Training of District Officials on Decentralised Planning

The incorporation of inclusive growth as the new goal of the Eleventh Five Year Plan of the Government of India gave importance to decentralised planning. Decentralised Planning was given a platform when the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts provided constitutional status to local and urban self-governments. The setting up of the District Planning Committee (DPC) was a necessary feature wherein the DPC would be responsible for preparing a draft development plan for the district by consolidating the plans prepared by the panchayats and the municipalities in the district. However, challenges emerged when the newly elected representatives at both the local and urban levels needed to carry out this responsibility. Therefore, a need was felt to develop the capacities of elected representatives so that they are aware of the nuances of decentralisedgovernance and also of their roles and responsibilities under various schemes/programmes. This was also extended to building the capacities of the DPC as well in order for them to prepare their development plans in a more participatory, effective and transparent manner.

It is in this context that PRIA has undertaken training of district officials on decentrailised planning in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The objectives of this exercise include developingtraining modules to facilitate the decentralisedplanning process, development of Master Trainers at the state level who will further train trainers at the district level and providing hand-holding support during the district level training.

PRIA is working in collaboration with UNICEF in Madhya Pradesh. UNICEF is supporting the State Planning Commission, Government of Madhya Pradesh in the state-wide rollout process of decentralised district planning across 15 districts of Madhya Pradesh . In Rajasthan, PRIA is working in close collaboration with the Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES), Government of Rajasthan to strengthen the DPCs in five pilot districts.This is a Government of India – UNDP supported project.

Under the ‘State-wide roll out of Decentralised District Planning Process’ in Madhya Pradesh, the first training was organisedon 25 July 2011 in Bhopal where 129 participants (4 women, 125 men) attended the programme. The training programme helped to share the state’s perspectives on decentralised planning as well as enhance knowledge on the steps involved in decentralised planning. It also helped to make the participants understand the formats used for data collection and taught them how to develop response plansand make use of the IT applications. In addition, itsensitisedthe participants on their roles and responsibilities in facilitating decentralised planning and helped them draw a plan of action for promotion of the exercise in the state. To read more about the training workshopon ‘Training of Masters Trainers’in Madhya Pradesh,click here.

In Rajasthan,PRIA prepared draft training modules to the Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES) in May 2011 after which a two-day workshop was organised in Jaipur on 2 and 3 August 2011 to finalise the training modules. Here, 24 participants (7 women, 17 men) attended, representing different agencies, to deliberate on and discuss the state and district level modules.Valuable feedback was received from this interaction. On the second day the third module that was developed for the elected representatives of panchyati raj institutions (PRIs) and urban local bodies was presented. In the closing session, the role of the different stakeholders in the decentralised planning process was shared.It is hoped that the modules will be utilisedby the different stakeholders in a productive manner. To read aboutthe training workshop on ‘Testing and Approval of Modules Prepared UnderCapacity Development for Decentralised Planning in Rajasthan’, click here.