District Collector (2002-11-06 to 2003-07-17) - 0 years, 8 months, 11 days
Related Links
All Women Courier Services- District Website: There was no official website for Sivaganga when I joined the district. A website which was personally designed by me was launched as www.sivaganga.tn.nic.in welcoming netizens to the “Land with a Hoary past”
- All Women Courier Service:
- Citizens Information Centre: This was a novel concept. Under Mahalir Thittam, we trained a group of 25 girls belong to the NYK on how to run a computer kiosk. It was 2 week training, one week on EDP and the 2 nd week on computers. After the training, they were organized into SHGs and they purchased computers, accessories, Xerox machine, DTP accessories etc. One such group was provided premises in the Collectorate. IT became a really busy place with even petitioners thronging the place to know the fate of their petitions.
- RASI Project: Rural Access Services through the Internet was a project approved by the Government of Tamil Nadu. Immediately after taking over, I approached n-Logue, the company who was approved as promoters, to start a project in Sivaganga also. They requested me to find a co-sponsor from Sivaganga. Accordingly I organized a seminar where n-Logue officials demonstrated the utility of the WLL technology to access the Internet. From among the participants, we located the co-sponsor or LSP who had to contribute Rs.12.00 lakh from his pocket. This was also arranged after meeting with bankers. The WLL tower costing Rs.45 lakhs was set up in Tirupattur. Training was given to SHGs from 50 Village Panchayats so as to enable them to set up IT Kiosks. This became the precursor for the CSCs in India. 100% Village
- Towards development of rural areas, both the Central and State Governments have been spending hundreds of crores of rupees for the past many ecades. No doubt this has yielded considerable results in terms of infrastructure and human resource development in our village panchayats. The transfer of funds and power to the panchayats through the democratic decentralization process has brought in newfound enthusiasm and dynamism to development. We need to harness and take advantage of this huge potential of our people to take decisions for their advancement into a prosperous future. All that Government needs to do is to transfer funds to panchayats on time and encourage the Panchayat Presidents ad his team and the villagers to dream about achieving certain parameters of development, which they would not have thought possible, by coming together, and motivating each other.
Keeping the above in mind, we decided to declare any village Panchayat as a 100% village, if they achieve 100% targets under at least 5 out of 10 listed items. Such village panchayats would be incentivized financially.- 100% Literacy
- 100% Household toilets
- 100% enrollment and retention of children in schools
- 100% rain water harvesting
- 100% coverage of BPL women in SHGs
- 100% prohibition
- 100% immunization of children
- 100% small savings coverage
- 100% EPIC coverage
- 100% adoption of family planning measures
- Village Volunteer Force
As an experiment, we initiated a concept called “Village Volunteer Force” or “Grama Thannarv Padai”. The idea was that there would be one VVF per Village Panchayat. It will comprise of 20 youngsters above the age of 18 years, 10 girls and 10 boys belonging to NYK, SHGs, NSS and the like.
During times of crises, people look unto Government to provide relief and succor. There is hardly any element of educated volunteerism on the part of the Villagers. This is not a healthy trend. When our youth are available in the villages, why not harness their enthusiasm and energies for purposeful activities at times of crises and for other IEC activities of Government. We could mold them towards this by adequate and appropriate capacity building, much on the lines of the training given to SHGs, but at a much higher level. The VVF would have to be incentivized through the Mahalir Thittam etc. as youth groups, who can access bank revolving funds and economic assistance loans
The VVF was given training in 1. First aid 2. Household and environmental sanitation 3. Disaster management 4. Literacy training 5. IEC training 6. HIV Awareness etc. Earlier, Trainers were trained to impart training to the VVF. - Children’s Traffic Park: In order to create awareness on traffic rules among children and preservation and protection of nature, we created a Children’s Traffic Park right in front of the Collectorate inside the Collectorate campus. The cost of construction of Rs.12.00 lakhs was purely from public contribution. This also allowed us to give a better ambience to the Collectorate campus.