Migration Trends
The need for migration arises under complex conditions. In the rural areas it is deeply influenced by the availability of livelihoods that is related to agricultural productivity and market conditions. It is also a consequence of the lack of social services, especially education and healthcare. The urge for self development often drives people out of villages. These are all centrifugal forces affecting the family structure, agricultural productivity and rural development. Lack of scope for human development in the rural areas is a major drawback instigating villagers to move out of their homeland. Thus migration from rural to urban is both reactive and proactive.
Urban to urban migration, on the other hand, is mostly aspiration-based and is proactive. With growing knowledge and scope for employment and development, urbanites are not just moving from one city to another, they are also going abroad to foreign lands for higher education, self-development and also for better jobs. All such movements certainly have a profound influence on child-rearing or vice versa.
1.Rural to Urban Migration
When a child is sent for education to the city from a rural area, s/he faces a major cultural change adjusting to the urban way of life that is very different from what s/he is used to. The child has to adjust to factors of anonymity, different technologies and a totally new living environment of small houses (as urban land is scarce) in congested neibourhoods. Here the equation with neighbours is very different. Such circumstances inculcate isolation and a child coming from a joint family or living amongst kin becomes homesick and visits home frequently, especially when it is individual migration in search of a job or for education. However, often children from low-income groups prefer to go for shared living that gives them a sense of collectivity and security. Such migrants have very strong emotional ties with their families and visit home for every festival or in times of need. In cases where monetary remittances have to be made, the ties are even stronger.
However, as young migrants grow and develop and settle down permanently in cities/towns, they tend to marry and have their own nuclear families, until which time they remain a part of the original conjugal/joint family. The second generation of migrant families is born urbanites, with less direct links with the village. They consider their parents’ families as relatives and often find it uncomfortable to visit villages because of their getting used to an urban way of life. Such children see better scope for development in cities. Their aspirations also change because of the exposure to the variety available in the city.
As revealed from primary data assessment, the younger generation from villages even otherwise does not want to pursue agriculture. Cities, therefore, attract all the more, even though they often face difficulties. Hence, the will to adjust is intense; it becomes almost an issue of survival of the fittest! The poor come for survival and adjust to urban ways of life.
2.Urban to Urban Migration
In the case of urban to urban migration, aspirations become more prominent. The issue here is of scope for still higher achievements. If scope does not match aspirations, children are sent away from home to live in hostels to fulfill their desires (could be of the children or their parents). The pressure on self-development and professional development is so high that children get isolated from the family. Though in their early childhood they miss home, they get so naturalized into an urban way of life, with all its speed, that they drift gradually from family cultures and ties. Visiting home becomes rare, though technology helps them to keep in touch with parents, ties with relatives get diluted, more so after marriage.
The urban poor follow a rural pattern of interaction with the parent family. For the poor the family remains a source of emotional support. Since many of them come from rural areas, visits to villages are frequent. Living in low-income group housing, there is hardly any social mobility. Hence ties do not get diluted as much as it does with typical modern living.
Summary
Distance and aspirations are two major components diluting family ties. In the case of the rural poor, migration is more in search of livelihood for survival, though aspirations do play an influencing role. As mentioned, the younger generation does not want to cultivate their land anymore. Given the vicissitudes of rainfed agriculture, which is still prevalent in many parts of India, agricultural productivity is very uncertain and cannot be economically relied upon. This encourages migration further.
For the rural rich, the pattern follows that of an urban to urban migration. It is actually a change in the scale from that of rural migration. While the poor migrate for survival, the rich migrate to enhance their career. Economic conditions play a very dominant role, as any migration is influenced by better earnings or scope for better jobs.
