Now what?
Government must facilitate, not control
The experiences of Sukhomajri and Bunga have a lesson: given the right conditions, external and internal, villages can be self-sustaining. But their inherent problems are also important lessons. Fixing these is the key to the success of the country's 2,000-odd rural development programmes. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, being implemented in around 300,000 villages in 330 districts with an annual budget of over Rs 13,000 crore, will be a test case.
The act focuses on the creation and management of resources like water and forests. It also mandates planning at the village level to achieve this. Sukhomajri and Bunga provide a template that can be adopted with corrections. Both villages show that the cyclical mode of development pioneered by P R Mishra is feasible when villages get rights over resources, their management and the profits that arise out of them. And it is only through common management at the level of the village that the crucial and fine balance between all resources of the village
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