Sustainable Village Development Plan with People's Participation: A Case Study of a Multi-ethnic Village of Jharkhand

Abstract

The new approach to village planning provides a paradigm shift in the traditional approach where the role of the government is changed from that of governance to facilitation. It envisages a bottom-up approach whereby the users' group themselves decide their work programme. It is a well-known fact that village development is a continuous, pluralistic and widely participatory process and basically means, advancement of an area, revealing, unfolding or opening up something which is latent and a change that is desirable. It requires a comprehensive and sustainable plan of action for the development of rural area or areas which are lagging behind in socio economic development due generally to prevalence of very low level of literacy and education and heavy dependence on primary production, viz. Agriculture, animal husbandry, fishery etc. and where the distribution of productive assets, such as land, is highly skewed (giving rise to serious disparities in income levels), social and development of social and physical infrastructure is lagging behind. In the above backdrop, a participatory exercise was carried out in the Jaspur village under Angara block of Ranchi district with the help of schedules and interview among the villagers to observe the present status and make a sustainable planning. Several Non-Governmental Organizations and Government Organization have been working the village earlier. This study has been an endeavour to find out the resource as well as drawbacks of the previous development attempts. The planning was needed for the holistic development in sustainable way to change into a model village. Emphasis was put on livelihood security, conservation on natural resources, environmental protection, infrastructure development, improvement on practical education, awareness on health and sanitation as well as with the interest of government and the people's participation on planning to make a Sustainable Model Village.