Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, announced the formation of the District Development Coordination and Monitoring Committee (DDCMC), termed as “DISHA” in July 2016. DISHA superseded the then District Vigilance and Monitoring Committees with the objective to promote effective coordination among the elected representatives in Parliament, State Legislature, Local government units, executing officers of various development programmes and schemes, for efficient and time-bound development of the district.  In addition, the committee has been given the responsibility of monitoring the implementation of development schemes in accordance with the prescribed procedures and guidelines, and facilitating convergence among on-going programmes on the ground.

According to the DISHA committee guidelines, meetings must be convened and chaired by the Member of Parliament (MP) of Lok Sabha from the district, as nominated by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. Usually, the District Collector / District Magistrate / Deputy Commissioner is the Member Secretary of the DISHA committee. Under extraordinary circumstances, the District Magistrate / Deputy Commissioner can authorize the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Zila Parishad or a Senior Additional District Magistrate or the Project Director or the District Development Commissioner to be the Member Secretary for a particular meeting and ensure that the meeting is held as per schedule.

The guidelines of DISHA suggest that meetings should be held at least once in every quarter and concerned stakeholders are invited to be part of the meeting. Number of meetings can exceed four in a year, if the chairperson so desires.  It has also been mentioned in DISHA guidelines that the district administration may incur expenditure upto rupees two lakh per meeting, adhering to the norms applicable, and the same can be reimbursed from the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.

The DISHA committee monitors performance of all non-statutory schemes of Government of India. A suggestive list of 41 schemes and programmes to be reviewed and discussed in the DISHA committee meetings has been provided by the Union Ministry.

The final list of schemes for review and the agenda for the DISHA meeting can be decided as per the discretion of the Chairperson of the Committee and consensus obtained from the Committee members. The necessary supporting statements / documents, which include the notice of the meeting, programme agenda, physical and financial performance of the schemes, are to be provided to the committee members much-before the meeting is convened.

Performance of DISHA

In achieving the promises made on ‘minimum government and maximum governance’, during the general election 2014 and the reiteration of the same in the sankalp patra  of 2019, implicitly, formation of DISHA in 2016, and the crucial role that are being played by the local member of Parliament at the level of districts, as chairperson of the committee, seem steps in the right direction. Ensuring transparent and accountable governance, effective functioning of DISHA committees at the level of districts seems in the right direction. However, before getting into the discussion on effectiveness of DISHA committee meetings, it is important to note how frequently these meetings happened during last four years. During the initial year of its formation, the meetings were not conducted in all the districts of the country and the frequency of such meetings were very less compared to the numbers prescribed in the guidelines. However, the available data, reflects that the number of districts covered as well as the number of quarterly meetings, across India, have    increased since 2016-17.

As per available data on the number of DISHA meetings conducted across years and the number of districts covered under the programme, it was observed that the total number of meetings conducted in 2016-17 was 854 across 485 districts, compared to 820 in 2017-18 and 662 numbers of meetings during 2018-19. Similarly, the number of districts covered was 441 and 398 during 2017-18 and 2018-19, respectively. Given the number of districts covered under the programme during 2016-17 and 2018-19, the minimum number of meetings should have been more than 5000 as per DISHA guidelines However, only 2336 meetings conducted during this period (Table-1).

There could be two possible reasons for less number of meetings conducted during the last three years). The first and foremost reasons could be lack of interest of the elected representatives to conduct review of the implementation of development schemes at the district level. Second, district administration is not well prepared in fulfilling the standard documentation required for the review and hence Members are not interested to convene the meetings.  It is also crucial to note that out of 2336 meetings held during the period 2016-17 and 2018-19, proceedings of 2042 meetings are available in public domain.

On 17 July, 2018, in a facebook post, Ministry of Rural Development, government of India, noted that, “DISHA is a crucial step towards good governance through which we will be able to monitor everything centrally. It will enable us to effectively monitor every village of the country”. This post by the Ministry carries two important messages from both the spectrums. The importance of ensuring good governance in the country through “effective monitoring” of the implementation of development schemes so that every rupee spent from the exchequer contributes towards better outcomes is certainly noteworthy. However, on the other end, the very implicit idea of “centralised” monitoring mechanism and efforts towards institutionalising DISHA as a platform of monitoring would defeat the very idea of cooperative federalism!

The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Nilachala Acharya at nilachala@cbgaindia.org.