When children move from one place to another, the impact of the culture of the place has less impression on them. Identifying themselves to a specific place does not occur. Neither are they able to assimilate the culture of a particular place, which they can call their home. As they drift from one place to another, they do not develop roots that were traditionally so common in the past. In olden times, in the south of India, place names were added to an individual’s name to establish identity and to relate. That is absent today. Moreover, the western culture of addressing an individual by his/her first name rules out further possibility of collectivism and acknowledges individualism and competitiveness. Hence migration brings about a move from dependency to independence.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
RURAL LIVELIHOODS
GeNext of rural households do not want to live in villages anymore. The nation’s effort to spread education has finally enticed them to go to school and acquire knowledge, only to leave their homesteads for more remunerative livelihoods of cities. Very few of the younger generation of rural areas want to follow their heritage livelihoods of being farmers and agriculturists. Neither do they want to follow the traditional non-farm jobs of their parents, if any. They are all leaving their village homes to migrate to cities for non-farm unskilled jobs, where they encounter considerable difficulties in adjusting to an alien urban life. Yet they prefer such employment against farm practices or traditional village jobs, as urban wages are far more attractive than rural wages. Moreover, because of the global warming process leading to climate changes, farmers do not want to face the risk of weather vicissitudes and the instability of rainfed agriculture. The senior generation in the villages is, therefore, not persuading their children anymore to stay back in the villages to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence. On the contrary, they are encouraging their children to go out and earn a better living for themselves and/or to support the family back home. This is creating a serious void of agriculture labour in rural areas. The casual labour of villages or the farm labours today prefer to work in the city where the daily wages are higher. Moreover, accessibility these days is not that difficult. Villages are mostly well-connected and villagers can commute daily to nearby cities.
In contrast, urban children are more often than not following their parents’ footsteps and family professions, under very close parental guidance. Globalization has thrown open to them a plethora of choices to fancy and to practice. For villagers the compulsions of leaving home are more economic than social. Rural parents are unable to convince their children of the benefits of agriculture because they themselves are facing the changing trends in the climate and in the government policies. The dilemma is that villagers are unsure of the returns from their land even though the country as a whole is self-sufficient in foodgrains. Or is it that modern living and the employment scope in cities are pulling people out of villages?
Of the school going children in the villages, more boys are getting educated in the high schools than the girls (though there is a steady rise in their number, the percentage is still lower). This is because of a gender bias, with the boys being in an advantageous position than the girls, pertaining to commuting to schools distantly located either by cycling or in public transport. The girls, because of personal security are not permitted to commute long distances (unaccompanied) in public transport or to cycle down to schools far away from home. Thus parents prefer girls to study in the village school, which generally functions as a middle school. However, private education is becoming very popular, as learning English for better communication, to widen the scope for employment, is now being valued and is becoming popular. The private market in education is providing this scope to village children, which is supported by improvements in road transportation, whereby students from the villages are picked up and dropped back home (though at a cost) by the school vehicle.
Ambitions have also risen because of exposure to modern trends in education and living. Young boys now want to learn computers and work outside the village, as IT jobs have not yet penetrated villages. From a survey done on Child Rearing Practices (by Indus World School of Business) we found that boys would like to venture into diversified activities; whereas any village girl wanting to go for higher studies opted to become a doctor! Such thinking indicates lack of awareness of modern employment opportunities because of less exposure to the outside world.
The parents of these children are also going through a transition. While on the one hand they are becoming aware of the enlarged scope for livelihoods (often from their children) in the cities, they are unable to leave their homesteads and assets (which is basically immovable property) to settle in urban areas for better earnings. The reasons, however, are more social than economic. With changing trends of consumption, those who are diversifying their agriculture from foodgrains to cash crops are surviving the onslaught of modernism, including policy changes. But for those who do not have the scope to diversify, subsistence farming is the only option. Because of the rising costs of farm labour (as migration has become rampant) and low government levies for foodgrains, it is often not economical for many agriculturists to grow foodgrains anymore. Hence farmers, who grow only foodgrains, produce mostly for home consumption, even though marketing foodgrains have become easy with the development of “mandies” (markets) nearby, where their produce can be easily transported and sold. Growing cereals is, therefore, not remunerative anymore, unless they cater to a more diversified market of flowers, fruits, vegetables or other value-added cash crops such as soya beans, spices or cotton. With changing culinary habits, agribusiness in livestock is also becoming popular. Moreover, division of farmland from heritage adds to the woes of small farmers. Subdivision of agricultural land takes its toll on the income of those who own such land.
