Students as agents of rural change

Teams of college students spending a few weeks in rural areas surveying local needs is a novel idea.

The proposal of the Government of India to Provide Urban facilities in Rural Areas (PURA) in the country is laudable. Former President A P J Abdul Kalam was the proponent of this unique scheme and he was passionate to see the scheme through.

It was his earnest desire to reduce the dichotomy  of the rural-urban divide which in recent decades has been on the increase as never before. The PURA will only be possible if a  thorough scheme of action and the need based plans at the village level are drawn before launching the very scheme.

Involving the students of the   colleges and universities for preparing micro-level plans encompassing the rural habitations and the semi-urban wards covering the entire country will be an effective way to achieve the desired results of this governmental initiative. To send teams of students to spend few  weeks in the rural areas conducting surveys, prioritising the local needs and preparing the micro-plans in consultation with the village-committees  will be a novel idea.

The concept of involving students in rural reconstruction will not only help the rural folk to interact with the educated urban youth, but it also will go a long way in sensitising the young students to the rural problems which are quite dissimilar to the urban situations with which they might be familiar. This is very essential  to address the disparity between the towns and the villages.

During the first Five Year Plan period, the government of India had a unique programme, Bharath Sevak Samaj (BSS) introduced with a view to involve students in the process of rural development. This programme  envisaged laying of roads by students in rural areas where they stayed and worked for two to three weeks in camps while doing ‘shramadan.’ The certificate of participation of BSS had great weightage for admission into higher classes.

The rural problems, particularly concerning agriculture, health, sanitation, transport, communication, education  and a host of other aspects continue to persist are geography specific. The widespread poverty and illiteracy can be seen as a legacy of the past ages and a precious little is being done by the administrators past and present.

A great impediment for cultivation in the vast dry belts, for example, has been the conservation of rain water. In the absence of any perennial rivers,  tanks have been the only source of irrigation in several areas and they have played an important role in the development of agriculture over the centuries. The successive dynasties in the south like the Chola, the Kakathiya and the Vijayanagar rulers have bestowed utmost importance for the construction and upkeep of tanks for irrigation purposes. 

Prioritising tanks

In most parts in south India,  there is hardly any village that does not have a tank. There are instances in history when the tank was built first and then the village came up in the vicinity. As tank construction was considered more a protective work to insulate from the dangers of drought and the resultant famines, it was given priority by the then rulers. These tanks were maintained through land grants known familiarly as Dasabandam Inams. With the advent of the British rule, the tanks suffered utter neglect.

For them, the inams and such other incentives for the proper maintenance of the tanks appeared as uneconomical. Therefore, all such inams were dispensed with and thus the tank irrigation in the drought prone districts fell on bad days. Several of them faced the problem of silting that resulted in the gross reduction in the capacity to hold water even when they were full.

Encroachment of tank-bed lands lying within the waterspread, became a common feature as the government never hesitated to assign such lands for increasing the land revenue. With the introduction of commercial agriculture, land values have gone up and the tanks were eaten up by revenue hungry colonial administration. It is unfortunate that today,  there is no agency whatsoever to repair the tanks  which have gone into disuse over the years.

These days when the importance of water harvesting is so much emphasised, there is every need to restore and repair the existing tanks in the draught prone regions. As the tanks are generally fed by small streams through the connecting channels in the rainy season, there is also the need to keep these channels always in good repair with proper maintenance.

Besides irrigation,  other important economic and social issues like education, health, sanitation and infrastructural  needs of the people also could be taken up. The state governments in consultation with the universities can draw an innovative programme involving  the college and the university students who can be asked to go to the rural areas in teams  and interact with the locals  with a view to finalise the micro-level plans needed for that area.

This ambitious programme involving all the universities and colleges in the state also will provide due academic credit to the participating groups  so as to enable them  to take up with real zeal and enthusiasm. 

(The writer is retired professor, Department of History, University of Hyderabad)