Rural India holds the key

It is often said that India is a nation of villages. Even today 74% of the country's population live in rural areas where their main occupation is agriculture which these days is not lucrative. No wonder then that 33% of the world's poor are in India and 42% of the country's population earn less than `65 per day.Due to shortage of work and a variety of other factors, people in the age group of 13-35 are forced to migrate to urban areas to eke out their livelihood. But given the level of their education, these unskilled workers end up in the vicious cycle of poverty. Among them, those belonging to the SCs/STs are the worst-hit.Though the poor are spread all over the country, states like Orissa, Assam, Bihar, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh are the most backward and have the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of poverty. Orissa and Bihar are the poorest of the lot with poverty ratios of 47% and 43% respectively. The fortunes of the people in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat and Kerala are slightly better.Despite a plethora of welfare schemes and infrastructure projects, rural areas lack basic facilities like clean drinking water, hospitals, schools and colleges, not to speak of proper roads. Students have to take the trouble to go to cities for secondary education. Given this scenario, the girl child school dropout ratio is alarmingly high in rural areas. On the positive side, in recent times, rural India too has witnessed development but there's still a long way to go. There may be TV sets and mobile phones in every household but modern education is still beyond the reach of many children in rural areas. However, there's no denying the fact that rural India is now a huge market with great potential for development. This, in fact, holds the key to sustainable economic growth of the country.Shruti Wadodkar is a IX standard student at Kendriya Vidya Picket