Address During the Jyoti Gram Yojna to the Nation Champaner, 11 November 2006

POWERING WITH ELECTRICITY IS THE FOUNDATION FOR PROGRESS 

I am indeed delighted to participate in the dedication ceremony of the Jyoti Gram Yojana (JGY) of Gujarat Government to the nation. My greetings to the organizers, engineers, technical support staff, citizens of Champaner and distinguished guests.

JYOTI GRAM YOJNA

I understand that Jyoti Gram Yojana is a scheme to provide continuous three phase power supply to the rural area for upliftment of 30 million rural citizens residing in nearly 18,000 villages. I am happy that the timely implementation of this scheme will provide more opportunity for local employment, provide better health services and infrastructure facility, provide better computer based education to the children, help local dairy and milk testing process, improve the lifestyle of the villagers and reduce migration from rural to urban area. I congratulate Government of Gujarat for conceiving and implementing this scheme which will benefit nearly eighteen thousand villages of the State.

GUJRAT PURA

With this important infrastructure in place Gujarat can think of complementing it with the connectivities such as physical connectivity, electronic connectivity and knowledge connectivity to the rural complexes leading to economic connectivity of the village complexes. Thus, the provision of quality electric power can lead to creation of three hundred PURA complexes covering the eighteen thousand villages of the State. This will further enhance the overall economic activity and the prosperity of Gujarat as a whole. Recently, I was in Chhattisgarh, where I inaugurated a PURA complex at Baktara village in Arang Tehsil of Raipur District. This PURA complex covering 22 villages with a population of 36,000 people is coming up and very soon it will be a vibrant PURA with high quality 4 lane roads with Battery operated and Bio-diesel buses, 1000 modern dwelling units, quality health care facility with 250 bed hospital and a state-of-the-art school by DAV Institution and paramedical and nursing training institutions. The Corporate have committed to establish these facilities linked to the schedule of commission of the PURA within next 5 years. I thought of sharing this experience with you to give an idea how the areas are fast developing in different parts of our country. I am sure, Gujarat Government can consider establishing such PURAs in different districts since the vital requirement of power and quality roads are already there in many rural areas.

DESIGN OF PURA

While designing PURA complexes the focus should be on creating employment potential for about 50% of the families of the complex. The PURA complex should have its umbilical connectivity with the nearest university. Let us visualize how the Gujarat PURA will transform into by the year 2011:

a) All the village citizens will have dwelling units with clean water and sanitation facilities b) The village complex will have 100% literacy c) Apart from upgrading the existing schools, the complex will have few colleges, world class vocational training institutions in construction, carpentry, welding natural art; Computer maintenance and Services, IT Enabled Services, BPO and Call Center. Sakshat programme - a one stop education portal will be used through internet for capacity building in this region. d) The people in the PURA complex will be able to get quality healthcare through tele-medicine and also through mobile clinics via PHC. They will be brought under a corporate medical healthcare scheme. e) The PURA village complex will be free from diseases like polio, TB, malaria and other waterborne diseases. f) The PURA complex will promote horticulture and floriculture products, apart from agriculture in collaboration with nearest agricultural university. g) There will be agro-processing industries and the cottage industries based on the core-competence of the region in the PURA complex. h) Dairy will be functional producing over One lakh ltrs of milk per day to the nearest district headquarters. i) All the water bodies in this PURA cluster will be operational and used for water harvesting during the rainy season. j) All the employable people of the village complex will have an additional job in dairy, agro-processing industry, construction business or tourism. k) The per capita income of the PURA cluster will be three times the present per capita income. Of course to achieve the above performance, a dynamic PURA management system is very vital. This has to be evolved with the active participation of State Government, District authorities, NGO, educational institutions, small scale industries or an enterprise in association with the Panchayat. Finally it has to be managed as a viable and sustainable business proposition through the local entrepreneurship.

CONCLUSION

The entire PURA cluster has to function as a viable sustainable business entity providing certain value added quality services to the rural community and opportunities for entrepreneurial growth in the rural sector. The PURA unit as a whole should aim to improve the quality of life and welfare of the rural community encouraging reverse migration of urban people to rural areas. Also, the PURA unit should enable preservation and nurturing of cultural heritage of the region. PURA should be implemented as a participative endeavour between all the stake holders namely, people of the villages, elected members, entrepreneurs, members of the state government and central government and societal transformers. With these words, I dedicate the Jyoti Gram Yojana to the nation and wish all success to the Government of Gujarat and its partners in promoting rural prosperity in the State. May God bless you.