NEW DELHI, 3 Feb: People have started returning to villages in some border districts of Arunachal Pradesh under the Vibrant Villages Programme, even as no formal impact assessment has been carried out to study reverse migration or related outcomes, the Lok Sabha was informed Tuesday.
In a written response, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai said that, while the Centre has not undertaken any assessment on the programme’s impact, the Arunachal government has reported people returning to the border villages of the state.
“No impact assessment has been carried out. However, the Arunachal Pradesh government has informed that people are returning to villages in the border districts of Kurung Kumey, Dibang Valley and Shi-Yomi,” Rai said.
The reply came on a query by BJP MP Baijayant Panda, who sought to know whether the government has made any impact assessment of the manner in which the Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP) has influenced reverse migration trends, women’s entrepreneurship, and youth-led rural innovation in the border regions, and if so, the details of such assessments.
Rai said the VVP-I was approved in February 2023 as a centrally sponsored scheme for the “comprehensive development of select villages” along the northern border, covering 46 blocks in 19 districts of Arunachal, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and the union territory of Ladakh.
“Initially, 662 villages were identified for comprehensive development on priority under VVP-I,” he said.
Expanding the initiative, the government approved VVP-II in April 2025 to cover the border blocks along the international land borders in 15 states and two union territories other than the northern border.
“Under VVP-II, 1,954 villages have been identified for comprehensive development,” the minister said.
On implementation, Rai said 2,558 projects and works with an outlay of Rs 3,431 crore have been sanctioned under VVP-I, including through convergence with other central ministries and departments.
He said also that more than 8,500 activities have been undertaken so far, including awareness drives, service delivery camps, training and capacity-building programmes, health and veterinary camps, fairs and festivals, and promotion of tourism activities across the covered states and UTs.
The objective of the scheme is to create sufficient incentives for people to stay on in the selected villages. (PTI)
