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CII suggests changes for rural development scheme
Friday, 01 June 2007, 19:30 IST
New Delhi: The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Friday suggested major changes to the government's flagship rural development programme, Bharat Nirman, to stimulate growth of the rural economy by creating employment engines.
"We believe that supplementing Bharat Nirman by creating employment engines for the rural economy - or Bharat Nirman Plus - is essential to reducing rural poverty," said the 21-page CII report presented to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
It said this could create employment for about 30 million to 40 million people in rural areas and increase rural incomes by one percent a year in the span of five years.
This would amount to a 25-30 percent increase in income growth over the current rate of less than four percent annually.
The report said there was need to rejuvenate agri-business by creating a second green revolution and creating non-farm employment engines including services for rural India.
Presenting the report, former CII president Y.C. Deveshwar said "the six areas covered by Bharat Nirman - roads, power, drinking water, housing, telecom and irrigation - were taken up by the study with focus on two most challenging areas of power and irrigation. We felt that in each of these areas there was need for some major changes for successful execution."
In the case of power, the report stressed the need to think of alternative sources for rural India since it would take years to develop large power plants.
It suggested locally owned Decentralised Distributed Generation (DDG) since the rural communities could take on the responsibility for pricing and collection, operations and maintenance of the plants.
The report said the government would need to play a critical role in kick starting DDG projects by providing capital subsidies - sometimes nearly 90 percent of the initial cost as well as shaping regulation to support such efforts.
In the area of irrigation, the CII report recommended three major reforms - setting up an independent Rural Water Authority (RWA) in each state to fix water prices, increasing participatory management through water-user associations and creating financially independent irrigation agencies.
It also suggested that farmers grow "dollar" crops such as fruits and vegetables and protein products like poultry and dairy in addition to grains since such items were in great demand among Indian consumers.
The implementation of the recommendations to the Bharat Nirman programme would need an investment of 
17.4 billion by 2009.
Source: IANS
17.4 billion by 2009.
Source: IANS