What does "governing drought" enlighten?

In recent years, the problem of "the last kilometer" is often found in field investigations: the state invests trillions of dollars in rural areas every year to build large-scale water conservancy facilities, village roads, rural libraries, and agricultural technology service stations. to provide infrastructure and public services for farmers. However, some obstacles in implementation make it difficult for the project to benefit farmers to play a role.

On the face of it, the "last kilometer" is an engineering problem. For example, water conservancy facilities have been completed, but the canals in farmers' fields are blocked, making it difficult for large and medium-sized water conservancy facilities to be effective; rural libraries have been built, but farmers cannot use them because of poor management; agrotechnical service stations have been set up, but lack the motivation and enthusiasm to popularize agricultural technology to farmers. It seems that the government only needs to continue to invest more money to complete the project, but the reality is not so simple.

This is actually a governance problem and an organizational problem. Take irrigation as an example, even if the state has built perfect water conservancy facilities, it is not easy to coordinate the use of water conservancy facilities among scattered farmers. This requires the sharing of water charges and the negotiation of farmers to form a common will. as long as one household wants to "hitchhike", more farmers will follow, resulting in the failure of the use of large and medium-sized water conservancy facilities. Some people call the drought caused by this phenomenon "governance drought" to distinguish it from climatic drought or engineering drought. Governance drought is not a real drought, nor is it that existing projects are unable to pump water into the fields, but that grass-roots organizations in rural areas are weak and unable to organize farmers to share the cost of water use and canal protection.

Another example is the popularization of agricultural technology. The future of agriculture lies in science and technology, and the state also attaches great importance to science and technology, but grass-roots agrotechnical stations are lack of fulcrum in the village. Agricultural technicians have entered the village, and if village organizations are not willing to cooperate actively, agricultural technicians will not be able to carry out farmland experiments and agricultural technology promotion. The result is likely to be that no matter how the agro-technical stations are built, it is difficult to integrate with the needs of the peasant masses.

An in-depth analysis of these examples shows that the reason for the repeated occurrence of the "last kilometer" problem lies in the lack of an organizational fulcrum for policy landing. To solve the problem of "the last kilometer", it is necessary to strengthen the construction of rural grass-roots organizations. Only through the coordination of grass-roots organizations, the fulcrum of national policy can be found in the process of downward extension, and the carrier of collective action can be obtained in the process of upward cohesion of farmers' interests. As the saying goes, the key to national governance lies not only in the ability to do big things, but also in the ability to do small things. If you want to do small things, you need strong grass-roots organizations.

It can be said that where grass-roots organizations are sound, there will be sound policies to benefit farmers. For example, Chengdu has established the villagers' council system in the construction of urban and rural experimental areas, the key of which is that 200000-300000 yuan of public goods construction funds are allocated by the government every year, and the villagers' council decides to use it. The result of practice is that the villagers' council decides the transfer of public funds from top to bottom to the village, which improves the villagers' sense of participation and forms the public will based on the interests of the villagers. In other words, when national resources go to the countryside, farmers get tangible benefits, and the authority of village organizations is also greatly improved.

When the wave of urbanization sweeps through, land contractors and land cultivators are gradually separated, which will make the interests of decentralized management of farmers more complex. Under such circumstances, how to strengthen the construction of rural grass-roots organizations, provide a strong lever for the landing of national policies, and solve the problem of "the last kilometer" of policies that benefit farmers is not only a test of governance ability, but also an opportunity to deepen reform.