Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas

rdf:langString Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas

rdf:langString Provision of Urban Amenities to Rural Areas (PURA) is a strategy for rural development in India. This concept was given by former president Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and discussed in his book Target 3 Billion which he co-authored with Srijan Pal Singh. The genesis of PURA can be traced to the work done by Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute in the early 1990s on Taluka energy self-sufficiency. It was shown in the study that energy self-sufficient talukas can be a new development model for rural India in terms of creation of jobs and better amenities to its population. PURA proposes that urban infrastructure and services be provided in rural hubs to create economic opportunities outside of cities. Physical connectivity by providing roads, electronic connectivity by providing communication networks, and knowledge connectivity by establishing professional and technical institutions will have to be done in an integrated way so that economic connectivity will emanate. The Indian central government has been running pilot PURA programs in several states since 2004. The Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Rurban Mission is a successor to this mission.