Rural Development Approaches and Components

In order to understand rural development, we need to first comprehend the problems associated with rural areas. Most common problems of rural area are:

• Lack of infrastructure, facilities and institutional support
• Lack of literacy and hence lack of knowledge and skills required to develop livelihood options from existing resources
• Systemic discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or caste
• Economic policies that discriminate against or exclude the rural poor from the development process and accentuate the effects of other poverty-creating processes
• Large and rapidly growing families with high dependency ratios
• Unemployment
• Low agriculture productivity and market access
• Low income and poor economic status leading to rural poverty.

 

These problems need solutions both on grassroots level as well as policy level. The approach to rural development is to understand that if the local people are final beneficiaries of development assistance, the aim of rural development should be improvement of sustainable livelihoods (especially impoverished groups), with careful attention paid to local characteristics. For development to be sustainable, it must be inclusive, both in terms of the people who serve as active designers and participants and also the ultimate beneficiaries. It must put in place practices and infrastructures that are renewable and adaptable. A focus on good governance is key to enabling marginalized rural people to negotiate with the state and the private sector in order to set a new political and economic agenda. Decentralized policy-making is essential in that respect, as is the willingness to scale-up successful initiatives carried out at the local level. Thus community participation in a rural development programme is essential to ensure sustainability.

Study of rural area in terms of natural resources (land, forest, water, human and livestock), common problems and area specific problems is necessary to develop an effective development programme. A rural development programme may include:

• Baseline Survey and Participatory Rural Appraisal of rural community for identification of problems as well as their solutions
• Natural Resource Development and Management (land, forest, water, human and livestock)
• Agriculture Interventions
• Health Interventions
• Education Interventions
• Livelihood Enhancement Interventions through Income Generation Activities (IGAs)
• Sensitization and Awareness building campaign through IEC/IPC activities to ensure participation and development of sense of ownership
• Formation and mobilization of community based organizations (CBO) for consolidation of benefits of various interventions
• Capacity building of community through training programmes and exposure tours to ensure learning, adoption and long term sustainability
• Creation of market linkages for various Income Generation Activities (IGAs) carried out by CBOs and hence creation of value chain
• Access to credit through institutional support

Rural people are the main users of natural resources and the key persons for the conservation and sustainable use of the natural environment. A comprehensive approach encompassing assistance in agriculture, industry, education, health, and infrastructure sectors is necessary for the reconstruction of rural areas. Sustainable Rural development is in fact a multi-sectoral activity that generates synergy effects. This approach includes “Integrated Rural Development,” which effectively combines multiple sectors and techniques from health care service, agricultural expansion, education, improvement of infrastructure to technical transfer, choosing specific regions and treating the local governments as counterparts. This approach has advantages when coping with multidisciplinary issues such as poverty, or tackling regional problems and in obtaining participation of the people concerned.

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