If we look at the governing structure in rural India, the Elected Representatives of Gram Panchayats are the heads of the Panchayati Raj institutions. Our Elected Representatives are the agents of development for the villages of India. The fact that there are lakhs of local governmental institutions makes it even more crucial for our elected representatives at the village level to be trained using the best resources so that they can lead the rural citizens of India.

Today, our elected representatives are trained either by the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD) or the State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD). Besides the benefits from these trainings, there are a lot of challenges when it comes to effective training for our elected representatives. Some of the challenges faced are the short span of training, relevance of materials and the wide spectrum of capabilities among the elected representatives. The focus is also more on the “Training” approach rather than the “Learning” approach.
These are just a few challenges in the current training methodology which results in poor skill development of our Elected Representatives, and lack of utilisation of domain competencies in local governments.

Sampoorna Swaraj Foundation has carefully studied the challenges and come up with a solution that meets the varied needs of our elected representatives when it comes to training/learning. Sampoorna Swaraj Foundation has worked with Gooru to prepare the competency model and the training material to prepare our local elected representatives with basic knowledge about governance in the Panchayati Raj system in India. We believe that every learner has a destination to reach. The destination represents the mastery of the subject. But every learner differs in the status of present knowledge on the subject, or the approach to learn the subject. Sampoorna Swaraj Foundation believes that, to navigate a learner to his destination, we need to know where he is, where he wants to go, and all the possible routes that can lead him to his destination. This is the approach that we have adopted to help our Elected Representatives reach their learning destination.