Abstract
Although India has experienced its economic growth, the fruits of economic growth have not been distributed equally among the people, which not only widen the gaps between have and have nots but also contributed to poor Human Development resulted in placing of India in low Human Development Index. The Government of India has undertaken many development strategies to attain the objectives of development, especially in the rural sector, yet the fact is that majority of poor of the globe live in India. Lack of livelihoods opportunities and employment opportunities force every year a considerable number of rural people to migrate to urban areas. However, the urban areas employ these people but on the cost of environmental degradation and social turbulence. Therefore, the migration of rural people to urban is one of the major challenges for policymakers since independence. Further with the outbreak of Covid-19, it becomes a critical concern for rural economic development as a majority of rural migrants returned to native places.
One of the major concerns for developing countries like India is poverty. It will be not right to say that India lacks resource and workforce, but there is an absence of the right development model which can accommodate the considerable workforce to utilise the resource base of India. Accordingly, the current rural development models based on wage employment in the form of programmes like MGNREGA, self-employment and livelihood generation missions such as DAY-NRLM, are trying to fulfil the short-term goal of poverty alleviation. Except providing self-employment and wage employment majority of rural development programme fails in attaining the goal of poverty alleviation as majority of them adopted provision of subsidy to mitigate the problem of rural poverty. ‘While subsidies and “freebies” of all kinds-from food and shelter to even televisions sets can generate temporary relief and a sense of opulence, real national growth and people empowerment require efforts which are more deeply thought out and with far-reaching consequences’ (p. 203). Further lack of proper infrastructure and knowledge base, especially in rural areas exaggerated rural poverty. Therefore, there is a need for an alternative model which not only provide employment but focuses on entrepreneurship development through community participation in where the community can play a significant role than that of policymaker, implementor and administrator.
The book Target 3 Billion (PURA: Innovative Solutions Towards Sustainable Development) authored by ex-President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Srijan Pal Singh seeks to provide an alternative model for rural development which aims at development entrepreneurship through community participation to eradicate the rural poverty. However, the primary focus of their approach is rural development, but through developing rural areas, this model of development also focuses on mitigating the problem of urban areas, which arise due to massive migration from rural areas. The vision of the development model is known as ‘Provision of Urban Amenities to Rural Areas’ (PURA). Through this model, the authors seek to provide urban amenities and livelihoods opportunities to rural people through the development of virtual cities. This primary objective is to obtain sustainable growth, ensuring a better life for millions of rural poor who live in deprivation.
PURA according to Dr Kalam is not a vision of short term, and he developed the vision from his long experiences being as scientist, management, interaction with different people being as President of India and as academicians of different academic institutions. The whole idea of empowering three billion emerged while he was working at Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky, United States and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad as visiting professor. This idea is the outcome of class discussion, which came up with many vibrant issues and solution. The Central argument of the book is that country like India is poor because the majority of people who lives in rural areas do not have access to basic livelihoods, employment, education, health and knowledge connectivity, Lack of management and poor development model many of the rich traditional knowledge systems vanished from the society and majority of people have to move to urban areas in search of employment. So, if the rural people are given the opportunity of employment and provide the basic facilities the sustainable development can be meet and PURA is alternative to such development strategies.
Rural India is the hub of traditional knowledge system. However, the irony is that due to the lack of a support system, many traditional knowledge systems vanished from society. This is the reason we have lost many of the biodiversity we had in crops in the last few years. In many parts of the book, the authors highlighted the relevance of biodiversity and traditional knowledge system. They argued that preserving traditional knowledge is not only crucial for preserving biodiversity, but it can also generate employment for local youth. Therefore, the primary concern of the book is not only development but also attaining eco-friendly sustainable development.
The question of development is essential because ‘development is the greatest answer to any form of societal unrest’ (p. xx). Post-World War experiences emphasis on peace, development, freedom. However, soon it was realised that although economic development is needed but not in the cost of environmental degradation. The concept of sustainability is the outcome of such discourse. Understanding sustainability has great importance. It not only talks about well-being but also related to the environment, resources and human being as it talks about the capacity of a society to sustain itself. In ‘Target 3 Billion (PURA: Innovative Solutions Towards Sustainable Development)’, the authors claimed that development could not be segregated from sustainability. Accordingly, the PURA model that they proposed aims at obtaining sustainable development through eradicating rural poverty. Although a significant focus of this model is rural development but indirectly, the authors considered that majority of the urban problem can be mitigated through rural development as it will lead to slow down the rural-urban migration. They considered that migration to urban areas from rural areas is one of the significant factors which ‘contributes to urban poverty and leads to stress and societal turbulence’ (p. vii). Many components of sustainability have been identified by the authors, including economic, technological, social, environmental.
