Karnataka pushes for rural-to-urban shift amid slack progress

Eyeing a grant of Rs 1,000 crore from the Centre, Karnataka has offered to urbanize 90 more rural pockets across the state, close on the heels of the government upgrading nearly three dozen gram panchayats as urban local bodies.

The state government has asked the Centre for additional funds through the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission, under which eight rural clusters are being urbanized at present. Each cluster, like a gram panchayat, will have geographically contiguous villages with smaller populations.

“Typically, rural areas that are tending towards urbanity, such as villages near a district headquarter, are formed into a cluster,” Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) principal secretary L K Atheeq said. “We have now asked the Centre to take up 90 new clusters in the state, for which we’ve sought Rs 1,000 crore.”

This works out to Rs 10-12 crore investment per cluster. The government will go with any rural cluster the Centre wants to select. “There are guidelines followed by the Centre to select clusters. So, for the 90 new clusters that we’ve proposed, we haven’t identified them on our own,” an official said.

The Centre’s Rurban Mission, which was launched in 2016, has already selected eight rural clusters for urbanization in the scheme - Kangrali (Belagavi), Haragadde (Bengaluru Urban), Hulkoti (Gadag), Gurugunta (Raichur), Dhanapura, Toranagallu, Holalu and Moka (Ballari).

According to officials, the idea is to pump money into such clusters for infrastructure development - water supply, livelihood, agriculture and so on - and prep them to be upgraded into municipalities.

Last month, Karnataka decided to bring 33 rural areas under urban limits. This includes many gram panchayats being upgraded as town municipal councils or town panchayats as well as villages located on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

But, authorities have expressed concern over the progress achieved under the Rurban Mission so far. The eight clusters in the state have an outlay of Rs 575.46 crore this fiscal, against which expenditure is Rs 175.93 crore - just 30%.

“Progress is slow indeed,” former RDPR minister H K Patil, who got his native Hulkoti in Gadag selected under the Rurban Mission, said. “Maybe the slowness was because of the Covid-19 pandemic. But things have to move
fast.”

One reason for the slackness is administrative. “Administratively, it becomes a very small scheme. We need to give separate staff for it,” an official said. “Also, while the Centre provides funds, a lot of the money is dovetailed from existing central and state schemes.”