DIMENSIONS OF RURAL

DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA

Rural Development in India

Veena Tripathi
Assistant Professor in Amity School of Business
Amity University, Noida

Email id : veena.tripathi06@gmail.com

Abstract
This paper describes the current state of rural development, discusses the rural development
programs available to communities and individuals through the government. It concludes how
the new rural policies has changed opportunities for rural areas and, in the process, made much
of traditional rural policy obsolete. This paper also highlights the outcomes of policy as
MNREGA that need to be considered when understanding its impacts. The alternatives represent
generalized approaches to addressing some of the key concerns that have been raised with regard
to rural development.
In rural development intervention, direct provision of amenities has been used for improvement
of living conditions or to enhance production. The strategy can provide an easy remedy within
the highly vulnerable segment but the effect is non-sustainable and shortlived. The emerging
paradigm shift from direct provision to facilitating access of such, and from universal
intervention to targeting requires a clear understanding of the spatial and possibly temporal
dynamics of rural development and infrastructure provision.
The Government of India has adopted an umbrella development strategy that promotes economic
growth and also addresses the needs of the poor by ensuring their basic rights. The Ministry of
Rural Development has initiated rural development campaigns which targeted programmes for
providing direct employment, self employment, social security, housing, building rural
infrastructure and manage land resources to alleviate poverty.
As a measure to strengthen the grass root level democracy, the Government is constantly
endeavouring to empower Panchayat Raj Institutions in terms of functions, powers and finance.
Grama sabha, NGOs, Self-Help Groups and PRIs have been accorded adequate role to make
participatory democracy meaningful and effective.
A different approach to rural development may be needed in the numerous areas affected by
chronic conflict or political instability. This can help mitigate the wasteful allocation of
development assistance in rural areas, and identify where it is needed most and where higher
benefits are expected. Correct policies can be hoped to resolve the vulnerability and inequality
dominating the picture of rural communities.
Key words : Rural Development, Rural Poverty, MNREGA

DIMENSIONS OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA

Poverty is still largely a rural phenomenon. The poorest countries are those with predominantly
agricultural economies and societies, and the poorest people live mainly in rural areas.
Lennart Bge
President, IFAD

Even after 56 years of Independence, right from the Nehru era to the Manmohan Singh era, the
Rural India is still under developed . The basic amenities like drinking water, electricity, roads,
housing, food and clothing are not fulfilled.
Visiting a village we find even today houses made of mud, bamboos and grass have no
protection against rains, storms, moisture and fire. Supplying of adequate drinking water is a
tedious problem in which housewife and girls are devoting a sizable part of the daily routine,
fetching enough water from far flung area or standing in the queue for hours waiting their
number at the public tap. Illiteracy and particularly among the girls is main peculiarity of our
rural India. Rural poverty and illiteracy has given our country the dubious name where highest
numbers of child labourer in the world are on the job to feed these bellies.

According to the National Sample Survey Organization, 300 million Indians live in extreme
poverty. The poor face absence of basic capabilities to function in society and lack opportunities
such as access to public infrastructure and income earning. A majority of them earn their
livelihood through unskilled, casual manual labour and exploitation of the natural resource base.
This dependence makes them more vulnerable to crises, like climate shock, natural disaster, illhealth, all of which adversely impact their employment opportunities and reduce their ability to
move out of the poverty trap.
The thinking of Balanced and developed economy is the vision of India 2020. But this holistic
vision India will not achieve unless the rural areas of India get developed. Rural India still need
strong policies and properly implementations of the same. Sustainable growth is required in both
rural and urban areas for a continuous development.
People in rural areas should have the same quality of life as is enjoyed by people living in sub
urban and urban areas. Further there are cascading effects of poverty, unemployment, poor and
inadequate infrastructure in rural areas on urban centres causing slums and consequential social
and economic tensions manifesting in economic deprivation and urban poverty. Hence Rural

