|
Rural development in India
|
|
Lalitha Kumar
|
The substantial increase in the budgetary allocation for rural development reflects the strong commitment of the Central Government to sustainable development in rural areas and also towards creating more livelihoods opportunities.
The rural sector is home to 70 per cent of our people and nearly 80 per cent of our poor. The development in rural areas, however, has not kept pace with the overall progress in other facets of national life. Even today, nearly one third of the rural poor subsist in poverty and there remains an acute shortage of basic facilities such as housing, drinking water and roads in rural areas. This has seriously affected the livelihoods of poor people. Sustainable livelihoods development in rural India is essential to unleash the processes of all-round growth.
The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) plays a pivotal role in correcting the developmental imbalances and accord due priority to development in rural areas. To ensure a reasonably good quality of life for the masses in rural India, the Ministry of Rural Development is implementing a number of programmes aimed at providing opportunities for livelihoods and sustainable development. The main thrust of these programmes is all-round economic and social transformation in rural areas through multi-pronged strategies. During the last three years, top priority has been given to these goals not only in terms of allocation of additional funds and resources but also through introduction of new programmes, facilitating greater peoples participation at all levels of programme implementation and advocacy of pro-poor policies.
Decentralised rural development
During the past few years, there has been a paradigm shift in the strategy for rural development with focus on decentralisation through speedy and effective devolution of financial and administrative powers to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). A strategic pro-poor policy has been adopted wherein the rural poor are treated as a resource with their ideas and experiences providing important feedback for development strategy. Under most of the rural development programmes, PRIs have been assigned a crucial role.
Water and wasteland development
In order to empower the PRIs administratively and financially in the development process, the government has launched new initiatives like Swajaldhara in the drinking water sector and Hariyali for degraded/wasteland development during 2003. Under Swajaldhara, PRIs formulate, implement, operate and maintain drinking water projects at village level. Under Hariyali, the Gram Panchayats execute watershed projects Integrated Wasteland Development Programme (IWDP), Drought Prone Area Programme (DPAP) and Desert Development Programme (DDP) with technical support from the Block Panchayat/ Zilla Panchayat who act as Project Implementing Agency (PIA) for watershed projects in a particular block/district.
The Ministry is also implementing the Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme to resolve the drinking water crisis in rural areas. This programme also gives importance to rain water harvesting, sustainability of resources and community participation. Besides this, with the assistance of DFID, the MoRD is implementing two projects namely (i) Andhra Pradesh Rural Livelihood Project and (ii) Western Orissa Rural Livelihood Project. These programmes aim at the implementation of pro-poor watershed based sustainable rural livelihood approaches in selected districts.
Infrastructure development
Rural road connectivity is an extremely important aspect of rural development. A number of recent studies have indicated that the rate of growth of rural incomes and reduction in rural poverty are strongly influenced by the provision of rural road connectivity. Infrastructure development in rural areas is an effective means of reducing poverty. It is estimated that about 40 per cent of Indian villages do not have proper road connectivity. Keeping this fact in view, in December 2000, a 100 per cent centrally-sponsored scheme namely Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) was launched with the objective of providing connectivity by all-weather roads to about 0.17 million unconnected habitations with population of 500 persons or more in rural areas by the end of the 10th Plan Period (2007).
|
Monitoring & Evaluation
The comprehensive system of monitoring and evaluation employed by the Monitoring Division in the Ministry includes various mechanisms such as Progress Reports, financial Returns/Audit Reports, Intensive Inspections by Officers of both Central Government and the State Governments, Areas Officers Scheme, Review by various Committees, namely, Parliament Committee as well as Standing Parliamentary Committee and Concurrent Evaluation Reports and impact research studies of the programmes of the Ministry. The Monitoring Division has also introduced a high-tech review system through the Video- Conference as an instrument to monitor the implementation of the programmes. To provide information which should be readily available to the users anywhere in India and abroad, a Home Page indicating all the detailed information regarding the programmes of the Ministry has been put on Internet to generate awareness among the masses. Accordingly, high transparency is ensured through these programmes.
Source: http://rural.nic.in/monitor.htm
|
Unemployment
To tackle the problem of unemployment and scarcity of food grains in rural areas, a new scheme, Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) was launched in September 2001 to provide gainful wage employment and food security to the rural poor and in the process develop rural infrastructure in tune with the peoples aspirations. With an outlay of Rs 100 billion, the scheme envisages employment generation of one billion man-days annually.
