Rural infrastructure—Status, spread, investment and benefit from rural godown scheme

The study has been conducted to find the extent of spread of constructed/renovated rural godowns, regional imbalances in their construction, investment made and subsidy distributed, their availability in terms of geographical area as well as production and utilization pattern. It has examined the benefit extended to rural economy in terms of employment generation, wastage reduction and price gain by launching of the scheme In India. The scheme being implentd by Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India) is a credit linked subsidy scheme. The subsity is back-ended and is being released to the units by NABARD and NCDC. Under the scheme, a total of 9483 godowns of different capacities have been promoted up to March 2005. More than 53 per cent of godowns have been promoted by farmers, 25 per cent by farmers' cooperatives, 18 per cent by others and 4 per cent by public sector agencies. The spread of the rural godowns under the scheme has been found in 21 states and one Union Territory. A total of 141.83 lakh tonnes capacity has been created under the scheme. On an average, at all-India level only 3 godowns are available per thousand sq km of area. Suprisingly, not even one godown is available per thousand tonnes of produce at all-India level. The study has suggested extension of the benefit to more number of farmers to check the growing imbalance among the regions, districts and states in the construction of rural godowns.