Development which is concerned with economic growth and social justice, improvement in the
living standard of the rural people by providing adequate and quality social services and
minimum basic needs becomes essential.
Over the past 60 years, rising productivity of farm labor has released labor to work in the
growing industrial and service sectors of the economy. As the inclination towards agriculture is
no longer a dominant segment of the rural economy. Because farming is not the primary source
of jobs and income in many rural areas, farm payments and other policies that affect farms
generally have little noticeable impact on rural areas as a whole. Collectively there are a lot of
problems to develop rural areas. The major characteristics of rural poverty are mentioned below.
The major issue of rural poverty are :_
1. Invisibleness which is the main factor of the rural poverty as in rural areas are diverse and
the experience of poverty is diverse and spread in the large area in villages
2. The decline in relative contribution of agriculture are creating unemployment.
3. due to this low income problem has been raised in rural areas
4. discrimination between men and women has raised a lot of social issues. The isolation of
women and older people has raised more financial issues.
5. Social security provisions and medical facilities are also a problem in developing rural
areas
6. Inadequte information of services and technologies
7. Literacy rate is yet not achieved till date.

Rural development is the improvement in overall rural community conditions, including

economic and other quality of life considerations such as the environment, health, infrastructure,
and housing. For most small communities, this improvement involves population and
employment growth, however, such growth is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for
rural development. In Rural areas government has initiated a lot of steps through polices, but
these policies are not implemented properly.
One of the worlds largest economies, India has made tremendous steps in its economic and
social development in the past two decades through different policies. After growing from 3.2
percent to 8.2 percent in tenth five year plan, India has successfully shown the sustainable
development. Such sustained acceleration is needed to provide opportunities for Indias growing
population and its even faster growing workforce.

Rural areas is different from national areas in a number of ways. Rural areas have lower labour
force participation rates. Rural workers are predominantly involved in the production of low
wage, low skill tradable commodities that are highly exposed to effects of globalization.

Fig : Incidence of Rural Poverty in India

Villages are the heart of India. Approximately 75% of Indias population lives in 6,38,365
villages spread over 32lakh square kilometers. Of this rural population, about 90% is
concentrated in the villages having population less than 2000. As per the census (2001), rural
segment comprises 13.5 crore households which constitute 72% of total households in India with
48 crore adult individuals.
Yet the rural market is not homogeneous across the country. Variations in the level of exposure to
urban centres and the extent of development in a region have resulted in tremendous
heterogeneity. The consumer willingness to accept innovation also varies significantly from one
rural market, it has to be analysed and evaluated on different socio economic parameters.

Rural areas have always support the economy of any country towards through the production of
tradable commodities like agricultural products and manufactured goods which supports
international trade.
Various rural development programmes aimed at reducing poverty in rural areas have been
launched from time to time. These include land reforms, Gram Sadak Yojna, Five year plans,
Green & White revolution, providing rural Amenities in Rural areas ( PURA), National rural
Employment Guarantee Act, Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP ), Jawahar
Rozgar Yojna, etc. Though government had initiated a lot of policies to develop rural areas but
the objectives of these policies were not clear. Initially the establishment of industries trade
policies were seen as development plans, but the result was not up to mark. Enhancing
employment opportunity in rural areas is a necessary condition for economic development to
occur.
The important changes taking place in the economy are well known, and their impact on rural
places is clear. They include globalization, falling transport costs, rapid technological change, the
shift from manufacturing to services as the leading sector in the industrialized world and the
explosive growth of modern telecommunications.
Reducing poverty and hunger are the fundamental challenges facing developing countries.
Despite Indias recent high economics growth rate aroung 350 million people are still living on
less than one dollar a day.
The prime goal of rural development is to improve the quality of life of the rural people by
alleviating poverty through the instrument of selfemployment and wage employment
programmes, by providing community infrastructure facilities such as drinking water, electricity,
road connectivity, health facilities, rural housing and education and promoting decentralization
of powers to strengthen the Panchayat raj institutions.
Rural development should be central to poverty reduction. Three quarters of the 1.2 billion
people surviving on less than one dollar a day live and work in rural areas. Rural people are
twice as likely tobe poor as urban counterparts. However, rural development faces aloss of
confidence: funding has been falling, and governments and donors are scrambling to rethink
policy.
Rural areas are changing, however if we will look from few prosectives, there are a lot of places
improvement is required.
Demography: rural populations continue to grow in absolute terms but shrink in relative terms
by 2020, a combination of falling fertility and out-migration to towns means that rural
populations are likely to have stabilised and be overtaken by expanding urban populations

