Devoting a considerable portion to the various Centrally-sponsored rural development and poverty alleviation programmes, complete with factual data, tabulations and the pattern of the interventions in each district over the past five years, the report identifies several key indicators of rural development like food grain production, value of agricultural product per agricultural worker, rural road connectivity, rural employment and amenities such as housing, electricity connection, availability of latrines, sources and location of drinking water, etc. It says, the incidence of poverty in Meghalaya can be gauged by the fact that the percentage of below poverty-line families during the Ninth Plan was estimated to be as high as 54, while there was a marginal drop of the figure during the Tenth Plan to 48.90.
Attributing the near failure of all rural development initiatives so far to the absence of “an effective, empowered, more enabled, accountable and participatory governance”, the report laments the fact that “it remains insular to the paradigm shift in development policies in the country since the last decade of the twentieth century brought about by the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution”. It may be mentioned here that these amendments relate to strengthening the Panchayati Raj system and local bodies in urban areas. But since the State of Meghalya still sticks to the Sixth Schedule of the Constituion by vesting all the powers of self-governance on the autonomous district councils, the panchayati raj system has never been considered as the right deliverer. The report seeks to make a strong case for supplanting the district councils with the panchayati raj system as elsewhere in the country, especially in tribal-majority Arunachal Pradesh.
It recommends that, “because the Sixth Schedule has hardly helped as an instrument of self-management and social and economic change”, Meghalaya must opt for the panchayati raj system envisaged under the 73rd amendment of the Constituion. “The 73rd Amendment promises a more democratic way of land and community asset management. It also provides for empowerment of socially vulnerable sections in general and women in particular. There is enough scope within the provisions of 73rd Amendment to accommodate the existing form of governance by the State in transforming the autonomous district councils and the role of the tribal councils,” it suggests.
It ends with the reminder that in the North-east, Arunachal Pradesh has gone ahead by accepting the 73rd Amendment and constituted the panchayats. It strongly calls upon the State of Meghalaya to immediately make “a close scrutiny of the Arunachal law on this subject.”