There are many organizations and associations which are working for the welfare of the farmers in the country. But few are there who are working for the overall development of the villages. “You develop when your ambiance develops”, makes it imperative that the villages should progress altogether for the development of the people residing therein. And this is well understood by the NGO, CFM: Community Friendly Movement. Vision of CFM is “MAKE FARMERS RICH” which goes in-line with KRISHI JAGRAN/ AGRICULTURE WORLD's (KJ/AW) objective.
KJ/AW has signed an MOU with CFM, according to which both the organizations will arrange 700 farmer conferences in the state of Uttar Pradesh. CFM has a bottom-up approach in which they work at the Panchayat level for the upliftment of the farmers in the villages. There are around 2,39,645 Gram Panchayats (GPs), 6,109 Intermediate Panchayats (IPs) and 554 District Panchayats (DPs)) across the country. The rural development programs implemented through Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) focus on generating more employment opportunities for village youth, landless people, and artisans, small and marginal farmers. PRIs need additional resources and financial autonomy to fulfill their new functional obligations. In order to become financially more independent, PRI must be encouraged to raise local resources for development other than receiving grants from Government.
M C Dominic, Editor-in-Chief, KJ/AW signed the MOU with Saurav Ghosh, Founder CFM on 1 March 2018. Self-Corporatized Panchayats/ SwaNigamit Panchayat (SNP) is one of the many CSR Projects by CFM, in which KJ/AW is partnering with the organizations. The project runs on P-P-P-P(Public-Private-Panchayat Partnership) model that leads to entrepreneurship development-opportunity creation and improve quality of life at village level without creating an additional burden on Government exchequer.
About SNP
SwaNigamit (self- corporatized) Panchayat is a model in which a Panchayat can generate income through its internal resources as provisioned in the Constitution of India and work towards becoming self-reliant. CFM through its flagship mission SwaNigamit Panchayat provides support for revenue generation and entrepreneurship focussing on old wisdom of ‘health is wealth’. There is wide potential of utilizing the human resources and locally available resources in social enterprise model to learn and earn at community level with Panchayat being the facilitator/mentor/infrastructure provider.
Through the scientifically selected process of finding Cluster Executive (CE) of SwaNigamit Panchayat, the model seeks to provide ease of doing business at community level to truly uplift the spirit of Make in India- to Make in Villages of India. Panchayat then serves as the SPOC (Single point of contact) for agriculture infrastructure & linkages, farm input access, training to reengineer supply chain and reduce retail wastages for what “City needs- Village grows”. When the village input requirement is streamlined the village, output is streamlined leading to greater efficiency and values created at micro-level.
By levying taxes, rentals, collecting taxes all of which are provisioned in the Constitution of India, Panchayat moves from grant seeking entity to Tax paying entity as has been demonstrated in ‘Adarsh Panchayats’ who create their own balance sheet and annual reports. Panchayat may arrange these input services more effectively and efficiently utilizing its human resources thus creating employment and revenue through Panchayat established Rural Business Hub (RBH) and use technology for trade. Ministry of Panchayati Raj Institution also support for establishing RBH at Panchayat level.
The focus of the SwaNigamit model is on health is wealth principle and will focus on four pillars
- Soil Health- Solution and services for Integrated Pest and Nutrient Management at community level
- Animal Health- Solution and services for Integrated Livestock, Feed and Fodder management
- Human Health- Access to potable drinking water, water resource management, health and hygiene
- Digital Health- Access to Government enabled Insurance services, financial services and product
