How Panchayat Development Plans Often Miss Community Voices

As a community resource person with Assam’s NRLM (Assam State Rural Livelihoods Mission), Nehar’s role is to ensure that SHG women in the remote corners of Golaghat participate in drafting the Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP)--a participatory tool meant to give rural communities a voice in local planning.

Each GPDP is meant to reflect village-level priorities through “community-driven, decentralised planning”, according to the Ministry of Panchayati Raj’s (MoPR) GPDP portal. Prepared by each gram panchayat, the Plan outlines how resources will be allocated for economic development and social justice in their respective areas, incorporating inputs from both residents and elected representatives.

The GPDP planning process has to be “comprehensive and based on participatory process which involves the full convergence with Schemes of all related Central Ministries / Line Departments related to 29 subjects enlisted in the Eleventh Schedule of the Constitution”, the website further mandates.

But despite years of policy focus on making GPDP collaborative, and the work of field staff like Nehar, conversations with multiple stakeholders indicate that actual participation in the GPDP process remains weak.

“Many gram panchayats generate demands in closed-door meetings without much participation from people in the village or SHG members, despite our efforts,” Nehar from Assam tells IndiaSpend. The same applies to ward-level planning (A ward is a smaller unit of the gram panchayat). “Ward members just write demands on a piece of paper. They don’t even hold ward sabhas (meetings). Unless these demands come directly from the community, nothing will change,” she adds.

For 2024-25, while nearly 76% of gram panchayats across India have reported physical work aligned with their GPDPs, in Assam, the numbers tell a different story: nearly 80% of panchayats have prepared their plans, but only 1.4% have begun implementing them, according to the eGram Swaraj portal.

“For the past one year, panchayat bodies in Assam have not been working. Elections took place in May 2025, and the panchayat body has only recently been constituted in July 2025. Hence such poor implementation for this year,” Naseema Begum, another NRLM community resource person and erstwhile ward member in Assam’s Nagaon explains.

Community-driven planning

Article 243G of the Constitution empowers panchayats to function as institutions of self-government and mandates them to prepare plans for economic development and social justice. In 2015, following the mandate of the Constitution and recommendations of the 14th finance commission (which asked for greater sums to be devolved directly to local bodies), MoPR mandated GPDP preparation.

“Two major shifts happened in 2015,” explains Joy Elamon, former director general of the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA). “The centralised planning process ended after the Planning Commission got disbanded. Simultaneously, GPDP guidelines were rolled out by MoPR, drawing inspiration from Kerala’s 1990s People’s Plan Campaign for decentralisation. All 2.6 lakh gram panchayats in India were mandated to come up with their own plans at the village level in a participatory manner.”

“Since 2018, GPDP preparation has been formalised through the annual People’s Plan Campaign,” says Arindom Bora, project lead at Kudumbashree NRO, which supports the NRLM in establishing convergence between self-help groups under NRLM and panchayati raj institutions. “On October 2, all gram panchayats hold a special gram sabha--known as the GPDP gram sabha--where the final plan is presented to all the people in the village. Decentralisation, convergence with line departments and self-help group women, remain at the core of GPDPs.”

“Parallely, greater funds began to be devolved to local bodies by the Centre. Both the 14th and 15th finance commissions mandated greater funds to be given to rural local bodies,” Elamon details, while talking about the evolution of GPDP.

The 15th finance commission had recommended that the total size of the grant to local bodies be Rs 4.4 lakh crore for the period 2021-26. Of this, a sum of Rs 2.4 lakh crore is earmarked for rural local bodies.

Since this devolution is tied to uploading the GPDPs on the ministry’s portal, there is a high compliance, with 99% panchayats uploading their Plans in 2024-25, Elamon says. “But the extent of actual participation of people in the preparation of these plans varies from state to state, depending on the history, society and local context.”

An analysis of the E Gram Swaraj Portal for the year 2024-25 shows that over 77% of the total budget for gram panchayat development focuses on just five areas: sanitation, drinking water, roads, community systems and health.

A deeper analysis indicates that a significant portion of the total budget for gram panchayat development funds is sourced from the 15th Finance Commission funds and own funds of the gram panchayats, which together account for nearly 60% of the budgetary allocation. The remaining activities are supported by Union government schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Jal Jeevan Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission etc., along with various State Finance Commission grants and state-specific schemes.

“One reason why the focus is largely on drinking water, sanitation etc. is because of the nature of fund devolution,” says Bora. “The 15th finance commission recommends a distribution of funds to local bodies with 60% tied and 40% untied grants. The tied grants are earmarked for specific purposes, primarily for basic services like sanitation, solid waste management, waste water management, and drinking water supply. Additionally, most of the decisions on where the finance commission funds will be spent are actually taken by higher ups--at the block and district level, and not at the GP level,” he adds.

“Focus on things like anganwadis, drinking water, sanitation through national guidelines may be a good thing in and of itself, but we need to ask to what extent this reflects the local priorities of the specific village and the community, which was the initial purpose of GPDP," Elamon says.

This is corroborated by what community cadres articulate. “When we go to the gram panchayat saying self-help group women of the village have demanded a breast feeding centre, the panchayat functionaries say that they have orders from the higher-ups to focus on roads, land development, sanitation, drinking water etc. and that our demand will be taken up later,” Nehar argues. “That later never comes.”

