Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, calling it a scheme that would open the door for good politics, and inviting all MPs to select a village to develop on a demand-driven, rather than a supply-driven model, with people’s participation.

The Prime Minister said, “Development in villages was often supply-oriented. Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana would, however, have three distinct features – it would be demand-driven, inspired by society and based on people’s participation. While democracy and politics were inseparable, damage was often caused by bad politics. This scheme would inspire a movement towards good politics with MPs acting as facilitators and catalytic agents.”

He said that though government schemes were working across the country, in each state there were a few villages that the state could be proud of. This shows that there was something extra that the leadership and people in those villages had done, beyond government schemes.
 
Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana will work through the leadership of Parliamentarians. By 2016, one village will be developed by the MPs, and then by 2019, two more villages will be taken up. If states also encourage their legislators to take up the scheme – five to six more villages could be added in this timeframe, and if even one village per block is developed, it has a cascading effect on other villages in that block, he remarked.

The Prime Minister said MPs were free to pick up any village in their constituency, except their own village or their in-laws village.