Rural poverty can be at times bewildering...

Let us try to understand poverty in rural West Bengal in a simple power point presentation...

There are thousands of villages and each has a problem of its own...

But let us try to generalise a little bit...

Let us assume that there is a typical village called Tarapur… what are the problems of Tarapur?

1. Bad infrastructure - bad roads and poor quality of electricity (if there is any…)

2. Poor quality of education - school buildings are in bad shape, teachers are of poor quality, parents don’t send kids to school...

3. Govt Health Service - not working …primary health centre is too far away, doctors don’t come, ICDS worker not regular...

4. Source of income limited - and in recent times the price of crops are falling...

5. Uneducated people lack information on various govt schemes for them...

6. Unplanned development - money is often wasted on things that are less important…proper planning is lacking...

7. Social prejudices - prevents breaking of norms and innovation; keeps women locked inside home;often conned by gurus...

In addition there are special problems of various regions - arsenic in water, flood, lack of rain...

So what is the answer? Let us look at some of the ‘medicines’ that are being tried out now...

Education - Govt of India has launched an ambitious programme called Sarva Shiksha Avijan - idea is to educate all children of India upto the age of 14… NGOs have developed many innovative teaching-learning materials and techniques of pedagogy appropriate for rural areas...

Health - there are lot of government schemes plus work done by NGOs and UNICEF…the emerging consensus is that villagers have to learn to make themselves less vulnerable and rely less on the ‘doctor’...

Sources of Income: Microfinance in providing cheaper credit to develop rural enterprises… Sustainable agriculture is reducing the cost of inputs and making the farmer less vulnerable to the market - increasing real income by reducing cost and improving the quality of the soil… watershed management is solving the problem of lack of irrigation...

Information gap, corruption: The gram samsad is being activated so that the panchayats become accountable to the people of the village; there is also an attempt to teach the rural people how to make plans for themselves...

Social oppression: Self Help Groups of women are emerging as a strong force - protesting against domestic violence and alcoholism… an activated gram samsad is likely to be able to address many problems rural poor are increasingly organising themselves into agricultural unions...

What is the biggest problem of all?

The education system of the urban schools are such that the educated middle class hardly understands the problem of rural areas and develops very little interest in it… …hence there are very few high IQ persons in India trying to address the problems faced by the rural poor… …however India cannot become strong and achieve the dreams of the nationalist struggle unless rural poverty is eliminated...

Do you agree?