Promoting physical infrastructure development in rural areas

Abstract

This study is mainly focused of importance of development of physical infrastructure in rural areas. Infrastructure plays a very vital role in development of any sector. In the same way, infrastructure is the back bone and plays a strategic role in producing multiplier effects in the economy with growth in agriculture. There have been various government schemes for promoting and developing infrastructure in rural areas but these schemes couldn’t completely fulfil the needs of people. Despite many large-scale rural development schemes, the absolute number of people in poverty has not declined substantially; abject poverty still remains ubiquitous in rural regions. In our country, although agriculture contribute only to the 17% of the GDP of the country, it provides employment 60% of the population and moreover 70% of the rural households depend on agriculture for their livelihood. It is estimated that 15% of crop produce and 20-30 percent of the agricultural, horticultural and forest produce gets wasted because of either inadequate rural road network or poor condition of roads. Rural infrastructure has direct and strong relationship with farmers‟ access to institutional finance and markets, and increasing crop yields, thereby promoting agricultural growth. Agricultural infrastructure has the potential transform the existing traditional agriculture or subsistence farming into a most modern, commercial and dynamic farming system in India. It has been concluded from many researches that adequate infrastructure raises farm productivity and lowers farming costs and its fast expansion accelerates agricultural as well as economic growth rate. In many cases, investments in infrastructural projects are used as an effective instrument to simultaneously subserve the twin objectives of promoting growth and equity. These are the various why a research on infrastructure development in rural areas is needed. The case study considered is Ananthapur village in Telangana state. This village acts as an economic node for its surrounding villages and any development in this village will directly reflect in the livelihood development of its surrounding villages also.