With a meagre 2.4% of existent landmass, India has been a homeland for 17.5% of total population of the globe. The distribution of Indian population is concentrated more in urban landscapes throughout the country. After almost eight decades after independence, though India is gradually making her way to be among economically developed nations, the pace of development can be accelerated largely with a right approach to an all-inclusive progress. Diversity has been a unique identity of the nation, but the populace is largely diversified being clustered based on multiple verticals such as economy, education, location, caste and community.
The 2001 census indicated that 72.2% of the total population is distributed in about 638,000 villages while the remaining 27.8% lives in more than 5,100 towns and over 280 urban agglomerations. From these demographics, the diversity of distribution in rural and urban localities is quite evident in India. While national leaders of pre-independent India such as Mahatma Gandhi emphasised on rural empowerment, post independent reorganisation of the country has been quite ineffective to convert such ideas into reality. Government initiatives for a developed India are not apathetic to rural peripheries, but the process is apparently inadequate. Either the functioning of government initiatives is with glitches or with serious setbacks on policy fronts. Issues such as farmer suicide still rage the country when the brighter face of a rich India shine abroad in other nations.
The functioning of government initiatives can be divided into two dimensions, one constituting urban areas and the other comprising the vast rural landscape. It has become an elementary feature in policy making of the country to diversify developmental activities on the lines of urban and rural perspectives. This approach of policy makers cannot be deemed as miscue owning to the vast difference prevalent in rural and urban India in diverse fronts: social, economical and infrastructural. However, in the process, the gap seems to widen instead of bringing the two on a same page.
The need for emphasis on rural India is based on the fact that almost three fourth of the populace lives in villages. Needless to highlight the expanse of rural India, majority of the country’s landmass is within rural landscape. These areas not only produce bread and butter of the nation but also are highly awash with rich natural resources. However, a multidimensional deficiency in almost every facets of development has plagued these areas, dragging its populace to urban locales in search of livelihood and employment. Such migration in return brings in myriad complicacies to the entire system. The rural populace being deprived of education, financial support, infrastructure and employment turns to a sheer wastage of human resource.
Rural India, in fact can be the most efficient powerhouse for national development. A number of implications highlight its prospects. The first, as stated earlier, three fourth of Indian populace belongs to villages. Therefore, Indian human resource is primarily based on rural areas. Furthermore, more than 65% of total population in India is under 35 years. This signifies the large potential that the country possesses in terms of labour power. Secondly, since most of the country’s resources are concentrated on remote areas, by leveraging manufacturing and industry in rural landscapes, the nation can utilise them in an efficient manner. It will reduce the cost of manufacturing that will eventually help end customers. Productivity will increase impacting export and foreign exchange. Hence, these regions will be turned into prerogative engines to drive the nation towards progress.
Recent initiatives by government are ambitious to bring pace in the country’s development. Initiatives such as Skill India and Make In India are enthusiastic steps. However, they will need to be at par with unique aspects of the nation surrounding distribution of populace and economy. Without bringing rural India under the ambit of active development, holistic progress of the nation is impossible. Government should ensure that recently rolled out measures should adequately focus towards empowerment of rural youth and communities.
Skill development is now a priority in India. Emphasis must be on dedicated schemes for capacity building in rural India. Formation of a well-established infrastructure exclusively for skill development must be initiated. Professional Skill and employment-oriented training must be provided to rural youth for creation of skilled labour force. Since the Indian market is growing lucrative with a strengthening buying power of a section of its populace, many foreign companies are keen to invest. This will bring up many industries in various sectors in the nation, which will have a huge demand of skilled labour in coming times. Directing the Make in India initiative to rural India will bring about an impressive development in overall economy of the nation. Manufactured produce in these industries will cater to both rural and urban consumption in addition to a sharp boost in the country’s export.
Rural India has immense potential to add an intriguing feature to manufacturing and export. India is famous for many unique items and products across the world. Numerous indigenous products of India have a prodigious value in international as well as in the domestic market. For instance, handicraft, handloom and textiles, orchids, herbs and similar products have huge commercial viability in the global market. Industries associated with these products should be developed with bases in rural landscape throughout the nation. This will bring about a sharp breakthrough in indigenous industry and manufacturing of the nation and enable rural communities to become self-dependent with economic empowerment. Furthermore, industries such as tourism have enormous prospects in a country such as India.
Ministry of Rural Development has a budget of Rs 1500 crore yearly for their flagship scheme under NRLM-National Rural Livelihood Mission as DDU-GKY: Deen Dayal Upadhyay Grameen Kaushal Yojana. The scheme trains unemployed youths under BPL category on various skills in order to provide them employability. However, this is insufficient for the size we have available in our country. We need similar schemes for all category of people be it BPL or General. Skill development schemes that focus on infrastructure development in rural India are the need of the hour. It could be a great initiative if government schools can add vocational training along with other subjects across the nation. Apart from these, schemes should be floated to use school infrastructure in post school hours for training and skill development. There should be special incentive schemes under Make in India policy for Industries to setup their units in rural locales utilising local resources.
The dream of India becoming a super power aligned with countries such as the US, and neighbouring China, can be transformed to reality only with proper utilization of its resources. Human resource is the best resources of any nation and for India; our rural populace can become the driving factor for development and industrialisation. Time has arrived to hone this asset and utilise it for the best.
Disclaimer: Author Ajay Chhangani is CEO, Rise India Group. The above article represents the personal views of the author. It does not reflect the stand of CNN-IBN/IBNLive.
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