TOWARDS VILLAGE-BASED TECHNOLOGY

The clarion call has come: That the villages must come into focus in the economic development of the country. The villages which produce raw materials should themselves be made to convert these employment potential goods into finished products to the extent possible. The National Commission of Agriculture has proposed that 30 per cent of the rural labour force be employed for non-agricultural work. This will no doubt require new techniques to be introduced there. But one cannot ignore the traditional crafts and trades which are on the path of decadence. These need to be revived by improvements and innovations. The result of the efforts of rural development institutions, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission and similar bodies that are working in this field, so far have been far from heartening. The silver lining now appeared, is the new awareness in the governmental policies about the need of reservation of maxims of production. The principle of various sectors have specific areas of production has long been debated upon, but unfortunately, never applied. With undue competition now being sought to be removed, a great impetus is expected to rural crafts and industries. As work progresses the science and technology will have to answer the challenging problems of these productive units in the rural sector. A glimpse of the problems in the field of village industries is being given elsewhere in this issue.

Another fact which must be understood about the rural unemployment picture is that only a percentage of people can be engaged in the traditional village industries. We therefore, have to introduce techniques and processes of converting the unused rural wealth by the help of newer knowledge evolved in our laboratories and scientific bodies here and abroad. This will provide new areas of productivity and avenues for employment to upgrade the economic and cultural level of the village. There are many hurdles in this pioneering task. We may have a process or a technique, the technical viability of which having been found out and near perfection obtained.

Still we would find that the new method remains un-replicated. What is necessary is that the process should become a profession and the technique a trade of the people in the village. When the mode of conversion has been found out, it should be amenable for multiplication. The Gobar gas plant, for example, had been perfected by the year 1946 by the ICAR when it observed its silver jubilee. Its viabilities came to be proved thirty years later. Yet if this techniques is to become universal we would have to evolve the profession of gobar gaswallas, the self-employed people who earn their living by its multiplication and maintenance. What applies to gobar gas applies to all the other new techniques as well. Our laboratories bring out innumerable methods and techniques every year. Those of them which the industrial/commercial enterpreneurial interests can profit from are lifted by them. Among the large number of the leftovers there are a few which could be utilised for rural uplift. These are not profitable to the middle man. A smokeless oven, a plaster to make mud- walls non-erodable, a soakpit which can keep the environs dry and clean, a solar cooker which saves fuel and trees, are a few to name. We will therefore have to con- duct experiments to see how rural people can be induced to take to one or more of these as their means of earning. As much work will be required for working out this as is required to evolve the technique itself. Even repeated demonstrations of a new industrial unit which is expected to serve the interests of the down-trodden cannot take roots till the mode of involving the people to be self-reliant in its working is also evolved side by side. India needs a thousand and one new avenues of rural employment which can help bring social and economic justice to those who have been deprived of it since ages.

Let us hope that the movement of Science for the Villages will lead to the desired change and bring succor to the last and the least of the land.

No doubt, but to be specially experimented upon in selected areas, for throwing up ideas a well as to generate confidence in the micro scale so that it can be applied on the macro scale concept of Gandhi district.

When the 6th Plan was on the anvil and all sections of opinions were being solicited by the Planning Commission, an important fact was brought in relief that the infra-structural support to general increase in productivity does not necessarily help remove poverty. For reaching the poor, specifically target group oriented time- bound plans are required to be made. At some stage the Planning Commission took cognizance of the idea mooted out by Acharya Vinoba Bhave that the district of Wardha (where Gandhiji himself spent many of his years) be chosen for such an experimentation and he gave the name of such a move-of a district being developed on Gandhian lines as Gandhi Zilla Scheme The then Union Minister of Planning. Shri N.D.Tiwari, met Vinoba on 30th of January 1981 and discussed this proposal with him as well as with official and nonofficial people working in the development field at Wardha. The proposal took further shape and substance when the Prime Minister approved of it and the Planning Commission asked Dr. M.S. Swaminathan Committee to prepare a plan for this.

Devendra Kumar