Photo credit: Times of India
India’s home ministry told the lower house (the Lok Sabha) on Tuesday that at least three villages in Arunachal Pradesh have reported reverse migration by their people.
The Times of India reports that this indicates a positive outcome of the ministry’s vibrant villages program (VVP) which.in its first phase unveiled development projects in villages abutting the Indo-China border across five states.
The objective of VVP is to create better living conditions and adequate livelihood opportunities to ensure prosperous and safe borders, control trans-border crime and assimilate the border population with the nation and inculcate them as “eyes and ears of the border guarding forces”, crucial for internal security. The development and connectivity boost is essentially aimed at preventing outmigration by the residents of the border villages..
The junior home minister Nityanand Rai said that projects with an outlay of Rs 3,431 crore were sanctioned by MHA under VVP-1 of which villages of Arunachal Pradesh received the lion’s share of Rs 2750 core for a total 2,082 projects. More than 8,500 activities like awareness drives, service delivery camps, training and capacity building initiatives, health and veterinary camps, fairs and festivals and tourism promotion activities, etc, were undertaken of which 2,966 were in Arunachal Pradesh, 2,221 in Ladakh, 1,836 in Uttarakhand, 1,016 in Himachal Pradesh and 530 in Sikkim.
Rai also shared that VVP-II too was approved on April 2, 2025 for the comprehensive development of 1,954 identified villages abutting international borders of 15 states and 2 Union territories. An outlay of Rs 6,839 crore has been okayed till 2028-29 for VVP-II, covering villages in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, J&K, Ladakh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
