District Planning in Kerala - Kollam District Plan

Kollam District Plan

The District Planning Offices in Kerala were entrusted with the task of creation of database for each district, by compiling all available secondary data. Kollam district conducted a resource potential survey and went ahead with district planning as a pilot project with focus on industrial sector.

A District Planning Committee was set up with District Collector as Chair Person to formulate the district plan. District Development Committee (DDC) - an advisory body of officials and non-officials including the MLA's and MPs in the district, headed by the District Collector, was expected to function as the local planning machinery in the district. The dormant grama panchayats and municipalities were the existing elected local governments below the district level. Eleven technical committees were constituted for each of the major development sectors. Block Planning Committees (BPCs) were formed at every block consisting of the Chair Person of the Block Development Committee, Presidents of all the Panchayats in the block area and officials of different development departments of the concerned blocks.

The district planning exercise in Kollam district was divided into two stages.

Stage I: - Assessment of resource endowments and the development potential of the district which included:-

1. Identification of local natural resources
2. Survey of infrastructure, and
3. Review of development of different sectors and ongoing schemes in the district

Stage II: - Preparation of the district plan by involving people's representatives and local government officials.

The District Development Committee(DDC) had set up the planning bodies, BPC meetings were convened and the planning procedures were explained to all actors. Panchayats were requested to discuss and decide their resource endowments, identify development problems, the schemes and projects to be included in their plan and to involve the experts available locally in the execution of the process. Panchayats were able to complete the tasks in two/three meetings. The BPC met again after a month to review the proposals from the Panchayats. They reviewed, modified or supplemented the projects to make them complete or perfect and transmitted those plans to the technical committees at the district. The technical committees held several rounds of discussion to make them conform to the standards of the state level schemes. New proposals were then formulated by the technical committees, whenever needed. The strategies for development of the sector were also evolved by those technical committees.

The procedure evolved in this experiment formed the basis of the guidelines for preparation of district plans by Kerala State Planning Board later. The Seventh Five-Year Plan visualized decentralization of planning process from the State-level to the level of districts in the first phase, and then further down to the block level, to increase the effectiveness in implementation of the anti-poverty programmes and to ensure balanced regional development. So the Planning Commission suggested the State government to formulate comprehensive district plans in two or three districts as an experiment.

Modality of the process

As per the guideline, the exercise of district planning had to start with a resource survey and preparation of a resource inventory based on secondary data as well as through primary survey for both natural and human resources. It was followed by an assessment of the felt needs of the district and formulation of a set of priorities consistent with the State and National priorities. After that, an assessment of the financial resources covering 'untied funds', flowing to the district from state and central schemes as well as the institutional finance, has to be made. The guidelines suggested for the preparation of a perspective plan that should show the long-term development needs and the development potential of the district. The next step was to draw up five-year and annual plans. Such district plans were then to be integrated with the State Plan. The guideline suggested an effective monitoring mechanism at the district and the State level to monitor the implementation of the district plan, in terms of finance, physical achievements, devolution of appropriate administrative / financial powers and preparation of district budget. The last item in the nine-point guideline envisaged "involving Panchayat Raj Institutions and enlisting the co-operation of the voluntary agencies in the process of decentralised planning".