District Administration, Gomati – Gender Empowerment

The Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) is meant to help construction of dwelling units by Government of India (GoI) for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and also Non-Scheduled Castes rural poor, living below the poverty line. In Tripura, specifically in Gomati district, the focus has been on empowering the women—accordingly the house allotment is been made in name of women as head of the family. This helps creating gender empowerment and also the empowerment of disadvantaged groups.

Even a remotest block in Gomati District—Silachari RD Block—has since 2012 shown high resilience in implementing development programmes, including IAY. This has since been followed in Matabari RD Block and so on.

Challenges

• Lack of land: families having no land of their own were given RoFR patta land where they could construct their house.
• IAY beneficiaries were constructing houses as per their own choice. As a result of which, project completion was delayed.
• Difficulty in recognising women as head of family for sanction of IAY house due to existing patriarchal society.
• Non-availability of building material in local markets led further escalation of cost; the present allocation of Rs 75,000 was found to be inadequate.
• Delay in releasing of installments causing delay in completion of houses.
• Elected local bodies were not monitoring and supervising the progress of works.
• Opening of bank accounts and withdrawal of installments.

Solution

• Block receives target of IAY from District Magistrate & Collector.
• Selection of IAY beneficiary through Gram Sansad and Gram Sabha.
• Concerned Panchayat Secretary/RPS is Supervising Officer.
• Fund released to the beneficiary account in three installments.
• After receiving the execution status of IAY from the Supervising Officer, installments are released to the beneficiary account successively.
• Final installment is released after getting completion report from the concerned Supervising Officer.
• Display of beneficiary list at Gram Panchayat and ADC Village Committee Office.
• 100 per cent inspection by the Junior Engineers, Technical Assistants and Block Level Officers (BLOs).
• Payment through beneficiary account.
• Audit of Records and Registers by the Auditors of Accountant General.
• Audit of Records and Registers by the State Auditors.
• Online Monitoring of IAY Scheme by AWAASSoft – a local language enabled workflow based transaction level MIS, which captures beneficiary-wide data to monitor the scheme.

Outcomes

Citizen can now view all reports, alerts and can lodge complaints online. Selection, fund transfer status and grievance redressal is only a click away. Most IAY houses in Silachari RD Block are either allotted in the name of women or jointly with their husbands. This establishes ownership right of a woman that saves her from domestic abuses. These women beneficiaries are now in a position to devote more time towards income generation activities, leading to increase in their income level. Due to a proper dwelling the children and old age people have safe shelter with toilets and drinking water. Out of 331 houses sanctioned since 2012, 313 have achieved physical completion.

Gomati district has a total of 17,442 BPL families. District has made an action plan to cover these families by providing IAY houses by 2018.