Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government will soon start a process of preparing a governance atlas of all the 6,794 gram panchayats in the state to understand people’s aspirations and cover progress details of its various schemes, an official said Sunday.
The administration is planning to come out with the atlas by October 2, 2023, he said.
Poverty and Human Development Monitoring Agency (PHDMA) under the Planning and Convergence Department of the state government will begin the process soon, the official said.
In the first phase, the agency will bring out the governance atlas of 4,056 gram panchayats in the state by the next year’s March 5, the day observed as Panchayati Raj Divas.
The governance atlas of GPs is a systematic tracking of access, availability and utility of priority schemes, projects, programmes and benefits of households and individuals.
It will also capture the aspiration of people of all the GPs and help the authorities build a robust redressal mechanism, the senior official said.
“The governance atlas will be shared with all stakeholders for necessary policy actions and inputs,” he said, adding that teams of PHDMA, the apex monitoring and evaluation body of the state government, will visit GPs to understand “what is working on the ground level, what needs to be done and what do people aspire”.
The project will not only boost the institutional mechanism to address the existing issues but also keep track of the progress, the official said.
“It is our way to participate in the process of poverty eradication and human development through listening. The objective of the exercise is to listen, accept the voices of people and resolve,” PHDMA member secretary Roopa Roshan Sahoo said.
The compilation of “realities through narratives, observations and pictures on the ground” will be the governance atlas of the state.
The member secretary claimed that the PHDMA has a unique way of collecting narratives and visuals from the fields, which ensures a better understanding as compared to a structural format and a traditional method of monitoring and evaluation.
“The agency’s approach is distinctive in listening to people’s stories and experiences,” Sahoo said.
The PHDMA teams will visit each panchayat and follow the process of narrative collection and continuous monitoring, which it calls “the Mycelium Way’.
The ‘Mycelium Way’ refers to the wisdom of the people that is shared with PHDMA, she clarified.
The governance atlas will provide a detailed analysis of the progress of welfare schemes in the state and will help the administration track growth of individuals, households and communities, she said.
Odisha Planning and Convergence Minister Rajendra Dholakia said, “The state has set a target to reduce the poverty ratio to 10 per cent from 29 per cent. Accordingly, the department will implement various measures based on the outcome of the PHDMA’s governance atlas of all the GPs.”
PTI