Concept of Rural Development

 Content

  1. Introduction
  2. Defining Rural and Rural Development
  3. The United Nations defines Rural Development as
  4. Concept of Connotations of Rural Development 
  5. Aims and Objectives of Rural Development
  6. Basic Elements of Rural Development
  7. Why Rural Development?
  8. Science and Technology for Rural Development
  9. Rural Versus Urban Development 

Introduction

There cannot be agreement on what development means because it is a personal and value-laden term. In various situations, the phrase is employed in a variety of ways. Basically, it refers to "unfolding," "revealing," or "opening up" something that has been dormant. Therefore, it refers to "unfolding" or "opening up" the potential powers of humans. The word "development" typically connotes a change that is beneficial. It is impossible to come up with a definition of development that is universally accepted because what is desirable at one time, place, and in one culture may not be desirable at other times or places, or even in the same culture milieu. The ideal way to understand growth in the context of society is as a set of desirable societal goals that society aspires to. According to this definition, everyone values development, regardless of their culture, religion, or geographic region.

Sustainable development has gained popularity in recent years. Sustainable development, according to the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987: 43), is development that satisfies current demands without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to satiate their own needs. Sustainable development, or the development index, can be defined as a process where the collection of desirable societal goals does not diminish with time. Sustainable development requires that the natural capital stock, which includes the environment and natural resources, remain stable. An appropriate institutional framework and governance system are included in the list of "necessary requirements" for implementing sustainable development policies.

Recently, rural development has gained international attention, particularly in underdeveloped countries. For a nation like India, where the majority of the population—roughly 65% of the total population—lives in rural regions, it is of immense relevance. Through creative wage and self-employment programs, India's current rural development plan primarily aims on reducing poverty, improving livelihood options, providing basic amenities and infrastructure facilities. A brief discussion on science and technical interventions in the field of rural development has taken place, and attempts are being made to list and document some of the applicable technologies developed by various research organizations and institutes for use in rural areas. In addition, the projected aim and strategy of the XIth plan as well as the actual realizations made during the Xth plan have been highlighted to reflect the current trajectory of the Ministry of Rural Development's developmental efforts.

Defining Rural and Rural Development

Rural

Rural - Is an area, where the people are engaged in primary industry in the sense that they produce things directly for the first time in cooperation with nature as stated by Srivastava (1961). 

Rural areas

Rural areas are sparsely populated regions that are free from the sway of major cities and towns. These regions can be distinguished from more densely populated urban and suburban areas as well as from uninhabited locations like the outback or wilderness. People reside in rural homes, farms, and other remote communities. Although many rural areas are defined by an economy centered on forestry, mining, oil and gas exploration, or tourism, rural areas can have an agricultural character. Because there are fewer services available, rural communities have distinct lifestyles than urban ones. Governmental services like the police, courts, fire departments, and libraries could be far away, of limited use, or nonexistent. There might not be any utilities like water, sewage, street lighting, or waste collection. People utilize their own automobiles, walk, or ride animals when public transportation is occasionally nonexistent or highly limited. Based on factors like lower population density, less social difference, lower levels of spatial mobility, slower rates of social change, etc., a civilization or community might be categorized as rural. In rural areas, agriculture would likely be the primary industry.

Development

Development is the process of growing, evolving, or moving forward. This development has been gradual and has gone through several stages. There is always more differentiation. Additionally, it alludes to the general trend toward complex problems and higher efficiency.

Rural Development (RD)

The term "rural development" refers to the use of strategies and methods in a single program that mobilize around local communities as units of action. It offers a broad canopy under which all those involved in community groups' work, community advancement, and community relations can operate.

Rural development (RD) is a process that seeks to collectively enhance the wellbeing and self-realization of those who live outside of urbanized areas.

The United Nations defines Rural Development as:

Rural Development is a process of change, by which the efforts of the people themselves are united, those of government authorities to improve their economic, social and cultural conditions of communities in to the life of the nation and to enable them to contribute fully to national programme.

Rural development is the process of changing rural communities' traditional ways of life to more modern ones. It can also be described as a movement for advancement.

One of the most crucial elements for the expansion of the Indian economy is rural development. India is mostly an agricultural nation. In India, agriculture accounts for around one-fifth of the country's GDP. The government of India has planned numerous programs related to rural development in order to boost the growth of agriculture. India's top organization for developing policies, rules, and laws relating to the development of the rural sector is the Ministry of Rural Development. The main industries that contribute to the rural business and economy include agriculture, handicrafts, fishery, poultry, and dairy.

A subset of the more general phrase "development" is "rural development". Whatever its definition, development is a value that is shared by people, families, communities, and countries all around the world. The technology is also natural in the sense that all living forms on Earth have a natural desire to endure and advance. Due to its universal dominance as a goal and the fact that it occurs naturally, development merits a scientific investigation and analysis. Therefore, it is intriguing that academics from a variety of disciplines, ideologies, and religions have researched the topic of development.

