A ‘green vision’ will be the fundamental characteristic of developmental activities devised for the district under the second phase of the People’s Plan Campaign, district panchayat president V.K. Madhu has said.
A major focus of the Plan perspective will be the agricultural sector, in tune with the Statewide Haritha Keralam mission.
Education, skill development, and social welfare are the other core areas. Development planning will be undertaken with a sustainable, eco-friendly approach, with stress on conservation of water resources, forests, and the coastal environment, he said.
He was outlining the vision of the 13th Five Year Plan for the district at a public conference of the working groups involved in the drafting of the district panchayat’s annual Plan for 2017-18.
Local production
Within the farm sector, the panchayat-level drive to promote organic vegetable cultivation, at homes, schools, offices, and farms, would continue. At present, only 50% of the vegetables consumed in the district were produced locally. Activities would be undertaken to remedy this shortage, Mr. Madhu said.
Programmes would be implemented to boost the cultivation of plantain, tapioca, coconut, and paddy. Acknowledging that water scarcity was a major impediment to Plan implementation in other areas, he stressed the need to ‘cultivate’ water through rainwater harvesting, recharging of wells, and construction of bunds in waterbodies.
Efforts in this direction were already under way, with around 80,000 of the planned 1 lakh rainwater harvesting pits having been constructed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).
Night study centres
In the education sector, apart from the projects launched last year by the district panchayat under the Comprehensive Education Programme, night study centres were on the anvil as a means to reducing school dropout rates, especially in coastal areas.
