Rural Development : Issues and Challenges

Rural development has fascinated the visionaries and statesmen in the 1950s. Since that periods many programs and projects have been undertaken by several countries for the development of their areas. Despite the apparent rosy picture there are still several areas in the rural development that need to be looked into. To understand why the rural development efforts have not succeeded in achieving the desired results, it is essential to find out the basic issues and contemporary challenges and take corrective measures accordingly. Rural development refers to the structural change in the socio-economic situation to achieve improved living standard of low income population residing in rural areas and making the process of their development self-sustaining. As rural development is essential for the improvement of quality of life among the rural people, utmost care should be taken for improvement of living standard of the rural masses through concerted efforts in achieving a balanced rural development .This paper is an attempt to focus on the issue and challenges to design some potential strategies for rural development Keywords : Socio-economic , Balanced Rural Development, Rural areas, Dimensions of Rural Development , Programs for Rural development , Rural Community , Self-help group (SHG) , Sustainable agriculture.