A wiser RDPR to equip PDOs to handle reality

Officers to be trained for nine months with focus on hands-on-experience

Two suicides and 270 resignations later, a string of measures have been rolled out to get the PDOs better accustomed to their roles.

In an attempt to boost the morale of the PDOs, the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) issued a circular last month making monthly meetings of the PDOs with executive officers (EOs) mandatory.

Along with this, meetings with taluk level EOs and gram panchayat secretary and president, and quarterly meetings with zilla panchayat chief executive officer have also been mooted. ZP CEOs have been directed to use the meetings to implement some confidence-building measures for the PDOs.

Officials in the RDPR said the face off between the gram panchayat members and the PDOs have occurred on issues mostly related to employment guarantee scheme and low-cost housing schemes.

This could have been handled more efficiently, if the PDOs were trained to face the realities.  “During the training, the notion given to them on what they would be doing was completely different from the actual situation. They were made to feel more important and powerful than the post actually is,” a senior official admitted.

It is a feeling echoed by Shyam Kashyap, who worked as a PDO for a year in Shimoga district.

“During training, we were told only about the schemes and about our roles in terms of empowerment, but nothing about the problems. We were treated as very special and told we could change the system. We were constantly told that we had the power to change,” Kashyap said.

Stiff opposition

Fed on this staple diet, PDOs went to the gram panchayats only to be faced with the stiff opposition from the gram panchayat members, especially the secretary.

“The PDOs to a certain extent took over the role of the GP secretary. This loss of power especially related to signing of cheques, created quite a few problems,” the department official said.

Earlier, all the expense cheques were jointly signed by the GP secretary and the president. Now, it is the PDOs who sign it along with the president. This, according to the PDOs has created a lot of hassle, as the secretary has been deprived of his powers to favour people.  It is now learnt that the department is trying to do away with the joint signing of the cheque entirely and vest the powers completely with the PDO.

A change in the training module is definitely on the cards as the previous one proved inadequate. “We are extending the training period to nearly nine months now, so they can get more hands on experience and we have also changed the modules,” the official said.

The reported suicides of Mandakini, a PDO from Gulbarga district, and Vijay Kumar Suryavanshi, a PDO in Bidar district, in the last two months, has led to several agitations from PDOs who have been demanding better security and protection from harassment.

While this is yet to be sorted out, the department is however not too concerned about the resignations.

About 2,500 were recruited directly to the posts, while another 1,300 were promoted. Of the 270 resignations, most returned to their previous departments, something that even the State PDO Association president S Ramesh agrees to.

Now the process of recruitment has been handed over to the Karnataka Public Service Commission, which will be holding exams in December for 1,353 posts.