Another set of subsistence farmers are those who during their employable days go to the city to earn non-farm livelihoods or to do some stable public sector jobs (while their older generation looks after the land) and then come back home after retirement from an organized sector to lead a more peaceful life and follow the same occupation as their forefathers, to sustain themselves. Such “first time” farmers tend to only fend for themselves with the help of one or two not so well educated children who cannot work in cities because of lack of education and are compelled to stay in the villages with parents and work for agriculture. In such families the rest of the members of the third generation, especially the sons, follow the footsteps of their fathers in getting employed in urban areas, but keeping in touch with home through frequent visits. Such families do not cultivate their land for doing business. They are satisfied if they do not have to buy their daily requirement of foodgrains.
Two types of villagers migrate to cities: (i) those who are rich enough to avail of higher education in cities, on completion of which aspirations change and they do not return to the villages, but remain in the city doing urban jobs and (ii) those who are forced to migrate to the city as a survival strategy to earn a living. It is the second group of villagers who face difficulties in settling down in a city for want of money or fixed assets, as a result of which they live in slums, but soon get attuned to urban life. They earn a living, save some money and send remittances back home to support their kin in the villages. They have close ties with their families living in the villages and visit “home” frequently, especially during festivals or ceremonies. The richer class makes the city their home and do not come back to the village. They normally appoint a manager to take care of their cultivation and immovable properties.
A category of villagers who depend on rainfed agriculture often believe in dual livelihoods, with one non-farm livelihood as a standby under difficult climatic conditions. These people normally acquire one skill or the other which they use in times of need. For example (as witnessed in another of my field trips while working for an ADB TA), many farmers of North Bengal are also weavers, who earn from weaving when crops fail or during lean periods. Close to a city, farmers take up skilled or semi-skilled jobs of truck-drivers or auto-rickshaw drivers, carpenters, masons, potters, etc. when they cannot work in the field. In some cases many live in villages adjacent to urban areas and work in the city. We found cases of carpenters and public-sector workers near Bhopal who live in the village and commute for their daily work. They have very small pieces of land that they till, but cannot depend for their living totally on the soil. This pattern, however, is based on the conditions of water shortage for irrigation or on monsoon failures.
The 2008 World Development Report on Agriculture mentions that GDP growth generated in agriculture has large benefits for the poor and is twice as effective as growth generated in the other sectors. Hence promoting agriculture is still a viable solution to economic growth as it reduces poverty. But at the same time, as countries get richer, contribution of agriculture to the country’s development diminishes. However, rural poverty can only reduce when there is a decline in the rural population and or when agribusinesses increase with urbanization. Actually it is growth in non-farm economy and increase in agriculture productivity that will help rural areas to come out of poverty. In the urbanized economies, agriculture works like any other tradable sector and predominates in some locations (World Development Report on Agriculture, 2008). As our ex-President Dr. Abdul Kalam Azad has said in his PURA concept, growth is possible only when export-oriented productivity increases.
There are two sectors of agriculture – the non-tradable staple crops sector that provide the domestic markets and the tradable non-staple sector that export products for improved income. Staple crop sector is price inelastic (World Development Report on Agriculture, 2008). Moreover in India the government has imposed regulations whereby a certain portion of the grains will have to be compulsorily sold to the Food Corporation of India to provide for the PDS, at a very low levy fixed by the government. Consequently because of less profit, cultivators are reluctant to grow staple crops, thereby posing a serious threat to food security. Corruption here is rampant and producers are loosing patience with the government system to contribute to food security. This has been reported from all large-scale producers of foodgrains. Farmers and cultivators are, therefore, changing over to market-oriented agriculture such as cotton, flowers, other cash crops or even livestocks to fetch them more money to either make profits or breakeven with their investments made in farming. In M.P. a major cash crop is soya beans. Horticulture and floriculture are also becoming popular, especially in villages around cities, where marketing is easy and transport is not a major problem anymore of transferring the produce.