Human capital and infrastructure: though poverty remains high, human capabilities, to use Sens
terminology, are generally rising as indicated by the statistics for literacy, infant mortality, and
access to health and sanitation
Livelihood diversification: A growing share of rural incomes derives from the non-farm economy
There are many reasons to believe that agriculture can be the engine of rural growth, especially
in early development. When agriculture prospers, farmers and farm labourers benefit, and so do
those with jobs upstream and downstream from farming. Furthermore, the wider economy also
benefits, from increased spending, greater tax revenue, more investment in infrastructure, and a
stronger foreign exchange position. Many econometric studies illustrate the impact of
agricultural growth on poverty reduction typically one and a half times the impact of growth in
other sectors.

Multi-sectoral approaches are necessary. However, past experience with integrated rural
development reminds us that implementation constraints, whether caused by low administrative
capacity or bureaucratic capture, are the enemy of good intentions. Plans need to be ranked with
capacity to deliver as a criterion. Rural development does not always sit happily with new
approaches to development planning, which focus either on sector-wide approaches implemented
by individual line ministries, or on centrally-driven poverty reduction strategy papers. Strategic
approaches are needed to raise the profile of rural issues in such processes, and adapt their
strategies to rural implementation.
As a measure to strengthen the grass root level democracy, the Government is constantly
endeavouring to empower Panchayat Raj Institutions in terms of functions, powers and finance.
Grama sabha, NGOs, Self-Help Groups and PRIs have been accorded adequate role to make
participatory democracy meaningful and effective.
Among the multifarious problems in the rural sector now government has taken steps to improve
the situation through different policies to encourage the rural people to self develop themselves.
In recent years Government of India has accelerated its pace of poverty alleviation strategies by
mobilizing greater budget resources, creating time frames for quantifiable deliverables, linking,
with global frameworks of action, such as the Millennium Development Goals which provide an
umbrella approach for addressing multi-dimensional deprivations. The seriousness and urgency
of these policy and resource commitments to poverty alleviation are exemplified in a single
legislation:
MNREGA an Act to strengthen livelihood security through time bound guaranteed wage
employment. NREGA, with its Rights Based framework, is a paradigm shift from all other

development programmes that were traditionally supply led. Centrally funded entirely through
domestic resources, the implementation of this law is supported by a budget based on demand for
employment. The Parliament enacted an Act No. 42 of 2005 called the National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act. The law was initially called the National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (NREGA) but was renamed on 2 October 2009.The Act provides a guarantee for
rural employment to house holds whose adult members volunteer to do un-skilled manual work
not less than 100 days of such work in a financial year in accordance with the scheme made
under the Act.
The Government of India has adopted an umbrella development strategy that promotes economic
growth and also addresses the needs of the poor by ensuring their basic rights. The Ministry of
Rural Development has initiated rural development campaigns which targeted programmes for
providing direct employment, self employment, social security, housing, building rural
infrastructure and manage land resources to alleviate poverty.
MNREGA was launched on February 2, 2006 from Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh and initially
covered 200 "poorest" districts of the country. The Act was implemented in phased manner - 130
districts were added in 2007-08. With its spread over 625 districts across the country, the flagship
program of the UPA Government has the potential to increase the purchasing power of rural
poor, reduce distress migration and to create useful assets in rural India. Also, it can foster social
and gender equality as 23% workers under the scheme are Scheduled Castes, 17% Scheduled
Tribes and 50% women. In 2010-11, 41 million households were employed on NREGA
worksites. NREGA leverages the enormous amount of untapped human resource to create and
improve the much needed rural infrastructure and improve the natural resource base of the rural
livelihood.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act aims at enhancing the
livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing hundred days of wage-employment
in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual
work.Apart from providing livelihood to millions of households, over the last two years, the Act
has become a significant vehicle for strengthening grassroot level democratic processes and
regeneration of Indias depleting natural resource base. The legislation has also had a positive
impact on the socio-economic empowerment of women (the Act mandates at least 33 percent
participation for women).

