Developing Rural India

Nearly 800 million of 1.3 billion Indian people still live in the over six lakh villages. If there has to be meaningful and inclusive economic development these villages have to become sustainable with adequate jobs and check urban migration. Studies suggest that villages can develop only if densification happens so as to reap the benefit of economies of scale. This densification happened in a planned way in the United States and in India, it is unplanned leading to haphazard growth.

Census data indicates 57 per cent of migration in the country happens from village to bigger village in search of jobs as farming is increasingly becoming unsustainable due to fragmentation of land holdings and rain-dependent in the majority of areas. People migrate to nearby and larger village as cost of living is less compared to urban towns. Also, skills required are less.

Former Rural Development Secretary S Vijay Kumar, who is now a distinguished fellow in TERI, has come out with a new approach to economic development in rural areas that will not only be sustainable but create much-needed jobs as well and narrow the widening rural-urban divide.

He has advocated the creation of Mega Panchayats, an intermediary between gram panchayats and Nagar Palikas to deal with governance problem of mega villages called census towns that have mushroomed in rural India. At the moment, census towns where the majority of migration takes place is governed by neither panchayats nor Nagar Palikas.

Vijay Kumar, an IAS officer from Himachal Pradesh cadre said that India has successfully tackled the problem of food security to its vast population but not as yet dealt with the problem of poverty.

Poverty in rural area can be tackled only when the transition from farm to non-farm pursuits are facilitated in villages. This can happen only through planned densification of villages so that economies of scale operate in the development of infrastructure and industrial activities, he said. Unfortunately, this is an area where inadequate attention has been paid so far. This is resulting in the rural-urban divide. In all developed countries, only 5-8 per cent of the population depended on agriculture for livelihood. The rest are in non-farm activities due to densification of villages that had happened over time, Vijay Kumar said.

There is a serious governance issue with regard to census towns as it is nobody's baby and the clock is ticking. In India typically a village has a population of 500-3000. There are less than 4000 villages with a population of over 10,000. Villages are governed by Panchayats and towns are governed by Nagar Palikas (urban local bodies). In Kerala, Panchayats are large and have a population as high as 25,000, which meant densification of villages has happened by itself. Economies of scale, essential for development, operate only if there are at least 10,000 persons in a village.

The migration is largely from villages to the census towns. This is evident from the fact that census towns have grown nearly three-fold. Census towns have grown from 1362 in 2001 to 3892 in 2011. Census towns are basically villages with over 5000 people.

West Bengal had the highest number of census towns in 2011 (780), followed by Kerala (461), Tamil Nadu (376) and Maharashtra (278). Almost the entire growth in the urban population in Kerala between 2001 and 2011 was due to additional CTs.

"Census town amenities are not good as they are not planned because it is a combination of 2 or 3 panchayats. So there is no funding preference for urbanising part of the panchayat. It is not equipped to support densification. The crucial point is one cannot plan densification covering multiple panchayats without appropriate governance," Vijay Kumar said adding "there is a governance fracture."

Well developed census towns will promote job creation. Studies show that a mere Re 1.1.5 lakh investment is enough to create one job in rural India creates a job whereas it takes at least Rs 5-6 lakh in urban areas.

Typically, Rs 60 crore development budget annually over the next decade or so in such mega panchayats or census towns will create much-needed urban amenities in rural India as envisaged by former President, Late Abdul Kalam.

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Rurban Mission launched by Narendra Modi Government is an attempt to realise Kalam's dream but so far it appeared to be not well thought out mission. Also, only 100 clusters of villages are proposed to be developed under the mission and not all the 4000 odd census towns in the country.

(The views expressed are strictly personal)