Panchayat Level Convergence Committee (PLCC)

When I started the baack2school campaign in Krishnagiri District in 2006, one area we felt needed urgent attention was the attitude of the Government and non –Government functionaries at the Village Panchayat Level. In fact we noticed that there was hardly any interaction among the ten odd Government and non-Government functionaries! In fact there were more ego clashes among them than anything!

• Panchayat PresidentVillage
• Administrative Officer (VAO)
• Panchayat Assistant
• Makkal Nala Paniyalar (MNP)
• Village Health Nurse (VHN)
• Anganwadi Worker (AW)
• Health Worker (HW)
• Local school Headmaster
• Local NGO
• Link Volunteer from VVF

A simple example will illustrate the lack of coordination among these grassroots level functionaries. When a child is born, the VHN has to report this to the Registrar of Births and Deaths who is the VAO. If she fails to do so in 20 days, then the birth date has to be determined by the Tahsildar! If this doesn’t happen, then the courts have to give their ruling! Krishnagiri district much like other districts had a large number of children who didn’t have birth certificates. The GOI officer brought this to my notice.

Thus I worked up the idea of a Panchayat Level convergence Committee (PLCC) of all Government and non-Government functionaries at the village level. A fiat was issued that in all 337 Village Panchayats; there will be a PLCC formed of the above members. The PLCC should meet at the Chairmanship of the Panchayat President, first Friday of every month at 11.00 am. The District Collector through 337 Observers would give the agenda for the first few meetings. At the end of the meeting the PLCC has to give back an A4 size paper with the minutes of the meeting, and action points. PLCC meetings used to be conducted simultaneously in all 337 Village Panchayats on the first Friday of every month for one hour. I would depute 337 observers for overseeing the meeting every month. Minutes (337 pages) would reach me the same day. I, the DRO, PO DRDA and other top officers used to attend at least one PLCC. The UNICEF team, which met me recently in 2016, informed me that the PLCC continues in Krishnagiri to this day, and that they would like to institutionalize this all over Tamil Nadu and India. The concept has been adopted in Erode district. I felt humbled……

Vegetarianism

My interactions with CMs and other politicians

IT infrastructure State Data Centre

Village Volunteer Force

It was a huge team effort in bringing back and retaining about 10,000 OOSC (out of school children). How to meet this challenge was solved after brainstorming with my team of officers.If we divide 10,000 OOSC by 337 panchayats, then the problem of OOSC become simple; on an average about 30 OOSC per panchayat, who can be easily identified, cajoled to come back to school etc. by preferably volunteers. Thus was born the concept of the Village Volunteer Force (VVF) or Grama Thannarva Padai, who would help a lending hand to the district administration in many matters including tracking and monitoring OOSC!

We created a force of volunteers called VVF (Village Volunteer Force) at the rate of one VVF per Village Panchayat with about 20 youths above the age of 18 , with one boy and one girl above the age of 18 from each habitation, constituting the VVF (boys and girls who otherwise populate the different manrams and the like in villages, extolling the virtues of film stars and the like). We trained them on three aspects: 1.Child labour and OOSC 2. Sanitation 3. First aid. UNICEF helped hugely with the training. The idea was to convert each VVF into a Youth Group under Mahalir Thittam (program for SHGs being led by the Tamil Nadu Corporation for Development of Women Ltd), so as to incentivize them to be a group.

The incentive offered to OOSC and their parents was anything under the sun that a Collector can give (under the rules of course!) A house, a loan, employment, crop loan, auto loan, pensions for widows, physically challenged, Government job as noon meal worker or cook etc…. Anything… the only condition being that the child should return and continue to be monitored on a monthly basis by the VVF who would feed the data online into an OOSC children tracking software built inside d website www.baack2school.in

The Village Volunteer Force of about 8000 volunteers  would bring all kinds of things to my notice, and if it concerned education of children directly or indirectly, immediate action would be taken! In fact in the monthly Law and Order meetings, I was more armed with facts and figures and L&) issues. Thus helped us to pre-empt many a problem or nip it in the bud itself!

When i as at South Korea in March 2008 for training  I received a call from my Link Volunteer from a village adjoining Bangalore, that a couple of people who had come from across the border had  died probably after drinking spurious arrack! I laughed at him! But as a matter of abundant precaution I called up the CM’s office and informed the CM’s Secretary! He was a little amused!

But next day came the news that more than 150 people died in the worst hooch tragedy of the region. It killed 47 people from my district and more than 100 from Bangalore!