20-Jun-2019: Ambitious 'back to village' programme starts in Jammu and Kashmir.
The ambitious 'back to village' mission mode programme started in many districts of Jammu and Kashmir. The 'back to village' programme will continue till June 27 across the state and during this period the entire administrative apparatus of the state government is going to move out of state, provincial and district level offices to reach out to the villages.
The Government of Jammu and Kashmir has embarked on an ambitious and extensive programme of reaching out to the people at the grassroots level to create in the rural masses an earnest desire for decent standard of living. The ‘Back to Village’ programme is aimed to involve the people of the state and government officials in a joint effort to deliver the mission of equitable development. The programme is aimed at energizing Panchayats and directing development efforts in rural areas through community participation.
As part of this programme, civil servants will have to reach out to each Panchayat of the State, where they will stay for a specific period to interact and obtain feedback from the grassroots so as to tailor government efforts in improving delivery of village-specific services. The ‘Back to Village’ programme has been conceived with the objective of ensuring that developmental initiatives are built on the feedback and cooperation of the people, thus being more result oriented with greater probability of success than those which are top down.
The programme revolves around the concept that while the official machinery has to guide and assist, the primary responsibility to improve local conditions rests with the people themselves. Therefore, they must be encouraged to own a programme so that benefits are maximized. The life of a person living in a rural area is not cut into segments in the way the Government activities are prone to be. The approach at the village level, therefore, has to be a coordinated, touching all aspects of village life. Such an approach has to be made, not through a multiplicity of departmental officials, but through Panchayats.
The essence of the ‘Back to Village’ programme is to emphasize the importance of ensuring, right from the beginning, people’s participation, not merely as an agent in the execution of the development works but as owners of the entire programme.
During this programme, the officers will collect data on the guidelines contained in the 20-page booklet that has already been given to them. Five main problems will be highlighted from each Panchayat. After collection of all the data, it will be uploaded on the website and respective administrative departments will be asked to attend to these problems on top priority basis.
The officer who visits the Panchayat will be designated as the Nodal Officer for that village. After some time, the Nodal Officers will revisit the villages and take stock of the redressal of the problems highlighted during their 'back to village' deployment. Rural areas in Jammu and Kashmir face multiple problems including those of roads, schools, health centres, electricity, sanitation and safe drinking water.
27-May-2019: New code in offing for textile, clothing sector
The ‘Social and Labor Convergence Programme (SLCP),’ an initiative to have a standard-neutral, converged assessment framework for the textile and clothing industry, will be launched in India shortly.
The issues of social and labour compliance had become highly relevant in labour-intensive industries, including in the textile and clothing sector.
The SLCP is not a code of conduct or compliance programme. The converged assessment framework is a tool developed by the SLCP, which provides a data set with no value judgment or scoring. It is, however, compatible with existing audit systems and codes of conduct. This means that the same data set can be used by a wide-range of stakeholders. It eliminates the need for repetitive audits to be carried out on the same facility.
The initiative is led by world’s leading manufacturers, brands, retailers, industry groups, non-governmental organisations and service providers. The objective of the initiative is to improve the working conditions in textile units by allowing resources that were previously designated for compliance audits to be redirected towards the improvement of social and labour conditions.
This is a voluntary adoption by the textile and clothing makers. For the exporting units, it will reduce the number of social audits and facilitate measuring of employment practices, thus improving working conditions and employee relations. It also redeploys resources towards improvement actions and fosters collaboration between supply chain partners. The SLCP would be holding free seminars at Mumbai, Bengaluru, Tiruppur, and New Delhi and will launch operations in India, China, Sri Lanka and Taiwan this month.
7-Mar-2019: Odisha govt launches boat ambulance for remote villages
The Odisha government on March 5, 2019 launched boat ambulance service for those living in the remote villages near Bhitarkanika National Park in Kendrapara district. It is meant to ferry people to hospitals and clinics in case of emergency.
The boat ambulance can speedily reach the river and seaside villages. People living near Bhitarkanika National Park will also benefit from the service. The ambulance service will be available round-the-clock, and is equipped with necessary medical equipment.
The state government has decided to introduce six boat ambulances in riverside areas this year. The Health Department has given the work order to Mumbai-based Mahindra Dockyard to build the specially designed boat ambulances.
Many villagers depend on passenger boats, which are not available at night. The boat ambulance service can help them during medical emergencies.
Bhitarkanika is the second largest mangrove forest after Sundarban in West Bengal. Its water bodies are the home of around 1,800 estuarine crocodiles. But the healthcare system in the remote coastal pockets is failing due to shortage of medical personnel, poor transport facilities and infrastructural inadequacies. As a result, most people are forced to seek immediate medical help from quacks. The distance and lack of transportation often prevents pregnant women from reaching the health centers, particularly in case of sudden onset of labour.
Waterborne diseases are common in the riverside villages, especially in the summer. If any of the 60,000 villagers falls seriously ill, they have to travel around 20 kilometres to Mahakalapada or Rajnagar for a health centre.