"Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job."

Micro level planning is a progeny of “Gramaswarajya” – a strong concept of Mahatma Gandhi during his struggle for an independent, democratic Indian republic with the instrumentality of ‘Ahimsa’. Gandhi has often quoted that if mankind was to progress and to realize the ideals of equality and brotherhood, it must act on the principle of paying the highest attention to the prime needs of the weakest sections of the population. Therefore any exercise on economic planning on a national scale would be futile without uplifting these most vulnerable sections of the society in a direct manner.  In the ultimate analysis, it is the quality of the human being that has to be raised, refined and consolidated. In other words, economic planning is for the citizen, and not the citizen for national planning. Everybody should be given the right to earn according to his capacity using just means. 

The “Micro planning unit” is one of the core units of NCRI, serving as a catalytic agent between planning, extension, research and implementation policies in the principal domains of Agriculture, Health, Education, Women Empowerment, Natural Resource Conservation and Eco-management at the grass-roots level. The NCRI, from the day of its establishment is making efforts in spreading awareness among the rural society and is making the people at the grass-roots level participate in the developmental plans to uplift the rural community through its Micro Planning Unit.

Vision and Mission:

• Strengthen the Rural institutes in India with Micro level planning
• Support the process of decentralisation of planning and administration
• Upgrading rural institutes
• Strengthen the unit to become an autonomous body in the process of planning for rural development

Objectives:

• Promote rural higher education on the lines of Mahatma Gandhi’s revolutionary ideas on education so as to take up the challenges of micro level planning for transformation of rural areas with a participatory approach.
• Consolidate network and develop rural institutes to the level of Regional Development Institutes
• To perform the role as a functional link between planning and administration in micro-level planning in the principal domain of rural interest
• Deepening the process of decentralization in the Panchayat Raj system
• Ensuring peoples participation by reduction of government structural responsibility
• Harnessing the human energy for an inclusive growth and discourage migration to urban areas
• Promoting social and developmental justice through rural institutes
• Planning from below for pro-poor initiatives.

Current activities:

• Supporting the Micro planning based projects of Rural Institutes
• Convention of workshops/seminars
• Designing short term demand driven certificate courses in consultation with the experts
• Publications
• Documentation of success stories
• Support research study on a subject of National importance

Events:
During the year 2010-11, 4 workshops and 2 training camps have been convened by the unit on micro level planning in the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh with rural institutes under the aegis of NCRI, in addition to a consultative workshop on micro-planning in the office of NCRI at Hyderabad.

Contact:

Landline : 040-23422119,
E-mail : mpu@ncri.in