Friday, August 11, 2006

Mission 2007, no really

When I first read about Mission 2007 on rediff I had a sense of deja vu. An initiative for rural development with a grand sounding name. Hasn't this been played out a million times before? Lofty ambitions, grand launches and then complete silence. But as I went through the Mission 2007 website I realized that this initiative was not being launched now. It was launched in 2004. For whatever reason rediff chose to highlight it now. Which is a bummer because we are learning about it just 1 year before it ends. But in a way its good. Now that the end of the mission is not that far off we can atleast remember to follow up and see what worked and what didn't.

Btw, for those of you too lazy to click through the links, the mission statement of this Mission is

“Achieving sustainable human security is a priority task. This will call for harmony with nature and with each other. Knowledge connectivity within and among countries will help to achieve this goal. This is why we should make 'Mission 2007: Every Village Knowledge Centre' a success.”

It's easy to be cynical about an initiative that is run out of a Govt Secretariat and I am fighting hard not to fall into that trap. After all even if this is a half-hearted Babu driven initiative it will probably touch more people than we ever can - such is the power of Govt agencies. So who am I to complain. But (you knew there was a but right :)) I couldn't help but notice that the milestone page has a list of launches and conferences instead of real statistics like how many people in how many villages have they been able to touch so far. I hope it's a cultural oversight. They have a concept of partner organizations of which there are 242 as of today. Though it's a bit late in the game we might decide to join it. If that happens there will be more reports on this topic.

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