Rurban Mission: A Study of Smart Villages In the Making

Abstract

The Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, launched Shyam Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission (SPMRM), known as the National Rurban Mission (NRuM), with the idea of stimulating local economic development, enhancing basic services, and creating well planned Rurban clusters in potential growth centres in various States of India. This is a mission with several unique elements, such as nudging States to use programme convergence as a strategy to leverage economic drivers identified in a given cluster, and fill the gaps, if any, through a critical gap fund. It has been nearly five years since the launching of the mission. There are not many studies on how National Rurban Mission (NRuM) works on the ground. Therefore, this rapid study was conducted in four Rurban clusters in Tamil Nadu and Kerala using qualitative research design, to underscore/highlight issues, and come out with tentative conclusions that can serve as strong hypotheses for a larger study on how the mission works on the ground.