India: Study on Development Model “PURA” in the Rural Area

Abstract

For the rapid urbanization in the developing countries, it is necessary to clarify what would be issues for realization of “Sustainable City” with the balance of the urban growth and the environment control and how those issues could be solved. In the past a manner to solve them required a huge amount of investment for the basic infrastructure in a mega-city. Such approaches have, however, limitations. The infrastructure investment only corresponding to the demand increase should be changed and it becomes important to control the demand.

In order to solve or to mitigate the problems in urbinization, the urban planning that includes the rural development is indispensable. And a social structure with the vicious cycle must be cut off. (i.e. migration from rural to urban⇒lack of infrastructure/shortage of employment opportunity/disorder development⇒ the urban poverty) In the past experience of JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) and other donor agencies in the area of rural development, there are many approaches such as the rural road construction, the irrigation facility, the micro community development, etc. But the vision of regional planning in the rural area is not shown clearly.

In India, the concept of PURA (Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) has been proposed. The pilot projects are implemented in some states in India. PURA is a rural planning model to vitalize the rural area and to provide the urban amenities that the rural people can easily utilize so that the migration from the urban to rural area would be controlled. The development issues in the rural area, such as the poverty and/or insufficient infrastructure, are not attractive for the economic activities because there are difficulties to establish a market for the growth and to create a new business. In addition, the small population in the rural area is not enough to make the effective and efficient investment for the public infrastructure. The idea of PURA is to provide the public facilities, employment opportunities, a certain scale of market in the rural area with a key word “CONNECTIVITY”. This kind of plan for rural development may be said “RURBANISATION”

This paper is to discuss the basic scheme of PURA with a case study on Raipur PURA in the State Chhattisgarh, India, and points out the issues for implementing PURA projects.