Model Villages Led Rural Development: A Review of Conceptual Framework and Development Indicators

Rural Development Programmes have always been on the agenda of development for any country. India is such a country which contributes a mammoth share of its annual budget towards rural development and agriculture plays an integral role in rural development of India. But still rural India lags behind urban areas in almost all development parameters. There was a time when social reformers planned of developing Model Villages. The paper discusses the concept of Model Villages in India and how they can serve as micro-embodiments of the concept of rural development. Globally several development organisations have developed quantifiable indicators to measure the effectiveness of rural development interventions and Model Villages are in consonance with this global inventory of development indicators. A conceptual framework has been developed to establish this. The paper highlights some of the notable Model Village efforts of India and what have been their development indicators in the backdrop of global inventory of Rural Development Indicators. Also, the recent Model Village initiative of Central Government: the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana and its progress till date have been discussed and the add-ons which future rural development programmes can incorporate has been explored.