Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission

The Union Cabinet has approved Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission with an outlay of Rs 5142.08 crore.

Aim of the mission: 

To spur economic, social and infrastructure development in rural areas.

Important Details: 

Under the scheme, the State Governments would identify the clusters in accordance with the framework for implementation prepared by the Ministry of Rural Development.

For the selection of clusters, an objective analysis at the district, sub district and village level, of the demography, economy, tourism and pilgrimage significance and transportation corridor impact will be carried out.

The clusters will be geographically contiguous Gram Panchayats with a population of about 25000 to 50000 in plain and coastal areas and a population of 5000 to 15000 in desert, hilly or tribal areas.

The mission also aims to set up these clusters by 2019-20 across the country.

Components of the scheme: 

The scheme will function with 14 mandatory components to ensure an optimum level of development of a cluster, which include skill development training linked to economic activities, digital literacy, fully equipped mobile health unit and inter-village road connectivity.

The other components of the scheme in clusters will be providing citizen service centres- for electronic delivery of citizen centric services and e-gram connectivity, public transport, LPG gas connections, agro processing, agri services including storage and warehousing, sanitation, provision of piped water supply, solid and liquid waste management and upgrading education facilities.

Funding: 

The funding will be through various schemes of the government converged into the cluster.

The mission will provide an additional funding support of up to 30% of the project cost per cluster as critical gap funding as central share to enable development of such ‘Rurban clusters’.

The cost of developing a cluster might vary between Rs 50 crore and Rs 52 crore. The preferred mode of delivery would be through public-private-partnerships while using various scheme funds.