Assam budget proposes mega rural mission

Assam government today proposed to roll out a major scheme for rural development envisaging an investment of Rs 30,000 crore over the next five years to transform each village of the state.
While presenting the budget for 2016-17, Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma proposed to take up a "Mega Mission", called 'Chief Minister Samagra Gramya Unnayan Yojana (CMSGUY)' for five years till 2021-22.
"The main objective is to double the farmer income, in unison with the vision of Hon'ble Prime Minister. There will be one Mega-Mission and 9 'Navaratna' Sub-Missions," he said.
"The planned investment is about Rs 1.20 crore per revenue village. The total requirement for the Mission is Rs 30,000 crore over a period of five years," Sarma said.

Of the total investment, 10 per cent will be in the form of community resources such as land and mandays, while the remaining 90 per cent will be from the state resources.
"The state has never witnessed such a massive and mega investment in this kind of focused manner. Each village will get benefits such as tractor, cold-chain vehicle, milch cows, fish hatchery etc as community asset with collective ownership," the Minister said.

An all-weather road, high speed broadband connectivity and other logistics will also be provided from possible convergence from the existing sources like Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), Central Government programmes and bank linkages among others, he added.

"The novel approach of the Mega Mission is that it taps the energy of rural youth and community. I propose to reach out to each of the youth clubs in 25,425 revenue villages in community mobilisation for development over a period of five years," Sarma said.
The state government will also seek this Mega Mission specific financial support from the Central government during the current financial year onwards so as to help the state to stimulate its economy, create employment, increase income of the people and thus, raise resources for future, he added.
"This will be supported though other activities such as road and broadband connectivity, market linkages, rural knowledge centres," Sarma said.

Economic activity will be specific to the village and places like hill areas can focus on potential sectors like rubber, bamboo and horticulture plantations, he added.
Sarma said the critical mass of commodities produced by such a large and focused interventions would stimulate markets and the requisite interventions would be made to link the emerging markets within and outside the state.