Meghalaya is blessed with the abundance of natural renewable and non – renewable resources. The population of the state is primarily dependent on the natural resources for sustenance and livelihood. With the ever increasing stress on the natural resources it thus becomes imperative to adopt a forward looking approach for optimum and productive utilization of the State’s natural resources – via, ‘Water’, ‘Land’ and ‘Biotic Resources’ in order to alleviate poverty from the state
Pressure on natural resources due to increased needs, unsustainable resource utilization, etc. warrants putting in place a developmental framework that ensures sustainable livelihoods, gainful employment opportunities, and inclusive growth. Better convergence and higher participation of the Community in the Developmental efforts will have to be central to any new initiative for a holistic development of the state. In line with the perspective of promoting inclusive growth with a focus on poverty alleviation, employment generation and livelihood promotion, the Government of Meghalaya launched a state flagship programme titled “Integrated Basin Development & Livelihood Promotion Programme (IBDLP)”.
The programme is built around four pillars- Enterprise Promotion, Knowledge Management, Natural Resource Management and Governance.
IBDLP- the flagship livelihoods programme of the Government of Meghalaya aims to put the state on a higher growth trajectory and improve the quality of life of all its citizens. It seeks to redefine the relationship between the citizen and state. IBDLP has brought a paradigm shift in the way development is viewed and administered by moving from the current supply driven beneficiary model of development to a demand driven partnership model of development. The focus will be on ushering in a culture of entrepreneurship in the state through working on the attitudes of citizens. It will help create the right eco-systems for entrepreneurship to flourish.
Being a framework programme cutting across all departments of the government, it is essential that the implementation structure of IBDLP has the required authority to drive integrated action. Also, the top political and official executives need to be part of the policy making and implementation process.
The Apex policy body for providing overall direction and strategy to the programme is the Basin Development Council (BDC) headed by the Chief Minister of Meghalaya. The Meghalaya Basin Development Authority (MBDA) is responsible for the overall implementation of the programme. The Chief Secretary of Meghalaya is the Chairman of MBDA and all the Principal Secretaries are part of the Governing Council of MBDA. The Principal Secretary, Planning is the Chief Executive Officer of MBDA.
At the District level, the District Basin Development Units (BDU) has been set up with the Deputy Commissioner as the Chairman. These BDUs are responsible for district level implementation of the Programme. The EFCs are set up at the block level in order to have grass root level interface with citizens to provide the required intellectual and academic rigor/depth to the different components/ interventions of the programme, the following Knowledge Institutions have also been created:
These Institutions’ primary role is to create actionable knowledge in partnership with other regional, national and international institutions, academia and other stakeholders that can be used by the implementing agencies of the programme.