Rural Development Programmes in India

In India rural scenario the problem of poverty and unemployment have always been and still continue to attract the attention of our policy makers. Several strategies have been tried out to find out workable solution but these attempts have only touched the brings of the problem. Food For Work Programme (FWP) is the latest strategy chalked out by the Central Government to tackle the problems like low level of nutrition in the rural population, unemployment and strengthening of infrastructure. The Government of India first launched FFW programmes in 1977 in ten states including Andhra Pradesh. The underlying idea was that surpluses from green revolution areas could be used to pay the drought affected people to create community assets (Asthana in Nayak etc at 2002). Evaluations conducted by the planning commission (1979) showed that food prices were depressed in some locations and that there were also irregularities in the maintenance of labor registers. But the overall assessment was positive and the concept survived in the minds of policy makers as an effective approach to helping the poor in times of crisis and simultaneously undertaking structural works in rural areas.