style development plan prepared by district and other local planning authorities. By virtue of specific transitional provisions, these plans will continue to operate for a time after the commencement of the new development plan system brought...
revealed the duplications, gaps and contradictions in the people's planning. As well, it provided guidelines for the preparation of the next years annual plans in the district.
The exercise indicated that district plan, in the absence of clear objectives, proper methodology and meticulous preparation can degenerate itself into a bundle of statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
and schemes, without any coherence, direction and integration. So the district planners should have a through knowledge of the objectives of the state and national planning and should customize the district plan in tune with the objectives of the higher level plans while balancing with the projects arising from below.
External links
- From Decentralised Planning to Peoples Planning : Experiences of the Indian States of West Bengal and Kerala, by Charvak, Discussion Paper No 21 July 2000, KRPLLD, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram
- Website on Decentralisation and Local Goverance in Kerala
Other links
- District planning in IndiaDistrict planning in IndiaDistrict Planning is the process of preparing an integrated plan for the local government sector in a district taking into account the resources available and covering the sectoral activities and schemes assigned to the district level and below and those implemented through local governments in a...
- Local Governance in KeralaLocal Governance in KeralaKerala, is a tiny state in the southernmost part of India. In decentralization, the State had a long history of half-hearted reforms characterized by partial successes and blatant reversals from its creation in 1957...
- Peoples Planning in KeralaPeoples Planning in KeralaPeople's Plan Campaign, held in 1996 in Kerala State, was a remarkable experiment in decentralisation of powers to local governments with focus on local planning. Kerala State lying in the south-west part of India, is considered a fertile land for decentralization...
- District Planning Committees in IndiaDistrict Planning Committees in IndiaDistrict Planning Committee is the committee created as per article 243ZD of the Constitution of India at the district level for planning at the district and below...