- Government has introduced the flagship programme called Tamil Nadu Village Habitations Improvement (THAI) Scheme from 2011-12 onwards to overcome the bottlenecks in the uneven distribution of resources and to provide minimum basic infrastructure facilities to all the habitations.
- Tamil Nadu is the only State focusing on ‘Habitation’ as the unit of development and no other State in the Country is implementing such an innovative scheme.
- There are about 6 habitations on an average for each Village Panchayat in Tamil Nadu with 79,394 habitations in 12,524 Village Panchayats. However, the number of habitations varies from District to district.
- The average number of habitations in a Village Panchayat in The Nilgiris District is 37 whereas it is only 3 in Villupuram District.
- Therefore, allocation of equal amount to all the Village Panchayats, with varied number of habitations, has led to disparity in development, disproportionate distribution of assets and uneven progress.
- The THAI scheme has come as boon with the aim of extending the basic facilities to the grass root habitation.
- There are 12,524 Village Panchayats in the State spread across the 31 Districts (except Chennai). As can be seen from the following table, the population of Village Panchayats in Tamil Nadu varies widely with some Village Panchayats having population even below 500 while some others have population exceeding 10,000.
Minimum Basic Requirements :
Water Supply , Street Lights , cement Concrete Roads , link roads , Burial Grounds etc.