It has been nearly 28 years since the Panchayati Raj system has made its way in India.

The thought process behind the Panchayati Raj system, at that time, was to make democracy functional at the local level and driven by citizens’ needs and participation. It was therefore introduced as a three-tier system that decentralized governance, decision making, and local development.

The Panchayati Raj system can decentralize the democratic setup by widening the political representation of different social groups, especially women. Also, it can enable the building of efficient local institutions that could plan, execute, and monitor their communities’ development through a participatory approach.

Today, 25 years on, the above initial ideas must be seen as success indicators of India’s Panchayati Raj system.

DPDF Logo

DHAN Panchayat Development Foundation
- An initiative to motivate Panchayati Raj System

DHAN believes that Poverty Reduction and Grassroots Democracy are the two eyes of the Development process. It has a proven track record of building excellent participatory, democratic models by way of various self–governed people institutions such as Self – Help Groups, Farmer associations, Cooperatives, and recently in the form of Farmer Producers’ organizations. Also, building democratic practices at Village Panchayat is possible. It serves as a development forum and its area of operation is small to handle and has direct connectivity with the local community.

So, to make our democracy more reasonable and help in nation-building, there is an immense need for linking local-level people institutions with mainstream panchayats and other government agencies. Helping the local Panchayats to follow democratic principles and activities to keep its activities transparent and effective. This initiative, Panchayat Development Foundation will enable such interface across the nation.

Model Panchayat Programme
- A step towards creating a Model Society

A conceptual model village is one where villagers act as decision-makers, partners and beneficiaries with multi-sectoral, multifunctional and integrated development to achieve holistic and sustainable development backed up by futuristic and progressive skills leading to higher levels of productivity and improvement in overall quality of life. “a model village is a sustainable community that can generate and maintain the resources necessary to improve its level of well being by strengthening the sustainability pillars of livelihood, infrastructure, and services.”

Importance of Model panchayats in DHAN Programmes in relevance to federations:

“A Panchayat can be called as truly a Model Panchayat when it becomes self-sustained in all aspects. In this ecosystem, the community should feel empowered and uplifted enough to take on the responsibilities of governance. In other words, a feeling of ownership should be present in the community”

Ms. Shanthi Maduresan (Programme Leader-DPDF)

Ms. Shanthi Maduresan, the program leader of DPDF, explained to us the core purpose of the Model Panchayat programme.

“A Panchayat can be called as truly a Model Panchayat when it becomes self-sustained in all aspects. In this ecosystem, the community should feel empowered and uplifted enough to take on the responsibilities of governance. In other words, a feeling of ownership should be present in the community”, she said with hope and positivity.

Not that model Panchayat is only on paper and not in real terms. Even though it is a newly conceived model, DPDF does have ample experiments to showcase.

Let us go through some of them.

The DPDF programme has initiated the Diploma in Panchayat management (DPM) course to empower the communities and to equip their participation in the Panchayat System.

There are 62 people who have undergone the DPM course. Especially Madurai district and Dindigul district . And Kottampatty vayalgam requests one more batch for their ward members and panchatyat vice presidents and youth. And Cuddalore and Nagapattinam vayttalakundu the course to be conducted in April 2021.

Election awareness Campaigns

Creating awareness among the masses and making them aware of their rights and responsibilities is one of the core activities.

Below are some of the glimpses of the Election awareness campaign at some of our locations.

The DPDF programme has initiated the Diploma in Panchayat management (DPM) course to empower the communities and to equip their participation in the Panchayat System.

There are 62 people who have undergone the DPM course. Especially Madurai district and Dindigul district . And Kottampatty vayalgam requests one more batch for their ward members and panchatyat vice presidents and youth. And Cuddalore and Nagapattinam vayttalakundu the course to be conducted in April 2021.