Programmes to deal rural youth migration

NI Wire

New Delhi

Thu, 17 Apr 2008: 

In India where economy is basically agrarian and over 70 percent of people living in rural areas depending more on agriculture for livelihood, it is the utmost need of the government to provide support for nation building. However, the decreasing land-man ratio and agricultural productivity has set areat challenge for rural people for their source of livelihood and hence has resulted into the rural youth migration to urban areas.

With an aim for overall socio-economic transformation, the Ministry of Rural Development has launched a number of centrally sponsored schemes for poverty alleviation, employment generation, developing rural infrastructure, and providing basic amenities to the rural population.

As one of the measures to develop the economy and to provide support for nation building, the need is also to modernise and mechanise agriculture and allied activities. Keeping the notion of developed nation by 2020 in mind the government has to be more creative in its agricultural oriented policies as compared to the consumption of food, the cultivation of land would further decrease sharply.

The problem of youth migration to urban areas is now a major problem in the absence of adequate employment opportunities, which proves as major impediment for the growth of rural areas. Therefore, any programme or policy should have a major focus on providing employment opportunities, urban amenities, and improving lifestyle of rural people.

The programmes that the government has launched so far are the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY), National Rural Employment Gurantee Scheme (NREGS), Indira Awass Yojana (IAY), Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme (ARWSP), Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), Integrated Wastelands Mangement Programme (IWMP), Integrated Wastelands Management Programme (IWMP), which includes Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP) and Desert Development Programme (DDP) and Integrated Wasteland Development Programme.

One of the most important scheme-the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was launched on Feb 02, 2006 covering 200 districts further extended to 330 districts and has now been extended to all the rural districts of the country from April 2008.

The above-mentioned development schemes aim to provide employment opening keeping in prospect the overall development of rural areas and provide basic amenities so that rural people including youth could not be forced to migrate to urban areas for their livelihood.