Send the best and brightest to the farms

Every village must be linked by a proper concrete road to the nearest market town, and thereby to district towns and cities. With such a road infrastructure in place, large industries would gladly establish some ancillary activities in rural areas. For example, Hindustan Lever may be open to setting up a soap manufacturing facility in a village if given tax breaks and freedom from labour laws. Such initiatives will accelerate progress. Once the villagers can reach a district town in half-an-hour on a motorcycle, they themselves will find new avenues of progress. It goes without saying that their produce would also get into the urban marketplace more easily.

The estimated cost of building the roads: approximately Rs 30 lakhs per village.

Water management

An organised movement for capturing and storing rainwater, to ensure that every well in villages and farms accesses water, is required. We have seen shining successes in villages in Nagar district like Hiware Bazaar, Ralegan Siddhi and Palwe. Every village should have two common wells that provide water all year long 8212; one for drinking and the other for washing. Plus every farm must have its own well. All these wells should be linked to each other and to the local lake by a horizontal bore. Water from nearby slopes should be captured by contour and tree plantation. If tubewells are dug along the path of the water, the water will seep into the hill instead of sliding away. This stored water can provide year-long supply to the village lake and wells.

Water should not be wasted. Modern methods like drip-irrigation, micro-irrigation and sprinkler-irrigation should be adopted. There must be a complete ban on draining water through a tubewell since a tubewell dries up ten wells.

The cost of water management: Approximately Rs 1 crore per village.

Forestation

Once water is made available, wasteland can be utilised for large-scale forestation. Bio-technology has led to growing trees that are useful for producing bio-diesel. Planting such trees in huge numbers will make the village self reliant in fuel, which can be used to produce electricity. Then the villagers would not demand free electricity from the government.

The cost of forestation: approximately Rs 50 lakh per village.

Agriculture

Wasteland can be converted into grazing fields for cattle, thus facilitating milk supply. Also, cow-dung 20 kg from one animal daily and cow urine approx 10 litres from an animal daily can be used to supply fertilisers and pesticides to the entire village. Centralised produce gets a better price, especially in exports. Even the gobar-gas for cooking can be produced locally, so villagers will not have to cut trees for firewood.

Along with milk, the business of food-processing must be developed. Dairy products like butter, ghee, cheese, sweets as well as papads, pickles, spices, ketchup, jam, jelly can be easily produced. This can lead to economic independence of women.

Bio-diesel or gobar-gas can run absorption chillers which do not require electricity. Such refrigeration centres can be built in every village for storing processed foods. Proper packaging will also reduce the wastage of flowers/ fruits during transport, ensuring better pricing too. Today, only 2 of our vegetable and fruit produce is processed. It is estimated that if within the next ten years, it is increased to 10, it will give employment to 7.7 million people directly and 30 million indirectly. If over 20 years, it reaches 25, it can become a major instrument for rural development.

Expenditure needed: Nil. Just make available the loans required.

Education and health

High quality and useful school education must be given to every boy and girl in every village. Alongside, it is compulsory to educate the older generation as well. To improve the quality of education, a teacher8217;s salary raise can be linked to the performance of his students in the board exams. Video-conferencing should be available in every school so that students get the benefit of good teachers in urban areas.

For healthcare, every village must get filtered drinking water and proper toilet facilities.

Expenditure needed: approximately Rs 20 lakhs per village.

In short, for a sustainable development, an investment of Rs 2 crore per village is needed. Of course, rural development cannot be achieved by simply investing money, because a large portion of it may fall prey to red-tapism and corruption. To avoid this, use modern technology for quick progress. Satellite-based surveys can give quick information about flows and collections of land, water and topography. Technical experts using computers can map out where to put forests, grassland etc. Similarly, identification of areas for forestations, cattle-grazing fields, road development, schools and primary healthcare centres should be done by technical experts, who should also consult the gram panchayats.

Contracts should be given on the basis of technical as well as financial bids, with the only condition being that the last 25 of the remuneration would only be given if the minimum goal of water in the wells is achieved. Those who exceed the objectives can be rewarded with a bonus. The government should bear 90 of the cost burden with the remaining 10 donated, in the form of labour, by the beneficiaries.

A group of ten villages should be formed, for which the proposed development programme should be implemented within two years. Every group should have a government official and three knowledgeable assistants. There is no need to make new recruitments, the staff can be selected from those currently employed.

Taking the example of Maharashtra, if 500 such village groups are created and development programmes implemented, 10,000 villages would receive all-around development in two years. Within ten years, all the villages in Maharashtra around 50,000 would have been affected. The estimated expenditure would be Rs 10,000 crore per year.

So where would the funds come from?

8226; The Central Government gives grants of thousands of crores of rupees annually to State Governments. All this should be channelised for this purpose.

8226; Government should stop spending exorbitantly on itself.

8226; Formulate float bonds for rural development. Owners of such bonds should get Income-Tax breaks, and should not be questioned about the source of the funds. This will create an inflow from parallel economy into rural development projects.

If rural India prospers, new marketplaces will be created for the city-dwellers, boosting urban economic progress as well. Similarly, creating employment in rural areas will also stem immigration to the cities, curbing the expenditure on rehabilitating such immigrants.

The writer is chairman of the Kinetic group.