An orchard, bitumen-topped road, improved drinking water supply, efficient waste collection among others were the achievements that made the Government of India sit up, take notice and finally award the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Sashaktikaran Puraskar to Muthugoundenpudur panchayat, near Sulur.
The panchayat with four habitations – Anna Nagar, Mudalipalayam, Kurumbapalayam and Muthugoundenpudur – was ahead of others for long but it progressed further after V.P. Kandhavel became president, said S. Kavitha, Project Officer, District Rural Development Agency.
Mr. Kandhavel said the developments that drew the Government of India’s attention was the panchayat’s efforts at getting more water under the Pilloor I scheme and utilising funds under the Jal Jeevan Mission to improve water distribution infrastructure.
From two lakh litres a day until a few years ago. the panchayat now received two more lakh litres a day to serve nearly all the 4,500-odd families, he said.
Likewise, the panchayat had streamlined the waste collection system. It was an exercise that started a few years before he even took over as panchayat president. First, as an activist, he had removed bins after informing residents that there would be door-to-door waste collection.
As old habits die hard, the people continued to dump garbage in places where the bins were. Therefore, Mr. Kandhavel said, he had to announce a prize of ₹500 for residents who clicked photographs of people dumping garbage. This brought about a behavioural change. This was in 2017 when he also mobilised funds for six battery-powered vehicles for door-to-door waste collection.
After winning the presidentship, with government funds he got six more vehicles. Now, every ward in the panchayat has a waste collection vehicle with the requisite manpower.
Ms. Kavitha said the panchayat did not stop with that. It was also into proper waste segregation, turning degradable waste into compost and segregating and selling non-degradable waste to recyclers. And it used the compost to nourish a two-acre government land where it raised an orchard.
Mr. Kandhavel said that on the land, classified ‘mandaiveli poromboke’, the panchayat had raised fruit-bearing trees and herbs. It gave the fruits and herbs to people who worked under the 100-day Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme. The panchayat had also built houses for 150 families under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna and a few other schemes, he added.