Kerala

121

Jammu & Kashmir

69

Maharashtra

104

Assam

67

Haryana

97

Karnataka

67

Punjab

94

North-Easta

63

Andhra Pradesh

86

Chhattisgarh

63

Jharkhand

80

Madhya Pradesh

59

Tamil Nadu

80

Uttar Pradesh

56

Uttarakhand

72

Gujarat

56

Bihar

70

Orissa

53

West Bengal

70

Rajasthan

51

Himachal Pradesh

69

INDIA

64

Fig : Average wage cost per person day

Note : Except Assam (approximate figure, based on incomplete data).
The MGNREGA stipulates that works must be targeted towards a set of specific rural
development activities such as: water conservation and harvesting, afforestation, rural
connectivity, flood control and protection such as construction and repair of embankments, etc.
Digging of new tanks/ponds, percolation tanks and construction of small check dams are also
given importance. The employers are given work such as land leveling, tree plantation, etc.
NREGA offers an important window through which to learn about the impact of accountability
mechanisms on governance structures at the grassroots. Yet, remarkably little is being done to
study and evaluate the effectiveness of these experiments- what works, what doesnt work, under
what conditions and perhaps most importantly, what lessons can be drawn from each of these
experiments.

MNREGA started with an initial outlay of $2.5bn(Rs 11300cr) in year 2006-07.The funding has
considerably been increased as shown in the table below:

Year
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11

Total Outlay(TO) Wage Expenditure(Percent of TO)

$2.5bn
66
$2.6bn
68
$6.6bn
67
$8.68bn
70
$8.91bn
71

The point is, in spite of many programmes launched earlier and presently what real impact,
quantitatively and qualitatively these have on the progress and prosperity of rural area. We have
to evaluate each programme, funds involved therein and the result derived there from. The most
challenging task is to see whether the funds have been properly utilized. It is paradoxically that
before the Panchayats were made self sufficient and strong we have been accusing the
bureaucrats for their corrupt practices, now the corruption has gripped the Panchayats also and it
has destroyed the very concept of rural democracy / rural republic as envisaged by Gandhiji. The
funds are swindled away by the local leaders and officials who are supposed to implement them
in the right spirit.
A multi-crore fraud has also been suspected where many people has been issued the NREGA
card who is either employed with another Government Job and who are not even aware that they
have a Job Card. In Gujarat, a scam of Rs 10 million has taken place. the public works schemes'
completed product (e.g. water conservation, land development, afforestation, provision of
irrigation systems, construction of roads, or flood control) is vulnerable to being taken by over
wealthier sections of society.
The role of roads, other rural infrastructure, support services, and other interventions in rural
development is not necessarily a new field. However, an empirical community model that
integrates spatial dependencies will potentially contribute toward better understanding the
policy directions needed in targeting rural development. A different approach to rural
development may be needed in the numerous areas affected by chronic conflict or political
instability. This can help mitigate the wasteful allocation of development assistance in rural
areas, and identify where it is needed most and where higher benefits are expected. Correct
policies can be hoped to resolve the vulnerability and inequality dominating the picture of rural
communities.
Though lot of initiative has been taken by the present government to improve the economic
conditions of the rural people and providing infrastructure to boost the rural economy, yet much
more is needed keeping in view the peculiarity of our rural areas in the field of education,

electrification, drinking water and health and hygiene sector etc. The implementation is to be
properly checked to bring the required result.
In sum, in the twenty-first century, India will be judged by the extent to which it lays down the
appropriate rules of the game that will enable it to marshal its human resources, strengths in
innovation, and global niches in IT to improve overall economic and social development and
transform itself into a knowledge-driven economy. Sustained and integrated implementation of
the various policy measures in these domains would help to reposition India as a significant
global economic power, so that it can rightfully take its place among the ranks of countries that
are harnessing knowledge and technology for their overall economic development and social
well-being.

References :

A. Books
1. Implementation of Rural Development Programmes By Dr. Shankar
Chatterjee
2. Empowerment of Weaker Sections : Future Planning and Strategies for
Rural Development in India - By Prof. K. Vijaya Kumar
B. Journals
3. Yojana, Gram sabha : Democratizing Democracy ( Feb 2011)
4. NSO, 2004, Family Income and Expenditures Survey, National Statistics Office,
Philippines.
C. Websites
5. www.rd.ap.gov.in/
6. www.nabard.org
7. www.tnrd.gov.in/
8.
9.
10.
8. www.nrega.nic.in