The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Tiruchi News : Gram sabha meets lacklustre

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 03, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi

Gram sabha meets lacklustre

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUCHI, OCT. 2 . With farmers and agricultural labourers busily engaged in farm activities, gram sabha meetings evoked a lukewarm response in many panchayats in the district today.

Attendance remained thin at the meetings and even self-help group members, who normally make their presence felt, were conspicuous by their absence. "We are taking up cultivation this season after a gap of nearly three years and most of our folks are in the fields," explained a farmer at Adavathur in Manikandam Union. Similar situation prevailed in most of places. Clearly the villagers were in no mood to spare time for the exercise.

Nevertheless, the meetings went ahead in 408 panchayats. For those, who attended, the exercise hardly seemed to bring in any immediate tangible benefit, given the financial crunch faced by most of the panchayats. Demands for better amenities largely evoked a standard refrain from panchayat presidents: "We would take up the works as and when we get funds." However, demands for minor works such as installing handpumps and street-lights were conceded.

Local body representatives complained that there had been little fund flow to the panchayats since March and they had not been able to realise the full allocation from the State Finance Commission, which they received recently. For, nearly 50 per cent of the allocations had been directly deducted towards the electricity charges due to the TNEB from the respective panchayats. For instance, the Adavathur panchayat had received a meagre allotment of just about Rs.16, 000 and a cheque for an equal amount drawn in favour of the TNEB. The panchayat owes the TNEB over Rs.3 lakhs towards electricity charges accumulated over the past several years. Many other panchayats were saddled with similar crippling burden.

The disconnection of power supply to panchayat union schools, owing to the default of payment by the panchayat unions concerned, figured prominently at some of the gram sabhas.

Farmers of Allithurai, Adavathur and Thayanur made a strong plea to include the cultivable areas in their villages under the registered ayacut of the Old Kattalai Canal. The cultivation areas in the three villages and those in Navalurkuttapattu, Punganur, Nachikurichi (south) and Pirattiyur could not get assured irrigation as they had not been included in the list of registered ayacut areas of the canal. The areas were still recorded as rainfed areas in the revenue records, they said and urged the district administration to ensure that the tail end areas of the Ariyar (fed by the New Kattalai Canal) and the 32nd channel under the Old Kattalai Canal received adequate water in the channels by conceding their demand.

They also demanded steps to strengthen the banks of the Uyyakondan, Ariyar, Koraiyar and Kudamuritti rivers and the Kodikal, Old Kattalai and New Kattalai channels. They pleaded for putting up new shutters on these water courses as most of the existing ones were in repair.

The gram sabha meeting at Angarai in Lalgudi union, which was attended by the District Revenue Officer, P.Senthil Kumar, resolved to make it a total sanitation village by constructing individual toilets in all houses and banning open defecation and dumping of garbage in public places.

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