Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma Plans Massive Rural Outreach To Plug Development Deficits

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has designed a massive rural outreach to gain a first-hand account of the success and coverage of various development schemes and welfare programmes and plug deficits. 

Sarma told Swarajya that from 1 to 15 October, all ministers (including himself) and top officials will undertake visits to every village in the state.  

“We are naming it Raijyor Xomadhan (solving people’s problems) whose basic objective is to understand the pulse of the people and take governance to their doorsteps,” said Sarma, the architect of the outreach programme. 

While other states have also launched programmes to take governance to the doorsteps of the people, what sets the Assam model apart from the rest is that the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues as well as top state officials will visit all the villages personally. 

The visits by the CM, Ministers and top officials to the villages will be preceded by visits by officials of all line departments to collate beneficiary data of all government schemes and assess their reach and coverage. These visits, which commenced Tuesday (1 August), will continue till the end of August. 

Based on this collection and collation of data, preliminary and confirmatory surveys will be carried out from 1 to 15 September. All the departments tasked with implementation of various welfare programmes and development projects will carry our foolproof verifications between 10 and 20 September. 

“All this has been planned and mapped out with a lot of care to ensure that a 100% correct picture of the status of various schemes and projects, their coverage and rate of success is obtained. The visits by all ministers and senior officials from October 1 to 15 will take the outreach programme to its final phase,” said Sarma. 

“We will inspect all physical infrastructure and development schemes in the villages, talk to the beneficiaries, find out if anyone or any family has been left out and address all deficiencies and gaps on the spot. During those fifteen days (1 to 15 October), all of us will visit many villages in a day and, between ourselves, will cover all the 25,501 villages in the state,” Sarma said. 

Another objective of the outreach programme is to create a unified digital database for faster rollout of future welfare and developmental schemes. “This programme will also enhance people’s collective trust in government institutions and improve the quality of public assets,” Chief Minister Sarma added. 

After the outreach programme, every village will have its report card that can be assessed by all departments and the general public. That will act as a ready tool to address development deficiencies in individual villages, help tailor future programmes to plug such deficiencies and usher in transparency in governance, Sarma added.