By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
When there is a dire need to convert our 6.5 lakh-odd rural settlements in India into smart villages, we are planning to build 100 new smart cities, which in the process may end up uprooting a big population and gobble up thousands of acres of agriculture land.
In contrast, with much smaller investment, we can make villages smart. This move may go a long way to check the erosion of smartness of a handful of existing smart cities.
Tukrapara village, Chaygaon in Assam (Used for illustration purpose)
The irony is that when the people in the West, from where we borrow the ‘smart’ ideas, are shifting to suburbs or villages, we are toying with the concept of over-crowding our cities, not knowing that flyovers and underpasses are not going to solve all the problems. The relatively new smart cities like Chandigarh and Gandhinagar are losing their sheen in less than half a century.
Perhaps no time is better than now to undertake one such project. The tragedy is that the real importance of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, launched by the Manmohan Singh government, could not be appreciated though it has the potential to revolutionize rural India. These lakhs of kilometres of roads has the capability to make the one-way journey –– from rural to urban centres –– a two-way traffic.
True, it has come a bit too late, when thousands of villages have virtually been deserted. Yet, the network of motorable roads has made the villages much more accessible to administrative blocks, which are as good as townships, and district headquarters. In many blocks, private +2 schools are coming up side-by-side the government ones. Now, there is not just one Navodaya Vidyalaya in one part of the district, but even DAVs, DPSs and other institutions for day-scholars are growing in the rural hinterland. As many of the villages have been electrified, the rural life has certainly got transformed.
The rapid growth of mobile-phones has virtually removed the feeling of being remote. Unlike in the past when children had to cover a long distance on foot to reach their schools, now buses and auto-rickshaws are transporting them in much less time than in cities. Or they can pedal down in the pollution-free atmosphere without facing road jams, congestions and greater risk of accident. Though the NRHM has brought some change in rural health sector, yet much needs to be done. Today private and government doctors, even those living in urban areas, can easily work in the rural areas.
Still villages –– in spite of a lot of advantages –– still lack the glamour of urban centres. Many of them have become horribly deserted. Not only the working hands; even women-folk, old and retired ones are being attracted by the apparent charm of the urban life. Some of these new settlers realize their mistake, but by that time it is too late to return to the roots.
We have no plan to rehabilitate these depopulated villages. Some small efforts by the government may help make them much more liveable. We have Indira Awas Yojana for the poor. But there is hardly any other housing scheme for above poverty line and relatively well off rural-folk, who now prefer to live in rented urban holes rather than in much larger houses on their own land at their native places.
Why not come up with the idea of announcing something like Rs five lakh as interest-free housing loans for at least five years on their own land in villages. The purpose certainly should not be to convert villages into concrete jungles, but help people replace their crumbling thatched and largely abandoned houses –– nothing more than big huts –– with environmentally-conducive homes. As most people do not want to invest money in homes in their villages why not attract some of them to move back, or at least check the rampant urbanization. This would certainly make the life of cities better too.