Q.Explain the role of rural infrastructure — roads, electrification, irrigation and rural banking — in agricultural and rural development.

Rural infrastructure forms the preconditions that allow farm and non-farm rural growth to actually take place. …

Rural infrastructure comprises the physical and financial facilities that allow agricultural and rural non-farm activity to actually function and grow, and four types are usually highlighted.

Rural roads connect villages to markets, input suppliers and processing centres. Without reliable roads, perishable agricultural produce cannot reach markets in time, and even a well-functioning marketing system or a favourable price cannot be realised by the farmer if the produce cannot physically get there.

Rural electrification supports irrigation directly (through electric pumpsets), enables rural agro-processing and small-scale industry that require power, and more generally improves the quality of rural life in ways that support both farm and non-farm activity.

Irrigation reduces a farmer's dependence on the timing and adequacy of rainfall, permits multiple cropping within a year, and — as the Green Revolution experience showed clearly — is often the single infrastructural precondition on which the benefits of improved seeds and higher fertiliser use actually depend; without assured water, HYV seeds cannot deliver their higher yield potential.

Rural banking and credit access ensures that farmers and rural non-farm entrepreneurs have access to institutional, regulated credit rather than falling back on more expensive, less transparent informal lenders — this links directly back to the institutional-versus-non-institutional credit distinction discussed earlier in the chapter. …

A common gap is discussing these four infrastructure types in isolation without connecting them back to the chapter's other themes — for example, not noting that irrigation is the precondition the Green Revolution depended on, o …