RURAL DEVELOPMENT - INDIAN APPROACH

RURAL DEVELOPMENT - INDIAN APPROACH

*G.JAYALAKSHMI  

  Email: jayalakshmi_ganesan@yahoo.com              

INTRODUCTION

            Rural development means to the process of improving living conditions, providing minimum needs, increasing productivity and employment opportunities and developing potentials of rural resources through integration of spatial, functional and temporal aspects.

 Rural development is a strategy to improves the economic and social life of a specific group of people, the rural poor, including small and marginal farmers, tenants and the landless.

            The concept of rural development was first used in India by the planners.  It is the very process of the planning to implement rural development programmes through and appropriate strategy to realize the desired results.

OBJECTIVE OF RURALDEVELOPMENT

            The rural development have the following main objectives

v     Providing certain social goods and services in terms of social and economic infrastructure.

v     Increasing the income of every rural family and to see that those who are below the poverty line are enable to come above that line in coming years.

v     Creation of additional employment opportunities is rural areas.

v     It is essentially concerned with the improvement of the living standards of low income population living in rural areas on a self-sustaining basis through transforming the socio-spatial structure of their productive activities.  

v     Improvement of services of rural masses in the process.

v     Improvement of know-how which is to be implemented to the rural people to infuse in them a sense of pragmatism in the process of development.

INDIA’S STRATEGY OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Development of rural areas has always been one of the paramount concerns of the various India’s fives years plains.  Not only during plan era, but also during pre-independence period, a lot of attention was paid to uplift rural poor.  In this regard, several rural development programmes were launched in India, especially to provide job opportunities to raise their income.  Hence these3 programmes enabled rural poors to improve their standard of living.  These programmes are designed for getting following two objectives.

1. Creation of socio – economic infrastructure, necessary for rapid development of rural areas – the government of India has launched various poverty alleviation programmes.  In this connection development of fundamental infrastructure in rural areas was given a first priority by inducing minimum needs programme (MNP).  This is being done by under the programmes like- water supply and sanitation, schemes relating to land reforms, agricultural marketing, rural godowns and development of roads in rural areas.  These programmes is supposed to provide to villages certain economic and social infrastructure, ensuring facilities like roads, electricity, transport, drinking water, medical care and primary school etc. such type of facilities are basic requirements of development of a particular regions.  These are also essential for the successful implementation of poverty elimination programmes.
2. Increasing income of individual rural people, by providing productive job – For The Implementation Of This Objective, Programmes Like – Integrated Rural Development, Development of Women and Children Development Programmes, Drought Prone Area Programme, National Rural Employment Programme, Desert Development Programmes, Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme and Training of Rural Youth for self Employment are in operation. IRDP aims at lifting the beneficiary family above the poverty line by providing them with financial assistance (partly by way-of loan and partly by way of subsidy) to enable them to acquire productive and income generating assets.  The NREP has been designed to provide wage employment opportunities, particularly to that segment of the rural poor, who are without assets, has launched to supplement the IRDP as a part of the wider strategy of rural development. The RLEGP is designed to provide short term job for one hundred days to one member of a landless family in rural areas.

HURDLES        

Rural development programmes are suffering from some maladies or drawbacks. That is why they are not being implemented successfully. Some of the major hurdles in operation of these programmes are being listed as below:-

1. Wrong identification of beneficiary – the percentage of wrong identification is found very high, falling some where between 3 to 30 percent. This can be said to bring considerable distortions in the programmes, limiting its potential to achieve wider objectives.
2. Corruption – the procedures for release of subsidy and credit give plenty of scope for corruption.
3. Poor repayment capacity of beneficiaries – the repayment performance of beneficiaries is also very poor.  Inadequate generation of monthly income through initial investment is due to inadequate infrastructure.   
4. Bureaucracy - Bureaucracy is also affecting the successful implementation of rural development programmes at different level.

REMEDIES

The implementation of present rural development programmes is far from satisfactory and it require to rethink on present strategy.  Therefore an attempt is being made to point out some remedial measures to remove drawbacks of the strategy.

1. Proper Integration – There is not a proper co-ordination between various rural development programmes.  Attempts should be made for combining IRDP and NREP.  In this connection, emphasis should be given to cover the same beneficiaries under IRDP as well as NREP/RLEGP, wherever it is felt necessary.
2.  Proper Co-ordination – There should be a proper co-ordination among activities of different credit providing institutions. 
3.  Proper Supervision, Inspection and Guidance – The existing systems of supervision, inspection and guidance for rural development programmes should be strengthened, by regular monitoring and follow-up of the beneficiaries by the staff of implementing agency.
4. Optimum Utilization of Local Resources – The block levels plans should be prepared, so that optimum utilization of local resources can become possible.
5. Proper Identification of Beneficiaries – for the removal of tendencies of wrong identification of beneficiaries, awareness should be generated among rural masses.
6. Linkages of Rural Development Programmes with Social Forestry Scheme - Most of rural development programmes provide finance to agriculture, allied sector and small business activities to increase the monthly income of rural poor.  In this respect, we have neglected the role of social forestry in rural development.

CONCLUSION

 The strategy for rural development in present time should aim at improving living standard of low-income population through income creating opportunities and making the process of their development self- standing.