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EMN DIMAPUR, JULY 29
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he State Institute of Rural Development organized training program for village council members, village development board secretaries and “women members” during July 17-23. The event was inaugurated by Pakon Phom, SDO (Civil) on July 17. Phom emphasized on the functioning of the village council for peace and development of the villages and to guide the village development boards for successful implementation of government programs and policy. Project director of Mon’s DRDA Y Nyangpong encouraged the members to give importance to training so as to implement the development program and “properly utilize the fund provided by the government for development of their own village.” The technical session started with a documentary film on the functioning of village councils and VDBs of Nagaland. The topics covered in this training program were to develop ‘positive attitude’ and mindset “for all round development of an individual and organizations.” The training also covered all the flagship programs of the Ministry of Rural Development as well as some of other ministries’ programs being implemented in recognized villages of Nagaland. Some important social issues such as women participation in development process and gender budgeting, women and child, health care was also discussed. The president of village council union of Mon district and president of the VDB association of Mon district also shared their experiences and participated in the interactive sessions. A topic that the training broached was that of the Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF). The BRGF was launched by the ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India in 250 identified backward districts in Nagaland namely, Tuensang, Mon, and Wokha. It was later implemented in five backward districts as two more districts namely Kiphire and Longleng were curved out from Tuensang. Longleng and Kiphire have been considered under the program as separate districts. The BRGF program has no specific permissible work to be implemented as in the case of MGNREGS. The fund has been provided to fill the local infrastructure gap that is not adequately met through the regular inflow of funds to the identified districts. Perhaps the BRGF was the first program in our state with proper planning system of “online planning” using ‘Plan-Plus’ software developed by NIC. Accordingly, the training program on participatory decentralized planning and planning online using ‘Plan-Plus’ software had been imparted to all stakeholders but unfortunately implementation of BRGF has been found to be not satisfactory, the discussions said. Resource persons of the training were drawn from the district level training of trainers personnel and officers from the DRDA, Block and line-department officers.