Check
de-population of the villages
Sir,
The
village is the heart of India. Real India
lives in the villages. Gandhi Ji lived
for villages. Some 80 percent of our
population lives in the villages. But the
present trend is that vast volumes of
people are migrating from the villages to
the towns. But town men are not going to
settle in the villages. It is a one way
traffic from the villages to the towns.
As a result the villages are losing their
population and their old importance. The
villages are being de-populated. Any
villager who becomes an officer or a
professor or a big business man no longer
lives in the village. He builds a
bungalow in some big city and settles
there; he does not find the village life
as decent for him. His children rarely
visit their ancestral village. A villager
who goes to foreign for higher studies
never settles in his home village on his
return. Even the representative (MLA's,
MPs) of rural India lose contact with the
villagers. Very few leaders live among
them and share their simple life.
Let us
think over, what are the circumstances
which favour the town over the village.
The world is rushing forward but the
villagers continue in the old ruts. The
cities offer unlimited scope for
employment, better amenities of life,
higher education etc. If a villager falls
ill, a doctor will have to be called from
the neighbouring town. Industrial
Revolution was another factor. Big
factories and industries were started in
the towns which offered labour for
landless people as industrial worker. So
the villagers migrate to the towns in
search of employment (Bread) in search of
better amenities of life, in search of
higher education.
Now the
question is what measures can we adopt to
check this flow of population from
villages to towns? One thing is very much
clear that we cannot totally stop it. But
if Government builds roads, schools,
hospitals in the villages, to electrify
them, rural universities are to be
installed. If industries and factories
are to be installed in the dry and kandi
belt of the country, this flow of
population from villages to towns can be
checked to a great extent. The villagers
want employment in their spare time. If
this can be had in their locality, they
would not run to cities. If agriculture
is to be modernised to the extent that it
will become a very paying profession, the
people will not run to the over crowded
cities in search of bread.
Some more
schemes like 'Rehbre-e-Taleem and 'Serva
Shiksha Abhyan' should to be started in
which hundred percent chances of
employment are to be given to the
educated youths of villages. These two
schemes of the Government are very good
steps which favour the villages over the
towns. Now it is being noticed that the
villagers settled in the towns, lured by
the chances of employment are thinking in
the lines to return to their native
villages.
If such
steps are to be taken by the Government
to improve the plight of the rural India,
there will be automatic check on the flow
of population from villages to towns. Not
only it will be check, but movement would
be 'Back to the villages'.
Yours
etc...
C R Khajuria,
Lecturer (Retd)
R/o Surara (Patayari) Hiranagar.
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