New face of rural India: march of new 20-point programme

New Face of Rural India is an humble effort to highlight the progress made in the far flung interior villages of our vast country during the last three decades. The emphasis laid on rural development can be judged from the fact that out of 20 points in the new Agenda for the Nation, the New 20-Point Programme with the new motto Shrama eva Jayate, as many as seventeen deal directly with rural development programme. It is true, progress of the whole nation must be accompanied by simultaneous activity both in the farm and factories, in villages and cities. And yet it must also be observed that inspite of the last thirty years' of progress-during which we have succeeded to rank ourselves as one of the ten leading countries of the world in our industrial progress and an equally leading one in agriculture-we still represent some of the poorest rural population in the world. So far as our national income is concerned we do not figure anywhere near the first hundred of the world.