Integrated Village Development Scheme, Jammu & Kashmir

Jammu &Kashmir government has planned to start Integrated Village Development Scheme for integral development of tribal villages across the territory. This scheme intends to promote development in villages mainly those villages having more than 500 tribal people. A meeting was held headed by the Secretary, Tribal Affairs, Dr. Shahi Iqbal Choudhary with other officials and district teams for formulate an Integrated Village Development Plan for the villages. This scheme tends to infrastructure gaps. It aims at covering all the areas like health & nutrition, water & sanitation, housing, livelihood, farm and non-farm activities, road connectivity, etc in villages for development. It aims at developing the villages where residents have access to all the services and needs with improvement in all the socio-economic indicators.

Scheme Overview:

Scheme Objectives and Benefits:

• The main objective of the scheme is to ensure overall development in tribal rural areas
• It aims at integrated development of the villages having more than 500 tribal people staying in the villages
• The scheme aims at developing the villages on various socio-economic factors
• It tends to enable adequate infrastructure gap filling activities The implementation of this scheme enables the development at village level
• Development under this scheme will help the residents of the village to access basic amenities and services like basic drinking water, sanitation, health, education, housing, roads, transport, etc
• The implementation of this scheme will enable the development at village level

Key Points:

• Integrated Village Development Plan is a scheme for development of tribal villages which is planned to be started by the Jammu & Kashmir government
• It aims at overall development of the tribal villages
• Secretary, Tribal Affairs, Dr. Shahi Iqbal Choudhary held a meeting with other officials like Director Rural Development Department, Chief Planning Officer, District Statistics and Evaluation Officers, District Panchayat Officers, Assistant Commissioners Development, Director Planning, Director Tribal Affairs and district teams for formulate an Integrated Village Development Plan for the villages
• A special grant of 98 crores will be provided for tribal village development
• Under this scheme plan will be formulated and village prioritization will be done on 55 different monitor-able parameters
• Parameters would include health & nutrition, drinking water & sanitation, housing, livelihood, farm and non-farm activities, road connectivity,
• mobile/ internet connectivity, skill and entrepreneurship, social security, digitalisation, electric supply, market interventions, Livelihood and Financial Inclusion
• It is planned to undertake all the infrastructure gap filling activities in different sectors
• Safeguarding basic rights of the villagers and protection against exploitation are also covered under the scheme
• Under the scheme a clear, indicative and realistic village development plan will be chalked out at field level-district level and then it will get an approval from the state level authority
• Government is planning to conduct training programmes to help understand the process to formulate the village development plans
• Firstly, the plan will be chalked out by the field team in coordination with the gram panchayat
• Then the plan will be approved by the district planning and monitoring committee headed by Deputy Commissioner
• Then the plan will be submitted to the State level committee headed by Chief Secretary
• Then after screening and recommendations with the Tribal Affairs department the plan will be approved
• State level committee will be the apex committee in this process
• Rural development department, Directors are the coordinators for plan formulation division wise
• Initial level plans are expected to be complete by July 31, 2021
• Under this scheme, assistance amount for implementing the scheme will be released in installments for each village
• The first installment of the amount will be released immediately after selection of villages and second installment will be released after the approval of the plan
• This scheme is mainly planned for overall development in the villages thus ensuring social security and welfare of the people