15 Panchayaths for the Green Kerala Express final round

Green Kerala Express- the first social reality show in Indian Telivision history which focuses on the sustainable developments of Kerala’s local self governing bodies announces 15 panchayaths for its final round participation. These panchayaths were selected on the basis of preliminary evaluation of developmental visuals. questionaire marks, jury marks and sms waitages. The selected panchayaths were listed below:

Palakkad

Kannadi Panchayath

Elappuli Panchayath

Akathethara Panchayath

Alappuzha

Palamel Panchayath

Cheriyanad Panchayath

Kanjikkuzhi Panchayath

Thrissur

Koratty Panchayath

Adat Panchayath

Wayanad

Meenangadi Panchayath

Mananthavadi Panchayath

Malappuram

Nilambur Panchayath

Kozhikode

Kodiyathoor Panchayath

Thiruvananthapuram

Aryanad Panchayath

Kunnathukal Panchayath

Kollam

Sooranadu North Panchayath

The final round of Green Kerala Express includes indepth evaluation and direct visit to these 15 panchayaths by the jury member teams.

Elappully Panchayath from Palakkad won the Green Race

Elappully Panchayath in Palakkad District, the favourite among the 140-odd grama panchayats in the social reality show, Green Kerala Express, has bagged the first prize of Rs 1 crore. It is the revolutionary project, an integrated dairy farming project, that enabled Elappuly get this major achievement.

In second place came Akathethara panchayat of Palakkad with their nature conservation schemes, winning Rs. 50 lakh. In third place came Adaatu panchayat of Thrissur, with their natural methods of rice-farming, winning Rs.25 lakh.

In municipalities, Ottappalam came first winning Rs.50 lakh and Malappuram came second with Rs.25 lakh.

Chief Minister V S Achuthananadan and LSG Minister Paloli Mohammedkutty presented the awards to the winners. The winners were announced by actors Kalpana and Padmapriya.

Palakkad district shines with three grama panchayats, Kannadi, Elappuly and Akathethara reaching the final round, and two of them winning the prizes.Alappuzha district also managed to get three grama panchayats - Palamel, Cheriyanad and Kanjikkuzhi to the final round. Thrissur, Wayanad and Thiruvananthapuram had two panchayats each in the final while Malappuram, Kollam, and Kozhikode had one each.

All the 15 finalists at the reality show received an amount of Rs 10 lakh.

The finalists also included Koratty, Meenangadi, Mananthavadi, Nilambur, Kodiyathur, Aryanad, Kunnathukal and Sooranadu North.

The 15 finalists were selected on the basis of preliminary evaluation of developmental models, questionnaire marks, jury marks and SMS weightages. The jury also made site visits before finalising the winners.

PM to Present Award to ‘Green Kerala Express’

The Urban National Water Award 2010 awarded to ‘Green Kerala Express’ reality show will be given presented Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on Tuesday at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.

The award will be received by Local Self-Government Department secretary R K Singh and Suchitwa Mission executive director George Chackacherry function in held at Vigyan Bhavan.

‘Green Kerala Express’ has been chosen for the award under the category of Communication Strategy and Awareness Creation, and the award has been instituted by the Union Ministry of Urban Development.

-Published Date: Dec 13, 2011  

SOCIAL REALITY SHOW TO SELECT THE BEST PANCHAYATH WITH GREEN INITATIVES IN KERALA

Doordarshan in association with the Ministry of Local Self Government, Suchitwa Mission and C-DIT has undertaken a unique programme, the first social Reality show in Indian Television. Titled the Green Kerala Express, this daily 30 mt interactive show involving all 999 Grama Panchayaths, 57 Municipalities and 5 corporations will focus on sustainable development models developed by the local self-governments.This show will be unique in the focus on the collective effort of the people in harnessing the talent of the community at the grass root level.  The panchayats will be evaluated based on their performance in sectors like water and land management, Sanitations, environment, health, energy, social security, NREGS, Women empowerment, education, agriculture, food security etc.  This competition will give an opportunity for local self Governments to map their resources and also to show case the models that they have developed which can be emulated by other panchayaths.

The invitation to join the competition is open to all panchayaths and they can apply with a detailed profoma and also a five minute video on their achievements, A technical jury will evaluate their work by assigning marks based on profoma and video and will shortlist 150 panchayaths for the first round. Representatives from the selected panchayats will be invited to present their models in front of the jury and audience.  A two-member anchor team will be leading the show. There will be interactive sessions, presentation of counter videos from Panchayaths and questions form jury and audience. One Panchayat will be short listed form each district, along with Municipalities and Corporations. In the final round the show will go into details of activities in various developmental sectors and panchayaths will be evaluated and graded according. One panchayat, One Municipality and One Corporation will be selected as final winners.

Each episode will have the following additional features.

1. Every week special awards will be given to a green hero/green idea/green technology/green institutions/given school. 2. Every episode will have a citizen’s report, which will depict unknown facets of our state. 3. Every episode will have messages on social awareness.

To ensure transparency and impartiality the jury will represent various sections of the society. There will also be a national jury like Aruna Roy, P. Sainath, Mihir Shah etc. There will also be a celebrity jury who will be a socially committed member form the fields of films, literature etc. The basic format will be that of a travelogue and thus it differs from conventional reality shows. Two anchors-male and female-will travel through the breadth and length of the state depicting the green history of the state as its evolves. A unique web portal will be created which will have all episodes in full. A community will be formed which will be useful in assessing feed back. SMS voting will be included to ensure the participation of viewer. The social reality show will be a unique experiment in developmental communication. This will help the LSGS to showcase their sustainable developmental models and to present it to the world so that others can learn lessons form it and emulate the practices. This is also unique in that the Public Service Broadcasting is joining hands with the Government to create interesting models of communication.

Green Kerala Express to be revived...

The Green Kerala Express social reality show for grama panchayats will be revived with focus on sanitation, social security, palliative care, and functioning of anganwadis, Minister for Panchayats M.K. Muneer has said.

Releasing a research report of Manjula Bharathy, Associate Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, on the Green Kerala Express reality show here on Wednesday, Mr.Muneer said the programme aired on Doordarshan in 2010 visualised many sustainable development models in panchayats and it had reached the people too.

The research report was released at a two-day seminar on ‘Democratic decentralisation & mediascapes: contested terrains and shifting terrains' held at the Centre for Development Studies.

Panchayats will be inspired to execute projects with an extra caution once they come to public glare through the media. This will lend a clear direction to regional development.

To strengthen participatory democracy, grama sabhas should reflect the aspirations and views of women, children, differently abled, and tribes, he said.

The People's Plan Campaign was the biggest information dissemination process which took place in the country, former Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac said.

The Green Kerala Express show had helped to strengthen the informal education process formed through the Plan campaign and firm up the communication between local governments.

The show also helped to instil a confidence in local governments that decentralisation of powers had gained the strength to brave all challenges, he said.

The report was prepared on the basis of a field survey and focus group discussions held among 200 people in Kollam, Thrissur, and Palakkad districts.

The Elappully, Akatthethara, and Adatt panchayats, which won the first three prizes in the show, and the Nedumpana panchayat, which participated in the show, were also included in the study.