AFPRO is providing its services to the Ministry of Rural Development of the Union Government in it District Level Monitoring Programme. A huge amount of budget allocation is made for poverty alleviation through launching of different schemes by the Ministry and it was felt to develop a strong mechanism to monitor the flow of funds and it’s utilization at the district level. Since July 2004 to March 2005, AFPRO was entrusted the task of monitoring rural development programmes in three districts Sambalpur, Nuapada and Kalahandi in Orissa. District wise physical and financial reports for 14 ongoing schemes (mostly for the identified poor) with data/figures are submitted to MoRD every month. In the year 2003-2004 AFPRO had been assigned the task of monitoring programmes of MoRD in three districts of Chhattisgarh, viz. Bilaspur, Kawardha, and Raigarh,  and one in Orissa, viz. Deogarh

The exercise has been initiated to ensure that authentic and reliable information about programme performance reaches the Ministry with regularity, and to check and verify the physical achievements reported. Besides this quantitative aspect, it seeks to ensure qualitative feedback regarding implementation and policy environment at the district level for increasing effectiveness and removing bottlenecks in implementation.

As a result of the programme, changes have taken place at different levels. While there has been an increase in the awareness levels of villagers regarding different schemes of the government, maintnenance of records and scheme-wise reporting too has improved at the district level. On the other hand, there is a lot of room for improvement, especially with respect to dissemination of information, use of local language in documents and records management.

(Field Unit: Raipur, Chhattisgarh)