Journalism of Courage
This January 26,the 1,900 gram sabhas (meeting of villagers) in the district will have agriculture officials speaking to the villagers about schemes available to them in a new initiative beginning this year. It is compulsory for every village to convene a gram sabha on Republic and Independence Days,but this is the first time agriculture officials are leveraging this to meet and popularise their funding schemes to as many people.
“Normally gram sabhas are all about local issues and what villages need. This time,agriculture officials will be visiting and speaking to them about the schemes we have implemented in their villages since April 2009 and the funding that is available to them. We hope to improve transparency in the system,” said Uday Deshmukh,deputy director,Commissionerate of Agriculture.
In Pune,district superintending agriculture officer Ravindra Bhosale will personally visit two villages. Elsewhere,around 30,000 agriculture officers and assistants will spread out to interact with the people. The plan will be charted out on Monday,Bhosale said.
One of the schemes that villagers would be told about is the farm-pond scheme,for which up to 100 per cent subsidy is available — if only they would apply for it.
This kind of rainwater harvesting becomes useful in crunch situations when rains fail and villagers would still be able to irrigate their fields. “The yields will improve. Each block can have 200 farm ponds,for which the government can fund from Rs 16,000 to Rs 82,000. On January 10,the farm pond scheme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was extended to all the 35 districts in Maharashtra,’ Deshmukh said.
At present,1.4 lakh farmers have subscribed to the government’s short messaging service (SMS) wherein they receive critical agriculture-related information on their phone. “We want to roll in over 5 lakh farmers by February.”
Officials say transparency will improve once each village realises where the money sanctioned to them is being spent. They will also become aware about the schemes they are eligible for.
“We have several funding programmes under the National Horticulture Mission,schemes under the Rashtriya Krishi Yojna,National Food Security Mission and organic farming schemes that will be useful to farmers.”