The role of self-help groups

After walking or travelling long distances, Nehar often finds herself waiting for self-help group meetings to begin. “SHG didis are usually late. They have to finish their household chores, caring for children or elders and then come for the meeting,” she says. “By the time we explain why it's important for women to be part of the gram panchayat planning process, they’re already worrying about getting back home.”

Still, she says, once the conversation starts, participation follows. SHG members often raise demands for entitlements, livelihoods, and basic services and resources in their village. “We map the entire village using stones, pebbles, twigs, and other markers--identifying roads, schools, drains, and other public infrastructure. After that, we hold detailed discussions on what women would like to see improved in the village,” Nehar says. In Assam, common demands include road repairs, street lighting, community halls, school boundaries and weaving centres, according to her.

These community-generated demands are documented in the Village Prosperity and Resilience Plan (VPRP)--previously called the Village Poverty Reduction Plan--a bottom-up planning document prepared by SHG members, meant to be integrated into the GPDP.

“VPRP was formalised in 2016, a year after GPDP guidelines were issued,” explains Manu Sankar S., theme manager at the Azim Premji Foundation.” Rural development and panchayati raj ministries issued joint advisories to ensure better convergence between SHGs and panchayats. “The 2016 advisory outlined how VPRPs made by self-help group members could be used as sub-plans within the broader GPDP framework. It was a step toward recognising SHGs as equal stakeholders in local governance,” he adds.

“In addition, to institutionalise this convergence, the two ministries formed a Joint Task Force in 2022 to oversee the annual rollout of VPRP-GPDP integration through planning and training,” Bora elaborates.

“By formalizing community voice through the Village Prosperity Resilience Plan, MoRD is ensuring that GPDPs are not just administratively compliant, but socially responsive and equity-driven,” says Jui Bhattacharya, the National Mission Manager of NRLM.

The rural development ministry’s detailed guidelines every year help state missions “to ensure timely planning, consolidation of demands, capacity-building of cadres, and convergence with Gram Panchayats,” she added. “In addition, annual refresher trainings are conducted at the national and state levels, and through a cascading approach of SHG federations across the country,” she adds.

However, despite advisories being circulated to states, gaps persist. “There’s no mandatory mechanism to ensure that VPRP demands are integrated into GPDPs because local self-governance is a part of the state list. The result is fragmented uptake and uneven outcomes across states and even across GPs based on the specific state’s priorities and focus,” according to Bora.

This point is echoed by field cadres working on mobilising self-help group members to make VPRP. “Some gram panchayats are proactive and want to engage with self-help group women, while others are not,” according to Naseema Begum, the NRLM community cadre in Assam. “If I were to be completely honest, nowhere has VPRP demand been completely 100% accepted because gram panchayat functionaries are already asked to spend the funds in certain ways.”

A 2024 study by Sham N. Kashyap from Azim Premji Foundation on GPDP in Karnataka shows that even after SHG federations started preparing their plan (VPRP), GPs did not consider supporting SHGs and SHG federations as part of their responsibilities.

“Similarly, issues of health, nutrition and education were considered as responsibilities of [respective] line departments. GPs felt that they were anyway monitoring and lobbying these services from other agencies,” the study states. These examples show that gram panchayats “fundamentally believed that local planning through GPDP had to be confined to activities that GPs routinely do”.

The way forward

The need for convergence with self-help group members and various line departments such as education, health, agriculture departments is crucial to make GPDP participatory and successful, according to multiple stakeholders.

“The only way to ensure effective implementation of GPDP is by taking up various activities in convergence with line departments,” Charanjit Singh, former additional secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, told IndiaSpend.

“A number of departments are still lagging in this. I feel technology can be utilised to bridge this gap,” he said. “Further, I feel PRIs (Panchayati Raj Institutions) should get a certain amount of the central finance commission budget as a fixed percentage, just as it is given to the states, to enable them to get more empowered.”

He added that integrating SHG-led VPRPs into GPDPs is now high on the agenda for both the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj ministries, with several initiatives underway.

“SHG networks are encouraged to lead campaigns at village level to mobilize community participation in Gram Sabhas. We are encouraging the use of street plays, wall writings, rallies, and other Information-Education-Communication (IEC) activities by SHG members to raise awareness of local planning processes,” says Bhattacharya of NRLM.

Some VPRP demands are being realised, Bhattacharya said, citing examples such as a bus stop in Karnataka, weekly markets in Assam and Karnataka, power tiller distribution, and incinerators in schools in Himachal Pradesh, and adult literacy classes in states such as Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Maharashtra. These efforts increased the participation of SHG members during the GPDP gram sabhas, she added.

During 2024-25, states such as Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Tripura saw 80-100% participation of SHG members in the GPDP gram sabhas, she explained. “However continuous efforts are being taken to further improve on the same in other states too.”

Additional suggestions include the need to revive local committees and the need to help build capacity of citizens to enable informed participation.

Nehar says planning and facilitation committees, designed to assist panchayats in formulating development plans and consisting of line departments, SHG and panchayat members and community cadres, need to be revived. “Right now they exist just on paper. If these committees actually meet monthly,” things will get better, she says.

What also needs more focus, experts like Elamon say, is sustained capacity building--both of citizens and of panchayat functionaries. “Informed participation of citizens is at the heart of GPDP. That was at the heart of decentralised planning in Kerala. That’s how GPDP was conceptualised. And that’s how local self governance will be realised.”

IndiaSpend reached out to the officials at the Ministry of Panchayati Raj for comment on low levels of community participation in GPDP preparation and the nature of planning and implementation of GPDP. We will update this story when we receive a response.

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