President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam said on Thursday he was confident that the states in eastern and north-eastern India with their multiple core competence and investment plan could be transformed into developed states well before 2020.

For that the country has to ensure that the overall GDP growth rate of East and North East States reaches 8 per cent to 10 per cent and maintained at this level for the next 10 years.

There is an urgency to improve the conditions of rural life through better physical connectivity, electronic connectivity and knowledge connectivity since over two hundred million citizens of East and North East out of 260 million population live in villages, Kalam said.

For this, employment generation, particularly in the rural areas is very essential.

Kalam said the programme called PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) involving a geographically co-located clusters of multiple villages with four connectivities namely physical, electronic and knowledge leading to economic connectivity can help in the process.

India with its 600,000 villages needs to have 7,000 PURAs.

The specific needs of the PURA for different states in East and North East will be around 2000 PURAs, the President said.

Each PURA cluster, apart from concentrating on reinforcing agriculture, should emphasize on areas like agro processing, development of rural craftsmanship, dairy, silk production and fishing, so that the non-farm revenue for the rural sector is enhanced, based on the competitive advantage of the region.

The president said it is also essential that the rural economy should be driven by renewable energies such as solar, wind, bio-fuel and conversion of municipal waste into power. With this approach, the core competencies in the rural sector would be harnessed for sustainable development of the economy as a whole.

Currently, India has five operational PURAs such as Periyar PURA, Byrraju PURA, Loni PURA, Chitrakoot PURA and Sakthi PURA.

With a strategy for the bottom of the economic pyramid through PURAs, India should be able to transform its rural economy into cluster based, economically viable systems in the shortest possible time.

Kalam also emphasised on knowledge platform for eastern states that will combine the core competencies of all the states in the region.

Kalam said as per Planning Commission projection a sum of over Rs. 3,25,000 crore (Rs 3,250 billion) is likely to be available for the development of East and North East region during the 11th plan period.

North East states in particular has been allotted a sum of Rs.50,000 crore (Rs 500 billion) in the 11th Plan period for providing road connectivity.

In addition there are planned missions for improving the availability of power, electronic connectivity, creation of inland waterways, air connectivity, rail connectivity, establishment of industries and enhancing the tourism potential in the north east during the 11th Plan period. Based on these, a strategy should be worked out on how this financial resource could be effectively utilized as planned for the intended mission in a time bound manner.

The above initiatives can only bring the people in the east and north east states below the poverty line to be zero by 2017 from 45 per cent now.

This will also increase the current per capita income of the East and North East region which is in the range Rs 6,500 to Rs 18,000, to Rs 50,000.

The initiatives will also reduce Infant mortality rate to 10 per thousand from the present 60 per thousand prevalent in some of the states and help realise the goal of 100 per cent literacy from the existing less than 50 per cent in some of the states.