Hyderabad: Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of migrant workers fled to their hometowns leaving behind the cities where they had come in search of livelihood. Seeing them walk hundreds of miles from the cities to their hometowns for want of food and water, brought tears to many eyes.
Thus, the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the need to provide livelihoods to homeless poor daily-wage labourers back in their hometowns itself rather than push them towards the cities.
Only when employment opportunities are set up in smaller towns, will Gandhiji's dream of gram-swaraj become a reality. Technology can be a great source of help for over six million people living in villages, be self-reliant and self-sustainable - financially and independently.
A public-private partnership of the government with the aid of the People Knowledge Platforms (Jana Vignana Vedika) should be put in place to bring such establishments into force in the rural areas. Migration from villages to cities has been booming in India during the past 10 years.
According to different estimates, the number of migrations has been ranging from 7.2 crore to 11 crore over the past few years. These estimates put India right next to China in having the largest number of migrant workers in the nation.
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Gandhian Gram Swaraj
As per the vision of Gandhiji’s Gram Swaraj, the new-growth model for the villages is to make the villages economically self-sufficient. After his return from South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi led rural movements such as Champaran (1917), Sevagram (1920) and Wardha (1938). The main aim was to create a decentralized political system at the village level and create an environment for the villagers to achieve economic self-sufficiency and social equality while building infrastructure.
Mahatma urged that the roots of true democracy can expand only in the fertile lands called self-sufficient and economically and socially equal villages. "Gram Swaraj can be said to have been established only when each village functions as an individual republic entity. It is an independent nation by itself, which works hand in hand with the neighbouring villages while fulfilling its own needs and wants."
Gandhiji emphasized that each village should survive as the very property of self-reliance and an epitome of the mutual congregation. Village Swarajya is a village where people work locally and earn higher incomes with greater productivity.
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Gandhiji recognized that technology is the key to rural development. Most people do not know that he had announced in the then British and Indian newspapers during those times, that he will give a reward of Rs1 lakh (equivalent to about Rs 2.5 crore in current value), to whoever could develop a traditional Charkha and update it with technical nuances.
Former President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam had proposed a developmental scheme through which villages could be provided with modern-day facilities. He said that if 50 to 100 villages were created as a complex, joint accommodation and markets could be developed. The complex was referred to as the ‘Pura Complex’. Kalam proposed to link through technology, the various requirements of such complexes such as roads, buildings, accommodation, storage facilities, science and economics, thereby bringing all such requirements onto a single platform, making it easy for the villagers to interact with each other and develop themselves.
With these connections, villages and towns can easily walk the developmental path. Kalam presented the model in front of the 90th congress of the Indian National Science Congress held in Chandigarh in January 2004. He asserted that India will be able to reach economically superior peaks as the foundation of self-sufficient villages is placed in a strong way.
A key part of the Pura scheme is the construction of a ring road with a 30 km perimeter linking some villages and connecting all villages in the complex through a single bus route. This will reduce the pressure on the towns and develop residential facilities within the Pura village complexes. This will result in increasing the migrations in between the villages and reduce the migration from villages to towns and cities.
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Kalam proposed that to achieve such an ambitious project, each unit needs to budgeted expenditure of Rs 130 crore, catering to about 7000 Pura Complexes, under the Public-Private Partnership model. Kalam had long sought to provide a high quality of life to towns in Pura village complexes.
The Humanist Model
Nanaji Deshmukh embraces the complete humanitarian model of self-sufficient villages. Deshmukh has implemented this model in 500 villages of the country, especially in the Chitrakoot region of the state of Madhya Pradesh. Creating unemployment-free villages, eradicating poverty, resolving legal disputes locally, widow remarriage - are the integral parts of this model.
Deshmukh's model proposes to create villages into complexes and create social, economic and educational facilities. The use of sophisticated technology has been given huge importance in this model. Today, artificial intelligence and the internet are widely used for sustainable agriculture development around the world. These technologies enable our farmers to keep up to date on the prices of crops in the global market, providing our farmers with information on modern farming practices that are largely adopted abroad. This will help farmers get a better yield and thereby a higher income.
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The Deshmukh model is in line with the program of 10,000 agrarian producers' associations that have been newly established to empower small and medium farmers. The Centre should consider the proposal of issuing the ‘Atma-Nirbhar’ Bonds to raise funds to support the rural development dreams of Gandhi, Kalam and Deshmukh.
A portion of the priority loans offered by commercial banks must be spent on the purchase of these bonds. We need to prepare our youth from the student stage to undertake development programs in villages. The curriculum of engineering, medical and business schools should be tailored accordingly. The youthful concentration of renewable energy should be deployed to the village community.
Travelling on the path shown by the great leaders
One out of every four workers in India is an immigrant who travels to the city from his village/ town, in search of a livelihood. The coronavirus crisis has revealed to the world how migrant workers' lives are getting worse with each passing day. It is estimated that millions of migrant labourers have returned home.
Attempts made by the central and state governments to come to their rescue didn’t seem to be helping them at all. It was similar to giving water to the sea. Steps should be taken immediately, to see that people do not migrate to towns and cities to earn their daily bread.
This can be achieved only when the villages turn out to be self-sufficient, economically and socially too. The present crisis must be adapted as an opportunity and new development models are to be taken up on an urgent basis. Fortunately, such alternative models have already been presented to us by many of our great national leaders. The rural development models proposed by the patriotic leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, former President Abdul Kalam, and the socialist, Nanaji Deshmukh, are readily adaptable.
