A Study on Rural Development Programme in India

Abstract

The Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) is a rural development program of the Government of India launched in financial year 1978 and extended throughout India by 1980. It is a self-employment program intended to raise the income-generation capacity of target groups among the poor. The target group consists largely of small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers and rural artisans living below the poverty line. The objective of IRDP is to enable identified rural poor families to cross the poverty line by providing productive assets and inputs to the target groups. Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) aims at providing assets and self-employ­ment opportunities for the rural poor. Assistance under IRDP is given to a target group of rural poor belonging to families below poverty line in the form of subsidy by the Government and term credit by financial institutions for the purpose of rural development. However, in the Ninth Plan, the focus would be on pursuing an integrated approach under IRDP by subsuming the existing sub-schemes of Training of Rural Youth for Self-Employment (TRYSEM) and Supply of Improved Toolkits to Rural Artisans (SITRA), Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) and Ganga Kalyan Yojana (GKY) into the main programme. The Government's policy and programmes have laid emphasis on poverty alleviation, generation of employment and income opportunities and provision of infrastructure and basic facilities to meet the needs of rural poor. Thus this study focus on Role of IRDP in rural development