Over the years, India's rural development has undergone a number of changes in terms of its emphasis, methodologies, tactics, and programs. As a result, it now has a new viewpoint and dimension. Only with the involvement of development's target audiences can rural development become richer and more significant. People's involvement is the key to rural development, just as execution is the yardstick for planning. From a procedural and philosophical standpoint, one of the most important prerequisites for the development process is the involvement of the populace. To make the plans participatory, it is crucial for development planners and administrators to enlist the help of various rural communities.

Concept of Connotations of Rural Development

The phrase "rural development" refers to the general transformation of rural areas with the goal of enhancing the standard of living of rural residents. This makes it a broad and multifaceted concept that includes the growth of rural communities' socioeconomic infrastructure, as well as their agricultural and related industries, cottage industries, and facilities for community services. But most importantly, it includes the development of these regions' human resources. Rural development is a phenomena that develops as a result of interactions between numerous institutional, sociocultural, technological, economic, and physical elements. It serves as a technique to enhance the economic and social well-being of the rural poor, a particular population. It is a multidisciplinary field that combines the fields of engineering, management, social, and behavioural sciences with those of agriculture. According to Robert Cambers (1983), rural development is a plan to help a certain group of people, poor rural women and men, get more of what they desire and need for themselves and their children. It entails assisting the most vulnerable individuals seeking a living in rural regions to demand and exercise more control over the advantages of rural development. Small-scale farmers, tenants, and landless people are all included in the category.

Therefore, when the phrase "rural development" is employed, any of the aforementioned connotations may be implied. We will define rural development as "A process leading to sustainable improvement in the quality of life of rural people, especially the poor" to avoid ineffectual foundering among the various definitions.

This process generally entails changes in prevailing attitudes, and in many instances, even in customs and beliefs, in addition to economic progress. To put it briefly, the process of rural development must encompass the full range of change by which a social system goes from a state of living seen as "unsatisfactory" towards a condition of life that is materially and spiritually better. Rural development can be compared to a train, where each coach pushes the one in front of it and is in turn pushed by the one behind, but the entire train needs a strong engine to move. Finding and, if necessary, creating a suitable engine to join the train is the key to success in rural development. If any rules for identifying appropriate rural development engines exist at all, they are not consistently accepted. It's a decision that is influenced by culture, time, and place.

Aims and Objectives of Rural Development

The dynamic process of rural development focuses mostly on rural areas. These include improvements in agriculture, the construction of social and economic infrastructure, fair pay, housing for the homeless, village planning, public health, education, and functional literacy, as well as communication.

Through better access to resources (natural, physical, human, technological, and social capital), services, and control over productive capital (in its financial or economic and political forms), rural development seeks to improve the livelihoods of rural people in an equitable and sustainable manner, both socially and environmentally.

The primary goals of rural development programs have been to reduce poverty and unemployment by building the necessary social and economic infrastructure, offering training to young people who are unemployed in rural areas, and hiring marginal farmers and laborers in order to deter temporary and long-term migration to urban areas.

In India, rural development is crucial and a national requirement for the reasons listed below.
  1. About three-fourth of India's population live in rural areas, thus rural development is needed to develop nation as whole.
  2. Nearly half of the country's national income is derived from agriculture, which is major occupation of rural India. 
  3. Around seventy per cent of Indian population gets employment through agriculture. 
  4. Bulks of raw materials for industries come from agriculture and rural sector. 
  5. Increase in industrial population can be justified only in rural population’s motivation and increasing the purchasing power to buy industrial goods. 
  6. Growing disparity between the urban elite and the rural poor can lead to political instability.

Basic Elements of Rural Development

Whatever the geographic location, culture and historical stage of development of a society, there are at least three basic elements which are considered to constitute the ‘true’ meaning of rural development. They are as follows (Tadaro 1977)
  1. Basic Necessities of Life. People have certain basic needs, without which it would be impossible (or very difficult) for them to survive. The basic necessities include food, clothes, shelter, basic literacy, primary health care and security of life and property. When any one or all of them are absent or in critically short supply, we may state that a condition of ‘absolute underdevelopment’ exists. Provision of the basic necessities of life to everybody is the primary responsibility of all economies, whether they are capitalist, sociality, or mixed. In this sense, we may claim that economic growth (increased per capita availability of basic necessities) is a necessary condition for improvement of the ‘quality of life’ of rural people, which is rural development. 
  2. Self-Respect. Every person and every nation seeks some sort of self-respect, dignity, or honour. Absence or denial of self-respect indicates lack of development. 
  3. Freedom. In this context, freedom refers to political or ideological freedom, economic freedom and freedom from social servitude, ignorance, other men, institutions, and dogmatic beliefs; it cannot claim to have achieved the goal of ‘development’. Servitude in any form reflects a state of underdevelopment.
Reduction or elimination of poverty, inequality, and unemployment are major development indicators in the new economic view of development. When he wrote in Seers (1969), he clearly addressed the fundamental queries of what growth means:  The questions to ask about a country’s development are therefore: What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? If all three of these have declined from high levels, then, beyond doubt, this has been a period of development of the country concerned. If one or two of these central problems have been growing worse, especially if all three have, it would be strange to call the result ‘development’ even if per capital income doubled.

