The Central government has decided to sanction Rs. 200 crore to Maharashtra to develop seven ‘Smart Village’ clusters over the next three years.
The Rural Development Ministry approved funding for these smart village clusters under the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission (SpMRM) on Thursday in New Delhi. The funds will be used to prepare an Integrated Cluster Action Plan, and synchronise the growth of infrastructure related to rural transport and water supply in the shortlisted clusters, senior officials said.
The seven clusters, each having a population of 50,000 or more, shortlisted in Maharashtra are: Sirsala in Beed district, Sultanpur in Buldhana, Lonikalbhor in Pune, Ashti in Jalna, Jogeshwari in Aurangabad, Wadoda in Nagpur and Muktainagar in Jalgaon. The clusters will be provided with their own development plan.
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Senior officials said the development of villages in clusters is important for rural growth in Maharashtra, which is facing an administrative crisis of sorts while managing the affairs of as many as 28,813 gram panchayats. This number is way more than the gram panchayats in other developed States.
A state like Kerala has only 941 gram panchayats and does not face the administrative burden of managing the large number of gram panchayats that Maharashtra has, officials said. The smallest gram panchayat in Maharashtra has a population of 350 while as many as 22,000 gram panchayats have an estimated population of less than 4,000, and 5,000 have a population of less than a 1,000, officials said.
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“Maharashtra historically has had a penchant for having smaller and large number of gram panchayats, either for political or administrative reasons. The integrated development of these [panchayats] was never a priority but the SpMRM is set to change that,” said a senior official.
With the SpMRM, the State government is also looking at improving the per capita income in villages in Maharashtra, currently hovering around a measly Rs. 72 to Rs. 80.
The SpMRM was first announced in the Union Budget-2014-15, and was unveiled in 2016. The initial outlay of the project was announced at Rs. 5,142 crore, as on September, 2015. The first cluster to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was at Kurubhata in Chattisgarh.
Creating jobsThe Modi government had designed the rurban mission with the idea of creating jobs and reducing migration in the rural areas. The mission had its foundation laid in the PURA (providing urban amenities in rural areas) scheme launched by former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. While the government assured there was no duplication between the PURA and SpMRM, it agreed there were as many as 27 similar welfare schemes running in rural areas for uplift of rural clusters. As a token, the first Rs. 100 crore of the scheme was spent on clusters in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. The mission was also part of the election manifesto of the BJP during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.