MotivationNeed / Necessity
As very aptly said by his excellency Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam - "A new situation is emerging in India. Very rarely in history have we come across such a constellation: an ascending economic trajectory, rising foreign exchange reserves, reducing inflation rates, global recognition of technological competence, energy of 540 million youth, umbilical connectivities of 20 million people of Indian origin abroad, and the interest shown by developed countries to invest in our engineers and scientists, including in new RnD centres.
Governments have been emphasising economic development by ensuring growth rates of seven-eight per cent annually, enhancing the welfare of farmers and workers and unleashing the creativity of entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers. This opportunity must be fully utilised to bridge the rural-urban divide, using knowledge as a tool. As such, I would like to focus "“Empowering Rural India".”
Nearly 700 million Indians live in 600,000 villages across rural India. Connectivity of village complexes providing economic opportunities to all segments of people is an urgent need. We need to innovate to increase connectivities to the villages, making clusters out of them even while retaining their individuality.
The integraed method that will bring prosperity to rural India is called PURA or Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas. This envisages four connectivities: physical connectivity through quality roads and transport; electronic connectivity through telecom with high bandwidth fibre optic cables; knowledge connectivity through education, skill training for farmers, artisans and craftsmen and entrepreneurship programmes.
These three connectivities will lead to economic connectivity through starting of enterprises with the help of banks, micro-credit and marketing of products. We need to establish 7,000 PURA complexes in the country, encompassing 2.3 lakh village panchayats.
For providing knowledge connectivity to PURA complexes, VKCs (Village Knowledge Centre) will act as frontline delivery systems. The VKC should provide the essential data required for the targeted population such as farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, traders, businessmen, entrepreneurs, unemployed youth, and students. It has to be acquired by visiting the village, talking to the rural people, by understanding their requirement and core competence.
Providing meteorological data for both farmers and fishermen has to be area specific, covering say 20 or 30 villages in the vicinity of the sea coast or farming area. Local relevance of information offered is essential.
Users have simple needs of information but often it is tough for system integrators because of the need to update data. Trained manpower has to be deployed to generate information that can explain in simple terms the meteorological data, weather data, marketing data on fish, agricultural and other rural commodities.
This data has to come from various connected institutions that provide service to the people on a timely basis. But the transformation of data into user-friendly information is the real challenge.
The main focus of the VKC should be to empower youth to undertake development tasks of villages and establish rural enterprises that will provide largescale employment. So it is essential to skill enable and knowledge enable through academic institutions, industry, banking and marketing institutions. The VKC should act as a facilitator. Blended knowledge is better knowledge.
Technology is the instrument for providing non-linear growth to our economy. Hence PURA driven by technology for sustainable rural development will bridge the rural-urban divide. Access to technology is the means to generate employment potential for sustainable rural prosperity.
Village Knowledge Centres are the essential component for realising our goal of graduating to a knowledge society and India's transformation to a developed country by 2020.
Higher the knowledge dissemination and its absorption by society, wider the perspectives of its citizens — leading to reduction in societal tensions and increasing cooperation and collaboration. Dimensions of political, societal and media thinking will also be wider and focused on relevant aspects of social and economic development."