For Akbar Bhat, the call for Azaadi is a desperate plea for better basic facilities and livelihood opportunities. Hailing from Bandipora district of North Kashmir, one of the most backward regions in India, life is a constant struggle for Bhat. He has to walk 6 kilometres uphill to reach his village along a kaccha path that becomes dangerously slippery when it rains.

Bhat is one of 38,000 inhabitants of Gurez Valley, located nearly 150 kilometres north of Srinagar. Stretching 110 kilometres along the Line of Control, Gurez Valley doesn’t have either mobile connectivity or any power supply. It remains cut-off from the rest of the world for nearly six months every winter.

The harsh winter of Gurez means a very short work season. A situation made worse by the rugged terrain, which leaves very little cultivable land for people like Bhat who survive on subsistence farming.

Situated on the LoC, the volatile political climate also has repercussions on an already difficult life. When the whole of Kashmir came to a standstill owing to protests and killings in the summer of 2016, following the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen leader Burhan Wani, the resilience of the people of Gurez was put to a bigger test.

However, unaware of the rest of India, an experiment in community-led development was unfolding in this harshest of places in its most trying of times.

The three blocks in Gurez Valley – Gurez, Tulail and Bagtore – were part of an initiative launched by the District Development Commissioner Bandipora in 2015. This was a flagship programme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (MGNREGA) to enhance community participation in planning.

The Intensive Participatory Planning Exercise (IPPE) was conducted in the 2,532 most backward blocks in India. Composite teams of youth were trained in community engagement techniques and tasked to reach out and prepare the MGNREGA plan for FY16-17 in a transparent manner through Gram Sabhas (people’s assemblies). They also formed Block Planning Teams (BPTs) with volunteers appointed on an honorarium basis, who would reach out to the most vulnerable households and help prepare individual livelihood plans using MGNREGA.

“In November, before the 2015 winter set in, a couple of youngsters came to my house and asked me what I wanted out of NREGA next year”, recollects 65-year-old Akbar Bhat. “It was strange. Nobody from the government had ever come to this shack of mine. They suggested that the plot of land adjacent to my house could be levelled for agriculture and asked me to definitely come and raise this in the Gram Sabha a few days later.”

An important part of preparing the plan was for the BPTs to understand the existing context of each village regarding its natural resources and seasonal work calendars of the people.

“After we surveyed the vulnerable households in the village, we would call all those present to prepare a map of their village and mark important social dates and natural resource locations on it,” says Mansoor Ganie, a BPT member. “We would also ask them at what times during the year they were busy and when they were idle and could spare time for doing MGNREGA work. Based on the inputs received from household surveys and context mapping, we would then plan for the final Gram Sabhas.”

The Gram Sabha was the forum in which people would list out important works that were most needed by the community. The BPTs would then ask those assembled to assign priorities to these works – the higher priority ones to be taken up first.

“The Gram Sabhas saw lively discussions and debates among community members, particularly while assigning priorities. This process helped create enthusiasm towards the scheme. For the first time, people felt like it was their own plan,” says Nissar Ahmad Mir, programme officer – MGNREGA in Tulail Block of Gurez.

The intense community participation set the stage for the enthusiastic implementation of the plan. “We’ve constructed a concrete path aligned with drains to the village. We can walk a lot easier now”, says Bhat.

“This was for the first time that work was done based on what we wanted. Our village has often seen political differences among Panchayat members preventing any work from being undertaken”, says Azad Mir, a resident of another village in Gurez. “But this year, we have built bridge culverts, irrigation canals and roads which were most needed in our village. It would have been impossible had the plan not been made in a transparent manner.”

The administration is also satisfied with the turn of events. According to Sajad Hussain, district development commissioner of Bandipora, “The cumulative expenditure across all three blocks of Gurez subdivision had never exceeded Rs 1.8 crore over the last few years. This year, nearly Rs 3 crore worth of work has been undertaken. This is despite the short work season being marred by political unrest in Kashmir. It goes to show that the community had fully owned MGNREGA this year.”

While the IPPE process had tried to ensure the government scheme went to every home to capture the aspirations of the family through household surveys, unfortunately, until last month, the State had not appointed any ombudspersons in any district – a mandatory step to check the effectiveness of the programme. Also, despite the MNREGA Act coming into force more than a decade ago, the government is yet to frame grievance redressal rules and lay down the procedure to ward off complaints.

Yet, this model in Gurez shows that strengthening grassroots institutions like the Gram Sabha and empowering it during the planning process increases transparency, community ownership and better on-ground implementation.

Sadashiv N is a Bandipora based independent journalist and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.