NEEDED -A POLICY SHIFT
Our Planning has been urban centric in the recent past with more and more money put on improving urban infra structure to please multi national companies and IT companies.Bijille Sadak Pani has become an empty rhetoric to be used while during elections. Our farmers continue to commit suicides inVidharba and Andha Pradesh while air conditioned buses are operated by bankrupt state transports in urban metroes. JNNRUM is a huge drain on our national resources which could be used to build up rural infra structure which could facilitate our majority of Indians- provide our poor farmers a link to the markets, improve their well being so that urban migration stops. A scheme like Provision of Urban facilities in Rural areas conceived by our former President Dr.Kalam should have been adopted by the planning commission with all its resources That could have prevented large scale migration of rural poor to urban india in search of non existent opportunities.Daily we see train loads of people arrving at state capitals in search of livelihood and they add up to the slums of our cities. Rahul lamented that because successive non CongressUP Government neglected development, UP bhaiyas are forces to beg in the streets of Mumbai. He could have advised his urban savvy PM to concentrate on providing basic amenties to our villages rather than spending on urban development. Mani Shankar Aiyer time and again has been stressing the need to decentralise planning to village level as envisaged under Panchayati Raj but the likes of babus in CAG lament direct transfer of plan funds to local bodies and cry foul.
We need people with humane heart who understand the basic issues concerning our population. We instead have placed our faith on urban savvy,,elitist, bureaucracy supported by economists, arm chair at that with western notions about development.We need to have a serious rethinking now before the Maoist meance spreads and snow balls in to a major challenge to our development agenda.
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