Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY), a Government of India initiative for the empowerment of deprived sections, aims to achieve integrated development of selected villages through convergent implementation of all relevant Central and State schemes. The scheme was launched in March, 2010 on a pilot basis for the integrated development of 1000 villages each with more than 50% SC population.
Vision of an “Adarsh Gram” (Model Village)
A Model village is one which has adequate physical and institutional infrastructure, in which minimum needs of all sections of the society are fully met; they live in harmony with each other, as also with the environment, and a village which is progressive and dynamic. These villages should be covered with all the facilities necessary for dignified living, creating thereby an environment in which all its residents are enabled to utilise their potential to the fullest. These villages should, inter alia, satisfy the following norms:
Physical Infrastructure
- Should be connected to the nearest major road by an all-weather road. Likewise, in case of a multi-hamlet village, all hamlets should be connected with each other by an all-weather road.
- Access for all to safe drinking water on a sustainable basis.
- All houses should have electricity.
- The village should have slush-free internal roads, and adequate street lighting.
- Village should have adequate communication facilities, such as post-office, telephones, and, if possible, internet, and Bharat Nirman Common Service Centre (being established by the Deptt. of Information Technology).
- Availability of adequate banking facilities through regular (brick and mortar) branches in the village or in close proximity, and through Business Correspondent/Business Facilitator Model.
- All residents should have adequate housing, and there should be no homeless family.
Sanitation and Environment
- The village should have a high degree of sanitation- it should be free from dry latrines, and open defecation, and should have sanitary toilets, drains and an efficient waste disposal system. It should, as far as possible, fulfil “Nirmal Gram Puraskar” norms.
- The Village should take care of its environment through (1) planting trees, (2) water harvest action and maintenance of water bodies (3) use of renewable sources of energy, such as biogas, solar energy, wind energy, (4) use of smokeless chulhas, etc.
Social Infrastructure, Human Development and Social Harmony
- Should have an Anganwadi centre and schools of appropriate levels.
- The village should have adequate and attractive buildings for its Anganwadi, school, health centre, panchayat, and community hall. The village should have adequate facilities for sports and other physical activities.
- All children in the age group of 3-6 should be enrolled in, and regularly attend the Anganwadi. Likewise, all children in the 6-14 age group should be enrolled in, and regularly attend school.
- All adults should be at least functionally literate, and should have access to facilities for continuing education.
- Access for all to primary health care and Reproductive Child Health (RCH) facilities, with proper pre-natal and ante-natal care for mothers.
- 100% institutional deliveries, full immunization of children, and observance of the small family norm.
- The village as a community should take special care of its women, children (especially girls), senior citizens, and persons with disabilities.
- There should be no public consumption of liquor or any other intoxicating substances, and their use in general should be discouraged.
- The village should have an active Gram Sabha/Gram Panchayat, women’s/swarozgaris’ Self-help Group, youth club and Mahila mandal.
- There should be no caste-based discrimination, complete eradication of untouchability, and a due sense of security and dignity among the weaker sections.
- Residents of the village should be aware of and exercise their constitutional and legal rights. Likewise, they should also be aware of and discharge their fundamental and civic duties.
Livelihood
- All youth and adults of the village should have adequate employment and means of livelihood, and there should be adequate arrangements for development of skills among them, so that as many of them as possible are in skilled employment.
- Progressive and efficient practices, based on new technology, should be used in all the economic activities pursued in the village, especially in agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries etc.
- Should have adequate access to remunerative prices for agricultural and other produce of the village.
Objective
To ensure integrated development of the selected villages into “model villages” so that, inter alia,
- They have all requisite physical and social infrastructure for their socio-economic development, and satisfy the norms mentioned in the vision of an adarsh gram to the maximum possible extent.
- Disparity between SC and non-SC population in terms of common socio- economic indicators (e.g. literacy rate, completion rate of elementary education, IMR/MMR, ownership of productive assets, etc.) is eliminated, the indicators are raised to at least the level of the national average, and
- All BPL families, especially those belonging to SCs, have food and livelihood security, and are enabled to cross the poverty line and earn an adequate livelihood
- All children complete at least eight years of education, and
- Incidence of malnutrition, especially among children and women, is eliminated.
- Untouchability, discrimination, segregation, and atrocities against SCs are eliminated, as are other social evils like discrimination against girls/women,alcoholism and substance (drugs) abuse, etc., and all sections of society can live with dignity and equality, and in harmony with others.
Area covered
Presently the scheme is being implemented in five States of the country viz Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.
Implementation
The scheme is being implemented by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. To ensure focused attention, the selected States are to select villages from same, or 2-3 contiguous districts and give preference to the more backward districts. The development of the villages has to be ensured through:
- Convergent implementation of existing Schemes of the Centre and State Governments, and
- The works which could not be covered under the above, to be taken up through provision of “gap-filling” funds for which central assistance is provided @ Rs. 10 lakh per village revised to Rs. 20 lakhs per village at an average w.e.f. Sep. 2011, with State Government also expected to make a suitable, preferably matching, contribution.
Based on the experience gained in the pilot phase, the scheme will be considered for implementation on a larger scale.
- Scheduled Castes (SCs), who constitute 16.6% of our population as per 2011 Census, have historically suffered social and educational disabilities and economic deprivation arising therefrom. Accordingly, special provisions have been enshrined in the Constitution for the advancement of their interests. These provisions range from measures to remove any kind of social disabilities imposed on them to ensure equality of opportunity in every sphere, to measures of positive discrimination to bring them on par with rest of the population.
- Article 46 of Part IV (“Directive Principles of State Policy”) of the Constitution enjoins upon the State to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Article 38 (2) in the same Part also enjoins upon the State to minimize inequities in income, and to endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations.
