District Rural Development Agencies (India)
Encyclopedia
District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs) are 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:...

 level development execution and monitoring agencies created under the Indian Societies Registration Act
Indian Societies Registration Act
The Indian Societies Registration Act of 1860 was enacted under the British Raj in India. It provided for the registration of literary, scientific and charitable societies....

. Substantial sums of rural development funds of 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...

 of India were transferred and routed through them under various Centrally Sponsored
Schemes. From purely a financial resource from Rural Development point of view the DRDAs are extremely important institutions at the district level.

Context of decentralization

With the adoption of the Constitutional mandate for decentralization
Decentralization
__FORCETOC__Decentralization or decentralisation is the process of dispersing decision-making governance closer to the people and/or citizens. It includes the dispersal of administration or governance in sectors or areas like engineering, management science, political science, political economy,...

 of powers that privileged those self-government institutions in 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...

 for economic development
Economic development
Economic development generally refers to the sustained, concerted actions of policymakers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area...

 and social justice, the proposal to re-think the status of DRDAs and also to merge them with the panchayats had emerged. Under the section on 'devoluton of functionaries' the 1st Round Table had adopted a resolution, number IV(i), for reconceiving the role of District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs). DRDAs were to be progressively merged with the District Panchayats and their technical expertise made available to all tiers of Panchayats.

At an all India level, the progress reported in this regard is far from satisfactory. There are some vexed issues, one among which is the 'reported' reluctance on the part of some of the institutions of Union Government for the proposal of merger of DRDAs with the district Panchayats. The complete merger seems to have happened only 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....

 and Karnataka
Karnataka
Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...

. The latter has a much longer history of doing this. In both the States the DRDAs function as if they were the cells for poverty alleviation/ rural development schemes within the Zilla Panchayats.

West Bengal
West Bengal
West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...

is reported to have taken similar steps; yet, it does not measure up to the yardstick of complete merger. Rajasthan and Lakshadweep State/ UT Profile make a similar assertion; this report is unable to confirm this.

Status of DRDAs in the States

In 10 States/ UTs the DRDAs continue to be separate with the only linkage established with the ZPs is making the President of ZP the Chairperson of the DRDA. These are Bihar, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Lakshadweep. In Gujarat the District Development Officer, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of the Zilla Panchayat, continues to chair the DRDA. In nine States/ UTs either the Collector continues as the Chair or some other arrangement has been made in this regard. These are Assam, Goa, Haryana, Jharkhand, Manipur, Tamil Nadu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, and Puducherry. Andhra Pradesh has made the Zilla Panchayat President the Chair of the DRDA while designating the Collector as the Executive Chairperson. Similarly, in Maharashtra,
while the President Zilla Panchayat is made the Chair of the DRDA, the Chief Executive Officer of the Zilla Panchayat is designated as the Executive Chairman of the Management Committee.

Table : Status of DRDAs in the States
Sl. No State or U.T Status of DRDA
1 Andhra Pradesh DRDAs are separate; Collector is the Executive Chairperson though ZP President is made the Chairperson; large number and scope of parallel bodies across layers
2 Arunachal Pradesh DRDAs are separate
3 Assam DRDA separate; Collector is Chair and Ex Director; many parallel bodies
4 Bihar DRDA separate; ZP Chairman is Chairman of DRDA; many other parallel bodies;
5 Chattisgarh Reportedly DRDA merged; practically only the ZP Chairman is made the Chairman of DRDA;
6 Goa DRDAs are separate;
7 Gujarat DRDA separate; District Development Officer is the Chairman;
8 Haryana DRDAs separate; Dy Commissioner/ Collector is the Chairman
9 Himachal Pradesh DRDAs separate; ZP chairman is the chairman of DRDA; there are many other parallel bodies
10 Jammu & Kashmir DRDAs separate; interestingly, the DRDA administration is being refurbished, which by itself could be a very positive step; Panchayat at district level is called the District Planning & Development Board – in a way combining the ZP and DPC
11 Jharkhand DRDAs separate; Dy Commissioner is Chairperson of DRDA
12 Karnataka DRDA merged with ZP since 1987; functions as a unit of ZP office with distinctiveness maintained only to facilitate transactions with the MoRD, New Delhi
13 Kerala DRDAs merged with ZP, function as poverty alleviation cell of the ZP; some parallel bodies (Freshwater Fish Development Agency, Brackishwater Fish Development Agency) still function as per the directions of GoI. The MLA-LDF is also outside the purview and is sort of a parallel body.
14 Madhya Pradesh DRDAs separate; ZP Chairman is the Chairman of DRDA Many parallel bodies, particularly those funded by multilateral and bilateral agencies and operated by the State Government as para-statal entities; DPIP and
MPRLP are two examples.
15 Maharashtra DRDA separate, ZP Chairman has a cosmetic position of being Chairman of Governing Body of DRDA with the CEO being the executive chairman of the Management Committee
16 Manipur DRDA separate; Dy Commissioner as the Head; Many parallel bodies primarily associated with the Development programmes/ schemes of the Union Government.
17 Orissa DRDA separate; PD – DRDA is designated as the Secretary-cum- Executive officer of ZP; ZP President is the Chair of DRDA
18 Punjab DRDAs separate; ZP Chairman is made the Chairman and it is said that all Panchayats have access to the expertise of DRDA; there are other parallel bodies at district and village levels (Village Water and Sanitation
Committees, Village Education Committees), with no linkage with Panchayats
19 Rajasthan DRDA reportedly merged in 2003; however there are para-statals set up through multilateral funding as well as schemes of State and Union government
20 Sikkim DRDA is separate
21 Tamil Nadu DRDA separate institution; Chaired by the District Collector; many parallel bodies like in village education committee, watershed Associations, village forests committees exists.
22 Tripura DRDA exists separately; President of ZP is the Chairman of DRDA
23 Uttar Pradesh DRDAs separate; headed by ZP President; there are a few other parallel bodies
24 Uttarakhand DRDA separate; ZP President is its chair; Van Panchayats, Village Education Committees are the other parallel bodies
25 West Bengal DRDA merged; rechristened as DRDC of ZP;
26 Andaman & Nicobar DRDA is separate; Out of three, only one ZP President is the Chair of
DRDA;
27 Chandigarh No DRDA
28 Dadra & Nagar Haveli DRDA is separate
29 Daman & Diu DRDA continues to function as a separate body and have not been merged.
30 Lakshadweep DRDA is said to be merged; ZP President is the Chair; DRDA providing support to the ZP; other parallel bodies relate to Central schemes such at the SSA;
31 Puducherry DRDA is separate; Attempts are made to link other parallel bodies with Panchayats;

External links

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