Development Planning

Development, many believe, is a process by which one becomes better off by increasing his command over goods and services, and by increasing the choices open to him. They also believe that in a sustainable society economic and social systems will have to be shaped with a view to maintaining its natural resources and life support systems. Thus emerges the need for evolving strategies which reduce discrepancy between expectations and fulfillment in controlling our environment.

Our professional contributions, in this context, come in the form of strategies, plans and programs for a variety of situations of

• Urban, rural, regional development,
• Rural and decentralized renewable energy development.

An excerpt from the report on a study of village governments in Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh

The study recommends legitimizing the responsibilities of administering the development of villages through an institution with its wisdom, manners and morals, rooted in the traditional sociopolitical organization of the people as envisaged in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India so as to enable the people to handle the development administration, effectively, and to facilitate their defining the priorities of the development needs with particular reference to the linkage with the development bureaucracy, facilitating in turn its (better) insight into the development perceptions of the villagers.

For, such a participation in rural development administration will, more often than not, be genuinely democratic, and provide for participation of a people who do not follow the principle of election, as followed in the constitution of a gram panchayat because such an election is contrary to the tribal tradition of Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.

Dilip Kumar Paul.
July 29, 1991.

An excerpt from the report on a study of demand and supply of fuel and fodder in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya

The increase in population may not make it possible for the shifting cultivator to increase the fallow period. And the level of articulation that he has developed through traditional shifting cultivation may not facilitate his adoption of permanent agriculture successfully in the short run. Thus an appropriate strategy for alleviating the poverty of the cultivator will have to be rooted in the premise that

• Husbanding trees (where one has to select trees to suit the soil) as distinct from husbanding crops (where he has to prepare the soil to suit the crops) together with husbanding animals, has the potential of generating a return higher than that from husbanding crops in shifts (shifting cultivation) per unit of land and time, and
• Husbanding trees and animals at the outset will enable the poor permanent cultivator to earn money necessary for procuring costly high yielding agricultural inputs.

In the ultimate analysis, of course, an appropriate strategy for coping effectively with the demands for fuel and fodder would constitute

• Promoting ecological consciousness through consistent programs of development communication
• Curbing population growth
• Increasing the productivity of land and livestock
• Ensuring the participation of people in planting, protecting, nurturing trees, and
• Making land, seedlings, sustenance (during the period of gestation) available to the villagers and then sharing the benefits of fuel and fodder forests with them.

For, fuel wood and fodder are renewable sources of energy. Both of them grow on land, now a scarce commodity, with the growth of population making it more and more so, requiring the people and the governments to make as rational a use as possible of the available land.

Dilip Kumar Paul.
December 20, 1989

An excerpt from the report on an integrated rural energy plan for Mawrynkneng Block in Meghalaya

The report estimates the requirement of energy, in the year 2010, for dwelling, working and amenities and incorporates an energy intervention plan for harnessing locally available renewable sources of energy through a set of technologies to cater to the extent of 7 percent of the total requirement of energy at an investment of forty five lakhs of rupees.

The report incorporates a structural framework for implementing an Integrated Rural Energy Plan yearwise, villagewise, sectorwise and technologywise, over a period of ten years. The structural framework provides for working out alternatives by the implementing agency to suit contingent circumstances.

Dilip Kumar Paul.
October 18, 2000.