Mangalore: Achieving success, step by step

• This woman GP member has become a catalyst of change in Kolthige

 

Mangalore, 15 Jul 2012: Gram Panchayat members use their power to ensure that the villagers have access to drinking water supply, good roads and try to bring in change in their village.

 

They also make sure that the grants do not return back to the government, following non utilisation of funds. However, there are a very few gram panchayat members who carved a niche in their gram panchayat limits.

 

Yashodha, president of Kolthige gram panchayat in Puttur taluk is a woman of substance and has become the catalyst of change in the gram panchayat. Elected to the gram panchayat for three tenures, she has served as the vice-president of the gram panchayat and she believes in love, patience and unity, which finds an answer to all the problems.

 

“Male members of my village were spending their earnings in toddy shops. I have enrolled over 80 such individuals to de-addiction camps and now they are teetotallers and are leading a decent life,” she says with pride.

 

“As I come from a agriculture family, I learnt the art of SRI system of paddy cultivation through SKDRDP and I started disseminating information on the same. As a result, as many as 13 families in my gram panchayat are following SRI system of paddy cultivation,” she said.

 

In addition, she has been creating awareness against dowry system, self-employment among women, healthy food, need for savings, ill effects of mobilephones, need for attending gram sabha and cleaniliness. “Along with the help of the rest of the gram panchayat members, we have tried to create awareness against gambling which was rampant in the village. Through the efforts of the gram panchayat, the gambling has come down drastically,” she says.

 

Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), she has roped in unemployed villagers to construct compound wall in schools and planted coconut saplings. “I clear the bills under MGNREGA only after looking into the quality of work taken up. Under individual work, poor were asked to take up the work on planting saplings of rubber, arecanut, coconut, banana. Under suvarna grama scheme, the work on roads, drains and water tanks have been taken up in the gram panchayat limits. There was no electricity for the houses in Palchod for the last several years.

 

However, through the effort of the gram panchayats, the villagers have got electricity. There are 1,240 households in the gram panchayats, of which, over 200 houses do not have electricity,” she says.

 

Water supply

The gram panchayat has been supplying water to those areas which do not have means of water.  As many as 11 water committees have been constituted to look into the system of distribution of water. “In the past, none of the villagers were paying the bills.

 

However, now we have succeeded in persuading the villagers to pay water bill as well as house tax,” says another gram panchayat member Rajeevi and Bhavani. 

 

Yashodha says that in the last two years, as many as 90 houses have been sanctioned to poor under various housing schemes. “I pay surprise visits to every school once in a month and taste the food prepared under midday meals. Even PHC at Petambady which was in news for various reasons has started functioning without any hurdle.”

 

Through the efforts of the gram panchayat members, the villagers have started loving the gram panchayat.

 

Asked on her future plan, Yashodha says that she wants to convert the gram panchayat into a sugrama, where people live peacefully without any problems.