AN APPROPRIATE STRATEGY FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT-WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ROORKEE BLOCK

Abstract

The planning strategy adopted in Five Years and Annual Plans with specific reference to the importance of the aim of reduction of inequality, poverty, giving adequate employment to the rural poor and achieving higher growth rate has been examined. It has been noticed that because of m$cro-level approach and inadequacy in quality and quantity of the present infrastructure, results as regards the above aspects could not be achieved to any desired level. In certain areas the inequality and unemployment have risen. As a change in strategy, micro-level planning process has been suggested and as a case study detail data collection and analysis work have been carried out for Roorkee Block consisting of 113 villages with a population of 98725. Education, land-labour ratio , and income per consumption unit are important parameters to be considered for achieving the above objectives. The data were collected to study the impact of these factors on agricultural production per unit of land and per working unit. For this purpose 460 families of 10 villages of Roorkee Block have been selected at random as samples. Analysis of data reveals that the present formal education upto 8th standard gives 15-25 percent increase in agricultural production. The production is also substantially affected with the increase in income per consumption unit. The production per working unit and per land unit was about 80-100 percent more when the income per consumption unit was above the poverty line. The present understanding that 10 acres of land per family or about 4 acres per working unit is optimum was found correct. Because of limited land resources more than 2.0 acres land per family may not be possible. It was worked out that if such a uniform land distribution was made among the working units engaged in agricultural activities, on the whole the total production would go up and substantial reduction in inequality and poverty could also be achieved. Thus the results support the words of Vinobaji that inequality and poverty go hand in hand. With the help of collected data,important characteristics of individual families such as, their working units, consumption units, nature and quality of unemployment, human and other resources available and their economical status were examined. Efforts have also been made to identify technologies that will be suitable and to work out input-output.ratio and impact on other sectors of employment. Due to micro-level planning approach, it was then possible to plan employment strategy for individual family. Such a strategy then can reasonably be expected to give benefits to the target population. Impact of functional-mechanism and implementation of such a planning strategy have also been studied. It was revealed that present government-oriented functional-mechanism which will involve vi people in decision making process, implementation and maintenance has been proposed. From the results of case study of Roorkee block, suggestions arriving at a mathematical-model, have also been made. The discussion and the case study presented bring out the weaknesses of the presently followed macro-planning strategy. It also reveals the superiority of m.^ro-planning strategy for achieving basic objectives of reduction of unemployment, inequality and poverty.