Economic Development Through Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme in India: An Analysis

Abstract

Gandhiji often said that village economics is different from industrial economics and the nation can progress only, when the villages are self reliant. That is why more concentration is given towards the rural sector of the Indian economy. The Govt. of India is giving great importance to the Khadi and Village Industries programmes which are the backbone for the development of rural economy of our country. In this paper we investigate the performance of Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme in the economy of India as well as Jharkhand State in the 11th FivePlan (2007-2012) in terms of numbers of project started, production, sales, employment and earnings. An explorative as well as descriptive research methodology is used to get the data related to the production and employment generated by village industries in India which is well segregated into six zones by the commission (East, West, North, South, Central and North East). The correlation analysis shows a very strong relationship between the selected variables in India. But in case of Jharkhand there is a strong correlation between Number of Village Industries started and Production from those village industries, and the product produced and the sales of those product, but the correlation between the project started and employment generated from those industries and employment generation and the earnings from those employment is very week, which shows that although the number of industries increased under the PMEGP scheme but still lot have to be done to promote village industries in the economy.