Village Industry Planning in India

Village Industry Planning in India and its subsequent development are predicated to a large extent upon the development of India's 700-million strong rural population. Village Industry Planning in India is drafted according to the needs of rural India since majority of the population lives in around 600,000 small villages of India.

This section of the Indian population is primarily engaged with occupations that are directly or indirectly linked with agriculture. A substantial portion of India's current agricultural labor force had to move to non-agriculture sectors for making a livelihood. The challenge for Village Industry Planning in India is to manage the transition of 80% of the rural population from a village-centric, agricultural-based economy to a industry-based village economy.

As a part of Village Industry Planning in India the retarding factors for the development of industries in Indian villages were identified, as follows:

A set of basic facts define the constraints within which the economic growth and development of India's rural population must be addressed. Fundamentally, they relate to resource constraints, the nature of infrastructure, and the future trajectory of the geographical distribution of the population.

Infrastructure investment is irregular and inadequate to support India's 600,000 villages and the average cost of providing infrastructure is inversely related to the scale of the operation.

Limitations in the financial and other resources available for providing infrastructure made it impossible to provide infrastructure at every village in India and even if they were, it would not have been commercially sustainable.

The basic geographical structure of population distribution will change once India shifts from being an agriculture-based country to an industry-based nation.

The Ministry of Rural Infrastructure, Government of India and the Planning Commission of India aim at Village Industry Planning in India and its development on the following lines -

Irrigation
Roads
Housing
Water Supply
Electrification
Telecommunication Connectivity

Further, they have launched the "Bharat Nirman" scheme for the development of rural infrastructure. Plans proposed for the development of industries in Indian villages are -

To connect 66,800 habitations with population over 1000 with all weather roads
To construct 146,000 km of new rural roads
To upgrade and modernize 194,000 km of existing rural roads
Total investment of ` 174,000 crore envisaged under "Bharat Nirman", investment on rural roads estimated to be at ` 48,000 crore.
To provide corpus of ` 8,000 crore to Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF).

Village Industry Planning in India to encourage further development of -

Poultry farming
Fishery
Sericulture
Aviary
Handicrafts
Textile designing
Pottery
Food products

Last updated on 4/28/2011