IAY Purulia , West Bengal - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

IAY

Purulia

, West Bengal

Special Intervention

Programme

in

Ayodhya

Hills

Ajodhya Hills is a hill range running parallel to the

western boundary of Purulia District. It spreads over an area of around 300 Sq Km and over five police stations of Purulia. These hills are actually an extension of the Dalma Range coming into the district of Purulia from Jharkhand.

This thickly forested and hilly region has seen extremely violent LWE movement as late as 2011. Equally hit were the foothill areas.

PURULIA

BURDWAN

BANKURAW MIDNAPORE

J

H

A

R

K

H

A

N

D

Ajodhya hills is around 2000 feet high. Its top is like a rolling plain and table-like.

There are husk green meadows and cultivation lands on the top interspersed with occasional congregation of huts making up small clusters of villages. Temperature during summer ranges from 34 degree to 44 degree centigrade and 8 degree to 15 degree centigrade in winter.It covers mostly the Ajodhya GP of Baghmundi

Block and some parts of Matha, Burda-Kalimati, Sindri & Baghmundi GP of Baghmundi Block; Sirkabad, Chatuhansa & Hetgugui GP of

Arsha

Block;

Ghatbera-Kerowa

&

Genrua

GP of

Balarampur

Block;

Begunkodar

GP of Jhalda-II Block and Pusti,

Mathari-Khamar & Jhalda-Darda GP of Jhalda

-I Block.

The population in the hill area is about 30,000 & most of them are tribals

. People used to depend mostly on forest resources to sustain their daily livelihood. Population is highly scattered. There are 76 villages in Ajodhya GP and another nearly 40 villages in other GPs surrounding Ajodhya GP. In most of the villages population is low except the Ajodhya Hill Top, which is an attractive tourist destination. Some of the villages even consist of 4-5 families and situated remote inaccessible areas.

Ajodhya Hills area witnessed

large scale Naxalite activities in recent times. Various development works have been taken-up in these areas since then to tackle the menace, including making provision of road, electricity, drinking water & providing alternative livelihood. In 2015-16, the district administration took up an ambitious project called Special Intervention Programme in and around the Ajodhya Hills area. One important component of this programme was to achieve housing for all. All BPL households

in and around the Ajodhya Hills area were supposed to get a pucca house from IAY within the year.

Under guidance and direction of district administration, the block administration of Baghmundi,

Jhalda-I, Jhalda-II, Balarampur and Arsha blocks conducted an extensive house to house survey to identify all such households who can be covered through IAY. 855 eligible households were identified in Ajodhya GP itself. Another 1449 households were identified in other GPs. The rest of non-BPL households were covered under State Housing scheme of

Gitanjali.

IAY (2015-16) beneficiaries under Special Intervention Programme

Block

GP

No. of beneficiaries

Baghmundi

Ajodhya (Full)

855

Burda-Kalimati

(Part)

73

Baghmundi

(Part)

26

Matha

(Part)

73

Sindri

(Part)

15

Jhalda

-I

Mathari-Khamar

(Part)

213

Jhalda-Darda

(Part)

175

Pusti

(Part)

52

Jhalda

-II

Begunkodar

(Part)

71

Arsha

Chatuhansa

(Part)

48

Hetgugui

(Part)

217

Sirkabad

(Part)

22

Balarampur

Ghatbera-Kerowa

(Part)

296

Genrua

(Part)

168

TOTAL

2304

Before 2015-16, these areas were not given any special attention regarding housing. For example, only

143 houses were provided before 2013-14 in the hilly areas in Ajodhya GP, only 37 houses in 2013-14 and only 140 houses in 2014-15. For other GPs of Baghmundi block surrounding Ajodhya, this figure upto 2014-15 was merely 117. This year the district got IAY quota of 20939 which was distributed among all blocks. In case of above 5 Blocks, the district and block administration persuaded the PRI functionaries to concentrate this quota to Ajodhya Hills area.

But, this was not sufficient because the district needed some additional quota after identification of all eligible households of Ajodhya Hills area. This additional quota (4986) was accorded by state to the district. This additional quota was mostly used to cover all pending eligible beneficiaries of Ajodhya Hills area in a saturation mode. Now the people of Ajodhya Hills will have a pucca house for every household.

The next challenge for administration was to bring in all such households under financial inclusion. It is to mention that there is no bank branch in Ajodhya Hills. Though the households were covered under

MGNREGS, but they had their accounts mostly in Post Offices. Post Offices in these regions have traditionally been very late in disbursing any kind of payment. Hence, the administration insisted on bank account payment for IAY . Several meetings were held with bank officials both at block and district levels and after long and painful persuasion, the administration finally succeeded to open bank account of all beneficiaries. Now, the IAY beneficiaries also have a bank account and fund are transferred to these accounts

through electronic fund transfer mode.

Now, the beneficiaries have started building their houses. Also this year a mandatory convergence with

MGNREGS & NBA was imposed in order to ensure better quality of the house through value addition as well as additional wage generation for such households. The socio- economic scenario of Ajodhya Hills have drastically improved. The poor tribal households now have been ensured their basic needs of ‘Roti, Kapra aur Makan’. Now they can save their savings for their other livelihood activities as it will not be required to repair the house every season

.And, there has been no LWE incident in this region in last four years.

Thank you