Telangana: NIRDPR Funding Puzzle Raises Question of 'to be or not to be'

Hyderabad, Telangana: In this year’s budget, the Union Finance Ministry almost completely slashed its grants to the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), the only national institute dedicated to building gram panchayat capacity for local self-governance. The institute’s allocation this year is a meagre Rs 1 lakh, or 0.01% of its usual annual spending of around Rs 75 crore. Once the new financial year (FY) kicks in on April 1, NIRDPR will have only Rs 1 lakh the entire FY to pay salaries and pensions of 800-odd people. 

An autonomous body under the Ministry of Rural Development, NIRDPR works as a think tank, creating the frameworks and guidelines for local self-governance of panchayats. To cite a few examples, it played a key role in creating roadmaps to devolve powers to panchayats after the 73rd Constitutional Amendment of 1993. It also developed the methodology for social audit of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme, which allows beneficiaries to monitor the scheme and its fund utilisation.

Every year, NIRDPR trains around 40,000 master trainers, who then go on to train elected representatives of various panchayats. Other organisations that train panchayats, such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the State Institutes of Rural Development (SIRDs), often rely on the framework given by NIRDPR.

Since the 65-year-old NIRDPR is the only national institute that performs these functions, shutting it down would further curtail India’s fledgling decentralised governance system, say activists and panchayat representatives. The panchayati raj system came into effect in the 90s, but most panchayats still do not function independently as MLAs and state-level officials control their planning and finances. Even gram panchayat elections often get delayed by years.

The fund cut is not a one-off problem, but a part of the government’s larger plan to disengage with NIRDPR. It may now need to generate its own funds to survive. Experts say this would be challenging, if not impossible.

This week, NIRDPR Employees’ Association plans to be in Delhi as the Parliament’s second leg of the budget session began on Monday. “Some MPs have assured us that they would raise the issue in the session. Employees are very worried about their salaries in April. Our immediate demand is only to protect employee salaries and pensions,” association president D Rama Krishna tells 101Reporters.

Since the budget cut, employees and pensioners have held multiple protests and have given representations to MPs and Union ministers, including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. However, none in the government has responded to them.

Disruptions ahead

NIRDPR relies on government grants to cover its training and research programmes, staff salaries, pensions and campus maintenance. It conducts 1,200 to 1,500 training programmes each year, with about 30 people per batch, says a faculty member of NIRDPR Hyderabad on condition of anonymity.  

“These sessions are mostly for people from SIRDs and Extension Training Centres [ETCs], and district and block level officials, who will then train gram panchayat representatives. The institute offers training for free, and provides food and accommodation during the training period. It also gives some funds to SIRDs and ETCs to train others,” says the faculty member.

Panthdeep Singh, a third-time sarpanch of Chhina panchayat, Gurdaspur, Punjab, has immensely benefited from around 10 NIRDPR training sessions. “Panchayat representatives generally do not know their rights. I learned about the Panchayati Raj Act, government schemes, and the process of preparing the annual Gram Panchayat Development Plan [GPDP] through these training sessions,” says Singh, whose panchayat recently received multiple awards, including for GPDP preparation.

“In my panchayat, women could not work under MGNREGA earlier because of social norms. I was able to resolve it, thanks to NIRDPR training. We also learnt to manage our wastes, form SHGs and launch initiatives to become carbon neutral,” notes Singh, who particularly benefited from the discussions held on pan-India level solutions/case studies while attending the training. 

NIRDPR also trains resource persons on using upgraded IT systems of schemes such as MGNREGA, besides training representatives from African and Eastern European countries on rural development.

The fund crunch could affect training sessions and research projects. “No agency will pay for research on poverty, women empowerment and rural employment. It is the responsibility of the state to pay for this," says the faculty member quoted earlier. 

The fund cut will also affect the salaries of about 500 people, including daily wage workers, across NIRDPR’s main campus in Hyderabad and its two other centres in Delhi and Guwahati, as well as pensions of 300 retirees. In its wake, the institute’s courses could also get derailed or become costlier to cover salaries.

Overall, about 210 students attend NIRDPR’s PG diploma course in rural development and four distance education programmes. This year, the institute was set to launch a PhD programme in Rural Development and a School of Excellence in Panchayati Raj.

