Reverse focus to rural: Kalam to urban habitat conference

New Delhi, Dec 15 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today told the Asia-Pacific meet on urban habitat improvement that the solution lies in reversing the process to improving facilities in rural areas.

Expanding housing in urban areas without providing facilities in rural areas would mean increased flow of people to cities, which would negate the very purpose of their efforts, Dr Kalam told Ministers and experts from Asia Pacific countries.

To prove his point, he said he could give a practical example of an Andhra Pradesh village where educated city people starting flocking to after it was provided urban amenities.

''This necessitates the spread of the development process to the rural sector. That is what the PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) programme involving four connectivities namely Physical, Electronic and Knowledge leading to Economic connectivity envisages,'' he said.

The entire country should have 7000 PURAs encompassing over 600,000 villages.

The President said one can understand the need for this programme, if one keeps in mind that out of one billion population of the country, 700 million live in villages and 220 were living below poverty line.

''To uplift these people, we have to ensure that the overall GDP has to be increased to 10 per cent from the existing 8 per cent and maintained for a decade. For this employment generation, particularly in the rural areas is very essential,'' he said.

He was speaking after inaugurating the high-level segment of the four-day conference which has brought together experts and major stake-holders and representatives of government and private organisations of the Asia-Pacific countries, financial institutions and UN organisations like UN-Habitat.

Dr Kalam later went on to present to the conference his own model of village development and requested the delegates to consider it.

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