Given the situation India should move towards such agriculture that will enhance growth of other sectors through production and consumption links. Agro-processing and food-marketing can be tried and promoted within the villages. Other agribusinesses like herbicides and fertilizers are yet another solution. At the same time, it is to be remembered that growing food grains is essential to maintain food security. The issue that comes up is whether rural to urban migration is good for the economic development of India at this stage? Does providing unskilled labour to the city outweigh the need for rural productivity? What kinds of skills are required in the city that can be contributed by villagers? Or should there be a reverse process of skill-training of villagers to introduce agribusinesses in villages?
As the World Development report says, agriculture has, in many countries, not been used to its full potential for growth because of its anti-agriculture policy biases and underinvestment, and often compounded by misinvestments and donor neglect, with high costs in human sufferings. But the challenge today is of smallholder-driven approach to agricultural growth that reconciles to economic, social and environmental functions of agriculture. The dilemma is of sustaining productivity and income growth in the face of declining prices for grains and traditional exports. However, rising demands for high-value horticultural and livestock products in these rapidly growing economies offer farmers opportunities to diversify into new markets.
The World Bank report also mentions that agriculture’s performance has been impressive in the recent past. From 1980 to 2004, the gross domestic product (GDP) of agriculture expanded globally on an average of 2.0 per cent a year, which is more than the population growth of 1.6 per cent a year. This growth, driven by increasing productivity, pushed down the real price of grains in the world market by 1.8 per cent a year over the same period. Developing countries achieved much faster agricultural growth (2.6 per cent a year) than industrial countries (0.9 per cent a year) in 1980 – 2004. Developing countries accounted for 79 per cent of overall agricultural growth during this period. Their share of world agriculture in the GDP rose from 56 per cent in 1980 to 65 per cent in 2004. In contrast they accounted for only 21 per cent of non-agricultural GDP in 2004. The transforming economies of Asia (of which India is a part) accounted for 2/3rd of the developing world’s agricultural growth. The major contributor to growth in Asia and the developing world in general was productivity gains, rather than expansion of land devoted to agriculture. But the dilemma is that due to rising productivity, prices have been declining for cereals – especially for rice, which is the developing world’s major staple food – and for traditional developing-world export products such as cotton and coffee. Improvement has been due to the use of better technology, better policy and the application of widespread irrigation, improved variety of crops and the use of fertilizers, although crop improvements have extended well beyond the irrigated areas to embrace huge areas of rainfed agriculture. Another reason for expansion has been the growth in livestock. So is the case with horticulture and aquaculture. In India there has been a real revolution in the production and marketing of milk.
Acknowledgement
This write up is based on the field experience I gathered from an IWSB research project for which I visited the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, to work on Culture and Child-rearing Practices.
In contrast, urban children are more often than not following their parents’ footsteps and family professions, under very close parental guidance. Globalization has thrown open to them a plethora of choices to fancy and to practice. For villagers the compulsions of leaving home are more economic than social. Rural parents are unable to convince their children of the benefits of agriculture because they themselves are facing the changing trends in the climate and in the government policies. The dilemma is that villagers are unsure of the returns from their land even though the country as a whole is self-sufficient in foodgrains. Or is it that modern living and the employment scope in cities are pulling people out of villages?
