Jubilee Post News & Views
Kulsum Mustafa
Words of wisdom, and foresight this concern for the aged the population of rural India comes from Dr Sanjiv Phansalkar, chair, TRIF, fmr program director, Tata Trusts. He was one of the three panelists at India Rural Colloquy, the one-week long Zoom sessions which started off on Sunday evening.
This mega event is being organized by Transforming Rural India Foundation (TRIF), which works with NGOs and governments to develop and delivers solutions for rural India. The discussions in the colloquy are on challenges, solutions, and visualizing the Rural India landscape ten years from now.
Dr. Phansalkar said that while youth in company of the experienced elders will learn a lot the aged will find some moments of happiness and fulfillment in their company. This way both will benefit.
The ‘prevailing functional anarchy’ in the country as he called it was highly detrimental to growth. He said we Indians are in the habit of complaining all the time and love playing the victim card.
“As a nation, everyone in our country feels he has been wronged, so he keep cribbing all the time,” he said.
Another thing that pulled back all development was our habit of always talking about our rights and totally forgetting that we also have duties too. He said Rights with a sense of responsibility should be the right nationalistic approach.
Ms. Bharati Ramola, chair, Advisory Board TRIF, former Markets leader, PwC India, sketched her dream Rural India of 2030. She said she visualizes rural India with pucca roads and houses, a good healthcare system with a special focus on women health. She said she had special dreams for the youth of rural India which she wanted to share. In a decade from now she visualized that a quarter of the rural youth population she would like to see in colleges, the second quarter she would prefer engaged in skilling sector, the third quarter Ramola fancied as gone from the village for higher education and the fourth quarter she dreams will be joining their elders in agriculture.
She was highly critical of the Indian youth obsession on procuring government jobs. She said this was highly destructive for their growth.
“We must discourage this mindset in our youth as government jobs are few and when a young man fails to get one he loses all confidence and self labels himself a failure. We must instead teach them to adopt the entrepreneurial approach and increase their canvas” , she said.
She shared Her dream Indian villages 2030 and said it will have good educational facilities, healthcare, and proactive management of environment, all in perfect synch. She said that even though she knows that all this is not possible and that this is but an Eldorado but her heart wants to believe it is true and she urged everyone to try to be part of her dream for rural India and work towards making at least part of it come true.
She however was honest enough to accept that inequalities in women, Dalit were not really issues that could be possibly be wiped out in the near future. She suggested that we must start working on removing these social biases right at the school level when minds can be molded easily.
Talking about rural infrastructure Ms. Ramola warned about haphazard structural development said that care must be taken when modernizing a village e that we do not morph them into unplanned cities. She said that except for a few planned cities like Chandigarh the rest of the cities in the country are unplanned and therefore an eyesore. She said resources to be used for infrastructural development of the rural areas must be done with care and precision.
“A handful of medals at the Olympics by a country of 1.4 b is not enough, we must train rural youth to become big game changers through sports,” These were words of wisdom and foresight, spoken by Mr. R Venkataram, member of Advisory board TRIF, former managing trustee Tata Trusts while addressing the session as a panelist. Venkatram said that Technology is an equalizer and helps destroy inequalities prevalent in society. He said good training can take our youth, especially in rural India to great heights. He was of the view that a hyper collaboration of networks will help bring change faster.
Venkataraman said we do not have to just remove inequalities but also the insensibilities. He said the leap forward in technology has only increased inequalities. Citing an example he said that webinars are limited to those who have access to technology.
During the course of the 90 minutes conversation ably moderated by Soumitra Pandey (Partner, The Bridgespan Group) the speakers dwelt at length on the aspirations of the rural community and how best to provide the village population opportunities of growth sans any gender bias ensuring an all-around growth in rural belts. They said in the post-pandemic glocal society, economy, and technology are going to impact opportunities more. The august panelists, with many years of experience in their respective fields, spoke of paths which had to be walked by men and women in rural India to fulfill their aspirations and how they can live a life of dignity and prosperity fight heavy odds.
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Anish Kumar in his welcome address had stated that they had chosen August for this important colloquy because it is the month of Revolution, the month of our country’s Independence and it also has friendship Day. He said big changes are possible only if we work together with fervor, commitment zeal in a friendly environment with a commitment to take things forward.
The Takeaway from the colloquy was many and need to be studied carefully; The challenges like patriarchy, caste systems are big challenges that can be overcome with sustained and joint efforts. All stakeholders must join hands to carve out a better rural India landscape together. Powerful insights
