Business opportunities gallore from Bharat Nirman, reforms needed

New Delhi, June 1 (UNI) A CII report presented today to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh highlights the immense potential of business opportunities emanating from the more than Rs 50,000 crore-Bharat Nirman Programme aimed at building rural infrastructure, and calls for a second green revolution as well as policy changes relating to irrigation and power sector.

The report ''Bharat Nirman Plus: Unlocking Rural India's Growth Potential'' says that agribusiness has to be the core of the second green revolution and outlines the roadmap for achieiving this.

It also speaks about the enormous opportunities for creation of jobs in the rural areas as well as bringing prosperity in the hinterland.

The model suggested by the study entails the use of local resources and local communities, but also underlines the fact that little would be achieived unless a decentralised model of delivery is adopted.

A central message running through the report is the poor record on implementation.

For little would be achieved by mere allocation of financial resources.

The report was presented to the Prime Minister by Mr Yogi Deveshwar, ITC Chairman and past President of CII.

Later addressing a press conference, Mr Deveshwar said major reforms need to be carried in the power and irrigation sector.

In case of power, the report stresses the need to device alternative energy sources for rural India since it would take years to develop large power plants.

The report suggests locally-owned Decentralised Distributed Generation (DDG), so that rural communities can take on the responsibility for pricing and collection, operations and maintenance of the plants.

It says the government would need to play a critical role in kick-starting the DDG projects by providing capital subsidies.

In some cases, as much as 90 per cent of the capital subsidy would need to be provided by the government.

Regarding irrigation, the CII report recommends three major reforms -- setting up an independent Rural Water Authority (RWA) in each state to fix water prices, increasing participatory management through water-user associations and creating financially independent irrigation agencies.

It advises the farmers to grow ''dollar'' crops such as fruit and vegetables and protein products like poultry and dairy in addition to grains as the demand for these products rules high in both the domestic and international markets.

The report outlines major initiatives for creating non-farm income in rural areas.

Experts say unless prosperity reaches the doorsteps of rural areas both way of creating farm and non-farm incomes, it would be difficult to prevent the unceasing migration from rural to urban areas, which is putting immense stress on civic amenities and the potential of creating law and order problems.

The Bharat Nirman Programme has a potential of creating employment for about 30-40 million people in rural areas and increasing rural incomes by one per cent a year.

This would amount to a 25-30 per cent increase in income growth over the current rate of less than four per cent annually in a span of five years.

UNI