India's most backwards districts will soon receive support from technical and educational institutions in the preparation of their annual plans for most of the development schemes. The government has enlisted the institutions as technical support institutions (TSIs), hoping to ensure efficient use of central governmnet funds.

The bodies - identified by the state government for each district - will put together resources channelised to panchayats from all sources including centrally sponsored schemes, flagship proramme such as MNREGS, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, rural health mission and Bharat Nirman, grant in aid from finance commission awards and state sector schemes.

The plan document would include overview of the district, district vision, panchayat-wise resource flow and the process of participatory planning before recommending the schemes to be taken under plan.

The process of the decentralized planning would involve the following steps:

•        SWOT analysis of various planning units (village upward)

•        Assessment of the status of planning unit vis a vis national goals

•        Need assessment and priority setting through participatory for a like gram sabhas and SHG networks

•        Situation analysis using locally available data through simple methods supplemented by participatory appraisal technique

• Formulation of a vision of development as well as strategies for attaining the vision by the PRIs through a process of interaction with stakeholders and local experts

• Development of project ideas based on the need assessment and situation analysis by expert working groups at different levels of PRIs

• Consolidation of development  proposals of the working groups

• Prioritization of proposals and allocation of resources to the prioritized proposals

• Preparation of project reports in detailed formats

Teams from the TSIs would visit the districts assigned to them and hold discussions with the district planning committees and its officials at various levels.

TSIs would also conduct workshops at the block level for the village level resource groups constituted by the PRIs comprising elected representatives persons from the civil society, academic institutions, and others who can contribute to needs assessment and planning for the area.

In order to facilitate the preparation of the panchayat plans and their aggregation at the block and district level and further consolidation with the plans of the municipalities, TSI team should establish contact with the elected representatives and officials of the DPC, panchayat and municipalities and build rapport with them so as to fully understand the process of district planning adopted in the state.