The Fourteenth Finance Commission (14th FC) has devolved a substantial amount of funds to the GPs for improving local services. Government of India launched the Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP) in 2015 under which GPs are to come up with their development plans to utilize the 14th FC grant and other resources of the GP. Accordingly, the RD&PR Department of Maharashtra issued Guidelines for GPDP called ‘Amcha Gaon Amcha Vikas’ in 2015. The directive was to prepare GP development plans for five years following certain processes. In 2018 SIGMA Foundation was commissioned by Government of Maharashtra and UNICEF Maharashtra to study the field realities of implementation and suggest appropriate policy measures.

SIGMA Foundation carried out the study based on quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection along with a desk review of policy documents. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data. The study covered a sample of 264 GPs to have 95% level of confidence and 6% margin of error in the findings. A three-stage sampling method was adopted for which the first step was the selection of two districts from each division. The districts were selected purposively to represent one district with poorer performance and the other one with good or average performance as decided by the state government. Two blocks were selected from each district through random sampling. From each block, 11 GPs had been selected based different criteria. Case studies of Child Friendly Gram Panchayats were also carried out. The survey was carried out from 29th of January 2019 to 13th of May 2019. The findings were shared with Government of Maharashtra and UNICEF Maharashtra and the report was finalised after receiving their feedback.

The study team found that on the whole, the Gram Panchayats carried out the planning process diligently. For example, around 97% of the selected GPs had conducted Mahila Sabha at least once to assess the needs of the women and expenditure on drinking water and sanitation together comes to be 30.2% of the total plan which is quite good. However, there were certain gaps, which need to be addressed in the future. It was found that the participatory planning exercise was carried out only once and not repeated every year (to be carried out every 5 years). It was also seen that while GPs mostly did their assigned tasks, they were not sufficiently aware as to why they need to do participatory planning. Further, the data collection was mostly an independent task and not linked to planning as the Guidelines had suggested. There were several complaints in the field regarding shortage of human resources at all levels, from GP to Zilla Parishad to properly implement and monitor the planning process. The plans were well focused on human resource development (they were to spend 25% of the plan on human development as per guidelines and they actually spent 24.9%) and women and child development (they were to spend 10% of the plan amount and actually spent 8.5%). Water and sanitation also received high priority. Spending on roads and other infrastructures was only 27.3%. Grants of the Union Finance Commission constituted 55.3% of the expenditure made under GPDP and own source revenue contributed another 16.4%. The study has identified the areas where more convergence is necessary. There was wide variation on the per capita planned investments across different GPs.

UNICEF was found to be instrumental for promoting decentralized planning in the state. The state has also developed a good model of making the GPs child friendly with support from UNICEF. Bal Sabha and Bal Panchayats were formed in such GPs and the children also participated in the process of GPDP. The model was replicated in a couple of districts and the same was found to be sustainable. After reviewing the success in the pilot phase the state government has decided to make every GP child friendly which will be promoted through implementation of the GPDP in the new 5 year planning cycle which will start from the year 2020-21.