Improving Agriculture

There can be certain minor changes done in agriculture, which can result in a significant amount of increase in the earnings of the farmers. Some of these could be :-

• Cultivation of pulses instead of paddy
• Switching to horticulture instead
  

Lost Opportunities...Unrealized Potential

70% of India lives in Villages.

Right from my schooldays I have been hearing of this statistic. I am not sure how true it is. It would be certainly more than 10 years since I first came across it and shouldn't the number show some change, considering that there has been a lot of migration from the villages to the cities during this time. I don't understand where these statistics come from. But that's not the topic of this post.
Let's put the number at 60%. That means 3/5th of the Indian Population is not being provided the opportunities to realize their potential. Can you imagine what would have been the result if these neglected people were also given the education/health facilities on par with what their counterparts in the urban India enjoy? Wouldn't we have been the biggest economic power in the world.
Let's not delay it any further. They say: "Better late than Never".

PRADAN

Today while going through my daily news feeds from Google on Rural Development, came across this article from The Hindu which highlighted the work being done by this Non-Profit Organization called PRADAN (PRofessional Assistance for Development ActioN).

Established in Delhi in 1983, PRADAN was pioneered by a group of young professionals, all of whom were inspired by the conviction that individuals with knowledge resources and empathy for the marginalised must work with communities at the grassroots in order to help them overcome poverty.

I too believe that until some of the educated/knowledgeable people move to the villages to assist the developmental process, not much can be achieved, despite the various Government/Non-Government Development-related Initiatives. It caught my attention and was forced to study the work being done by PRADAN towards holistic development. Some of the things that I liked about PRADAN are:-

• The involvement of motivated educated youth as executives to carry on their developmental projects
• Mobilization of funds from Government-created development schemes like National Food for Work Programme (NFFWP), Rastriya Sam Vikas Yojana (RSVY) and other district level projects being run by Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDAs)
• Focus on improving Agricultural productivity, Microenterprise promotion etc. all of which aim at generating wealth.
• To date, it has reached over 1.1 lakh rural households. That's indeed an achievement.
  

It has a 1-year apprenticeship program which is the training ground for people who want to get directly involved into developmental projects at grassroots level.

Online Railway Reservation Service

The last time I went home, I felt the need for this. I had to accompany my uncle to the Satellite Railway Reservation Office in Aamadaalavalasa, to book the tickets for my uncle and his family. The place is around 30 km from my village, so we had to travel all the way and end up standing in a queue. After 1 hr of waiting the guy closed the counter for lunch. We came back after lunch only to find the "Link Failed" board at the counter. Luckily after waiting for some time the link was restored and we finally got our work done.

If we had some internet-cafe in the nearby town with a good/reliable internet connection, we could have used the IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Cororation Ltd.) website to reserve the tickets online. This could have saved us time and money. Isn't this a good business idea? Perhaps somebody can provide this Service through his internet-cafe at a premium. The precursor is a good and reliable internet connectivity. I see that there are a handful of internet cafe's in the nearby town, but the connection is quite slow and also unreliable. But there was a significant improvement from the time when I had used it a year ago. Hopefully within the next year things improve in this direction either because of state-owned ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like BSNL or other private ISPs. One thing that comes to the mind is that if there was tremendous improvement in the Cellular connectivity over there (Consider the fact that it has been more than a year since Cellular Service Providers like BSNL, Reliance, Airtel and Hutch have started their operations there) , why is that the Internet Connectivity not improving? It's simple : No big Demand for it. The other thing to note is that even Satellite-based TV like Tata-Sky is also becoming popular over there within very short time of it's introduction.

SEZ's Proving their Worth

Read this article about the Apache SEZ (Special Economic Zone) in Tada, Nellore. It's yet another story proving that setting up small/medium scale industry is the way towards rural development. It talks about the increasing incomes that unskilled/semi-skilled people around the region are getting because of being employed in this Sports Shoe manufacturing unit (Interesting to note is that the shoe's that are made here are sold under the "Adidas" brand). A salary of Rs 3500 a month in the villages is not less. This is also stopping the urban migration to some extent. It seems that the workers over here have also stated buying motor-cycles. That's an indication of improved lifestyle.

Reverse Diaspora

One means of generating wealth in the Rural Areas is to make it easy for the Software Engineers to be able to work from Villages. As these people have relatively high income at their disposal, they will spend more and this will in-turn create more opportunities.

Why would the SE's move to Rural Areas:-

• Existing Cities are unable to handle the increasing population and they have become overcrowded
• Enormous Pollution
• Increased Traffic and Congestion
• Steep increase in Prices
  
• Increased Rental and Property prices
  

What Infrastructural facilities need to be provided:-

• Power
• Internet Connectivity (Telecommunications is already there)
  
• Proper Roads and Transportation
• Health Services
• Proper Education Facilities so that the children of these people can have good
  

Advantages:-

• Little or no Pollution in the Villages and Peaceful atmosphere
• With this kind of Diaspora Cities will be eased
• The higher disposable income of these people will increase the wealth of other people involved in the rural economy like shopkeepers etc.
  
• This wealthy class will demand better services like hospitals/education etc. and which would automatically improve the status of these services in the villages. Ofcourse these services might not be available to the existing people with low incomes
  
• Working from home will reduce the Energy consumed for Transportation
• Total cost of owning a house (including the price of the land and construction) is quite less in villages and if more people are constructing houses then there is another market (construction market and demand for labour) getting created here.
  

Disadvantages:-

Rural Economic Development

Some ideas for rural economic development:-

• Agriculture
  
• Industries (Small and Large Scale)
  
• Food Processing
• Tourism

The Govt. is pumping in money through various developmental schemes likes Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Free Housing etc. but most of these are not sustainable. Instead of basing the schemes on wealth generation, it is spending wealth on these short-sighted schemes. Urbanizing the villages/towns is a promising concept and slowly it seems the political leaders are also getting to understand it. I have been hearing of the honourable Ex-President APJ Abdul Kalam trying his best to spread the word about PURA (Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas).