With the ongoing initiative for the implementation and data collection of the Panchayat Advancement Index (PAI 2.0) in the districts of Dimapur, Niuland, and Chumoukedima, a critical training programme for the concerned line departments and Block officials under Revamped RGSA was held on November 12 at Tulip Conference Hall, below the office of CNTC, Duncan Basti Dimapur, organised by the State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD), Nagaland.

The program was attended by all the District Heads of Department of the concerned Line Departments and the Block with two officials each from respective offices. The objective of the training was to familiarize the officials with the PAI 2.0 framework and the precise methodology for data entry, validation, and timely submission of information to ensure accuracy and consistency across departments.

In his inaugural address, Project Director, Dimapur, Limameren Yaden welcomed all the members for their active participation. He emphasized the relevance of PAI 2.0 as a scientific tool for bottom up planning, enabling panchayats to identify local needs, monitor progress. He urged all the members to be sincere throughout the training to familiarize the framework and methodology in ensuring accurate implementation of PAI 2.0 in their respective district.

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Consultant RGSA, Risuhli Rhakho, highlighted the concept of PAI 2.0, where she stated that PAI is an assessment index of a village to measure advancement of a village to attain the 9 LSDG themes– Poverty Free & Enhanced Livelihood Panchayat; Healthy Panchayat; Child Friendly Panchayat; Water Sufficient Panchayat; Clean & Green Panchayat; Self-sufficient infrastructure Panchayat; Socially Just & Secured Panchayat; Panchayat with Good Governance; and Women Friendly Panchayat. PAI can be used by the government and villages to check their performance & developmental progress in 9 LSDG Themes.

She informed that PAI will have different users at the state/district/block level by the Nodal Officers & at the village level by the VDB Secretary. Datas will first be submitted by VDB Secretary and it will be validated and checked at the Block level officials; the block datas will be verified by the district level officials; while the district datas will be validated by state level and state datas will be assess by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj and calculated for PAI Scoring.

She added that PAI has 150 different indicators (Numeric & binary); it has 178 Unique data points to be filled by VDB Secretary for data collection; 58 data points are auto-ported questions from different departmental websites and would be compiled on the basis of Local Indicator Framework (LIF) which are a set of different themes/indicators and data sources.

On the Role of line departments, he informed them to Nominate Nodal Officers at State/District/Block levels; Ensure good data quality for PAI 2.0; Monitor progress of PAI at different levels; Ensure timely submission and validation of datas.

She mentioned that PAI datas would be used for National Panchayat Award 2025 to be held in the month of November every year which will be given based on the performance of the 9 LSDGs of each village. The PAI Score card would be available in the PAI portal after final calculation is made by the Central Ministry which will help a village to check the themes they are weak in and help them to improve in the next year while planning for development activities.

In conclusion she said that, PAI training is organized to make the Block level officials and line departments officials as well as the VDB Secretaries to know their roles and responsibilities in PAI functioning PAI assessment index will be used in the upcoming years as well as to know the status of development of a village in different sectors to help them improve in whichever sector they are lagging behind so as to achieve the SDG goals. PAI details can be viewed at https://pai.gov.in

Resource persons also  highlighted on topics – Process of Data collection & Validation and Road map for PAI 2.0 Version (Panchayat Nirnay App) presented  by Consultant RGSA, Vepo Keyho; Local indicators Framework (LIF) across 9 Themes of LSDGs by Consultant RGSA, Risuhli Rakho.