By IANS
Bhopal : Calling upon the central government to enforce a legislation for tribal rights, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has also urged it to provide greater resources for agriculture and infrastructure.
Addressing the 54th meeting of the National Development Council held under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at New Delhi Wednesday, Chouhan also said that special assistance should be given for development of the Bundelkhand region and adequate funds should be provided for maintaining national highways, said an official release.
The chief minister said that the rural market constitutes merely 40 percent of the domestic demand though it represents 65 percent of the population. For continuously expanding this market, higher growth rate in agriculture is a must.
Agriculture development, Chouhan said, is also required for ensuring adequate supply of essentials like food grains at reasonable rates.
To increase agricultural productivity the chief minister stressed the need for rapid expansion of irrigation facilities and said that the central and the states should equally share the investment on such endeavours.
Referring to infrastructure, Chouhan said that the Backward Region Grant Fund provides meagre resources – woefully inadequate to address inter-state infrastructural imbalances – and the bulk of the private investments are going to the developed regions of the country widening the disparity between states and regions, which must be removed.
The chief minister also demanded more funds for the maintenance of national highways, saying: “A piquant situation exists in Madhya Pradesh – where rural roads are high quality and national highways dilapidated – adversely affecting the investment climate for the state”.
Chouhan also said that the railway’s policy of taking up new projects on cost sharing basis with states needs reconsideration. “Such an approach is not fair for the backward states.”
Regarding increase in power generation capacity, the chief minister said that substantial investment in system upgradation is required to reduce losses and to bring down tariff.
The central government support for this should be significantly stepped up for system upgradation.