Express India
With the cost of providing improved road, water,telecom and power infrastructure to rural India pegged at a whopping Rs1,58,313 crore, a Tata-sponsored study has proposed that the governmentsubsidise private players to encourage investments in basic amenities forvillagers.Home to 70 per cent of the country's population, rural India requires Rs92,690 crore (at 2002-03 prices) for providing telecom connectivity, Rs55,243 crore for power supply, Rs 5,892 crore roads and transport and Rs4,488 crore for water and sanitation, the study said.The India Rural Infrastructure Report, sponsored by Sir Ratan Tata Trustand prepared by the economic think-tank NCAER, said resolution toinfrastructure bottlenecks suffers from the fact that while infrastructure invillages is largely owned and run by the government, its funds areconstrained.On the other hand, private funds are attracted to areas where rates ofreturn are at least reasonable.Resolving this contradiction requires a Public-Private Partnership model,where the Government provides subsidies to the private playerscommensurate to the level of development required in particular rural area,the report suggested.The study highlighted that nine-tenths of rural households do not owntelephones, half do not have domestic power connections and even theconnected households are without power because of outages for almost17 hours a day in monsoon months and 13 hours a day in other months.
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