The Hindu : Coimbatore panchayat turns a role model

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 18, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Coimbatore panchayat turns a role model

By K.V. Prasad

COIMBATORE Dec. 17. The Odanthurai panchayat, near Mettupalayam in Coimbatore district, has become a national-level role model in implementation of the Centrally-sponsored Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission for village panchayats.

Gujarat, West Bengal, Orissa and Assam are keen on replicating Odanthurai success and are collecting guidelines from the panchayat for ensuring total people's participation.

Among the 59 districts identified for the project in 2000, one of the Coimbatore panchayats completed the scheme and commenced water supply in 2001 itself, while most of the others are yet to reach even the halfway stage.

Four districts — Coimbatore, Cuddalore, Vellore and Perambalur — were chosen for the programme. Under this, the Government's role shifted from that of a provider to facilitator, stressing participation by beneficiaries in part-funding (10 per cent of the project cost) and total maintenance of the scheme.

Today, teams from the four States visited Odanthurai to study the implementation, especially how the panchayat ensured total community participation.

The project officer of the District Rural Development Agency, P. Jeyabalakrishnan, told The Hindu that the teams, comprising District Collectors and other officials, were overwhelmed at the public participation in Odanthurai — both in funds contribution and also maintenance.

A few team members, from some of the 59 chosen districts, admitted that in sharp contrast to this experience, lack of community support scuttled the project in their States. Besides coordination between the local body and community, coordination between the local body and the district administration also played a key role in the success of the programme.

The project officer of the UNICEF and leader of the entire delegation, Abul Kalam, said the Odanthurai model proved that the scheme was locally maintainable with community support.

Launched in September 2000, works in the panchayat were completed in August 2001 and supply connections given in October 2001. So far, the panchayat has provided 410 individual house connections, and has planned 250 more.

About 4,500 people have individual connections now, while families living along the forest border are provided with public fountains, as they cannot afford house connections. The scheme, supplying 27.40 million litres a day (mld), was implemented at a cost of Rs. 48 lakhs. While the public share was 10 per cent (Rs.4.8 lakhs), they had, in fact, made a contribution of Rs. 6 lakhs, having donated land worth Rs.1.2 lakhs to establish a treatment plant at Naripallam.

A village-level committee, comprising the beneficiaries, monitors supply and carries out maintenance of the scheme.

The performance of the panchayat led to the Centre bringing three more districts — Virudhunagar, Kancheepuram and Ramanathapuram — under the scheme.

The panchayat president, R. Shanmugham, was invited to other districts to address the local bodies on how to implement the project with total community participation.

The teams from the four States would discuss the scheme with the district officials tomorrow on the effective approach to implementation, Mr. Jeyabalakrishnan said.

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