- The Government has hence taken a number of initiatives for development of SCs, which have yielded positive outcomes, and have also resulted in narrowing the gap between the Scheduled Castes and the rest of the population. However, the focus of most welfare Schemes of SCs has been mainly cantered on individual beneficiaries rather than on the integrated development of SC pockets.
- To enable an area based development approach, a new scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY) was launched on a Pilot basis during 2009-10, following the Finance Minister’s declaration in his Budget Speech delivered on 6.7.2009. The Scheme aims at integrated development of villages in which the population of Scheduled Castes is above 50%. A total of 1000 villages from Tamil Nadu (225), Rajasthan (225), Bihar (225), Himachal Pradesh (225) and Assam (100) were selected for the Pilot phase. Under this phase total Rs. 201 crore was released to the States. All the 1000 villages has been declared as Adarsh Gram.
- During 2014-15, PMAGY was further extended (Phase-I) to cover another 1500 villages across 11 States namely Andhra Pradesh (7), Assam (75), Chhattisgarh (175), Jharkhand (100), Haryana (12), Karnataka (201), Madhya Pradesh (327), Odisha (175), Punjab (162), Telangana (6) and Uttar Pradesh (260). Funding for these villages started during March 2015 and continued till 2019-20. Total 346.85 cr were released to the States as Central Share. Till date States have declared 149 villages as Adarsh Gram and remaining villages are slotted for declaration as Adarsh by 31-03-2021.
- In light of the benefits accruing to the residents of the villages through successful implementation of the Scheme, it has been decided in 2018-19 to take up more villages as Phase-II of the Scheme. All those districts are considered which have villages having total population ≥500 and with more than 50% persons belonging to the Scheduled Castes. The villages in descending order of SC population are proposed to be selected from each such district for implementation of the Scheme in this new Phase. The Government of India is planning to cover all the eligible 26968 villages by the end of 2014-25.
Revision of Scheme Guidelines:
- To ensure all round development of the selected villages, so that they can indeed become ‘Adarsh Grams’, the said Scheme was also revised to capture the Gaps in critical socio-economic ‘Monitorable Indicators’ as part of various sectors/domains. These domains include water and sanitation, education, health and nutrition, agricultural best practices etc. amongst others.
New Approach for implementation:
- The identification of needs or Gaps with regard to the ‘Monitorable Indicators’ are based on a Need Assessment exercise. The ‘Village Development Plan’ (VDP) is based on the data collected as part of the Need Assessment exercise. The Scheme relies heavily on convergence with other initiatives of the Central and State Governments for ensuring that the minimum infrastructure and critical services are made available to all the persons in the village, especially those belonging to the Scheduled Castes. PMAGY provids the platform for convergent implementation of other Schemes with the aim to achieve saturation in the various domains. Whereas it is expected that the major portion of the funds requirement for implementation would be met from other Central or State Government Schemes, the ‘Gap-filling’ funds will be provided under the Scheme, for those areas which cannot be covered otherwise.
- For every new village selected, the Scheme provides for a total of Rs. 21 lakh of which Rs.20.00 lakh is for the ‘Gap-filling’ component and Rs.1.00 lakh is meant for ‘administrative expenses’ in the ratio of 1:1:1:2 at the Centre, State, District and Village level respectively.
- Details of ‘funding’ and ‘flow of fund’ are explained at para-9 and 10 of the Scheme Guidelines. The State Government/UT Administration would initially, the State Government/UT Administration will release the entire admissible funds under ‘Administrative Expenses’ to the District Administrations for carrying out capacity building, administrative expenses, awareness generation and initiating non cost based activities. Thereafter the entire admissible funds under the ‘Gap-filling’ component i.e. Rs.20.00 lakh per village will be released by the State Government to the District Administration once the VDP of the selected villages is approved by their DLCC so that the planned works can be executed without any delay.
- The Scheme provides for setting up of various levels of Committees for guidance, monitoring and implementation. These Committees, especially the Convergence Committees at the Village, District and State levels, are crucial to the implementation as they would assess the requirements as well as plan and execute the works/services that are needed to be undertaken under various Schemes for the wholesome development of the villages.
- Government of India has developed a well-defined structure for Planning, Implementation and Monitoring of the Scheme execution. A website with the facility of collection of Household level data, assessment of village needs, prioritising the works, preparing the Village Development Plan and periodic monitoring of the Scheme has been made operational. The web link of the site is
The Scheme provides for An ‘Adarsh Gram’ is one wherein people have access to various basic services so that the minimum needs of all the sections of the society are fully met and disparities are reduced to a minimum. These villages would have all such infrastructure and its residents will have access to all such basic services that are necessary for a dignified living, creating thereby an environment in which everyone is enabled to utilize her/his potential to the fullest
- The objective of this Scheme is to ensure integrated development of the selected villages with more than 50% SC population so that, inter alia, there is:
(a) Adequate Infrastructure: All requisite infrastructure necessary for the socio-economic development needs are to be provided under the Scheme.
(b) Improvement in Socio-Economic Indicators The identified socio-economic indicators, known as Monitorable Indicators, are to be improved so that the disparity between SC and non-SC population is eliminated and the level of indicators is raised to at least that of the National average. More specifically, all BPL SC families should have food and livelihood security, all SC children should complete education at least up to the secondary level, all factors leading to maternal and infant mortality are addressed and incidence of malnutrition, especially amongst children and women, is eliminated.
- The particulars of the 50 Monitorable Indicators under 10 domains are listed in the next para. These 10 domains are:
i) Drinking water and Sanitation
ii) Education
iii) Health and Nutrition
iv) Social Security
v) Rural Roads and Housing
vi) Electricity and Clean Fuel
vii) Agricultural Practices etc.
viii) Financial Inclusion
ix) Digitization
x) Livelihood and Skill Development