Rural India transformation

The face of the Indian village is changing rapidly with the advent of good communication gadgets like mobiles,tablets, convenience of mobility with the rapid inroads of two, three and four wheelers, and lifestyle consumer goods like air conditioners, vaccum cleaners, washing machines reaching every rural house hold. Once up on a time comforts of high middle class are now available to common man in villages at a phone call. This development is making the lifestyle of rural India highly transformed and causing its own effects on the society surrounding them. The growth in the city life of a common man is always at a medium pace as he or she has to cope- up with high costs of city life and pressed for time to meet the ends . The rural economy on the other side is growing at a rapid pace with the advent of real estate boom and cost of the land increasing and cost the physical labour is also getting increased day by day. People are coming out of their heriditary professions to take up the lesser physical effort jobs. Farmers are facing difficulty in getting manual labour to work in the fields as the next generation of farm labour is not interested to join their parents in spite of attractive wages. While educated lot of next generation are going for software jobs others are preferring to drive an auto or do some job as courier boy or real estate sales agent or some other job which involves no physical work. Though its welcome to invite mechanization and development to avoid human hardship but today there are no people to do some jobs in villages such as coconut tree climbers, pot makers, laundry wallas(who are migrating to cities as watchman in apartments), etc.,

The life in villages in transformation and villages situated in close vicinity to cities are facing huge hardship to find workforce in villages due migration of workforce to cities at the dawn. Small and medium farmers are facing huge challenge in continuing agriculture due to the shortage of labour. Fertile lands are getting converted into real estate and apartments are coming up in fields as agriculture is no more a possibility with economic viability.

The rural India is now experiencing good incomes and with sudden spurt of mobile phones , electronic gadgets , vehicles causing both positive and negative impact on the rural society. The urge of owning and maintaining high-end gadgets and lavish vehicles (which are not essential in rural life) causing the greed and crime rate increase. The increasing incidents such as chain snatching, burglaries, domestic violence are the results of this kind of unnecessary consumerisation in rural India. Easy living is becoming a way of life in rural India, where as in cities common man works twice hard for his survival.

Getting an educated employee is now becoming easy rather to employ general labour who is without education or skill. White collar manpower is now abundant when compared to working class. Many are feeling that rural Indian population especially many BPL families now enjoying all kinds of subsidies and benefits, pensions from Government and leading a happy life. They are having health security in most of the States with schemes such as Arogyasree and their kids are getting professional education sponsored by government scholarships. Subsidised housing, right to work are giving them security to life and they never feel hard to live life. Many people enjoying these benefits are needy but there are a section of people who are taking these benefits and becoming trouble makers for the society. They are damaging the harmony in the society with their acts. The working hours in city are increasing from 8 to 12 excluding transport timings where as working hours in rural India are decreasing to 4 to 6 hours in day. The transport charges in city for an employee are born by them selves where as in rural areas they are freely picked up and dropped at their residence at employer’s cost. There are strict rules for taking a day’s leave in cities and in rural areas its at the mercy of the working class the employer has to organize his work. The employer in the city will pay the work force after a month’s labour where as in rural areas now the labour is being paid with advances and recovering them at the will of workman. The working class in the city is least bothered about their health conditions to absent from work where as in rural areas working class abstain from work even for reason of simple headache or body pains. A city dweller living in unhealthy conditions, definitely becomes jealous of comfortable living conditions in villages of working class. The present working class in rural areas are most satisfied lot and they are uncompromising on any terms and conditions unlike the city worker. The rural worker is least bothered about this work and commitment at the work spot his attendance and commitment are totally dependent on his whims and fancies. The rural Indian working class person’s life can go on without earning for couple of days which makes him doubly secured.

If nobody is ready for doing physical work in site, we cannot improve our agriculture output, we cannot build big projects, we even cannot develop infrastructure with this attitude in the minds of the people whether its rural or urban. Too much of sophistication and comfort zone living standards of people will become an obstruction to growth. The picture is now very clear in the rural areas as the mindset of rural Indian is not towards physical work out in the Sun rather they want a cozy and comfortable life style.

Its time now for governments to re think and device necessary planning in near future so that these regional imbalances can be contained .

By Raghu Bhushan Eranki

Rajahmundry