by Yog Choudhary
Published Mon, Feb 22nd 2016, 15:40 | Government
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just launched the ambitious Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban (rural-urban) Mission on 21st February. The mission is aimed at the development of 300 rural clusters across the country in next 3 years.
Also named as National Rurban Mission, development of 100 rural clusters out of the 300 is targeted to be completed by the year 2016 itself. The mission is generally to transform the rural areas through increased economic activity, improved social and physical infrastructure and other basic amenities.
The mission is aimed not just creating jobs for the rural youth nearby their villages but also to decrease their migration to urban areas. The Rurban Mission will complement the Smart Cities initiative by creating Smart Villages.
The mission was launched from Chhattisgarh and 4 rural clusters out of 100 will be developed in Chhattisgarh itself. The mission will help overall development of the rural regions across the country and improving the quality of life in rural areas.
The cabinet had already approved the project with an outlay of INR 5,142.08 crore in September 2015. The project was announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the year 2014 while presenting the first budget of then newly elected NDA Government.
According to Census 2011 data, 69% of India’s population, or around 833 million people, lived in rural areas, against 31%, or 377.1 million people, in urban areas. It is projected that the latter figure will jump to 50% by 2050.
Through the development of rurban growth clusters, the National Rurban Mission aims to catalyse the overall regional growth, which would benefit both rural and urban areas of the country, by strengthening rural areas and “de-burdening” urban areas—hence leading to balanced regional development and national growth, the rural development ministry says on its website.
The smart villages would be well-delineated areas with a layout prepared following the planning norms that would be duly notified by the states and Union territories. The villages “will be geographically contiguous gram panchayats with a population of about 25,000-50,000 in plain and coastal areas and 5,000-15,000 in desert, hilly or tribal areas. There would be a separate approach for selection of clusters in tribal and non-tribal districts,” the rural development ministry said in a note on its website.
For the selection of clusters, the ministry is looking at factors like demography, economy, tourism, pilgrimage significance and transportation corridor impact.
To ensure a standard of development, 14 components have been included in a list of parameters: skill development training linked to economic activities, agro-processing, storage and warehousing, digital literacy, sanitation, provision of piped water supply, solid and liquid waste management, village streets and drains, streetlights, fully equipped mobile health units, upgrading school infrastructure, village road connectivity, electronic delivery of citizen centric services, public transport and LPG gas connections.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Author writes about several topics, at present he is contributing at Sarkari Yojana where he writes about welfare schemes of central and state Governments in India