How do we create aspirations for the people within their villages, their panchayats? How do we bring back the dignity of occupations at the village level? How will people feel proud?
While the 'glass offices' may just be symbolic, the struggle is to reverse the trend. While it may take long to achieve, we need to start with small steps now.How do we instill pride in farmers feeding the cities? How do the villages/panchayats have best of facilities?
Restoring Dignity in farmers
The communities in rural areas are suffering from a lack of dignity and self pride. We have created a mirage - by presenting the flashy side of urban life. The lack of dignity in rural life is perhaps the prime reason for distress migration of the youths. Being a retail worker or a zomato delivery boy are more dignified than a farmer today!
Wondering, how do we bring back the dignity in rural life and in their occupation. How do we redesign the development process and infrastructure to instill dignity? Rural Ecosystem - architecture, skills, job etc needs to be created locally. Can panchayats employ 40-50 youths for different services?
Ideas would be helpful!
Discussions on LinkedIn
Priyanka Singh Bais
I believe content creation offers a unique way to positively impact rural ecosystems. Online content creators highlighting rural life, local products, & communal activities offer recognition and visibility to rural communities. This acknowledgment boosts the self-esteem & dignity of these communities by valuing their traditions and culture. Additionally, they provides educational content on sustainable farming practices & rural entrepreneurship, which can empower the rural population.
Another aspect is rural & agro-tourism, which brings economic opportunities to rural areas. Urban visitors explore the natural beauty, working farms & culture of rural regions, benefiting local economies. Maharashtra has set a great example. Besides, rural tourism has also been highlighted in the side events of G20 Tourism Working Group meetings held under Indian presidency!
Mainly, Panchayats are key here. Through capacity building, community engagement, effective governance, political decentralization, financial empowerment, & as you mentioned "stewardship," they can independently provide necessary incentives, funding, and infrastructure for rural development, ensuring sustainability & restoring dignity.
I hope these points address the questions
Priyanka Singh Bais
Subrata Singh Absolutely showing the reality of urban life should be the way forward!
Surjodoy Nandy
In most of the states Panchayats are either defunct or too much politicised....In most states fund, function, functionaries are either not devolved to panchayat or it's only on paper and block district admins are controlling panchayats. On the other side beneficiary syndrome is high among citizens. First political will is needed at the state legislators level so that they bring decentralisation as mentioned in the 11th schedule of constitution. So far only left parties showed such will in the country. On one side decentralisation and hand hold panchayats and on the other side cultural and educational intervention at community level....this I think can change the situation. If a local governance institution becomes stronger and sensitive, then things will change.
Subrata Singh
We need a better interpretation of 'local government'. An imagination and vision would help to change is needed! Panchayats with own funds can show the way.
There is a need to move away from the beneficiary approach, and embrace a stewardship approach.
Shiv Singh
Very tough to answer Subrata Singh but still some of the ideas are as follows:
# Policy reforms needed to strengthen the Panchayati Raj Governance systems to make them become accountable for socio-economic development with ecological balance at local level and towards more attention on strengthening all form of crafted/self-evolved institutions with more focus on inclusion, and women/youth empowerment
# Reforms related to meso-level governance would be also required to bring back the dignity and pride in rural populace
# Highly focused approach needed to build the competitive rural infrastructure
# Special attention needs to be provided to develop the local market and enterprises
# Climate smart regenerative agriculture production systems need to be established and strengthened with proper value chain systems towards produce price realisation, INRM, regenerative bio economic growth and sustainable impacts
# Upgraded services need to be ensured specially related to health, education, vocational training and strengthening rural livelihood (specially of youth)
# More focus need to be given on the establishing the local-self community governance on the common property resources at habitation/panchayat level
Subrata Singh
Thanks Shiv Singh for your suggestions! Need deeper thinking and engagement on this.
Rahul Banerjee
The greatest number of people can be employed in ecosystem restoration, sustainable agriculture, distributed electricity generation and agricultural processing. So the government needs to invest in these in a big way. The investment will raise productivity and incomes and come back to the government through taxes. Similarly govt investment in school education and primary health too needs to be increased. NGOs and social entrepreneurs can only run pilots, it is the responsibility of the government to provide sustainable and equitable development which it has not done since the time of independence. The ratio of govt exp per capita in rural areas to the per capita GDP is one of the lowest in the world and has been so for decades. Overall govt exp to GDP ratio in India is an abysmal 14% whereas it is 40% in the USA.
Subrata Singh
Thanks Rahul, great inputs and needs structured engagement. Need to engage a lot, evolve instruments (like GPDP) and build capacities on this issue.
Manu Srivastava
Agree Subrat. But just not jobs at the panchayats, can we create more job and entrepreneurship opportunities for the rural youth. At Arghyam we are planning a research with Water For People and JustJobs Network to look at direct jobs for integrated water management for villages across the country.
Subrata Singh
Thanks Manu, in discussion with Guru on the same. We need to look at it from a governance perspective - with panchayat being the determining position and exercising its powers - May need to look at Panchayat as a Corporate Entity (in functioning)
Nishant Kumar
Like your sensitive obsevation surely one of the sharpest question one faced in the sector was from CGM NABARD at RO Gujrat in 2010 addressed to a large group of development professionals _ How many of you do keetan bhajan with tribals after your duty hour?
Maybe the same crisis of lack self esteem was facing Shabri before the visit of Ram. He certified her perseverance as supreme of all devotion achieved by none before (Nawdha bhakti). She still is one of the most revered tribal icon in Central India and beyond.
Writing all this surely not to promote any North or South from centre approach in development but emphasising on the much beyond solutions from a cultural development approach. Surely a handful of true Bhagats have proved more than armies of pseudo believers in all aspects of rural life including self respect and social mobility.
May your humane approach thrive amidst ongoing clash of civilizations hell bent to rob communities of their identity and roots.
Deepannita Misra
Interesting points... perhaps these local trends also warrant taking a closer look at industrial-agricultural growth patterns, aspirations and contexts of what are considered to be the 'pillars of development' at the global and local levels, simultaneously. Attaching the reference to "green growth strategy" for review too: https://www.afdb.org/en/topics-and-sectors/initiatives-partnerships/green-growth-initiative
Ranjan K Panda
When I started understanding the traditional water harvesting systems of central highlands in early 90s, one strong observation came to the fore: the same people who created these marvels have lost their confidence, hence self-esteem, due to the negligence of their traditional knowledge by the system, thanks to concrete engineering dominated water depts. It took quite some time to bring back some level of confidence through various initiatives that respected their knowledge and co-created models of water harvesting on which they had the ownership. I think, in principle, some solutions can be found in such approaches. Thanks!
Raghvender Bhati
There is a general sense of unawareness and distrust among youth towards the use of various government schemes aimed at uplifting local entrepreneurship. An emphasis on educating the masses about the same is pretty important. I am planning to work towards such a campaign in some villages nearby NCR starting sometime soon, pls dm if you'd like to collaborate.
Paras Tyagi
What better way than pointing out the ill effects of transforming villages into cities for development, i.e. from rural to urban villages without any planning that has changed people's way of life, making it much worse than before. Except monetary benefits for few who took wise decisions, this change has resulted in social issues that are seldom talked about in the mainstream. A practical solution is "village development plan" that is purposely denied to villages. Be it Delhi, Bengaluru or any other expanding town and city in India, everywhere the villagers are not provided the right kind of opportunities. Most importantly it is the children youth women and elders who suffer the most. The least that civil society can do is help in advocating for this policy change. It's not rocket science, the Orthodox village society will continue to remain aloof and adamant because they lack the farsightedness to understand urbanization.
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