Background

New Hospital building

Old Hospital building in poor shape

Road in bad shape

Obsolete medical instrument

The Planning Commission, Govt of India has launched a new initiative in the Tenth Plan, namely, the Backward Districts Initiative under the Rashtriya Sam Vikash Yojana (RSVY). The primary objective of the RSVY is to address the problems of the pockets of high poverty, low growth and poor governance by putting in place programmes and policies, which would remove barriers to growth and accelerate the development process.

The districts identified in Assam are Kokrajhar, Lakhimpur, Dhemaji , NC Hills and Karbi Anglong. The aim is to use the funds available under the RSVY to serve as a catalyst so that visible improvement is possible in the field in the shortest possible time. To operationalise the scheme, districts plans are to be prepared based on the natural advantages, resources and existing institutional support and the additionality is to be used to serve local needs, which would make a major dent on the poverty in the district in a time bound manner. The district/state would be free to choose the schemes to be taken up but the strategy should focus on filling up critical gaps in social and physical infrastructure so that obstacles in the path of socio-economic development may be overcome. Under this initiative, Rs 45 crores would be provided to the district within three years @ Rs 15 Crores per year.

While formulating this plan important aspects like people’s participation and the involvement of Panchayati Raj Institutions, Non-Governmental Organisations and Self-Help Groups at every stage including plan formulation, implementation and monitoring have been taken into consideration. Innovative programmes and alternate ways (of implementing schemes to ensure transparency, efficient delivery and accountability) have been proposed and to achieve this, most of the employment generating schemes/activities schemes have been credit linked. Justifications for choosing the schemes under the proposed RSVY programme are dealt in respective chapters of this plan.