WHY RURAL INDIA FAILS TO PROSPER? (Part II)

 In continuation of our earlier blog on the same topic, we are trying to understand the various factors other than the lack of open meetings causing rural India to fail to prosper as expected? Though the lack of open meetings in villages is a major cause for non-development there are various other inter-link causes for hampering the growth in rural India. In this blog, we may not be able to cover each factor in detail, but we can list down the significant factors as root causes and we can provide details of each factor in later blogs.

Agriculture or Farmers are the most popular words in a democracy like India because more than half of the population (~65%) belongs to Rural India. For rural India, Indian Government has all the schemes to support farmers, pensions for poor old age/widow/handicapped under social welfare schemes, free education in Government school (under Right to Education), Food security system under Public Distribution System (PDS) to provide food and non-food items to India’s poor, 100 days of wage employment under MNREGA schemes (Right to Work), houses for homeless people, financial support in toilet construction, Handpump repair etc. Then why does Rural India still fail to suffer?  

Let’s go step by step starting from children to old age by each age category in life. Each village has primary school & secondary school with free education for children. The government provides support for books, school dress, meals, etc but why all most of the children from the middle class still prefer to go to private school. Is it a lack of proper infrastructure, an unhealthy environment, or non-quality teaching because of non-proficient teachers?

 

Let’s look at the age of youth who came out of college. As we discussed above, most middle-class family who can afford fees, enroll their children in private schools (or exceptional Government Navodaya / model schools). Students passed out from Government primary & secondary school (say, type-1 students) are always behind in the race of competitiveness to get good colleges for engineering, medicals, etc. Students from private schools in rural India are those who really go out for professional courses or competitive exams in the majority. These are the students who secure seats to some extent either in reputed professional colleges by clearing competitive exams (say, type-II students) or getting admission in private colleges on paid seats (say, type-III students). The majority of the students in rural India are of type-I & type-III, they later struggle to get good jobs. Type-III students still get low-skill jobs in the metros/big cities, but their struggle generally continues their whole lives because of the low salary package in their jobs. What about Type-I students? Will they be used by politicians, or they become forced non-skill farmers, will they get MNREGA jobs, etc?

Now we reach the age of the working class in rural India where mostly those youth who were not able to secure good jobs in big companies, administrative jobs, etc because of their poor education at a young age. Now, these youths are mostly misguided or used by political parties based on casteism, polarised ideology, etc. Exceptional are always there, but do they have the courage to help villages prosper by speaking the truth, participating in Government imitativeness without being biased, and standing up for their rights in villages? 

Now let’s look at the age of old age, widows, or handicapped who are in Rural India and need to be covered under the social welfare scheme. The government has made pension schemes online so that anyone with eligibility criteria can apply online itself? Then there is the problem if it is so simple. The problem lies in the complex system where you need to submit documents like Income certificates, handicapped certificates, family registration proof, etc but none of the documents, in general, can be made freely without paying a bribe to the officer or a hefty fee to Common Service Centre who deal with officer on people behalf.

We have covered the issues with open questions in rural India by looking at stages of life as children, students, working class, old age, etc. We, on behalf of FARF (Fundamental Action & Research Foundation), when we started our work in 2015 in rural India (mostly in Bhadohi, Uttar Pradesh), have reached the finding to a certain extent. We will provide the details of each finding in the series of this blog “WHY RURAL INDIA FAILS TO PROSPER” but significant factors of each above issues are as below:

·       Government’s primary & secondary schools are not efficient because of non-trained teachers without advanced technology usage. These teachers have degrees but either their degrees are question marks or there is no proper monitoring system in schools to force them to be sincere while teaching in class. Most teachers have very casual approaches in terms of attendance, professional teaching, etc.

·       Not good job opportunities for type-I & type-III students in rural India because of no proper effective implementation of skilled India in rural places, no proper industry, and no effective English communication program in Rural India so that they can easily get jobs in Metros/big cities or can do online services, rural BPO job, etc.

·       Most of the Government schemes in rural India like Social welfare schemes, PDS system, MNREGA, Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana, etc failed because there are rarely any skilled people left in the villages who can raise the questions in the right manner with the right authority and can-do proper follow up. People who migrated from villages to towns or cities either did not have time or were not interested in solving the problems in rural India. Though exceptional are everywhere, few NGOs, and individuals have recently started moving back to villages but is that percentage enough to solve Rural Indian problems? The answer is NO unless educated people & urban educated people do support the rural Indian problems. This is the era of Digital India where anyone can support by various means by residing in any part of the world. But, the big question is do they really want to? Everyone thinks why should I bother others?

India cannot change without rural development and Rural Development cannot happen without our contribution as a responsible citizen.