Of the school going children in the villages, more boys are getting educated in the high schools than the girls (though there is a steady rise in their number, the percentage is still lower). This is because of a gender bias, with the boys being in an advantageous position than the girls, pertaining to commuting to schools distantly located either by cycling or in public transport. The girls, because of personal security are not permitted to commute long distances (unaccompanied) in public transport or to cycle down to schools far away from home. Thus parents prefer girls to study in the village school, which generally functions as a middle school. However, private education is becoming very popular, as learning English for better communication, to widen the scope for employment, is now being valued and is becoming popular. The private market in education is providing this scope to village children, which is supported by improvements in road transportation, whereby students from the villages are picked up and dropped back home (though at a cost) by the school vehicle.
Ambitions have also risen because of exposure to modern trends in education and living. Young boys now want to learn computers and work outside the village, as IT jobs have not yet penetrated villages. From a survey done on Child Rearing Practices (by Indus World School of Business) we found that boys would like to venture into diversified activities; whereas any village girl wanting to go for higher studies opted to become a doctor! Such thinking indicates lack of awareness of modern employment opportunities because of less exposure to the outside world.
The parents of these children are also going through a transition. While on the one hand they are becoming aware of the enlarged scope for livelihoods (often from their children) in the cities, they are unable to leave their homesteads and assets (which is basically immovable property) to settle in urban areas for better earnings. The reasons, however, are more social than economic. With changing trends of consumption, those who are diversifying their agriculture from foodgrains to cash crops are surviving the onslaught of modernism, including policy changes. But for those who do not have the scope to diversify, subsistence farming is the only option. Because of the rising costs of farm labour (as migration has become rampant) and low government levies for foodgrains, it is often not economical for many agriculturists to grow foodgrains anymore. Hence farmers, who grow only foodgrains, produce mostly for home consumption, even though marketing foodgrains have become easy with the development of “mandies” (markets) nearby, where their produce can be easily transported and sold. Growing cereals is, therefore, not remunerative anymore, unless they cater to a more diversified market of flowers, fruits, vegetables or other value-added cash crops such as soya beans, spices or cotton. With changing culinary habits, agribusiness in livestock is also becoming popular. Moreover, division of farmland from heritage adds to the woes of small farmers. Subdivision of agricultural land takes its toll on the income of those who own such land.
Another set of subsistence farmers are those who during their employable days go to the city to earn non-farm livelihoods or to do some stable public sector jobs (while their older generation looks after the land) and then come back home after retirement from an organized sector to lead a more peaceful life and follow the same occupation as their forefathers, to sustain themselves. Such “first time” farmers tend to only fend for themselves with the help of one or two not so well educated children who cannot work in cities because of lack of education and are compelled to stay in the villages with parents and work for agriculture. In such families the rest of the members of the third generation, especially the sons, follow the footsteps of their fathers in getting employed in urban areas, but keeping in touch with home through frequent visits. Such families do not cultivate their land for doing business. They are satisfied if they do not have to buy their daily requirement of foodgrains.
Two types of villagers migrate to cities: (i) those who are rich enough to avail of higher education in cities, on completion of which aspirations change and they do not return to the villages, but remain in the city doing urban jobs and (ii) those who are forced to migrate to the city as a survival strategy to earn a living. It is the second group of villagers who face difficulties in settling down in a city for want of money or fixed assets, as a result of which they live in slums, but soon get attuned to urban life. They earn a living, save some money and send remittances back home to support their kin in the villages. They have close ties with their families living in the villages and visit “home” frequently, especially during festivals or ceremonies. The richer class makes the city their home and do not come back to the village. They normally appoint a manager to take care of their cultivation and immovable properties.
