Dr N S Srinivasan, one of the country's foremost experts in transport, argues that random unscientific manner in which villages are selected for the Prime Minister's 'Adarsh Gram Yojana' will lead to wasteful expenditure. VIP participation is no barometer of success, he argues.
‘Adarsh gram yojana’ scheme of parliamentarians adopting a village with a view to improve the quality of life in these villages is a laudable proposal. Selection of villages at random and providing different types of services such as school, bank, hospital and market may yield results. But such an approach will not result in maximum benefit to the society from the investments made. Sometimes, it may also result in wasteful investment. It is misleading to judge the success of the scheme from the number of visits of VIPs and publicity.
ADOPTING A VILLAGE ROAD
Some time back the Government realising the importance of rural road development introduced the system of MLAs adopting villages for providing road links. This project helped to improve village links, but did not yield maximum benefits to the society, as the selection of the villages was not done scientifically.
Studies have shown that even the selection of type of road surface should be done scientifically. For example, in the case of villages with population less than 500 it is not economically justified to provide a light bituminous surfaced road, if the link length is more than 0.5 kilometre. In the case of villages with a population of 7001 – 9000, road length of 9.10 km with light bituminous surface would be economically justified.
SOCIO-ECONOMIC SERVICES
In the same way studies have shown that for each type of service such as school, bank, market and hospital/dispensary, there is a threshold population, i.e. the minimum number of people to sustain the function of the service. The higher the level of function, the higher will be the threshold population.
Analysis of human settlement structure and their hierarchy should be carried out not only to take rational decisions for providing various socio-economic services, but also to identify the nature of transport connectivity required.
SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
Each village cannot be treated in isolation with the neighbouring villages. For scientific solution, the area as a whole should be considered, and a suitable human settlement plan area-wide should be prepared with a hierarchy of all economic and social services so as to get maximum benefit to the society from the financial and other inputs made.
Ministry of Rural Development should coordinate the activities of various departments concerned, prepare outline area development plans for selected areas in different parts of the country, and then suggest to MPs to adopt any village included in these areas and implement the proposed schemes for the villages. Such a scientific and coordinated approach is urgently needed to avoid any wasteful expenditure and also to maximise the benefits to the society from the investments made in rural areas.
(Dr Srinivasan is an authority on traffic and man behind City Road Improvement Programme)
