margao the ambitious netravali atal gram yojana of the state government which was launched with much fanfare two years ago and which was then chief minister manohar parrikars pet project lies virtually grounded sanguem mla subhash phal desai speaking to stoi acknowledged the failure of the project but vowed to take steps to get it revived the project which until recently was being executed by the department of planning statistics and evaluation has been transferred to the state department of agriculture and is stuck in limbo phal desai said that despite an initial robust response from villagers the scheme was beset with severe teething problems within just six months of inception owing largely to bureaucratic hurdles and administrative strait jackets the state government in 2014 had made a provision of 10 crore under the scheme to get the project back in shape phal desai attributed the failure of the project to the governments inability to define the spending pattern of the fund its very painful to admit that the scheme failed largely owing to bureaucratic apathy despite the planning department having made so much effort to implement it i had personally taken so much pain to convince the farmers and the women to participate in the scheme phal desai said people had enthusiastically borne the expenses towards purchases under the scheme hoping they would get their money back the whole project worked under a sense of trust but many of their bills are yet to be paid by the government on the ground that there is no provision for such reimbursement under the scheme this has led to a sense of distrust among the locals who were the real stakeholders of the project explained phal desai netravali in remote sanguem was identified by the state government for development into a model selfsufficient village with the focus on community participation not long ago vijay saxena joint director planning department had exuded confidence about overcoming all issues plaguing the project the aim of the project is to bring about transformation in the lives of the peopleproviding medical facilities upgradation of anganwadis provision of recreation facilities making model schools ensuring hygienic conditions in the village and so on skill development is another area which we are focusing on apart from areas like agriculture animal husbandry floriculture and ecotourism there is a lot of zeal and enthusiasm among the villagers and that itself is a positive indicator that we are heading towards success saxena had told toi in september last year phal desai feels the move of transferring the scheme from the planning department to the agriculture department was an imprudent decision by the government the netravali atal gram yojana was not restricted to agricultural activities alone it was an allencompassing project as it is the agriculture department is loaded with so many schemes and has shortage of manpower how can one expect it to do justice to this project said phal desai adding that he has already spoken to chief minister laxmikant parsekar