A category of villagers who depend on rainfed agriculture often believe in dual livelihoods, with one non-farm livelihood as a standby under difficult climatic conditions. These people normally acquire one skill or the other which they use in times of need. For example (as witnessed in another of my field trips while working for an ADB TA), many farmers of North Bengal are also weavers, who earn from weaving when crops fail or during lean periods. Close to a city, farmers take up skilled or semi-skilled jobs of truck-drivers or auto-rickshaw drivers, carpenters, masons, potters, etc. when they cannot work in the field. In some cases many live in villages adjacent to urban areas and work in the city. We found cases of carpenters and public-sector workers near Bhopal who live in the village and commute for their daily work. They have very small pieces of land that they till, but cannot depend for their living totally on the soil. This pattern, however, is based on the conditions of water shortage for irrigation or on monsoon failures.
The 2008 World Development Report on Agriculture mentions that GDP growth generated in agriculture has large benefits for the poor and is twice as effective as growth generated in the other sectors. Hence promoting agriculture is still a viable solution to economic growth as it reduces poverty. But at the same time, as countries get richer, contribution of agriculture to the country’s development diminishes. However, rural poverty can only reduce when there is a decline in the rural population and or when agribusinesses increase with urbanization. Actually it is growth in non-farm economy and increase in agriculture productivity that will help rural areas to come out of poverty. In the urbanized economies, agriculture works like any other tradable sector and predominates in some locations (World Development Report on Agriculture, 2008). As our ex-President Dr. Abdul Kalam Azad has said in his PURA concept, growth is possible only when export-oriented productivity increases.
There are two sectors of agriculture – the non-tradable staple crops sector that provide the domestic markets and the tradable non-staple sector that export products for improved income. Staple crop sector is price inelastic (World Development Report on Agriculture, 2008). Moreover in India the government has imposed regulations whereby a certain portion of the grains will have to be compulsorily sold to the Food Corporation of India to provide for the PDS, at a very low levy fixed by the government. Consequently because of less profit, cultivators are reluctant to grow staple crops, thereby posing a serious threat to food security. Corruption here is rampant and producers are loosing patience with the government system to contribute to food security. This has been reported from all large-scale producers of foodgrains. Farmers and cultivators are, therefore, changing over to market-oriented agriculture such as cotton, flowers, other cash crops or even livestocks to fetch them more money to either make profits or breakeven with their investments made in farming. In M.P. a major cash crop is soya beans. Horticulture and floriculture are also becoming popular, especially in villages around cities, where marketing is easy and transport is not a major problem anymore of transferring the produce.
Given the situation India should move towards such agriculture that will enhance growth of other sectors through production and consumption links. Agro-processing and food-marketing can be tried and promoted within the villages. Other agribusinesses like herbicides and fertilizers are yet another solution. At the same time, it is to be remembered that growing food grains is essential to maintain food security. The issue that comes up is whether rural to urban migration is good for the economic development of India at this stage? Does providing unskilled labour to the city outweigh the need for rural productivity? What kinds of skills are required in the city that can be contributed by villagers? Or should there be a reverse process of skill-training of villagers to introduce agribusinesses in villages?
As the World Development report says, agriculture has, in many countries, not been used to its full potential for growth because of its anti-agriculture policy biases and underinvestment, and often compounded by misinvestments and donor neglect, with high costs in human sufferings. But the challenge today is of smallholder-driven approach to agricultural growth that reconciles to economic, social and environmental functions of agriculture. The dilemma is of sustaining productivity and income growth in the face of declining prices for grains and traditional exports. However, rising demands for high-value horticultural and livestock products in these rapidly growing economies offer farmers opportunities to diversify into new markets.
