GUWAHATI, July 27 - The State Government has proposed to take up a five-year mega-mission, �Chief Minister Samagra Gramya Unnayan Yojana� (CMSGUY), with an objective to double the farm income in Assam.
In his Budget speech presented in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, �It is proposed to take up a �Mega-Mission� called Chief Minister Samagra Gramya Unnayan Yojana (CMSGUY) for five years from 2016-17 and culminating in the year 2021-22 coinciding with 75 years of India�s Independence. The main objective is to double the farm income, in unison with the vision of the Prime Minister of India.�
He added, �It will take about 80 years to double farm income in Assam at the current rate of growth. Normal interventions by the Government in this regard would not be adequate to address the problem. It is, therefore, proposed to induct massive investments in rural areas for complete rural empowerment in a period of five years in a focused and concerted manner to realise the dream of doubling the farm income.�
He said that this is sought to be achieved through �saturation model� by covering each revenue village through focused intervention in direct economic activities, logistic support including market linkages and community support.
�There are 25,425 villages (2011 Census) in Assam. Saturation model demands that each and every revenue village is covered by the end of the Mission period by covering at least a quarter of them annually for four years. It means that annually the Mission requires to cover about 6,356 villages annually from 2017-18 to 2021-22. The planned investment is about Rs 1.20 crore per revenue village. The total requirement for the Mission is Rs 30,000 crore over a period of five years,� Sarma said.
The Finance Minister said that 10 per cent of the total proposed investment will be in the form of community resources such as land, man-days and the remaining 90 per cent will be from the State resources.
�For the current year, I now propose to allocate Rs 50,000 lakh in this Budget... State Government will also seek this Mega Mission specific financial support from the Central Government during the current financial year (2016-17) onwards so as to help the State to stimulate its economy, create employment, increase income of the people and thus, raise its resources in future on sustainable basis,� he said in his Budget speech.
Sarma said that focused interventions will be aimed at nine critical areas and related sub-missions including Fishery Mission, Milk Mission, Organic Mission, Land Management and Conservation Mission, Sericulture, Khadi and Cottage Industry Mission, Road and Broadband Connectivity, Semi-Processing, Processing and Market linkages, Youth-Yoga-Sports Mission, and e-gram Mission by developing village knowledge centres.
�The synergy among various sub-missions will be achieved with a single objective of doubling the farm income. Each sub-mission will have independent targets and outcomes which are aggregated and converged into the overall mega-mission targets� There will be a registered society under the Government of Assam,� he said.
