Integrated Rural Development
A New Approach Needed

By Krishna Chandra Chalisey

Integrated Rural Development (IRD) puts a major emphasis on the eradication of poverty by meeting the basic needs of the entire population of the rural areas through an increase in production. In terms of progressive development of a developing country, we usually see three categories of the nations.

Insufficient

The first category includes these countries where available capital and skills are insufficient to generate non-agricultural employment at a rate concomitant with the increases in the number of job seekers.

The second category includes the countries going through transition period where the increase in demand for employment is of the same order of magnitude as the increase in non-agricultural job opportunities.

The third category includes those countries where both the percentage and the absolute number employed in the agriculture sector are decreasing. Obviously, Nepal belongs to the first category.

The massive mobilisation of the local resources throughout a poor country is not feasible without the active participation of its decision-making leaders and of all the strata of the population in rural development for whom the development is intended.

It is possible only when a system for informing, motivating and representing the rural population-especially the poor is set-up and there must be a fair and equitable distribution of the fruits of development.

Agricultural growth is a key to rural development. Rural development requires concomitant development of the secondary and tertiary sectors. Rural development cannot be achieved at once. It has to pass certain stages. Every development country that has agro-based economy have to pass through four stages. i.e. subsistence, diversified stage, specialised and automated. There are unique characteristics in each stage. Nepal has just moved from subsistence to diversified stage.

Agriculture does not develop by itself. It requires a complex institutional system to support it—marketing the products and services and providing inputs, credits and professional advice. In spite of the policy statement of the government to provide all support services, it is still far from reality. Due to poor infrastructure and commercial outlets, commercialisaion of agriculture has come a difficult job. There is an acute need to establish agro-based industries that can produce high quality products. Instead of raw products, efforts should be made to manufacture finished and processed goods.

The co-operative movement is gaining momentum in agricultural sectors as well in marketing the products. But there is a confusion with regard to the nature and functions of co-operatives. We find spontaneous growth of co-operatives but there is no adequate support system in their endeavours. At present stage of development, the low output of agriculture, the low level of technical ability, the absence of infrastructure network, the scarcity of capital and an acute shortage of skilled manpower are inherent limitations of the system. At this stage, the supporting system has to meet three fundamental requirements—wide dispersal of service facilities, efficiency in terms of both cost and quality and concentration in specific locations.

Rural development is a pressing need for all developing and least developed countries. No one can jump to industrialised status without modernising this sector. It spurs farm diversification by creating a market for agricultural products and providing employment. As we tried to imitate from the developed countries for industrial development, it did not produce the result as desired. IRD comprises macro and micro level activities in three sectors of the economy--agriculture, industry and service. According to the integrated approach, development planning should be the outcome of a co-ordination between macro and micro planning.

Many development programmes have failed as they were imposed on the people from outside and did not elicit their co-operation and support. All development programmes must express people’s desires, aspirations and values. Public participate actively in development programmes only when it is formulated together with their representatives and accepted by them and have a fair share in decision making. To materialise this organisation must be structured in such way that accommodates their concerns and respects their due roles.

Many countries irrespective of political ideologies have become successful to transform the country from backwardness to advancement by integrated rural development. The basic features for successes are: unwavering determination of the state to give top priority to rural development and full mobilisation of economic resources of the country, human capabilities and land utilisation.

Rural development is not possible unless planning and administrative machinery of the government is decentralised. Centralised government structure is a major hindering factor to rural development. Decision-making and execution is concentrated in the capital and usually in the hands of people without first-hand knowledge of prevailing conditions in the country. There is an utter lack of co-ordination among the line agencies at central and field level. In spite of decades of decentralised efforts and recent Local Self-goverance Act, the capacity of the local government institutions (IGIs) is yet to develop. LGIs should have professional knowledge to carry out IRD, authority to implement, fair degree of autonomy in financial resources and effective and true representation of the strata of the population for whom IRD is intended.

The approach of IRD that began two decades ago is not now in much vogue. Many catchy words and development jargons have come since then. In spite of good spirit of IRD, more than a dozen of IRD projects implemented in the beginning proved failure and that actually deteriorated development culture in the eyes of people. Development became a luxury business for many at the establishment. Various malpractices appeared in development planning and execution. It is due to inability and insincerity of the people at the helm of affairs, IRD lost its popularity.

Validity

The co-ordinated action of the government and the people is at the heart of IRD. IRD is action-oriented, co-ordinated, comprehensive and democratic approach. Still, IRD as a development concept and approach has not lost its validity. This approach should be pursued in true sense.

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