Business Sharing its Progress with Villagers Towards Developing Model Villages

Abstract

In a developing country like India, village-centric development is very critical for improving Human Development Index of the country. In this direction, corporate contribution assumes significance for rehabilitation and resettlement of project affected people and overall intervention under its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative. Since India is a country of villages, CSR has to be more sensitive towards the economic, social and cultural needs of rural society of the country. In this paper, it is proposed to gear all interventions for promoting model villages. Model village presents a credible vehicle for bringing about sustainability of a village community unit. A model village must have three significant components of infrastructure development, livelihood promotion and provision of services. Infrastructure development must cater to creating basic physical as well as social infrastructure like approach road, school building, community centre and social capital. Promotion of livelihood includes skill training, self-employment, employment opportunities and village enterprise development, while provision for services for the villagers includes health care, education, sanitation, recreational and other community services. Model village plan envisages a self-contained village community at the apex of all the pillars of sustainability, namely, livelihood, infrastructure and services. The future of Indian economy and the prospect of industry are going to depend largely on building sustainable and self-maintained smallest self-governing units called model villages.