Polipedia: Backward Regions Grant Fund

The Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme (BRGF), launched by the Prime Minister on 19th February 2007, signifies a new approach to addressing persistent regional imbalances in development.
The programme subsumed the Rashtriya Sama Vikas Yojana (RSVY), a scheme earlier being administered by the Planning Commission.
The BRGF is designed to redress regional imbalances in development by way of providing financial resources for supplementing and converging existing developmental inflows into the identified backward districts, so as to: [1.] Bridge critical gaps in local infrastructure and other development requirements that are not being adequately met through existing inflows; [2.] Provide professional support to local bodies (Panchayat and Municipality) for planning, implementation and monitoring their plans.
The BRGF programme represents a major shift in approach from top-down plans to participative plans prepared from the grassroots level upwards. The guidelines of the Programme entrust the central role in planning and implementation of the programme to Panchayats in rural areas, municipalities in urban areas and District Planning Committees at the district level constituted in accordance with Article 243 ZD of the Constitution to consolidate the plans of the Panchayats and Municipalities into the draft district plan.
Special provisions have been made in the guidelines for those districts in J&K, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura which do not have Panchayats, where village level bodies and institutions mandated under other frameworks such as the Sixth Schedule are to plan and implement the programme. (recently J&K have instituted Panchayats)
The conviction that drives this new locally driven approach is that grassroots level democratic institutions know best the dimensions of poverty in their areas and are, therefore, best placed to undertake individually small, but overall, significant local interventions to sustainably tackle local poverty alleviation
District planning, which commences from the level of each local body and is finally concluded at the district level through the consolidation of these local Panchayat and Municipality based plans by the District Planning Committee into the draft district plan, is expected to better strategise both local and more wide ranging interventions into a composite strategy document.
BRGF Development Grants: District Plans received from the various States indicate that the untied fund allocated to the districts are generally being used for filling infrastructural gaps in drinking water, connectivity, health, education, social sectors, electrification, etc.
BRGF Capacity Building Grants: The BRGF has adopted the National Capability Building Framework (the NCBF) which envisages strengthening of institutional arrangements, including the infrastructure as well as software support for capacity building of elected representatives, the functionaries and other stakeholders of PRIs and thereby improving the vigour of grassroots level democracy.
During the current financial year, district plans have been received from 223 out of 250 districts in 27 States. Except for Jharkhand, where DPCs have been constituted only in the month of December, 2011, all States having BRGF districts have forwarded plans duly approved by the DPC or a body at the district level mandated under the BRGF guidelines to approve the plans.
In 2009, the World Bank conducted an independent evaluation of the BRGF programme in 16 districts in 8 States. The key findings of the evaluation were that though the funds allocated under BRGF are small, meaningful investments are made by the communities in projects that are chosen in a decentralised participatory manner. The evaluation report pointed out that the BRGF funds are the single most important source of discretionary funds available to the Panchayats. The study also suggested that outlays should be enhanced in order to be more effective.