Saturday, March 24, 2007

Rural Development Issue




This landslide has separated villages from the modern part of rural district. Landslide has been biggest obstacles for people as they must cross this almost every day. There is a small hospital and they have got an ambulance from ADRA (An Australian Aid Agency) but that has been of no use since road to the hospital has been destroyed by landslide. Apart from that, rural people have to carry everything themselves. Price of market products has been increased whereas people have been facing other challenges too. Children have to walk hours through the landslide to reach school.
There is a famous development model successfully adopted by India, US and some other counties to develop their rural part called PUARA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) seems to be very effective to develop such remote places of Nepal. PUARA is decentralising urban facilities and infrastructures to rural areas for the overall development of the country. There should be good road in remote villages and other infrastructures of development e.g. school, modes of communication, hospitals, factories. This is not to make them city but to make them modern villages with urban facilities. This will not only stop mass migration to the cities, but provides education, health, employment and other opportunities to the villagers in village. It is very expensive and challenging for us to fully adopt this model but we can simply focus on most important part which could be effective to address several contemporary issues of the related areas. Currently population of Rasuwa is about 50000, whereas more are 3 million people live in Kathmandu. Rasuwa is more than two times bigger than Kathmandu.
We hear so many things in recent days about BUILDING NEW NEPAL, so this idea could be important and useful for our planners and policy makers to further develop their master plan. Despite landslides, floods, and other natural disasters, we can develop our villages. But it is not easy and a single effort alone is nothing for this when our leaders and intellectuals have not stopped fighting each other, so this idea is a just a theory at the moment. I wish there was a good teamwork and mutual cooperation among all people to develop our nation otherwise country will lose another thousand highly skilled and demanded people as they will leave the nation as always seeking security, employment and survival.

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