TOWARDS ZERO BPL MODEL

BPL stands for 'Below Poverty Line'. India despite economic development in various fields has not been able to decrease the percentage of its people whose living is below the subsistence level. The Government of India's Planning Commission being very much concerned with this state has chosen to make an intensive effort in one district-Wardha, which Mahatma Gandhi had made his home. It has published "Wardha District Plan on Gandhian Lines' in which Prof. M. S. Swaminathan says in his preface "An important principle for achieving development on the lines advocated by Mahatma Gandhi is enabling everyone in the area to enjoy minimum requirements of life. In other words no family should live below the poverty line." He maintains that within this decade, no family in the district should be below the poverty line and for this tirpartite relationship between government agencies, people's organisations and academic and technical institutions be brought about.

Wardha has an areal extent of 6,307 km, its year's maximum and minimum temperatures are 45° and 16º C and rain fall from 900 mm. to 1,250 mm, About 73.77% of its total area is under cultivation, of which hardly 4.24% is cropped more than once. Its population is about 9.27 lakh of which 42% is BPL. The percentage of workers is (i) Agriculture-28.96 (ii) House hold- 47.99 (iii) Industry-2.20 and (iv) other works- 20.85. Thus it becomes clear that there is great pressure on meagre land based occupations like agriculture and cattle raising and unless non-land based industries are added the landless people's condition will remain weak. The following suggestions incorporated in the report which give illustration, were made by the help of Centre of Science for Villages.

Non-Land Based Employment for Landless Labour:

Three areas have prospects for providing new rural employment (a) Raw materials as are produced in the district but are taken out as such, (b) traditional village crafts and trades which are dying out (C) new low-capital, labor-intensive industries. Of these three here we are giving the suggestions regarding the last area as they pertain more to S & T inputs. It says that non traditional new industries be introduced on the basis of the interaction of Science & Technology with the village raw materials and/ or needs of the district, e.g. (i) lime pozzolana cementeceous material manufactured by grinding in a Ball-Mill of slaked, lime and pozzolanic materials like paddy, husk, brick powder and/or fly ash

from Thermal Power Plants can become a new industry in bigger villages and, meet the needs of rural building construction (IIT Kanpur, CBRI, RBL), (ii) Thick papers for covers and files and boards for partition and planks can be made from agro-wastes likes cotton stalk, bananas stem etc. which serve neither as food nor as fodder can make good economic products (CSV, RRL-Jammu, KVIC), (iii) Each year biogas plants connected with toilets be put up in every village a 10 small gas plants of 100 cft, capacity and 2 community gas plants (1000 cft) providing, cooking gas to 250 people and during construction stages also it will/create jobs and establish new trades for the managing and maintenance of these plants and distribution of gas and slurry. (iv) Manure making as a trade on the lines demonstrated at CSV whereby spent, slurry from gas plants (or gobar as such) is used to ferment garbage and agro-waste with inter- mediate layers of powdered top sell clay in overground aerobic tanks pro- viding in 100 days, manure of 5 to 8% Nitrogen content, which it 40 times the weight of Gobar used. This will mean 'gobar' from one pair of bullocks (25 kg) could give 1 ton of manure per day. This has tremendous potential of giving work wealth and health to the village, (v) Construction materials and heavy pottery can also be developed to bring about better housing and providing new avenues of work (CBRI, KVIC, CG- CRI), (vi) Other new trades on the basis of USIR developed techniques could be introduced with their help.

In the three of the above areas of employment, projects could be identified and framed out to various S & T institutions which in collaboration with the local voluntary governmental agencies could take up their implementation, Wardha thus could begin a new wave of S & T for villages in the country and give a model for the Third World whereby productivity increase is commensurate with removal of disparity and poverty.

                                                                                                                                 Devendra Kumar