While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has blamed erstwhile Congress Governments for discriminating villages in the process of development across the country, the delivery of public services at public facility centres has not improved in rural areas of Jammu & Kashmir to the complete satisfaction of the rural populations even after the constitution of three tier Panchayat Raj System. The education and healthcare facilities run by the Government are not still good enough to stop migration of rural populations to major towns and twin capital cities Srinagar and Jammu for accessibility to better educational and healthcare facilities in the urban parts of Jammu & Kashmir. While the successive popular Governments of erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state have failed to reduce the gaps in the accessibility of people to key public services between the urban and rural populations in Jammu & Kashmir, the Panchayat Representatives at village, block and district levels too have failed to take the delivery of basic civic facilities at the door steps of the people in villages. While people in villages prefer admission of their wards at private schools and treatment of critical ailments at private nursing homes, the dreams of quality education and quality healthcare facilities at Government Schools and Government run hospitals don’t come true even after several decades of their existence. Still villagers are referred to referral hospitals of twin capital cities Srinagar and Jammu for the treatment of very trivial ailements which should have been available at the hospitals established in villages’ years ago by the Government. Very often reports about the deaths due to negligence of doctors in Government hospitals appear in newspapers and on social media sites but doctors and paramedics responsible for such deaths are not punished despite huge public outcry and condemnation by critics and public sympathisers.
Education and healthcare facilities if not accorded priority in annual plans won’t improve. What matters the most is the fact that annual plans have not to be just charter of demands received from the Panchayat Representatives but on the basis of surveys that need to be conducted about the working of schools and hospitals run by the Government in villages across Jammu & Kashmir. Better if such surveys are conducted by the planners and administrators but not by Panchayat representatives who don’t know even basic alphabets of the planning process.
Still Government schools in villages are run from rented accommodations where even basic teaching aids are not available and understaffing is also an issue of deeper concern at several Government schools in remote rural areas of Jammu & Kashmir. Education and healthcare facilities if not accorded priority in annual plans won’t improve. What matters the most is the fact that annual plans have not to be just charter of demands received from the Panchayat Representatives but on the basis of surveys that need to be conducted about the working of schools and hospitals run by the Government in villages across Jammu & Kashmir. Better if such surveys are conducted by the planners and administrators but not by Panchayat representatives who don’t know even basic alphabets of the planning process.
