When union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh addressed a gathering at Domlai village in Lailor panchayat during his third visit to Saranda (on July 1), Samendra Mundari had wanted to tell him about the hut he was building with money from the Indira Awaas Yojana. The 48-year-old farmer had received only the first instalment (of Rs 24,000) and used it to put up the mud walls of his new house nearly a month before the first monsoon showers fell. “I had applied for the second instalment but the money hasn’t come yet. I had to put up a tarpaulin roof because of the rains,” he says. Lost in the crowd, he never got to speak to Ramesh who had prodded the villagers to speak of their grievances, to complain to the authorities for lapses in governance delivery.
Samendra and the other residents of Domlai are beneficiaries of the Saranda Development Plan (SDP). The plan, a “development offensive” against Maoists in the region, benefits 7,000 tribal households in Lailor panchayat along with five others – Digha, Makranda, Gangda, Chiria, Chottanagra.

The plan includes special relaxations in the union government’s welfare schemes like the national rural employment guarantee scheme (MNREGS), Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY – housing grants for rural poor) and the implementation of the national rural livelihoods mission apart from the development of infrastructure in the region: a 130 km road network under the pradhan mantri gram sadak yojana, 10 integrated development centres as one-stop shops for delivery of government services, an integrated watershed management programme complete with check dams and all.
The disbursal of the IAY funds to the 7,000 tribal families in the six panchayats was a short-term goal of the SDP. Even though there is no deadline mentioned, the disbursal should have been complete by the monsoon. “The mud walls of the huts without roofs will crumble in the rains,” informs Bhimsen Tigga, the young panchyat committee representative from Lailor.

And, Samendra is not alone. A panchayat functionary at the block office in Manoharpur told Governance Now that 37 applicants of 77 from Domlai were yet to get the second instalment of the Rs 48,000 grant. “Those who have received the second instalment got it only after a couple of months of putting up the mud structures,” he says.

The tardy disbursal has pitched the beneficiaries against the rains, which has added another level of complexity to the problem – borrowings are up. “I borrowed well over Rs 15,000 from relatives for the roof. The asbestos sheets alone cost Rs 13,000,” says Shivnath Nayak, a 50-year-old farmer from the village. Others like Mary Mundari, who knows nobody who could give soft loans, had to dip into their meagre savings to see if they could put a roof before their mud huts soaked in the rains and crumbled. “My husband works as a daily-wage labourer. This house took up all our savings. Some of our neighbours have lent us some money on interest,” she says, “but I am happy that my kids and I have a roof over our heads now.”

Santosh Mundari, who works as a driver in nearby Jaraikela, borrowed from his employer. “There’s no interest being charged but I’ll now have to take pay cuts until I return all the money,” he says.

The poor implementation of SDP is not confined to IAY alone. Domlai has had no new MNREGS projects this year. Work on a village road of soil and murum (a local soft rock) and a pond, both projects sanctioned in the financial year 2010-11, was abandoned much short of mid-way when the villagers stopped showing up for work as they had not received payment for nearly 30 working days.

“A labour bill of Rs 72,000 has not yet been paid to the villagers who were working on the pond,” informs Mangal Mundari, one of the disaffected MNREGS beneficiaries and the ‘mate’ (the village-level coordinator for a particular MNREGS project) for the pond project. The concrete walling in of a well, a project from 2010-11, was hastily completed just days before Ramesh’s visit. The only bright spot seems to be a bridge Ramesh inaugurated in the village.

So, where has the Saranda Development Plan taken a beating in Domlai? The plan, as of now, seems to be running on one leg – the union government’s funds. “There are 829 BPL cardholders in Lailor. (In the first phase of the disbursals, the district administration went by the rulebook – funds were to be given to cardholders only. It is now being revised according to the directions from the union government.) Only 429 have applied for IAY. The 400 who haven’t don’t have a bank account. So, there is no way to transfer funds. The district administration has asked the local branch of Bank of India to organise an account-opening camp in the villages,” informs Shivnath Nayak, a panchayat functionary. The villagers point at the delay in disbursal and blame the officials of not informing them that they needed bank accounts.

With MNREGS, the problem is that no one in the village seems to know where the payments are getting held up. “The money is with the panchayat while a junior engineer prepares the bill which is cleared at the block office. If you ask anyone at these three levels, you are shuttled between them,” rues Mangal.

“Apart from these schemes, attention needs to be paid to drinking water and education. We have a basic primary school which has no regular teachers. All the teaching is left to the para-teachers,” says Tigga.