Uttarakhand - Department of Land Resources

strategies has to be shifted towards creating conditions not only to expand
employment opportunities but also to achieve better living and working conditions.
Agriculture will continue to play an important role in providing employment. It is
necessary that the rural economy gets expanded and diversified into non-farm
activities towards providing productive employment to the growing labor force. Such
diversification and expansion of the rural economy is possible through promotional
policies and efforts. The success of these policies will largely depend on the ability to
do away with some of the inherent weaknesses of the delivery system and the ability
to design appropriate strategies as some are suggested below:
Given the high incidence of underemployment and increasing casual labor, a
primary objective of the state policy should be to generate productive work
opportunities in sectors which are more labor-intensive.
It is not enough to merely create employment opportunities, but also to provide
the people with the human capital which will enable them to take advantage of
these opportunities. Education and skill development are the prerequisites for
such empowerment. Special programs should be implemented to develop skills,
enhance technological levels and provide marketing channels for people
engaged in traditional occupations.
There is a tendency to implement many schemes with similar objective targeting
the same population. Convergence of related schemes across sectors will help
obviate any duplication of effort and depletion of resources as well as reduce the
overhead cost of programs.
A long-term perspective of development, reinforced by a consistent state policy,
is crucial to successful implementation of programs.
Isolated successful interventions cannot make any perceptible impact on social
and economic development. Yet, these micro level experiments represent the
seeds of change and need to be multiplied on a wider scale towards the
realization of the development goals. As a result, institutionalization of the
process and methods adopted in these experiments are necessary.
The essence of success stories is “people‟s participation”. The essential
ingredients of people‟s participation in the development process are assessment
of local resources, local level planning, people development, and establishment
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