The government has shortlisted 1000 villages that are severely drought prone and a mission to turn them into model villages will be announced at the Thursday’s event, said an official from the chief minister’s office.
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To achieve this, the government will soon form a trust or set up a company with a governing council headed by the chief minister.
The aim is to converge all government schemes and activities going on through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for transformation of the most backward areas of the state. A corpus will be made through CSR contributions, but the amount is yet to be decided. “The meeting on Thursday would be a high-level consultation event aimed at involving the corporate sector in the initiative”, said a senior official. Around 60 dignitaries including Ratan Tata, Ronnie Screwvala, Anand Mahindra, Rajashree Birla and Amitabh Bachchan attended the high profile meet. Fadnavis said the model being worked out by the Maharashtra government and the top companies would consolidate corporate expertise, technology and capacity building, with the government effort and infrastructure.
Ratan Tata Tata Chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, ensured that the Tata Trust will be too happy to join this initiative and with growing industrialization we will also have to strive for this kind of change.
Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra articulated that, “this is extremely positive thinking of change and if f this project works then this will be an example of change before the country”.
Bachchan said he had agreed to lend his voice and face to this mission to create awareness and provide communication.
Amitabh Bachchan, an ambassador of the mission and who already endorses several government programmes, called it “an wonderful programme”.
The programme will initially run in a 1,000 villages of Maharashtra. “The common minimum programme will be works related to water conservation, agricultural planning, skill development, improving indicators of health and education”, he said. “Total 500 villages will be suggested by the partnering agencies, while the balance 50 per cent will be villages where the Human Development Index is low. Similarly, we have got tremendous response from others as well”, he said, adding the government is looking at working on at least 100 villages by October 2.
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Fadnavis said that people’s participation results in making any scheme successful and as was evident during the Jalyukta Shivar scheme and the Gram Sabha of the village would be involved in this mission for sustainable development of villages.
