Working Papers

India, as one of the prominent developing countries, is trying to face-lift its rural image by various means since independence. Rural development receives major share of development expenditure. The government records claim that the anti-poverty programme launched by the government have been instrumental in uplifting the people from below poverty line substantially. Yet India has a long way to go in Integrated Rural Development (IRD) to improve the quality of life of rural people. Similar are the conditions for the neighbouring countries of India namely Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. But the approaches adopted by these countries are people oriented and not institutions oriented. Hence there exist greater peoplea??s involvement and less bureaucracy which makes the rural development programmes more user oriented. The present paper attempts to build constructive strategies for raising peoplesa?? involvement in the rural development through the decentralised approaches as evidenced in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. This paper also prescribes the adaptable approaches for better implementation of IRD by empowering people at the grassroots. ??