A Review of Rural Development Schemes in India
Deepak Kumar
Department of Economics, Chaudhary Ranbir Singh University, Jind, Haryana, India.
Surender Narwal
Department of Economics, MNS Government College Bhiwani, Haryana, India.
Sunil Phougat *
Department of Economics, Chaudhary Ranbir Singh University, Jind, Haryana, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Two-third population in India still lives in villages and primarily, agriculture is one of the major sources of their livelihood. About 50 percent of India’s population have engaged in the agriculture and allied activities. Therefore, agriculture growth is the pre-requisite for the rural development in India. So, we cannot uplift the status or rural population without focusing on agriculture. Therefore, it is necessary for the government to focus on the agriculture sector more because agriculture and rural development both are complementary to each other. In this paper, we reviewed the various rural development schemes implemented in India. The study used the secondary data that has been taken from the various government websites and annual reports of the government. The study points out that MANREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), PMAY-G (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Gramin) and DDU-GKY (Deen Dayal Upadhya Gramin Kaushlya Yojana) played a significant role in the rural development in India. MANREGA scheme provides the employment opportunities to the 29.3 crores rural people, PMAY-G provides the pucca houses with basic amenities to approximately 1.40 crores against the target of 2.2 crores and in DDU-GKY scheme, 11.12 lakhs candidates were trained and 6.48 lakhs were placed on the jobs out of these trained candidates.
Keywords: Rural development, agriculture, MANREGA, PMAY-G, DDU-GKY