Abstract:
Meghalaya state of Northeast India has a tribal population of 86.14 percent mainly dominated by the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo communities. These communities since time immemorial have been living their social life under the administration of the Village Council which is the council of village elders headed by the Village Headman. Village Headman held responsibility for maintaining law and order, peace harmony and overall, the social welfare in the village. All the government programmes and schemes meant for the village are routed through the Village Council. Owing to the importance of the Village Council in rural development, the present study was conducted with the following objectives: i) to study the knowledge level of the village councillors regarding execution of rural development programmes, ii) to examine the extent of participation of village councillors in rural development programmes, iii) to ascertain the role perception of village councillors and scheme beneficiaries towards implementation of rural development programmes, iv) to determine the role performance of the village councillors in implementation of rural development programmes. Data was collected from the 30 Village Councils of the three districts (East Khasi Hills, West Jaintia Hills and West Garo Hills) implementing MGNREGA, PDS and ICDS programmes, respectively. A total of 540 respondents consisting of 360 Village Councillors (VCs) and 180 Scheme Beneficiaries (SBs) were sampled for the study. The salient findings of the study were that the knowledge index of the village councillors was found to be higher in ICDS village councillors (75.29%) as compared to MGNREGA (56.41%) and PDS (52.08%) village councillors, respectively. About 46.67 percent had medium knowledge level about MGNREGA, majority of them (74.16%) had medium knowledge level about PDS and more than half (51.67%) had medium knowledge level about ICDS, respectively. Participation index of the village councillors was found to be 74.82%, 76.33% and 75.88% in case of MGNREGA, PDS and ICDS respectively. Majority of the MGNREGA village councillors (74.16%) belonged to the medium participation level, PDS councillors (85.00%) had medium level of participation and 55.84 percent of ICDS councillors had medium category level of participation. Role perception index of VCs and SBs for MGNREGA was 79.29% & 90.40%, whereas it was 87.84% & 84.78% for PDS, 75.23% & 80.58% for ICDS, respectively. Role performance index as perceived by the village councillors and scheme beneficiaries of MGNREGA was 80.79% & 65.01%, whereas it was 83.86% & 63.91% for PDS, 85.11% & 68.68% for ICDS, respectively with majority of them falls under medium level category of role performance for all the three programmes. It was suggested that knowledge level of the councillors involved in execution of MGNREGA could be increased through orientation programmes at the VEC level, trainings, workshops, Annual VEC Meet, VEC Mela, leadership programmes etc. Improvement in work culture of the job cards holders could be done through awareness and capacity building programmes at the village level. Knowledge level of the PDS councillors could be increased through organising of orientation programmes, trainings at the village/cluster level, participation in awareness programmes etc. Finalisation of family households for inclusion under PDS beneficiaries must be in consultation with the Village Council. For ICDS, increasing of honorarium for the AWWs/AWHs and demonstration on cooking of food items supplied need to be taught to the beneficiaries to reduce wastage of public money.