India comprises mostly villages, where more than 70 percent of its population lives. India's health and wealth depend mainly on villages. It is their purchasing power that supports industry and commerce across the country. Bud sadly villages are generally ignored when it comes to development. Media, both print and electronic, has little interest in villages, except during a disaster or calamity.But things appear to be changing with the new government at the Centre. There is the newly-launched Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, besides the earlier government's existing 'Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana', which was to give priority in development for Dalit-dominated villages. The new scheme aims at covering all villages.

The task is really tough considering India has 638,000 villages spread over 250,000 panchayats. But a beginning has to be made somewhere. Presently, funding allocated for the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS), amounts to more than Rs 4,000 crore annually. The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, respectively, have 543 and 250 members. Each Lok Sabha MP gets Rs 5 crore a year to spend for development in his local area, while Rajya Sabha MPs can select any part of the country to spend the fund given under the MPLAD scheme. Thus, during the five-year tenure of the Lok Sabha. its members spend a huge amount of Rs 13,575 crore while the Rajya Sabha MPs spend Rs 7500 crores. By the end of its tenure in 2019, the present government plans to ensure that some 2500 villages will have been fully developed.

The situation as of today is pathetic. So far, the funds have remained unspent or the development is hardly visible even though the funds are not misused. But the present government wants to see a visible change in the villages. Under the new scheme, each village will have pucca ( low-cost) houses for the homeless and proper sanitation facilities, drinking water, connectivity to the main road, and electricity supply. The focus is also on gender equality, women empowerment, social justice, IT-enabled free education to all children up to class X. The plan also aims to provide basic healthcare facilities to all.

This puts the MPs under pressure and they will need facilitators to come up with schemes for development. Since the existing government agencies have little credibility, NGOs such as PPN stand a bight chance to reach out to the MPs and offer its services as all the areas mentioned in the scheme are also the features of the PPN Vision Statement and its Mission Document. There are also some village adoption schemes in operation in Maharashtra, with which PPN is already associated. PPN proposes to approach the BJP and Shiv Sena MPs from Maharashtra, with specific proposals as facilitator by offering support through its volunteers for carrying out their village adoption schemes.