Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY)

Brief Background:

1. Scheduled Castes (SCs), who constitute 16.6% of our population as per 2011 Census, have historically suffered social and educational disabilities and economic deprivation arising therefrom. Accordingly, special provisions have been enshrined in the Constitution for advancement of their interests. These provisions range from measures to remove any kind of social disabilities imposed on them to ensure equality of opportunity in every sphere, to measures of positive discrimination to bring them on par with rest of the population.

2. Article 46 of Part IV ("Directive Principles of State Policy") of the Constitution enjoins upon the State to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Article 38 (2) in the same Part also enjoins upon the State to minimize inequities in income, and to endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations.

3. The Government has hence taken a number of initiatives for development of SCs, which have yielded positive outcomes, and have also resulted in narrowing the gap between the Scheduled Castes and the rest of the population. However, the focus of most welfare Schemes of SCs has been mainly cantered on individual beneficiaries rather than on the integrated development of SC pockets.

4. To enable an area based development approach, a new scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY) was launched on a Pilot basis during 2009-10, following the Finance Minister’s declaration in his Budget Speech delivered on 6.7.2009. The Scheme aims at integrated development of villages in which the population of Scheduled Castes is above 50%. A total of 1000 villages from Tamil Nadu (225), Rajasthan (225), Bihar (225), Himachal Pradesh (225) and Assam (100) were selected for the Pilot phase. Under this phase total Rs. 201 crore was released to the States. All the 1000 villages has been declared as Adarsh Gram.

5. During 2014-15, PMAGY was further extended (Phase-I) to cover another 1500 villages across 11 States namely Andhra Pradesh (7), Assam (75), Chhattisgarh (175), Jharkhand (100), Haryana (12), Karnataka (201), Madhya Pradesh (327), Odisha (175), Punjab (162), Telangana (6) and Uttar Pradesh (260). Funding for these villages started during March 2015 and continued till 2019-20. Total 346.85 cr were released to the States as Central Share. Till date States have declared 149 villages as Adarsh Gram and remaining villages are slotted for declaration as Adarsh by 31-03-2021.

Expansion of the Scheme:

6. In light of the benefits accruing to the residents of the villages through successful implementation of the Scheme, it has been decided in 2018-19 to take up more villages as Phase-II of the Scheme. All those districts are considered which have villages having total population ≥500 and with more than 50% persons belonging to the Scheduled Castes. The villages in descending order of SC population are proposed to be selected from each such district for implementation of the Scheme in this new Phase. The Government of India is planning to cover all the eligible 26968 villages by the end of 2014-25.

Revision of Scheme Guidelines:

7. To ensure all round development of the selected villages, so that they can indeed become ‘Adarsh Grams’, the said Scheme was also revised to capture the Gaps in critical socio-economic ‘Monitorable Indicators’ as part of various sectors/domains. These domains include water and sanitation, education, health and nutrition, agricultural best practices etc. amongst others.

New Approach for implementation:

8. The identification of needs or Gaps with regard to the ‘Monitorable Indicators’ are based on a Need Assessment exercise. The ‘Village Development Plan’ (VDP) is based on the data collected as part of the Need Assessment exercise. The Scheme relies heavily on convergence with other initiatives of the Central and State Governments for ensuring that the minimum infrastructure and critical services are made available to all the persons in the village, especially those belonging to the Scheduled Castes. PMAGY provids the platform for convergent implementation of other Schemes with the aim to achieve saturation in the various domains. Whereas it is expected that the major portion of the funds requirement for implementation would be met from other Central or State Government Schemes, the ‘Gap-filling’ funds will be provided under the Scheme, for those areas which cannot be covered otherwise.

Funding under the Scheme:

9. For every new village selected, the Scheme provides for a total of Rs. 21 lakh of which Rs.20.00 lakh is for the ‘Gap-filling’ component and Rs.1.00 lakh is meant for ‘administrative expenses’ in the ratio of 1:1:1:2 at the Centre, State, District and Village level respectively.

10. Details of 'funding' and 'flow of fund' are explained at para-9 and 10 of the Scheme Guidelines. The State Government/UT Administration would initially, the State Government/UT Administration will release the entire admissible funds under ‘Administrative Expenses’ to the District Administrations for carrying out capacity building, administrative expenses, awareness generation and initiating non cost based activities. Thereafter the entire admissible funds under the ‘Gap-filling’ component i.e. Rs.20.00 lakh per village will be released by the State Government to the District Administration once the VDP of the selected villages is approved by their DLCC so that the planned works can be executed without any delay.

Project Monitoring:

11. The Scheme provides for setting up of various levels of Committees for guidance, monitoring and implementation. These Committees, especially the Convergence Committees at the Village, District and State levels, are crucial to the implementation as they would assess the requirements as well as plan and execute the works/services that are needed to be undertaken under various Schemes for the wholesome development of the villages.

12. Government of India has developed a well-defined structure for Planning, Implementation and Monitoring of the Scheme execution. A website with the facility of collection of Household level data, assessment of village needs, prioritising the works, preparing the Village Development Plan and periodic monitoring of the Scheme has been made operational. The web link of the site is https://pmagy.gov.in .

Selection of Villages under Phase-II of the Scheme and release of Fund:

13. The detail of the villages selected and fund released during 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 for Scheme implementation are as under:

Note: 298 villages of Phase-I again selected during Phase-II for second round of funding.

14. Progress under Phase-II implementation:

Note: The progress of the Scheme implementation has suffered to some extent initially due to General Election followed by State Elections in some of the States since 2018-19 and year long capacity building program of State, District and Village level functionaries of the covered States on revised implementation Guidelines as well as newly developed Web-Portal for end to end digitization of the Scheme. The progress further came to standstill due to outbreak of COVID-19 Pandemic which still has some impact. However, in recent months some positive initiatives were taken in the implementation. Nearly 45% of the selected villages has already successfully generated the Village Development Plan although 3584 villages were selected during August 2020.

15. Progress of Pilot Phase:

16. Financial Progress during Phase-I of the Scheme:

17. Financial Year wise releases are given below (Rs. In Crore):