Why Rural Development? 

Since time immemorial, India has been, still continues to be, and will remain in the foreseeable future, a land of village communities. As a matter of fact, the village was the basic unit of administration as far back as the Vedic Age; there is a reference to gramini (village leader) in the Rig Veda. The predominantly rural character of India’s national economy is reflected in the very high proportion of its population living in rural areas : it was 89 per cent in 1901, 83 per cent in 1951, 80 percent in 1971 and 74 percent In 1991. With more than 700 million of its people living in rural areas, and with the rural sector contributing about 29 percent of its gross domestic product, no strategy of socio-economic development for India that neglects rural people and rural areas can be successful. The rural character of the economy, and the need for regeneration of rural life, was stressed by Mahatma Gandhi (Anonymous 1979 : 2, 31). He wrote in Harijan (4 April 1936) 

India may be found in its 7,00,000 villages, not in its few cities. But as city dwellers, we've thought that India is contained within its cities, and that the villages were built to serve our needs. We haven't even stopped to consider whether those poor people have enough to eat, clothes to wear, and a roof over their heads to protect them from the sun and rain. He continued, "I would remark that if the village perishes, India would perish too," in Harijan (29 August 1936). There won't be any more India. He will stray from his own personal world mission. Village life cannot be revived until it is no longer exploited. Therefore, rural development is now and will always be an absolute and pressing necessity in India. It is essential to India's development.

Science and Technology for Rural Development

The country's promotion of science and technology is crucially dependent on the Ministry of Science and Technology. The department engages in a wide range of activities, from advancing cutting-edge basic research and technology development on the one hand to meeting the technical needs of the average person by creating the necessary tools and technologies on the other. In order to address local requirements without becoming more dependent on outside forces, appropriate rural technology primarily focuses on those technologies that are accessible to and easy enough for the average person to employ for their own advantage as well as the benefit of their community. The development of technology for rural areas is being undertaken by a sizable number of governments and public and private non-governmental organizations. The lifestyles of the rural populace have, however, rarely been impacted by modern technology. It seems that the issue extends beyond the creation, dissemination, and acceptance of technology to poor documentation. Many organizations, including the NRDC, CAPART, TRCS, NIRD, DST, DBT, CSIR, ICAR, KVKs, and other non-profits, have recently undertaken attempts to compile a list of technologies for rural areas for widespread information dissemination and public awareness.

Government schemes focusing on Science and Technology are: 

  1. S&T Application for Rural Development (STARD): Aims at facilitating development of promising 
  2. S&T based field groups and innovative technologies related to rural development. 
  3. S&T for Women: To promote research, development and adaptation of technology, improve the life, working conditions and opportunities for gainful employment of women especially in rural areas. 
  4. S&T Application for Weaker Sections (STAWS): Aimed at the development of economically weaker sections of the society in rural and urban areas. 
  5. Tribal sub-plan: Aims at improving living conditions of scheduled tribes based on sustainable science and technology activities 
  6. Special Component Plan (SCP): Aims at improving the lot of the poor sections of SC community through intervention of Science & Technology

Rural Versus Urban Development

Growing urbanization has been linked to economic development in Western nations, as seen by the rising share of the population living in cities. As a result, economists frequently use urbanization as a measure of development. Increasing concentrations of industrial firms with high capital requirements and infrastructure networks in urban centers are, of course, a direct result of expanding urbanization. Due to this focus, many emerging nations today have what is referred to as "dualism" in the literature on the economics of development, or the coexistence of two distinct economic subsystems. A very large but traditional and underdeveloped rural subsector, which makes up the majority of the population, is characterized by pervasive poverty, unemployment, and low productivity. On the other hand, a small but highly modern and developed urban subsector absorbs most of the material, financial, and educated and talented manpower resources. Both subsectors coexist in many developing nations, but they lack the connections that were formerly the primary driving forces behind the growth of the developed nations of today.

On the other extreme, a new ideology that is quickly taking hold in many developing nations holds that rural development must come first in order to achieve overall development and that it should be given top priority when allocating resources. The proponents of this school of thought typically either ignore or downplay the relationship between the rural and urban economic sectors of society in their zeal to advance the cause of rural development. What is required is a new approach to development that openly recognizes the complementarities and links between the rural and urban subsectors and allows for their full integration.

Reference

  1. Chambers R (1974), Meaning of Rural Development: Ideas and Experience from East Africa, Uppasala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies 
  2. Chauhan, N.B (2012), Rural Development (Compiled), http://www.aau.in 
  3. Chauhun, A (2014) , Need of Rural Development in India for Nation Building, Asian Mirror- International Journal of Research, Vol- I (I). 
  4. Dreze, J & Sen A(2002), India: Development and participation, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 
  5. Gangopadhyay, D ,Mukhopadhyay, A.K & Singh P (2008), “Rural Development: A strategy for poverty alleviation in India”, India, Science and Technology, CSIR, New Delhi.

Comments

Thank You

Find your topic