DEVELOPING COUNTRIES SHOULD
POOL THEIR STRENGTH TO TACKLE RURAL POVERTY – SHANTA KUMAR
The Rural Development Minister Shri Shanta Kumar
has called upon the third world countries to pool their own strength
to tackle the problem of poverty in rural areas. He was delivering
the inaugural address at the 14th Afro-Asian Rural
Development Organisation (AARDO) in Cairo today. He said the era
of rapid globalisation of world economy has added many fold dimensions
to the concept of poverty and a number of challenges are before
us. Shri Shanta Kumar said, there is no better way than exploring
together the ways and means, rectify the weakness and reinforce
our commitment through a genuine international cooperation. Describing
the objective of elimination of poverty as a challenge for any
civilized society, he said, while we should thank the developed
nations for their assistance, we have to stand on our own feet
to face the challenge.
Shri Shanta Kumar said, though countries of Asia
and Africa have made some progress in generating employment opportunities
and gender equity as key elements or way to sustainable development,
we are far from achieving the goal resulting in hunger, mal-nutrition
and low productivity. He called for the adoption of a strategy
for tackling the problems of poverty, development and environment
simultaneously. Shri Shanta Kumar said the focus should be on
efficient utilization of resources, involvement of millions of
rural masses in production process, providing access to facilities
and services, empowering disadvantaged like women and resource
less rural people for effective community participation in all
rural development programmes.
Outlining various steps taken by the
government, the Minister said that India is fast moving towards
achieving the goal of ‘hunger free India’. He said our strategic
pro-poor policy considers the rural poor as a net resource and
the success of these programmes depends upon their involvement
in formulation and implementation of poverty alleviation programmes.
Shri Shanta Kumar said, sustained effort has been made to enhance
the people’s participation in the development programmes through
improvement of the community, ensuring greater role for rural
poor and women in decision making. He said we are striving towards
promoting decentralization of power and nurturing local self-governance
through Panchayati Raj Institutions. He emphasized that involvement
of three-tier local Self Government Institutions at district,
intermediate and village levels in rural development programmes
has already initiated the process of significant changes in rural
areas.
Besides investing in rural road connectivity,
drinking water, primary health, education and nutrition, we have
also made sufficient investment in promotion of development of
women and children in rural areas and Self-Help Groups. He was
very emphatic that women’s empowerment should be the main concern
of AARDO. He urged the AARDO to adopt strategy for evolving more
and more micro level pilot projects with a focus on the most disadvantaged
sections of the society and the most underdeveloped areas of the
member countries.
Shri Shanta Kumar also emphasized the need for
a strong and effective research base for meaningful approaches/strategies
for development of rural areas. He also called for a tripartite
alliance of government agencies, the NGOs and the community to
not only accelerate our efforts and achievements but also sustains
them. He said, well-planned population policy and development
programmes should be worked out to help the third world countries
for carrying out the aspired economic changes and redistribution
of population by way of migration from cities to villages. This
is highly required at the moment in order to prevent the movement
of people from rural to urban regions, which has led to a serious
deterioration in agricultural production with a dangerous imbalance
in the distribution of the work-force and the emergence of economic
and social crisis, he added.
