Nellore: The Smart Village and Smart Ward (SVSW) scheme, helmed by MPs, MLAs and IAS and IPS officers, as also corporates and National Registration Identity Card (NRICs) holders, may be covering over 60 per cent of the 12,918 gram panchayats (GPs) and 3,393 wards across the state, but their all-round development, which is the avowed aim, is taking place only very slowly. It is visible in a few places where corporates or individuals are paying special attention to effect transformation of the area.
Observers say that these good intentions are getting stymied because there has been no allocation of funds specifically under this scheme. In places like Nellore and Tirupati, the collectors, SPs and MPs are making use of resources at their disposal, such as those under the MP Land Area Development Scheme, to give a facelift to villages thus adopted. Many also adopt villages with great initial enthusiasm, which fizzles out when funds run dry and they are not able to partner with a corporate or NGO to keep the momentum of work going.
The state government therefore thought it fit to form an exclusive body, called the Smart AP Foundation, whose purpose is to find suitable partners for those adopting habitations and can help take the stalled project forward.
Chief resource mobi-lisation officer of the foundation Mr Saman-uri Kishore said, “We have conducted distr-ict workshops across all the 13 districts, ba-sed on our interactions and consultations with partners and line depa-rtments. The objective of the workshops was to create a platform for partners to directly engage with the district line departments to clearly understand the projects related to the SVSW Scheme. The workshops were an opportunity for line departments to understand from the partner where their facilitation would be required for the programme.”
The key partners also shared their best practices across all workshops. A top priority is to make the adopted village Open Defecation Free (ODF). Out of the 155 GPs/villages that have been declared ODF, 133 are partners in the SVSW scheme.
Villages adopted by MPs under the Sansad Gram Adarsh Yojana in AP are also inlcuded in the SVSW scheme. Mr Kishore said they had motivated all the stake-holders successfully to achieve the SVSW Scheme’s ambitious targets.
