14 May 2020  |   03:18am IST

Training to make little village republics of Goa self-sufficient in a post COVID world

In parts of Goa, there are several heroines and heroes who inspire by their little acts of innovation and courage. It is even more heartening when government institutions, normally castigated for non-delivery, think on their feet and come up with practical roadmaps for Goa, specific to its villages. This is one such story of a great collaboration between the Goa Institute of Public Administration and Development and Rural Development (GIPARD) and the panchayats

Nadia Menezes

 

The quiet acts of heroism in Goa’s

villages during the Covid-19 lockdown left a loud impression on an autonomous body that specialises in training government officers, elected representatives and civil society on the public roles they play.

‘Can we come up with something that looks at what issues, beyond health, can arise for the rural sector once the lockdown ends and how these issues can be tackled?’—a core team at the Goa Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development (GIPARD) deliberated in the first week of April.

On May 11, as a 12-page Ready Reckoner to help Panchayati Raj institutions deal with the challenges of the pandemic and the way ahead was given officially to the Agasaim village panchayat, it appeared that deeds had met ideas.

“They (Agasaim panchayat) have done an astonishing job during the lockdown, including feeding their migrants for a month with cooked food. I suspect there will be many (such) villages in Goa. Good positive stories to encourage us,” Mathew Samuel, director-general of GIPARD sais on a WhatsApp message

On the phone from Agasaim, sarpanch Xavier Gracias says simply, “We did our best to ensure people stayed at home by making sure they received at their doorstep all their groceries, vegetables and even medicines, which we sometimes had to source from Bambolim (over 7km away). Our volunteers worked very hard.”

He feels the Reckoner—a compilation of possible challenges, including social, psychological, economic, and health, that panchayats could identify for themselves and solve—“can make a difference”.

“Right now, just because Goa is a Green Zone, people are simply roaming around. We have to educate them on what they actually need to do and how they should handle themselves,” says the 55-year-old.

GIPARD will handhold the panchayat as it carries out the Reckoner’s stated exercises to identify the village’s strengths and weaknesses using its already existent manpower—panchas, volunteers, village development committees and self-help groups.

“The ultimate aim of the effort is to ensure that each village in Goa becomes a self-sustaining unit,” says a senior official back at the sylvan Old Goa settings of GIPARD.

Elaborating, he gives an example from Goa’s initial lockdown period. “Some villages towards the Maharashtra border in Pernem taluka were almost entirely self-sufficient, requiring only oil and pulses from outside. On the other hand, many other villages, especially coastal ones, required to import almost everything.”

Attributing this to many villages having residents who are dependent on jobs outside their village, including in other parts of India, abroad or on ships, he says, “Take the tourism industry’s cruise shipping line for instance. Even if some of the operators are able to start operations soon, the overall scenario for tourism is being forecasted as bleak for at least the next 18 months. Then what is going to happen to the person from the village who earns his living by working on a cruise ship if he can’t resume service? And what is going to happen to his family and the village economy?”

He hopes the Reckoner together with an exercise being carried out by the directorate of higher education and GIPARD to identify each village’s specific strengths and therefore economic potential—milk production, horticulture, craftsmanship, etc—will lead to the villages becoming self-sufficient over time.

Dr. Seema Fernandes, an assistant director at GIPARD, who Samuel calls “the brain behind the Reckoner”, says the compilation was the outcome of talks, including via Skype, between GIPARD and the 12-member state resource group that has been working with the institute for the last 5-6 years.

This group has representatives from the fields of education, health, women and child development, a non-government organization, and more. Fernandes adds that she was assisted by GIPARD core faculties Savita Patil, Ashwini Acharya , and Arlette Mascarenhas.

“Once the draft Reckoner was ready we showed it to some sarpanchas, block development officers, and even a self-help group representative who is also a panch member for their views,” says Fernandes. She says Guirim and Nerul village panchayats have shown interest in the Reckoner. Goa has 191 village panchayats.

Proud of the work done by the team and positive that Goa’s villages can be self-sufficient, Samuel, a retired IAS officer employed on a contract basis by the government as secretary, Goa Lokayukta, with the additional charge as DG, GIPARD, says, “After all, they have proved, time and again, that they have the ability to stand up for themselves. They have proved to be little village republics.”