Every human being has certain basic needs as an individual. In order to fulfill these needs efficiently and survive, they gather into societies. The most elementary form of such a grouping is the village. The villages as we see in rural India are the most ancient and surviving human habitations anywhere in the world both in their age as well as the principles on which they are built. These villages have been part of hundreds of years of human history in those areas. Their fundamentals also have not changed much from the times when they have been founded in ancient times.
Every one of us needs food, shelter and clothing to survive. Provision of food, shelter and clothing to all the inhabitants was therefore the cornerstone on which habitations started to evolve. The responsibility of the habitation as a collective is to ensure adequate provision of the three basic needs to each and every resident. The economy of an elementary habitation should therefore involve exchange of goods and services relating to food, shelter and clothing. A look at any of the villages in our country will make this very clear. Even today the social, political and economic life in a village revolves around food production or agriculture. A typical village of 300 houses will have some 1000 acres of agricultural land, wherein some 250 houses will be agriculturists, some 30 houses agricultural labour, 20 houses of washermen/hair cutters/priests/traders/weavers/potters/builders etc. The payments to the artisans are even today made in kind, in terms of bags of paddy by the agricultural families. Agricultural produce is the currency of the village. A drought year or a flood year will hit the village economy very badly.
There are two ways of looking at the needs of a human being, one as an individual and the other as a village; these correspond to 'at home' needs and 'at common place' needs'. We will confine ourselves to the current day assessment of human needs from governance stand point here.
INDIVIDUAL NEEDS(at home needs)
On todays date the individual basic needs are reflected in the three activities of our government viz., ration cards, housing and pensions. Then there are other needs relating to credit, revenue record keeping, certificates of caste/income/birth/death/marriage, electric connections, telephone connections, etc. These are needs which can be satisfied, carried back and enjoyed at home.
VILLAGE NEEDS(at common place needs)
A village is similar to a living being having its own needs. There are certain needs specific to the village as a unit and some needs for a group of villages. These needs can be classified into intra-village needs and inter-village needs. We will examine these needs from the stand point of services rendered by our government.
The basic intra-village needs for survival of a village are drinking water, sewer disposal, rain water disposal, internal roads, garbage disposal, electric supply, and dead body disposal. Then we have other important village needs such as education, health facilities, place for governance, places of worship, places of gathering, place for conduct of business, place for common facilities, rations shop, and veterinary facility. These needs can only be satisfied and enjoyed at common places in the village.
The Sarpanch or the village headman(in case of a dummy Sarpanch), the ration shop dealer and the Village Revenue Office(VRO) form the governing trio of the village. These three people influence the major decision making in the village including whom to vote for during election times. The other functionaries who become important politically at village level are anganwadi worker, the priest, Self Help Group (SHG) leaders and community leaders. They too can exert some influence during voting in an election.
The governance of a village requires a panchayat where the governing body and the panchayat secretary are located and an office for a VRO where different certificates/documents are issued. Ration shop is another focal point in a village where people frequent for issue of subsidized food grains and is located at a convenient place fixed by Government. The ration shop dealer also exerts his influence on other matters relating to the welfare benefits to inhabitants such as pensions, housing etc. The health of the inhabitants is taken care by the local community health worker and the health assistant. The educational needs are satisfied in the anganwadi centre, the primary school / high school. The anganwadi worker is another functionary who has influence over some young ladies. Rachabanda is usually where people gather in the evenings for deliberations and santha(shandy) is the market place where conduct of business takes place. There are certain common facilities such as warehouses, threshing floors, drying platforms, cold storages etc. which are used for the livelihood activities in the village.
The inter-village needs are those which are common to a group of villages such as connecting roads, transport facilities, irrigation systems, major rural water supply systems etc.
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