Ask any villager in Tamil Nadu what is ‘Patta Chitta’ and you will get an immediate answer. However ,ask him the exact steps to obtain the ‘Patta Chitta’ for his land and you will only get a frown in return.

Both central and state governments work relentlessly to uplift the life of the rural and the needy by introducing schemes ,plans and reforms. However, for the common man in the remotest of the Indian Villages, terms like ‘PMAY’ ,’PMGSY’,’SPMRM’ are nothing but some alien abbreviations with no meaning.

It is for this reason that , Mr. Dipankar Das , Science Graduate from Delhi University , thinks it is important to assist the marginalised people/households to make them aware of the various schemes available from the central as well as the state government and help navigate their way via applications/documents processes which are a prerequisite to avail the benefits.

Currently situated in Kanapadi Panchayat, he is working around the idea of creating a model Panchayat in ensuring Entitlements to the marginalised section of the community.

“The process constitutes PALM (Participatory Learning Method) activity to learn and assess the socio-economic problems of the community followed by FGD(Focus Group Discussion) to refine the gap based on the data collected along with working with the panchayat officials to help with the backend process of governmental institutions” , he said while pointing out to a distant map drawn by villagers in the adjacent field showing the resource division of the the entire village.

“The process constitutes PALM (Participatory Learning Method) activity to learn and assess the socio-economic problems of the community followed by FGD(Focus Group Discussion) to refine the gap based on the data collected along with working with the panchayat officials to help with the backend process of governmental institutions"

Mr. Dipankar Das

The target of his project would be to address the disparity in the community and bring front their plight to the notice of the governmental institution and mitigate the socio-economic gap in the community bridging Government to the marginalised section of the society.

“The whole process of the project comes along with a lot of learnings and experiences from understanding the structure of work, the resources at your disposal and to the always available mentors to guide you” , he said.

“Moreover, the struggle to learn to speak Tamil and build trust and be accepted into the community has given me insight not only into their plight but also to their culture and way of life” , he said smiling widely.

Beaming Dipankar and Village Patti