Rae Bareli may be a VIP constituency that has been showered with several big-ticket projects over the past few years, but its people have no feeling of exalted status. They claim the fruits of development have not trickled down to the grassroots, with infrastructure and employment still remaining dismal. Has the town failed to keep pace with the aspirations envisaged for it? Deepa Jainani finds out
Caution: Men at work? is the first sign one encounters as one nears the town of Rae Bareli while driving from Lucknow. The highway is being broadened from a two-lane to a four-lane one. A little further, as one approaches Bachhrawan block, a flyover is under construction. Similar signs of development are visible all over the town, which has become the newest address for several top-notch educational and research institutions in the country, be it the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) or Footwear Design & Development Institute (FDDI), National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) or petroleum institute, an all-women?s university or an All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Not surprisingly, when a slew of measures were announced for the town in the recent rail budget, including a forged wheel factory, the Opposition termed it a ?Rae Bareli budget?.
But is this scramble for development making any difference to the lives of the people of the town and having a positive effect on the local economy?
?Well, honestly, we are yet to see the effect on our daily lives. While all the major roads linking the district to other districts, which were in a total mess earlier, have been taken over and spruced up by the NHAI (National Highways Authority of India), the connecting inner roads are still in a dismal state, just like any other non-descript semi-urban town in UP,? says Govind Rajan, a resident of Harchandpur assembly segment, where a 12-acre mint park is coming up. It is being set up by The Spices Board and will have common facilities for processing and value addition of mint before export.
Even the rail coach factory (RCF) in Lalganj?the only project the UPA government has handed over to the constituency so far that has had some impact on the lives of the local people?employs only 600 people. ?At present, this plant is only assembling and giving finishing touches to the stainless steel coaches for Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains brought from the Kapurthala factory. But once our expansion work is completed by June next year, we will start rolling out 1,000 coaches per year. And then our workforce will also increase manifold,? says Shabeeh Ahmed, senior section engineer at RCF.
However, PD Singh, a local businessman, is of the view that all talk of development in the area will fall flat unless local residents are recruited in the workforce. ?Of the total 541 hectares of land for the coach factory, 283 hectares belonged to private land owners. The Railways has agreed to provide jobs to about 1,400 persons in compensation for the land acquired for the factory and these jobs will be given to the land owners in ?Group D? category only. For all the plum postings, people from outside the district will be hired. How will that help in the growth of the local economy, apart from giving some fringe benefits to the local people in the form of increased trading opportunities or boosting the service sector?? he asks.
?No improvement can be brought in the district even if 2,000 people from outside come to study or work here. More needs to be done for the all-round development of the town, including generating better jobs for local people and better infrastructure? he adds.
NIFT, which was one of the first institutions among the many to set up a centre in Rae Bareli some six years ago, also has a very small number of students who are from the town. Says Dr AK Khare,
director of NIFT, Rae Bareli, ?When our new campus is ready by June next year, we will add three more courses?two undergrad studies and one post-graduate?to our existing three undergraduate courses.?
He adds: ?Unlike other states, this centre does not have any domicile quota. But we definitely encourage local youth to sit for the entrance tests. Once the new campus comes up, our student strength is expected to peak to 700 by 2018 from the 262 now.?
However, the considerable young populace of the city rues the lack of basic infrastructure such as shopping complexes or even a multiplex. ?There is no new thing in the city which can be of interest to the youngsters. The institutes are all self-sufficient and whenever the youngsters feel like going out for shopping or entertainment, they are forced to go to the neighbouring cities of Lucknow or Allahabad. Our loss is our neighbour?s gain,? says Vishnu Bharwani, a local shopkeeper, who sells branded menswear at Civil Lines, the town?s best-known address.
The thought is echoed by Anuj Mishra, a fourth-year student of fashion designing at NIFT. ?While we have seen this centre (NIFT) grow during our stay here, the city is yet to keep pace. Some time back, a mega mart did open here, but with us being the only buyers, it soon shut down,? he says, adding that local folks are still not comfortable with the idea of shopping in malls and watching films
in multiplexes.
When asked whether he and his friends, most of whom come from bigger towns and cities, miss the fun of eating out or simply hanging out, he responds: ?Every time we feel like going out for a movie or even some window shopping, we go to Lucknow, the nearest town.?
Ironically, neighbouring Lucknow and Kanpur, both iconic cities in their own right, are striving hard to keep their industrial units like Scooters India and textile and jute mills alive, whereas Rae Bareli is being showered with one project after another.
In fact, for NIFT second-year student Shipra Srivastava, getting her parents to agree to her admission to this centre was a tough task. ?My parents were really worried when they came here for the first time. The roads were very bad and the town wore a shabby look. Now, thankfully, there is a change for the better, but we still crave for some ice-cream parlours, the Pizza Huts, McDonalds, KFCs and PVRs.?
And while FDDI may fare better in terms of local student enrollment?350 of the total 550 students are from UP and of these 350, 192 are from Rae Bareli, Amethi and Pratapgarh districts?the faculty feels that educational institutes alone cannot bring development. Says Nalin Pandey, assistant manager, training, at FDDI, ?Education alone cannot usher in development anywhere in the world. A change in scenario will take place only when the industry comes in and recruits local hands.?
?Together with FDDI and NIFT, the town can well be the fashion industry?s cradle in the days to come, but for that to happen, a lot more needs to be done,? feels Harish Nautiyal, head of department, footwear designing, FDDI. ?It would be of immense help to the students if there were some leather units and ancillary units in the vicinity of the institute. Apart from the students, it will also have a ripple effect on the local economy as it would generate jobs. At present, we seem to be working in isolation,? he observes.
Numberspeak
Almost 2.5 lakh people living below the poverty line
Only 1,30,000 children of the total 4,60,898 between ages 0-6 in the district vaccinated
81 per 1,000: neonatal deaths in the district
33 per 1,000: neonatal mortality
30.55 kWh: per capita electricity consumption
Only 2,16,642 households in district with population of 3,404,004 have electricity connections
0.30 number of industrial areas per lakh population
14.52: number of small-scale industries per lakh population
CDR: 30.90
4.89: number of scheduled banks per lakh population
