Big push for rural India in Modi 2.0

Linking every village with all-weather roads, building two crore more houses for poor villagers and providing financial assistance to small and marginal farmers by 2022 are among the priorities of Narendra Modi’s government in the rural sector in its second term.

With the Modi government’s mantra of “New India by 2022” in its second term, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has already outlined the priorities for the next 1,000 days. The MoRD is set to discuss the programme of implementation with representatives of state governments during a meeting in New Delhi on June 6 and 7.

The just-concluded Lok Sabha elections saw Modi leading the ruling BJP to a second term in power. He and other members of his new Council of Ministers will take oath on Thursday.

The Modi government will commence the second term with a 1,000-day-agenda “to transform India into a New India” before August 15, 2022, when the nation celebrates its 75th anniversary of Independence. The targets set by the MoRD for rural development are among the 75 “milestones”, which the government identified for all sectors while drawing a roadmap of governance for the next three years.

The government raised the allocation for rural development schemes from Rs 1,12,403.92 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 1,17,647.19 crore in the interim Union Budget of 2019-20.

The MoRD claims the government could build village roads at the rate of 130-135 km a day under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana between 2016 and 2019, substantially speeding up the implementation of the scheme from 69 km a day during 2011-14 and 100 km a day during 2014-16. The PMGSY so far focused on providing connectivity to all villages having a population of 500 or more in the plains as well as to all villages having a population of 250 or more in hilly areas.

The Centre has now asked the state governments to complete a “comprehensive need analysis” by August 15 and submit an action plan by October 2 for building all-weather roads to every village across the country by June 30, 2022.

The government has set a target of building two crore houses for the rural poor over the next three years — 70 lakh by June 2020, another 70 lakh by June 2021 and 60 lakh by June 2022, according to a communiqué MoRD secretary Amarjeet Sinha sent to officials in the state administrations on Monday.