Professor Gnanaharan

September 2006

Etymologically speaking, the word 'citizen' having its roots in Old French means 'one who is an inhabitant of a town or city'. Over a period of time, this aspirational status comes to mean anyone who is legally recognised as a member of a country. So today everyone is a citizen irrespective of whether one lives in the rural backyard or in the urban settlements.

Large scale migration of rural poor to urban areas only means transportation and transformation of rural poverty into urban poverty unless their livelihood oppourtunities improve dramatically. Urban areas also add to the stock of poor people in the country due to inadequate oppourtunities. And many remain that way. Few however find escape route by clinging on to some oppourtunity or other.

Therefore, what is needed is not just change in the nomenclature or name but the true meaning associated with that. Viewed from this angle, Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam's project of Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas(PURA) makes enormous sense. For, it addresses and challenges the status quo by providing the necessary amenities and services. There need not not be an 'either or' situation. In many cases what is needed is an 'AND' solution.

Converting the PURA concept into reality needs no further Committees and Task Forces. People committed to the vision and having the ability to carry out the tasks are the need of the hour. And the best way to make this happen would be to select and excute few such projects across the country on an experimental basis. Simple, sustainable, and scalable PURA Projects could be the way to go ahead.

Closely related to this issue is Mahatma Gandhi calling the 'untouchables' as Harijans meaning the children of God. Despite Mahathma's noble intention the purpose has not been fully realised. The recent cotroversial policy on Reservation can be looked at from this perspective. Definitely there is a case for a preferential treatment of marginalised sections of the society. But reservation may not be the right route to achieve the goal. Something like the PURA concept could well address this issue.

But the immediate challenge would be to find translators for realising the goals set out in the PURA by His Excellency,Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam the President of India. As he himself pointed out in one of his speeches, the country needs Development Councils (DC) at the Village level. By installing DC's selectively in few places, may be at the block level, PURA can be experimented before rolling out at the national level.