To provide additional resources apart from those available under the SGRY, the Ministry launched the National Food for Work Programme (NFFWP) in November 2004 in 150 most backward districts of the country. The current year outlay of this programme is Rs 20.20 billion and 2 million tones of foodgrain. The aim of this programme is to generate supplementary wage employment and provide food security by taking up activities such as rural connectivity, water conservation, drought proofing, control and land development. The NFFWP is open to all rural poor who are in need of wage employment and desire to do manual and unskilled work. It is a move towards wage employment guarantee. It is an experiment, which if successfully carried out, will give the government the necessary confidence for providing wage employment guarantee, initially in these 150 districts and later in the remaining districts.
Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) is an integrated scheme for providing opportunities of self-employment to the rural poor. The beneficiaries (Swarojgaris) may be individuals or Groups (SHGs). The objective of the scheme is to bring poor families above the poverty line by providing them with income generating assets through a mix of bank credit and subsidy.
Housing and shelter
Shelter is one of the basic human requirements. For every citizen, owning a house provides significant economic security and dignity in the society. There is a direct co-relation between poverty and housing. According to the 1990-91 Census, around 3.1 million households are without shelter and another 10.31 million households reside in unserviceable kutcha houses. Considering the magnitude of the problem, the Government of India had announced in 1998 a National Housing and Habitat Policy which aims at providing housing for all and also facilitating the construction of 2 million additional dwelling units annually with an emphasis on extending benefits to the poor and the deprived.
Sanitation
Rural water supply and sanitation facilities are vital elements in the overall programme for rural development. Safe drinking water and improved sanitation play a major role in the overall well-being of the people, with a significant bearing on the infant mortality rate, death rate, longevity and productivity. Sanitation includes liquid and solid waste disposal, food hygiene, personal, domestic and environmental hygiene. The Central Government supplements the efforts of the states under the Central Rural Sanitation Programme, launched in 1986. In 1999, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was launched to improve the quality of life and promote sanitation in rural areas. TSC is being implemented in 398 districts of the country. As a result of the initiative taken up under TSC, 4.513 million individual household latrines, 52268 school latrines, 1751 women community complexes, 3881 Anganwadi toilets have been constructed during 2003-2004 along with the establishment of 1593 Rural Sanitary Marts and Production Centres.
| Provision of Urban Amenities in
Rural Areas (PURA) |
|
In an effort to bridge the rural
urban divide and achieve a balanced socio-economic development, the
Planning
Commission of India has formulated an innovative scheme, namely,
Provision of
Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA). The Ministry of Rural
Development is
the nodal agency for implementing this scheme in the country. It aims
at meeting the gap in social and
physical infrastructure in the identified rural clusters consisting of
10 to 15
villages within a radius of 4 to 5 kilometers around selected towns to
enhance
their growth potential with focus on the following areas:
Provision of reliable power
supply to the household level
Provision of water supply
Provision of road facilities
Provision of reliable telecom,
Internet and I.T Services
Upgrading existing schools to
the next higher level
Up-gradation of health
facilities
Marketing facilities for
agricultural produce.
The Government of India has
selected towns of 28 Districts of Orissa, except Cuttack and Khurda, for implementation of PURA in the
first phase.
An exercise has been carried out by the Planning Commission to identify
504
towns (one town per selected District) around which clusters have been
selected. Only towns with a population of 100,000 or less have been
identified.
The infrastructure gaps of the selected clusters will be bridged under
PURA.
Collectors are the nodal officers for implementation of PURA. Certain
facilities are provided across all the villages in the cluster, whereas
common
facilities are chosen at strategic locations to serve the entire
cluster.
Further details
are available at website
http://orissagov.nic.in/panchayat/pura/pura.html
|
Conclusion
The substantial increase in the budgetary allocation for rural development reflects the strong commitment of the Central Government for sustainable development in rural areas and also towards creating more livelihoods opportunities. For the Tenth Plan, the budgetary outlay for Rural Development Programmes has been enhanced to Rs.76.77 billion as against Rs. 42.87 billion during Ninth Plan. It is strongly felt that a holistic approach to rural development is a must for a resurgent India .
Author: Lalitha Kumar is the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.
|
"pura scheme"
Time: 26.01.2006 23:18
Comment: the above is not a comment its a query
|
"pura scheme"
Time: 26.01.2006 23:16
Comment: hi,
i want to know what are the major steps taken regarding pura scheme.when is this schme initialized.
what are its objectives,guidelines and how far its goals have been achieved.please mail me regarding
this as soon as possible.
my mail account is(vishal_vjn@yahoo.co.in)
|
|
|
|
|
