Rural reconstruction in India

Rural development assumes a significant place in the over-all economic development of India not only because an overwhelming majority of our population lives in the rural areas but also due to the fact that higher proportion of our labour force is employed in the rural sector-agriculture and rural industries etc.; and this sector is also respon sible for the generation of a sizeable share of the national income. However, inspite of various steps taken in the direction of rural development over a period of more than three decades of planning, a number of chronic problems such as wide-spread poverty, misery, squalor, illiteracy, unemployment and under-employment, low agricultural and live-stock productivity, lyck of infrastructural facilities such as irrigation, power and credit, appallingly low level of health and nutrition and irrational attitudes, customs and values still haunt the rural areas.

It is these problems to which the author addresses himself in this book. He has tried to analyse some of these problems in the context of rural development of Jammu and Kashmir state and provides a comparative picture of Jammu and Kashmir state's achievements with those of the neighbouring states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh in particular and all India level in general.