The NREP was launched in October, 1980, and became a regular Plan programme from April, 1981. The NREP will be continued in the seventh Plan as an important component of the anti-poverty strategy.
NREP will have to be viewed as an integral part of the total package, which would imply that an effort would have to be made to direct and monitor the wage employment opportunities accruing through this Programme to members of the target group including those identified for assistance under the IRDP.
The same principle would apply in the choice of projects which would, therefore, have to take account of labour intensity of projects, their capacity to provide reasonably long spells of employment during implementation, direction towards poor, long-term income and employment generation potential, capacity to create a base for productive asset endowment and capacity for filling gaps in vital infrastructure.
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Based on this, priority will be accorded to works for the development of waste lands and marginal lands allotted under land reform measures, renovation of derelict tanks for large-scale development of fisheries with the target- group orientation, social forestry including fuel and energy plantations, fodder and pasture development and roadside plantations with maximum involvement of the target-groups in their management coupled with nursery development of target-group land-holders.
Development of composite homestead projects for the shelter less in the form of housing complexes-cum-production estates within a larger concept of habitat development, fieldworks in irrigation command areas and micro watersheds, roads according to well-defined techno- economic norms and within planned priorities such as those arising out of the MNP and need-based construction of buildings, which apart from schools, panchayat ghars etc. would provide vital economic infrastructures like buildings for godowns, banks and workshops for target-group beneficiaries.