The World Bank report also mentions that agriculture’s performance has been impressive in the recent past. From 1980 to 2004, the gross domestic product (GDP) of agriculture expanded globally on an average of 2.0 per cent a year, which is more than the population growth of 1.6 per cent a year. This growth, driven by increasing productivity, pushed down the real price of grains in the world market by 1.8 per cent a year over the same period. Developing countries achieved much faster agricultural growth (2.6 per cent a year) than industrial countries (0.9 per cent a year) in 1980 – 2004. Developing countries accounted for 79 per cent of overall agricultural growth during this period. Their share of world agriculture in the GDP rose from 56 per cent in 1980 to 65 per cent in 2004. In contrast they accounted for only 21 per cent of non-agricultural GDP in 2004. The transforming economies of Asia (of which India is a part) accounted for 2/3rd of the developing world’s agricultural growth. The major contributor to growth in Asia and the developing world in general was productivity gains, rather than expansion of land devoted to agriculture. But the dilemma is that due to rising productivity, prices have been declining for cereals – especially for rice, which is the developing world’s major staple food – and for traditional developing-world export products such as cotton and coffee. Improvement has been due to the use of better technology, better policy and the application of widespread irrigation, improved variety of crops and the use of fertilizers, although crop improvements have extended well beyond the irrigated areas to embrace huge areas of rainfed agriculture. Another reason for expansion has been the growth in livestock. So is the case with horticulture and aquaculture. In India there has been a real revolution in the production and marketing of milk.
Acknowledgement
This write up is based on the field experience I gathered from an IWSB research project for which I visited the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, to work on Culture and Child-rearing Practices.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
THE PURA MODEL
Population growth and economic activities have expanded many cities into metropolises and conurbations (a conglomeration of urban settlements) that have often become difficult to manage because of their large size and consequent complexities. Peri-urban, as well as rural areas have therefore been removed very far away from city centres, with a distance-decay function affecting the provision of urban facilities in rural areas. The net result has been a vicious cycle of centripetal city force attracting rural migrants to take advantage of urban benefits, which include employment, connectivity, education, medical facilities, recreation and often floating population visiting cities for purchasing higher order goods and services. This growth within a city is the impact of agglomeration economies that result from the consolidation of basic infrastructure supporting economic activities and business that leads to a kind of snowballing effect that turns into an urban malady of pollution from congestion and shortage of utilities as the population grows, which heighten the dichotomy between the urban and the rural and encourage further migration. While the rural areas of India suffer from inadequate infrastructure, they are blessed with pollution-free environment, contrary to urban areas that enjoy the benefits of efficient infrastructure, but suffer from congestion and the resulting environmental pollution. In 2001 India had a population of 1,028,610,328 with an urban share of about 28% with a density of around 3664/km2 in contrast to a rural share of 72% population and a density of 238/km2
To overcome this sharp differentiation between the rural and the urban and to make the country more productive, our former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam had suggested the PURA programme to Provide Urban Amenities in Rural Areas, so that people are less amenable to migration and are also economically more productive, for a sustained growth of the country. His idea was to eliminate migration, so that rural areas remain rich in human resource and do not fall a victim to the maladies of migration and urban congestion. PURA emphasized on “a multiple-connectivity approach” of physical, electronic, knowledge and economic connectivity. It does away with the misnomer that the less educated rural inhabitants should always depend on low remunerative economic activities like handicrafts and household industries. A fact that has always been overlooked while drawing programmes for rural areas is that villages cannot import highly-priced consumables that are common in urban areas, unless their purchasing power improves, and which is best developed by an increase in exports. Economic law says that the higher the income from export, the more will be the capacity to import and the greater will be the purchasing power.
PURA differs from the traditional rural development in several ways:
It aims at a comprehensive development of rural areas, and not mere poverty alleviation
It plans for an investment at urban levels
It aims to halt migration and generate employment in rural areas, often to reverse rural-urban migration
It treats quality infrastructure as a prerequisite and not as a consequence of development
It seeks modern industrial development instead of rural handicrafts and suggests commercialization of services
It aims at private investments and to promote partnerships and not to depend on subsidies
In other words, the focus is to eliminate the need to migrate. However, President Kalam also aspired for a reverse process, which in technical terms is called the process of ‘suburbanization’. All developed countries have gone through this phenomenon. It comes with the development of efficient public transportation and the installation of basic utilities that include telecommunications, water and sanitation, medical assistance, education and electricity, as multiple-connectivity is the essence of development.
