Workshop on Panchayat Development Index for rural development held in Cachar

Silchar, Oct 25: A one-day workshop on Panchayat Development Index was organised earlier this month by the District Panchayat Resource Centre (DPRC) Cachar along with the State Institute of Panchayat and Rural Development (SIPRD), Udharbond in collaboration with Cachar Zilla Parishad.

Inaugurated by Amitabh Rai, president of Cachar Zilla Parishad, the workshop, held at the office premises of Cachar Zilla Parishad witnessed over 60 participants including all the Block Development Officers of the district along with their two Gaon Panchayat Secretaries attend the workshop. Departments like, PHED, Agriculture, Irrigation, Fishery, Forest, Animal Husbandry & Veterinary, Inspector of Schools, Health etc. also took part in the workshop.

Ranjeet Laskar, the Chief Executive Officer of the Zilla Parishad informed that the development action plans will be based on the Panchayat Development Index. Pabitra Kalita, the Joint Director, SIPRD, Assam had delivered a brief presentation on the Panchayat Development Index, he added.

“The Ministry of Panchayat Raj, Government of India has promised to achieve the United Nations set objective of attaining Sustainable Development Goals by 2023. In the pursuit, the Ministry has laid stress on the need to cover the very important areas of rural India and it is required to localize the 17 Sustainable Development Goals at the village level for which the Ministry has categorized all the 17 goals under nine thematic areas which were discussed in the workshop. To assess the achievement of SDG at the local level, the Ministry has decided to introduce the Panchayat Development Index. This Index is the outcome of huge data collected from various development indicators of Panchayati Raj institutions and line departments,” the Zilla Parishad CEO said.

Further, he informed that another workshop with the same title for the Gaon Panchayat secretaries of all the GPs and other officials was held at Udharbond as well. “From PDI, thematic gaps will be identified by the Gaon Panchayats and then based on the thematic Gaps, Gaon Panchayat will take Sankalpa and will try to address all the gaps by selecting schemes in the GPDP, BPDP and DPDP under the Peoples’ Plan Campaign. It was expected that a quality PDI will help to achieve a quality planning and implementation of need-based schemes at the GP level,” the CEO maintained.