Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

PM's speech at the CII conference on Bharat Nirman

"I am delighted to be here today to inaugurate this conference. This event in many ways marks the formal launch of one of our most important development initiatives in recent years - Bharat Nirman. I compliment the Confederation of Indian Industry for organizing this Conference. You have aptly described Bharat Nirman as 'Unlocking Rural India's Development Potential through Infrastructure'. This is what Bharat Nirman will in fact do. Once unlocked, I am confident, rural India will realize its true potential.

I recall, when I was a high school student, there was a famous poem by Oliver Goldsmith which said something to the following effect:

'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made:

But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,

When once destroyed, can never be supplied.'

I think that is in one sense a measure of the challenge that we face. Our task of development, of modernisation, will never acquire its true meaning and significance if our rural areas are not active partners in processes of social and economic change. And I sincerely hope Bharat Nirman will act to accelerate this process of reducing the gap between Bharat and India and make our rural consumers and rural producers an integral part of the processes of wealth creation and wealth distribution.

The economic and social development in our rural areas is going to be one of the world's biggest growth stories in the coming decade. Economics and politics are both driving a massive change. A change in the way incomes are earned, the way incomes are spent, the way lives will be lived and livelihoods pursued. It is up to us to seize these new opportunities. It is up to us to measure up to the enormous challenges that we face in grappling with these problems.

Over the last few years we have been watching a makeover of Indian business in bridging the so-called divide between India and Bharat. Many firms have tried to capture rural opportunities and in the process they have opened up unprecedented possibilities for rural India to get more integrated with the national and global economy. I have in mind efforts like e-Chaupal, with which Yogi Deveshwarji is intimately associated, Sagar Haat, Shakti effort with SHGs where corporate India is connecting with the growth potential in rural India. This movement needs a quantum jump. Waking up to this potential global management gurus have talked of the wealth of opportunities available at the 'bottom of the pyramid'. Instead of restricting yourself to competing in existing markets at the 'top of the pyramid' of our society, attention is being drawn to the possibilities of creating new markets at the bottom. I regard this as a development which has almost revolutionary implications.

The major challenge of our economic reform programme is that of balancing the growth process and bridging the various divides. One of the most significant divides in India has been between the urban and rural Indias. As I look at history of India in the last 50 years, this gap has widened. It is not become narrower and there lies the great danger for social, economic and political stability. We have to reverse this trend. We have to bridge and ultimately eliminate this gap. As we deepen our economic reform process, we need to focus on spreading the benefits of reform to all Indians and this cannot happen unless we quickly bridge the divide in infrastructure between our rural and urban areas. Our capacity to do so has dramatically increased. Our financial, engineering and communication potential have given us an opportunity to close this gap in a very quick time. Our government sees Bharat Nirman as a time-bound plan for doing precisely this.

Our Government certainly views Bharat Nirman as an effort to unlock rural India's growth potential. It is a commitment of our Government to ensure that the neglect of rural infrastructure would be corrected. It is also an indication of our impatience with an incremental approach in this field. Bharat Nirman is conceived as a four year time-bound business plan for achieving identified goals in six selected areas of rural infrastructure i.e. irrigation, rural water supply, rural housing, rural roads, rural telephony and rural electrification.

In four of these areas we would like to see universal coverage where every village in India over a 1000 population will have an all weather road, every habitation would have water supply, every village would have a telephone and every village would be in fact electrified. In addition we intend to build 60 lakh houses to address rural homelessness and add 10 million hectares to irrigation capacity. The targets are ambitious but with active participation of the State Governments we hope to deliver on time.

It should be obvious that each of these goals is extremely critical for unleashing the process of growth in the rural areas of our country. There has been a steady decline in public investment in irrigation over the years. There have been a large number of projects which have been languishing for want of funds. The effort under Bharat Nirman is to identify all such projects and target their completion to create 10 million hectares of additional irrigation capacity.

The Ministry has identified the major and medium irrigation projects amounting to 4 million hectares which could be completed as well as 2.8 million hectares that can come from minor irrigation. In addition there is a proposal for enhancing utilization of completed projects which would yield 2 million hectares. In addition ground water development could yield about an additional 1 million hectare. Increasing irrigation capacity is therefore the most important investment to realize the vast, latent agricultural growth potential of rural India.

As far as roads are concerned, our effort is to provide all-weather roads covering all habitations with over 1000 population, and all unconnected habitations above 500 population in hilly and tribal areas. There are 66,802 such habitations. Development economists have for long demonstrated, through detailed research, the significant dent made on rural poverty by improved road connectivity. Roads become a lifeline to new markets, new businesses, new incomes, and, above all, to new opportunities. Even a narrow road can be a highway to prosperity. Bharat Nirman would ensure that every village in India has access to markets, to services, to opportunities, indeed, to prosperity.

