India leaves Bharat behind

There is a startling contrast in the pace of development between rural and urban India, writes Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 14, 2006, 03:02:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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There is a startling contrast in the pace of infrastructure development between rural and urban India. The cities are experiencing swift development changes while in rural areas things remain static.

The India Infrastructure Report 2006, to be released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday, shows the disconnect between the two Indias.
In the four sectors — telecommunications, power, roads and transport and water and sanitation — studied by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), the quality and quantity of service has been found to be substantially lower than in cities.

The report has urged policy-makers to provide incentives to the private sector to involve itself in rural areas.

Telecommunications

High monthly rentals (between Rs 90-150) and poor service quality has restricted rural teledensity to 1.67 per cent as compared to 25.90 per cent in urban India. Of the ten states studied, only Kerala, Punjab and West Bengal have more than one public call office in a village. The reason is that those in villages are not willing to spend money on private connections. This explains why the national per capital annual telecommunication expenditure is only Rs 2.9.

The story in West Bengal is different. The Grameen Sanchar Society has provided wireless phones through its rural vendors with an assurance of quality service. A fixed percentage of revenue goes to the government and the rest to the Society.

Power

Punjab tops the NCAER list with 99.87 per cent power connectivity in village homes compared to just 17.82 per cent in Orissa. Punjab's monthly expenditure on power is also the highest at Rs 219 while Tamil Nadu with a high power connection penetration rate spends Rs 39 per home. This could be because Punjab has many more metered connections than Tamil Nadu, the report said.

The report is critical of power subsidy in the rural sector, which has prohibited the private sector from taking over distribution networks.

Water and sanitation

Most villages get water but the report has raised doubts over the quality and sustainability of the supply. For example, 2,17,000 villages have water quality problems. Excess fluoride, arsenic, nitrate, iron and salinity are causing health hazards. Sanitation is no better with only Kerala and Punjab fount to be satisfactory performers.

The report reveals that the villagers who spend on water get better quality and example of this is Kerala. There piped water connectivity is 100 per cent per capita as the per capita monthly expenditure on drinking water is Rs 22, highest in the country.

Roads and transport

Only 55 per cent of villages are connected by roads. "The lack of roads means that 20-30 per cent of the agricultural, horticultural and forest produce gets wasted because it cannot be transported to marketing and processing units," the report said.

Email Chetan Chauhan: cchauhan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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