Vikalp Vārtā # 4 - Innovation and Transformation through Local Panchayats

Link to the recording

Elango Rangaswamy was born in Kuthamabakkam village and grew up there as a Dalit, living through the caste and class disparities that are a big part of rural reality across India. He got the opportunity to move out of his village, study Chemical engineering, and joined a government job as a scientist at the Central Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). After some time, Elango returned to his village with the vision of making Kuthambakkam self-reliant with people's participation.

For many years, the state government of Tamil Nadu had not conducted local elections which had led to a lot of corruption in the system. Upon implementation of the 74th and 73rd Amendment, which handed over more powers to the Panchayat, Elango was elected as the sarpanch of Kuthambakkam in the first round of election 1996, and served for two terms.

Inspired by the People’s Plan Campaign in Kerala, Elango laid out a plan with patricipation from the villages; a plan which he knew would normally take 50 years to implement, he aimed at implementing in 5 years. The initiatives aspired to create enough opportunity for all within the village, so that outmigration could be reduced.

He spent his first term in building Common Community Housing under the Samathuvapuram scheme of the state government, which changed people's mindset about caste, a huge barrier for transformation in the village. For the first time in the history of India, Dalits, Brahmins and Naidus all stayed in one locality as neighbours, who all enthusiastically participated in the village development.

His second term was spent in creating livelihoods and better infrastrcture like roads. Education amongst the children increased, and the youth began to go into the nearby cities for higher education. The developmental activities started seeing funds coming into the Panchayat as well as from the local community.

In 2007, with the help of the Director of TN Rural Development, Elango set up the Panchayat Academy with the aim to create a network of Panchayats in Tamil Nadu, who would then work on common goals and learn from each other through this platform. It started with 190 village panchayats coming together, and now is at a strength of 900 village panchayats of Tamil Nadu.

One key focus of the Panchayat Academy was to build a Rural Technology Resource Center, which would work towards building people-friendly technologies. RTRC also linked itself to institutions like IIT for knowledge sharing and research. Basic technology and creating tools to run micro-enterprises can become a model of progress across the country.

But, it was former president of India and scientist himself, APJ Abdul Kalam, who advised Elango, that if he dreamt of a self-reliant village then he should work with the village to generate its own electricity, for as long as a village was connected to the grid, it was still dependent on an external source. Elango worked on low cost solar lighting system, and all rural based machinery as far as possible to be solar-powered, and has achieved very encouraging results that can be implemented elsewhere.

When the COVID crisis hit Kuthambakkam, the village being self-reliant was not impacted as much, but the state rules of the lockdown had to be followed. It was at this time that Elango innovated a local disinfectant with the most common and unharmful liquid Sodium Chloride, which turns into Sodium Hypochlorite (disinfectant) when (solar) electricity was passed through it.