Shift to disengagement

Since 2018, the Union government has been shutting down or merging autonomous institutions based on a report submitted by the Ratan P Watal committee, which had recommended rationalising a third of its 679 autonomous bodies by reasoning that they provide no useful services. The government has already dissolved several institutions based on this report in the last few years, and has been proposing to disengage with NIRDPR too.

During their meetings, NIRDPR’s General Council, headed by Minister of Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and Executive Council have discussed disengagement. However, employees say they have received no communication from the NIRDPR administration about the proposal. In response to an employee’s recent Right to Information application, the Rural Development Ministry said that the details of the disengagement proposal could be shared only after a final decision is taken.

The faculty member says the institute’s administration, headed by its director general, plans to double or triple the number of trainings and to request various ministries to fund these under their rural schemes. But such funding is not guaranteed, and sufficient trainers and trainees are unlikely. NIRDPR is already heavily understaffed, with two-thirds of its 120 faculty positions being vacant.
NIRDPR Director General Dr Narendra Kumar did not respond to our questions on the disengagement proposal and the way forward.

With disengagement seemingly inevitable, faculty members submitted a proposal this January to the Rural Development Ministry requesting five years’ time for the transition, and suggested four options for the institute’s functioning after this period. They have not heard back from the ministry yet.

Flaws exist, but closure no solution

NIRDPR does have shortcomings, but nearly everyone agrees that the government needs to strengthen rather than abandon it.

“This is the only forum where training and consultations with panchayat functionaries happen. They create frameworks for rural governance and pass it on to the SIRDs,” says Binoy Acharya, member secretary, NGO Unnati, Gujarat. He points out that NIRDPR developed the methodology for social audit of MGNREGA scheme, ways to incorporate the UN Sustainable Development Goals into panchayats’ planning, framework to map the devolution of power to panchayats, etc.

Retired bureaucrat and former NIRDPR director general SM Vijayanand has worked extensively on developing Kerala’s panchayati raj system. He says that some autonomous institutions [under the Centre] may be non-functional, but painting all of them with the same brush is wrong. "Without funding, how will NIRDPR generate resources for training? State governments will not pay for it." 

He agrees that NIRDPR does have shortcomings in its functioning as a think tank: “There is no other institute as NIRDPR with so much knowledge of the rural development and panchayati raj system. However, they need to develop capabilities in various sectors like livelihood and climate change. The solution is to build up these capabilities, as rural development needs a new direction when the country is urbanising.”

WR Reddy, another retired bureaucrat who was a former NIRDPR director general, believes the institute cannot run training programmes on local self-governance on a commercial scale.

However, T R Raghunandan, a Karnataka-based former bureaucrat who now works on strengthening decentralised governance, tells 101Reporters that NIRDPR’s training does not address panchayat representatives’ practical challenges in maintaining their autonomy. “Today, panchayat representatives in Karnataka are well-educated and aware. The panchayats are collecting huge amounts as property tax too, but senior IAS officers are issuing illegal directions to them on how to spend this money. NIRDPR’s training does not address these issues; it is generic and is about getting panchayats to perform agency functions on behalf of higher level governments.” Besides, he says, the institution hardly analyses data on fiscal decentralisation in its research.

In the absence of government support, he says the institute should develop demand-based content, and provide online and even subscription-based courses. “Panchayat representatives are in the hot seat, and there is demand among them for such courses,” Raghunandan notes.  

NGO Mission Samriddhi works with NIRDPR to develop training content. Its founder Arun Jain says these are valid concerns. “NIRDPR has largely been doing level 1 training that covers basics such as the role of representatives, various schemes, GPDP, etc. Whereas the Kerala Institute of Local Administration under the Kerala government does a structured three-level training programme for the state’s panchayat representatives, which include how to conduct gram sabhas, resolve conflicts, etc.”

“The need is for level 3 training, but in the Indian scenario even NIRDPR’s level 1 training should be accelerated manifold because most representatives, especially in less developed regions, are unaware of their role. Only a fraction of them are getting any training at all,” he adds.

According to Jain, there are huge disparities among states in terms of development and decentralisation. “The scenario in Karnataka, for example, is a lot better than that in Bihar, where representatives would benefit from level 1 training. So instead of shutting down NIRDPR, the government should set up six to seven such institutes for different regions of the country. They should develop separate training programmes based on the needs of the panchayats in each region.”

But for now, NIRDPR's fate hangs in the balance as they await a response from the Union government.

Navya PK is a freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.