Government's Role in Rural Socio-Economic Development

Government has a role to play in as far as promoting socio-economic for rural livelihood as the government is there for the people and it has to do anything possible for its people to live better life, government can promote socio-economic for rural livelihood through the implementation of different project and formulating policies that promote better living standards for the rural community. Socio-economics is the social science that studies how economic activity affects social processes.

In general it analyzes how societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local or regional economy, or the global economy.

Government can promote socio-economic of rural livelihood through promoting some of these strategies and programs that are aimed at improving the welfare of the rural people in general. And these include; integrated rural development, irrigation and water development, better market access, land reform programs and better social service delivery Rural integrated development: The integrated development approach emphasis is to bring all necessities at one locality include availability of hospitals, stadiums, roads, banks and court required for rural development moving.

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The management system may be highly authoritarian credit may be designed to provide an important role for local people in planning, decision making and implementation of the programmers. The main emphasis is on rational development and coordination of all principal factors required for agricultural and rural development (Manning & Thompson 2006). So in this case the integrated rural development approach sees as the transformation of rural area as the most effective way of accelerating socio-economic development through establishment of satellite town, promotion of small scales industries in rural areas, increasing agricultural production, provision of credit facilities and improvement of infrastructure.

In so doing this will sustain the economic growth of country whereby the rural people will be able to manufacture or add value to the raw materials.

Government should put policies that will help in this program of rural integrated development and those policies should be able to accommodate all stakeholders so that the intended purpose of the program should be achieved. In this case rural integrated development can help to reduce poverty whereby the rural masses will be able to access lending services in the banks and they will also be able to sale their product on the available a market and they can also add value to the raw material, hence promoting socio-economic for the rural livelihood and status of rural people will be improved and their living standards will be better off. Irrigation and water development: it is aimed at ensuring sustainable economic development with fully conserved and utilizes the water source.

Through irrigation the rural can be able to produce crops twice a year which can help them in their every day life and reducing the poverty level of rural community. One of the examples is the green belt initiative which is expected to cover all potential irrigatable land, hence the land can be used to produce maize, rice and soya beans which can improve their livelihood as these crops fetch better price on the market. In this case the government should put policies that will help the stakeholder to take part in these activities and policies should be viable to help the poor not to benefit these already rich (Rosegrant and Hazell 2000). In case of irrigation and water development it means they will be having enough food and have access to safe water hence socio-economic of the rural people will be improved. Land reform: involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural land.

Land reform can, therefore, refer to transfer of ownership from the more powerful to the less powerful, such as from a relatively small number of wealthy owners with extensive land holdings such as plantations, large ranches, or agribusiness plots to individual ownership by those who work the land (Rosegrant & Hazell 2000). Land reform may also entail the transfer of land from individual ownership even peasant ownership in smallholdings to government-owned collective farms; it has also, in other times and places, referred to the exact opposite: division of government-owned collective farms into smallholdings. For example, in Zimbabwe this process of land reform is in progress whereby the government is take land to the white and gives it to the black native Zimbabwean and the government is trying to do this to make sure that poor people do have land to cultivate hence reducing poverty since the large area of land was controlled by the whites. Another issue is of land tenure reform which is also under the same land reform program. Land tenure is system how land is owned.

It is important for the government to put policies so that every one should have land for farming and this will help fair distribution of the land. For example, Malawi government has introduces a program called kudzigulira malo, just to make sure that people do have enough land to cultivate. Since we depend mostly on agriculture, the program will help the poor community to have land and cultivate enough food hence reducing poverty. In case of land reform it means the peasant society will have power over land and able to grow more crops which will help them to boost their economic status. Better market access: With the right support small producers can become efficient and reliable suppliers for local markets and cities, and even for new global markets, investing in small processing businesses, which add value, can increase the revenues of the poor on the rural areas. Government should support several actors who help improve the market position of small producers, such as farmer organizations, rural financing institutes and service centers.

It is important that civil society, the private sector and the government closely work together (UN Malawi 2010). The most challenging thing for the people in rural community is to have better market access because they have the commodity but they can’t find the market to sale them and at the end they are reaped off by middle men or vendor who buy their produce at lower pieces hence making the poor community not to benefit from their sweat. But if the government and other stakeholder help the poor rural masses in market access, there will be improvements in rural development as they will be investing in the same community hence better livelihoods for the rural community. Better social service delivery is vital for promoting socio-economic of rural livelihood; most of developing countries have problems in social service delivery such as school, health services, road infrastructure and safe water and sanitation.

There is problem in service delivery in developing countries such as Malawi where there is congestion in primary school which affect the delivery of proper teaching, most of the school has ratio 1 teacher to 100 pupils or more than that compare to normal ratio of 1:60. So government has to do something as this has an impact on socio-economic of the rural livelihood as these children grow. Another problem is in health service delivery where by people do walk long distances to accesses these service and government to ensure that rural people are living in better condition and have access to health service it has to construct enough health centers. Government is doing good job in as far as promoting socio-economic of rural livelihood looking at the program of rural electrification and this one of example which shows that government has role to play in promoting socio-economics of the rural livelihood. Through this program of rural electrification it means rural people will be able to do any activities that are available in urban areas and that need electricity hence their living standard will be improved.

Reference

1. Manning R & Thompson S. (2006). Promoting pro-poor growth agriculture.
2. Rosegrant, M. and P. Hazell (2000), Transforming the Rural Asian Economy: The Unfinished Revolution, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong UN Malawi (2010). Malawi country assessment report.
3. Lilongwe UN (United Nations) (2004), “Millennium Development Goals: Status 2004”, Department of Public Information – DPI/2363-A, New York.