The first and most visible sign of prosperity we find when we travel is the quality of housing. We have all seen in our lifetime kutcha houses, with thatched roofs, being replaced by pucca houses in villages after villages across the length and breadth of the country. Yet, rural housing shortage is a serious problem in India. It is estimated that we still have a gap of about 15 million houses. We hope to cover a substantial portion of it - over 6 million houses through Bharat Nirman in the next four years.

The revolution in rural telephony has ensured that most Indian villages now have a telephone. There are, however, still about 66,822 villages without a telephone. By September 2007 we hope to provide every Indian village with access to a telephone. I believe it is in fact possible to be even more ambitious and enlarge this goal and commit ourselves, under Bharat Nirman, to increasing rural tele-density also. The Government is also considering a major initiative to ensure data access so that our villages are also e-enabled.

Access to and availability of safe drinking water remains a major challenge not just in rural India, but also in our cities. Despite an investment of nearly 50,000 crores in the last 25 years and a massive coverage that we have created, we still have about 55,000 villages without safe source of water supply. We also have nearly 3 lakh villages which have slipped back from full coverage. The goal under Bharat Nirman is to ensure that every habitation, not just a village, is provided with a source of safe drinking water. We also hope to address the problem of water quality in areas where chronic health problems persist due to quality of water supply.

I am deeply concerned at the loss of momentum in recent years in the development of rural electrification. Over 100,000 villages still do not have electricity connection. To correct this we have initiated the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. Our effort is to ensure electrification of all villages by the year 2009. Once this is ensured, we should move rapidly to ensure availability of electricity to all households. I am convinced that if reliable power supply is assured, people will be willing to pay for it. Energy is indeed a valuable economic resource. Every user knows the benefit we derive from safe and reliable source of energy. I am sure consumers will be happy to pay for this energy, as indeed they should.

The agenda of infrastructure development under Bharat Nirman is not new. In each of the areas I have listed there are some on-going programmes. What Bharat Nirman seeks to do is to impart a sense of urgency to the implementation of these programmes, within a specified time frame, and in a business-like manner.

Bharat Nirman estimates an investment of over Rs.1,74,000 crore. Most of this will come from the Government's development outlays. We are also proposing a specific financing window for Bharat Nirman through NABARD for funding selected components. The model of delivery, that would vary between components, proposes to involve the Panchayats as well as the Private Sector as partners. Panchayats will play a major role in the creation and management of rural assets in times to come. The Planning Commission is working on ways to enhance the management of our rural infrastructure programmes by Panchayats. State Governments and local bodies are critical to effective programme delivery. State Governments are key implementing agencies and Panchayats would need to activate the demand side without which service delivery would not be effective.

Our Government has made a commitment to deliver on our promises, meeting the goals set under Bharat Nirman, within the politically defined time-frame of four years, that is, by the year 2009. That is, by the time our tenure in government expires.

When Bharat Nirman was launched in the last budget as the flagship programme of this government for rural infrastructure, it received wide endorsement from captains of industry and industry associations. Their concerns were about timely delivery and the quality of spending. Bharat Nirman provides a platform on which to build rural India's growth potential. Taken together with our initiative to guarantee rural employment, through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and the initiative to improve rural health, through National Rural Health Mission, and rural education, through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, it should be clear that our Government is indeed giving a 'New Deal to Rural India'. This was our solemn commitment, made from the ramparts of the Red Fort. That we have moved so quickly in delivering on that commitment is a testimony to our sincerity. No Government in this country has launched such a massive programme of rural development and transformation in such a short period of time.

Rural connectivity, rural prosperity and rural well-being should widen the social and economic base of growth and development in our country. The easier movement of goods and services, enabled by Bharat Nirman, will help amplify the efforts that the private sector is making to connect rural India to the markets. Private Sector initiative and imagination can accelerate the growth of Bharat Nirman.

Bharat Nirman will go hand in hand with considerable rural asset creation that will happen through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. This new context is a challenge to Private Sector enterprise to re-think the growth potential of rural India. It is an opportunity for an unprecedented knowledge explosion in our villages as they get effectively connected. New opportunities with communication technology can quickly integrate our villages with the national and global markets and the evolving opportunities.

Bharat Nirman is not an agenda of the Government alone. It is a collective agenda. It is an agenda in which every Indian has a role either as a user or as a partner. It is up to the captains of industry and leaders of enterprise to understand the true potential of Bharat Nirman and participate in it. It is without doubt the largest, transformation exercise undertaken in this country for rural infrastructure. The growth of rural India will grow Indian business and business in turn can fuel rural growth. It is a situation of mutual advantage. I call upon this forum to come up with concrete ideas on how Indian industry can become an effective partner in implementation of Bharat Nirman. I once again commend CII for taking the initiative in organizing this consultation."