When RK Narayan created the small fictional town of Malgudi, he described it as a place stuck between a village and a city. He colourfully wrote, “the nearest railway station is 60 miles away, to be reached by an occasional bus passing down the highway, marching distance from the village by a shortcut across the canal.”

Today, our village-towns in India might not be so far off from a railroad but they are grappling with the consequences of rapid urbanisation. Typically, a census town is a place with more than 400 persons per square kilometre and where more than 75 per cent of the male population is engaged in non-agricultural occupations. The census of 2011 tells us that there are 7,935 such towns in the country, and more than 6,000 of them are part of urban agglomerations.

It is in light of this that we must look at the ambitious Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Rurban Mission (SPMRM), which has recently got the Cabinet’s nod and is expected to be launched soon.

Coordinated approach

While the cost of the project is unclear, the government has laid down some basic objectives of micro and macro infrastructure growth for the selected “rural clusters” that include such towns.

Beginning with drainage and water pipelines, SPMRM envisages building social infrastructure such as hospitals, quality schools and colleges in these clusters. In a way, it aims to bring urban facilities to the rural landscape.

The SPMRM looks at integrating and delivering small-scale manufacturing, digital literacy, sanitation, transportation, health and literacy services at the village-town levels. The ministry of rural development has been given the task of selecting these rural clusters, and analysing the possible impact of SPMRM at the district, sub-district and village levels. It effectively calls for close cooperation between State governments and, subsequently, Panchayati Raj institutions (PRIs).

PRIs, though made official government bodies through the 73rd Amendment in 1992, are struggling to find economic and functional independence in the current framework. Devolution of funds at the panchayat level is key to implementing any project.The SPMRM can become the harbinger of decentralised development.

Club earlier schemes

There needs to be a convergence of other infrastructure programmes such as Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana and Backward Regions Grant Fund, for effective implementation. If the selection of rural clusters is done in an unbiased manner, the Rurban Mission could iron out the regional imbalances.

The SPMRM is like the UPA government’s Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas (PURA) scheme, which was a dream of President APJ Abdul Kalam. It can tackle several challenges of unplanned urbanisation — especially the demand for water, low income housing, sewage treatment, transportation and job creation.

On the ground, however, PURA proved to be a disaster; it became yet another rural development programme that brought more tied funds to the villages, over and above the existing schemes. A Planning Commission report suggests that investment required for planned urbanisation in India over the next 20 years is close to $1 trillion. The Centre and States must show political will to converge all on-going schemes under one mission.

Empowering our PRIs with financial autonomy will cement the success of this mission. Until then, Malgudis will abound on our country’s landscape.

Yashaswini is a former research fellow with PRS. Dev is an entrepreneur. The views are personal

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