IN A RECENT speech, Prime Minister Narasimha Ra
called upon voluntary agencies to participate actively in
the country's rural development programmes and gave a
categorical assurance it "is not going to be a sarkari programme." Pointing out the Eighth Plan has allocated Rs 30,000 crore for rural development, which will be routed through panchayats, Rao commented, "We have not
heard of such an allocation to rural development in any
plan." The proposed programme is expected to create
one billion person-days of employment.
Speaking in Jaipur on the same, day, Planning
Commission deputy chairman Pranab Mukherjee conceded that development activities undertaken with people's active participation have a "greater chance of success
and were cost-effective." He mentioned an experiment in
"micro-level, participatory planning" is being launched
soon in 150 selected blocks in the country. Both Rao and
Mukherjee have given indications of new directions in
the Eighth Five-Year Plan that seek to institutionalise the
role of voluntary organisations in the development process.
All these are undoubtedly welcome decisions.
Indeed, the sums being allocated are very large. But it
must be remembered that rural development is essential
ly good management of the rural environment and natural resources. Sometime ago, the Centre for Science and
brought Environment together some
leading grassroots environmentalists
to discuss the process of integrated
village ecosystem planning, They
concluded an average investment of
Rs 5 lakh per village - or Rs 28,500
crore for the entire country - would
be sufficient to organise water harvesting systems, good management
of grasslands and a 20-40 ha forest
in each village.
The sums that the Prime
Minister is talking about are
extremely large and, in the parlance
of physicists, of a critical nature that
can set off a chain reaction. The
Eighth Plan can theoretically be the
plan to end all plans. But will this
really happen?
According to one estimate given out by the earlier
Planning Commission, more than Rs 25,000 crore was
spent on rural development programmes during the
entire decade of the 1980s and this amount did not
include money spent on agriculture or irrigation. But the
public assets, especially environmental assets, created
with this investment are nowhere commensurate with
the expenditure incurred.
If history -is not to repeat itself, the approach to planning, investment and implementation should be such
that the basic system of management should be extremely open and grow from the people themselves. If the government does not ensure this requirement, there is no need to imagine the corruption that will eat away the
crores of rupees promised by the Prime Minister.
Environmental resources such as land, trees, grasses,
crops, ponds, tanks and wells are fragile and they decline
speedily in productivity if they are not cared for adequately. Therefore, there is no guarantee even if money to plant seedlings does reach the people, that a forest will emerge.
If the government truly wants this massive expenditure to support a national programme on ecologically
sound, natural resource management, then it must think
through the nature of the Panchayati Raj institutions it
wants to create. It must ask itself:
Why do most voluntary agencies
have problems in dealing with panchayats? Money is like oil. It can
provide the motive force but not if
the car is out of order. On the other
hand, a fuel-efficient car can go further with less oil. It is institutions
that deliver, produce and manage;
what matters is how good or bad
they are. And, the challenge lies in
developing effective, open and participatory institutions.
We hope the government, committed to this level of expenditure, will pay heed also to this dimension of the rural development problem.
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