Prime Minister Manmohan Singh unveiled his plan of creating a
specific financing window for the ambitious Rs 1,74,000-crore
Bharat Nirman programme in the National Conference on Bharat Nirman on 16 December in New Delhi. The Government of India and the Confederation of Indian Industry organized the conference jointly.
The first public conference on Bharat Nirman, the National Conference served as the launch pad for the four-year ambitious programme that aims at creating infrastructure and providing effective services benefiting millions of rural poor.+
Speaking in the Conference, Dr. Ahluwalia said that all this needed a massive investment and the Centre and State governments would have to come together to make this possible. He further emphasised the need for the Panchayats and the NGOs playing a vital role to play in this process of building up the infrastructure in the villages in India. For India, growth icould not be just for growths sake but it had to be inclusive, he remarked.
Line ministries in the Central and State governments are grappling with the figures, as evident in the speech of Raghuvansh Prasda Singh, the Union Minister for Rural Development building 6 lakh houses, add 10 million hectares of irrigation capacity, connect 66,802 hamlets with all-weather roads, bring electricity to the remaining 1,00,000 villages, provide safe drinking water and rural telephony to 55,000 villages at a budget allocated of Rs 1,74,000-crore within the project life span of four years, of which six months have already passed by. (For complete text, please see:
http://pmindia.nic.in/lspeech.asp?id=248)
As telecom and Internet connectivity, ICT comes forefront in Bharat Nirman. Moreover, decentralization in planning, implementation and M&E of infrastructure building and services delivery necessitates proper exploitation of ICT tools and technologies connectivity, knowledge management and electronic services delivery at various level of governments, at central, state, district and local levels.
· Bharat Nirman, which is planned for the financial years from 2005 to 2009, encompasses following key tasks:
· Every village to be provided electricity: remaining 1,25,000
villages to be covered by 2009 as well as connect 2.3 crore households
· Every habitation over 1000 population and above (500 in hilly and tribal areas) to be provided an all-weather road: remaining 66,802 habitations to be covered by 2009
· Every habitation to have a safe source of drinking water: 55,067 uncovered habitations to be covered by 2009. In addition all habitations which have slipped back from full coverage to partial coverage due to failure of source and habitations which have water quality problems to be addressed
· Every village to be connected by telephone: remaining 66,822
villages to be covered by November 2007
· 10 million hectares (100 lakhs) house to be constructed for the rural poor by 2009
Various speakers at the conference raise the issue of public
participation in the process of project management. And it is
emphasized that public participation shall proactively sought through the local governments the panchayats and the gramshabhas and the grassroots civil society sector.
Public participation can also be given a big boost through the
appropriate and strategic ICT interventions, as being practiced I
several innovative pilot projects throughout the country during last half a decade.
ICT interventions such as knowledge portals provide the citizen
information on the project plan and implementation, allowing citizens to navigate through for harnessing the needful information and exercising their rights to express their informed opinion on the ongoing projects and programmes.
Official Bharat Nirman Website: http://bharatnirman.gov.in/
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