Rural Development for Poverty Alleviation- 2

For development of rural Intensive Development Centres, resources could be raised in many ways. One source is the government, which makes allocations for various territories under the national plans or area development programs. We can determine the adequacy or inadequacy of funds provided for executing the programs. Apart from this source, public and private firms in proximity to the IDCs could be directed or motivated to provide assistance. They could finance directly some programs or depute trained personnel in different filelds to administer the programs.

For such services the government could compute the cost and give tax exemptions. This should be considered as social responsibility of the business. The inflow of remittance from outside should be considered for determining total financial assistance required for the Centre. This requires an organization to prepare plans and detailed programs of implementation for each IDC. A proper mix of unemployed graduates and trained personnel could man these centres guided by experienced hands that will cover a cluster of ten (or a viable number) centres under their jurisdiction. IDCs of ten will form a Regional Development centre. Coordination will be effected at each of the administrative centres (RDCs and ZDCs) with the centres in charge of urban development and other government agencies a higher level.

Simultaneous action will be taken by the urban development department in each city or urban area to decongest territories witnessing over crowding and excessive development. This will be a regular process. Any decongestion move will be based on study of flow of people from the rural or suburban areas to the city for such services. A study determining the extent to which the services could be dispersed will precede this. After study of the flow of people from each area to the city, schools, colleges, hospitals, government offices, etc. could be dispersed. This will also help to reduce the strain on the transportation system. Purchasing power will get diffused in the suburban areas and gradually percolate into the rural areas.