Keeping in mind this rural-urban dichotomy, the PURA Model is designed to improve the quality of life in rural areas (built on the concept of elimination of poverty through an even distribution of infrastructure development) with 10-15 villages in approximately 60 km2 area with access to transport arteries within a range of 1 km. PURA focuses on multiple-connectivity, with physical, economic, electronic and knowledge connectivity. It reflects a proactive attitude towards a competitive business environment supported by comprehensive area development, so that henceforth rural development programmes should not be based solely on poverty alleviation and wage-earning, but formulated for a larger context of economic sustainability. PURA is designed:
To benefit from social services, without much commuting, including health and education
To be economically viable, with adequate export-oriented investments and productivity
To be culturally close to one’s roots
To travel the minimum with maximum benefits
To promote private-public-community partnerships.
The model actually focuses on comprehensive area development with backward and forward economic, social and physical linkages, supported by electronic and knowledge connectivity. As our ex-President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had written “India can launch itself into a developed status only when the economic machinery starts “real movement through the infrastructure”.
Dr. Madhusree Mazumdar
Professor, IWSB, Greater Noida
To overcome this sharp differentiation between the rural and the urban and to make the country more productive, our former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam had suggested the PURA programme to Provide Urban Amenities in Rural Areas, so that people are less amenable to migration and are also economically more productive, for a sustained growth of the country. His idea was to eliminate migration, so that rural areas remain rich in human resource and do not fall a victim to the maladies of migration and urban congestion. PURA emphasized on “a multiple-connectivity approach” of physical, electronic, knowledge and economic connectivity. It does away with the misnomer that the less educated rural inhabitants should always depend on low remunerative economic activities like handicrafts and household industries. A fact that has always been overlooked while drawing programmes for rural areas is that villages cannot import highly-priced consumables that are common in urban areas, unless their purchasing power improves, and which is best developed by an increase in exports. Economic law says that the higher the income from export, the more will be the capacity to import and the greater will be the purchasing power.
PURA differs from the traditional rural development in several ways:
It aims at a comprehensive development of rural areas, and not mere poverty alleviation
It plans for an investment at urban levels
It aims to halt migration and generate employment in rural areas, often to reverse rural-urban migration
It treats quality infrastructure as a prerequisite and not as a consequence of development
It seeks modern industrial development instead of rural handicrafts and suggests commercialization of services
It aims at private investments and to promote partnerships and not to depend on subsidies
In other words, the focus is to eliminate the need to migrate. However, President Kalam also aspired for a reverse process, which in technical terms is called the process of ‘suburbanization’. All developed countries have gone through this phenomenon. It comes with the development of efficient public transportation and the installation of basic utilities that include telecommunications, water and sanitation, medical assistance, education and electricity, as multiple-connectivity is the essence of development.
Keeping in mind this rural-urban dichotomy, the PURA Model is designed to improve the quality of life in rural areas (built on the concept of elimination of poverty through an even distribution of infrastructure development) with 10-15 villages in approximately 60 km2 area with access to transport arteries within a range of 1 km. PURA focuses on multiple-connectivity, with physical, economic, electronic and knowledge connectivity. It reflects a proactive attitude towards a competitive business environment supported by comprehensive area development, so that henceforth rural development programmes should not be based solely on poverty alleviation and wage-earning, but formulated for a larger context of economic sustainability. PURA is designed:
To benefit from social services, without much commuting, including health and education
To be economically viable, with adequate export-oriented investments and productivity
To be culturally close to one’s roots
To travel the minimum with maximum benefits
To promote private-public-community partnerships.
The model actually focuses on comprehensive area development with backward and forward economic, social and physical linkages, supported by electronic and knowledge connectivity. As our ex-President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had written “India can launch itself into a developed status only when the economic machinery starts “real movement through the infrastructure”.
Dr. Madhusree Mazumdar
Professor, IWSB, Greater Noida
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