Pragmatic Rural Development for Poverty Alleviation: A Pioneering Paradigm

This book is concerned with rural poverty alleviation in India. In 1999-2000, even after fifty years of independence, 27.09 per cent of rural people were still below the poverty line. Administrators and rural development workers entrusted with the task of implementing rural poverty alleviation programmes must know what rural poverty is and how to tackle it, so that poverty alleviation can be accelerated. At present, literature on rural poverty and its alleviation methods are not readily available in an integrated manner. The available literature is in a scattered form. An attempt is, therefore, made to develop new kind of literature on the pragmatic methodology of rural development needed for accelerating poverty alleviation. The book is divided into two parts. Part I with five chapters deals with the concept of rural poverty, causes of rural poverty, poverty related situational facts and results of the efforts made so far to alleviate rural poverty. Part II of this book provides details of pragmatic rural development. It includes information relating to (1) concept of rural development, (2) important issues in rural development, (3) models of economic development including ideas of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, (4) strategies and methods to be used in accelerating poverty alleviation, (5) programme objectives and programme areas needed for poverty alleviation, (6) an inventory of important programme areas. It is hoped that this book will help development planners, development administrators and local leaders of Non Governmental Organisations engaged in the task of rural development, academicians and students of rural poverty studies and all those who are moved by the bane of poverty in the country.