Moreover, to attain sustainability, one needs also to give importance on value and learning and adaptability, which this book considered one of the significant components of sustainability. It is because the value components of sustainability can ‘lead to the evolution of enlightened citizens, who are powered by knowledge and skills and guided by moral values’ (p. 30). On the other hand, learning and adaptability leads to self-reliant.
Although the majority of GDP of developed nations comes not from agriculture but without focusing on agriculture development in a country like India, one cannot think about rural development. Agriculture is the backbone of the rural economy that provides livelihoods and income to a considerable section of rural people. The authors considered that to uplift the life of a vast section of people ‘living below the poverty line and provided them with a better life; we have to ensure that the agriculture sector grows at least at 4 per cent per annum’ (p. 30). However, Indian agriculture suffers a lot and accordingly, its productivity is less. For example, as identified by the authors, each farmer of India can only support one non-agriculture people while this in a country like the United States can support 58 and in European Union, this number is 23 (p. 94). Moreover, India is also lagging in water efficiency. In India, we can now produce only 300 grams of crops by using one cubic metre of water while in the United States, one cubic metre of water can generate 1,300 grams of crops (p. 75). The productivity of agriculture can only be ensured with providing proper infrastructure and facilitating the farmers to be agro-businessmen. Subsidy-based development model cannot fulfil this. The farmers need to provide the right input at the right place and the right time. Similarly, creation of infrastructure would assist in forwarding linkages. Along with this, the subsidiary activities such as rural craftsmanship, fishing, dairy, silk production and agro-processing should also give importance.
Real development is a holistic approach. Accordingly, the PURA focuses on the holistic development of rural society through generating employment, creating infrastructure, capacity building, preserving traditional knowledge system, providing access to basic needs such as health, education and distributing economic benefit equally. To achieve this holistic development PURA focuses on four types of connectivities such as physical, electronic, knowledge and economic connectivity. The entire four connectivities are interdependent and complementary to each other. Each has its importance and relevance.
PURA is an alternative development model, and the success of this model is depending on the participation of the community in the entire process of development of this model from decision making to implementation. Based on different terrain, PURA model different PURA model should be promoted. So, in the case of India, one may have different types of PURA, such as Plain, Coastal, Hill, Island, Delta PURA. The implementor of the PURA must act as social engineers who have a sound understanding of issues of rural areas and social problem. Therefore, several stakeholders such as citizens, students, academic institutions, private sectors including large and small-scale industries, public sector unit, hospital, non-government organisation, non-resident nationals, media and government machinery play a vital role in realising a PURA model.
‘Aim of a sustainable development system is not confined merely to generating higher incomes and better economic growth. The evolution of such a development is complete only when the monetary benefits can translate directly into human development; be reflected in literacy and health care, and result in the reduction of poverty and eliminating other conflicts in a society.’ (p. 96). To realise the value-based citizenship, the authors provided three-dimensional doctrine such as ‘(i) Education with a value system; (ii) religion transforming into spirituality; (iii) economic development for societal transformation’ (p. 119).
The beauty of the book lies in its structure from developing the problem of study to the theoretical background of sustainability to the role of the different sector in development to the realisation of PURA. In doing so, the authors have cited numerous examples from grassroots not only from India but also across the globe. Another strength of the book is the graphical representation of the different concept of PURA. Although the book aims at providing an alternative model for rural reconstruction through the creation of PURA, it also aims the issue of urban poverty by slow downing the rural migration to the urban area. Further, the concept of PURA is although aims to develop the virtual city in rural areas the genesis can be traced to Gandhian concept of village Swaraj which also aim at the self-reliant village through decentralisation, skill building and capacity building of rural youth. Similarly, the PURA aims at developing the skill of rural youth and employ entrepreneurship development.
In conclusion, it can be remarked that this book provides an alternative to development strategies basically for rural development. It considers that the development of rural areas not only affects the life of rural people but also directly affects the people who live in the urban area. The authors not only provide the model but also provided many successful implementation and stories from the grassroots. It discusses from theoretical bases of PURA mission to implementation and evaluation. Thus, PURA, which sounds like Hindi word poora means whole or complete or total, is a holistic development model in real sense.