PM's finance window for Bharat Nirman

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today mooted a specific financing window scheme for the ambitious Rs 1,74,000-crore Bharat Nirman Programme.

"We are proposing a specific financing window for Bharat Nirman through Nabard for funding selected components, even as most of the resources would come from the government's development outlays," he told a conference on Bharat Nirman organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Singh also formally launched the initiative aimed at developing the rural sector.

Bharat Nirman, a four-year initiative, is aimed at building six lakh houses, adding 10 million hectares of irrigation capacity, connecting 66,802 villages with all-weather roads, electrifying the remaining 1,00,000 villages, providing safe drinking water in 55,000 villages and rural telephony in the remaining 55,000 villages. The programme was announced in the last Budget.

Though the model of delivery would vary for different components, the prime minister proposed to involve panchayats and the private sector as partners in this herculean task.

"Convergence" and "integration" seemed the catchwords for speakers at the seminar. Addressing the session on Rural Roads and Housing, Prof P V Indiresan of IIT Delhi said it would be a mistake for the government and the private sector to pursue programmes like road-building as an end in itself.

What was needed was a synergy between all aspects of rural life, including creation of markets, educational and health infrastructure and organised housing.

Hudco chief P S Rana said what rural areas needed was the creation of potential to sell the village's capacity of what it could create. "We need a critical mass of ideas that work in a village. Providing a road is just providing access," he said.

And providing a railway line is more a burden on land than a linkage if there is no railway station, no road leading to it, and no town nearby," he said.

Rajiv B Lal, CEO and MD of the Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC), said a study of microfinance revealed that while it was highly successful in providing credit to small communities, what was needed was a business model by which it could be replicated over a large number of villages.