| Employees of Panchayat Office promised rice and took bribes from rural families, Community Correspondent Dasarathi Behera reports from Deogarh district in Odisha. Ten indigenous tribal families are deprived of getting benefits from welfare schemes of the government in Bhatimunds hamlet. Few of them have been included in the Above Poverty Line(APL) Card list which enables them to get only 1 kg of sugar and 2 litres of kerosene. Out of these, six families paid bribes ranging from Rs.400-600 to a member of the village Assembly who assured them with promises of extra rice. All of them borrowed money from others and gave it hoping to get food. But all ended in vain as no one got rice. And now they have to re-pay loans with interest. Poverty eradication was one of the major objectives of all the Five Year Plans which are centralised and integrated national economic programs of India. As a result, many poverty alleviation schemes are offered by the Indian government to the rural poor. However, due to lack of proper implementation of these plans, these plans haven’t brought about any sweeping change in eradicating poverty from the country.This incident is only a micro picture of corruption crippling rural development plans. |
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