What is Micro-planning?

---Concept by Vinod Pandey ( Caritas India)

Micro-planning is a participatory process where concerned context community and different stakeholders ( or service providers)  come together to

• Identify the gaps (mainly non-availability or difficulty in availing resources) in development process and analyse it through identifying available resources ( social, natural, physical & financial),  gaps in availing ( procedure) resources  and would plan-out  time and resource bound different stakeholder-specific strategy  based on the analysis of resources and possibilities of new resources.

Other factors like time line of the context, priorities of identified gaps to be addressed and sometimes culture and custom of the context also contribute to the micro-planning of the context.

It must be a participatory process and would involve people different section. Also it is quite important that different stakeholders participate in the planning process. For example in a micro-planning of village, it not only community, but also PRI members, KVK/agriculture department officials, NGOs representatives ( if any), representatives of NABARD and other banks participate in the entire process. And it is vital because if the concerned stakeholder is not participating in the planning exercise, its contribution to the village (context) development is quite difficult. In most of the cases where NGOs facilitate micro-planning only NGOs representatives and community members participate and further on they share their plan at maximum to the PRI members, but ideally for a village development only PRI is not the stakeholder, other institutions or departments dealing with agriculture, water & soil, banking, postal & communication are also the key stakeholders, which maximum time are not considered while doing micro-planning and there is a severe impact of it ( Viz: farmers suicide because of non-repayment of loan, because in planning for village development banking has been missed or not considered as priority) . Ideally if there is a proper micro-plan process adopted in the village, there would be no need of any NGO to work for village development.

Micro-planning could be with any context and for any size of are, but preferably smaller the context area (in terms of population and geography) giver better the micro-planning.

At the end of micro-planning it is important that it must take shape of an official document ( as it requires financial , other resources and sometimes legal confirmations) so that plan could be converted in to action. For this micro-plan could be submitted by the context community to Panchayat, and other stakeholders ( as per the need in the plan).

Why Micro-planning is important?

• Micro-planning is important so that “gaps” in service delivery resources must be identified and filled and strengthen so that process of development (specific to context) would continue without any hurdles.

• It is important to create a scope for the community to know more on their resources (available with them) and available services (mainly from government and related institutions) for their betterment.

• At the end it is vital for the government functionaries to identify the gaps in services and further on calk-out the plan for broader development of the context.