Connecting Rural Bharat

Currently, Government, is making all out efforts, to take Rural Bharat at par with the Urban Bharat, whereby enire society, whether urban or rural will enjoy and ripe the similar benefits. This is certainly going to enhance the stature of Bharat, in the entire world. All of us understand that making this happen is a mammoth task, just because of sheer spread and pace required for this development. Government in past some years has launched many new schemes for upliftment of the rural society. While Government was on spree of this mission, it was also supported and backed up by many public and private institutions. With this holistic approach, everyone is quite sure that, the efforts put in by entire machinery, will certainly strengthen and boost rural Bharat stature and also Bharat will emerge as one of the prominent country in the world.

Let us look at the various initiatives taken by Government, Public and Private institutions, in current past, which has gone long way in upliftment of rural society to a greater height, are like:

Government Initiatives: development of various policies, which will impact life cycle of a common rural man like subsidised gas, toilets at every house, avas for all, fasal vima, health insurance, kisan crop support and subsides, jan dhan accounts etc. These are some of the initiatives taken by the Government.

Public Institutions: participation by way of implementation of the policies developed by the Government like opening of jan dhan accounts, distribution of fasal vima, health insurance through PSU Banks, crediting various subsidies in direct accounts. Currently, most of the Banks have now norms of priority sector lending etc.

Private Institutions: have taken up the mammoth task of empowering rural Bharat, by way of implementation of technology, like mobility, connectivity, infrastructure, many tools of financial inclusion. This will definitely boost the rural economy of Bharat. These institutions are using latest technologies for reaching rural Bharat at a great pace with vast geographies.

There is no doubt that all these collective efforts are taking Bharat to a greater height. While, it is definitely helping increase rural growth share rapidly, whether it is enough? or what else is required to be done?, so that rural growth rate will increase at a rapid pace. Whether the speed needs to be increased?

While the entire efforts are focused on development of rural Bharat, to me an awareness is an important and integral part of this entire chain. We all know that Bharat means its geographies, people, society, culture, attire, taste, language etc. While various geographies have different languages, culture, still we stand as a one nation. However, this local aspect plays a vital role in development of the rural Bharat. Hence, entire focus should be on making information available to the entire society, as they understand it. It can be by way of local language, simple and understandable information, using different kind of communication methods etc.

This means, large part of it to be focused on awareness, may it be a Swachata, may it be a schemes, may it be a financial literacy etc. Rural society needs to understand the importance of the entire efforts so that they participate in this exercise on their own rather than pushing them in it. For this, the information should be in local language, information should be in simple and understandable form, it should be appealing and they should get some benefit out of it. They should get feel of "there is something for me, in whatever is being done". It will then automatically, accelerate the growth engine of rural Bharat.

Some of the start-ups are working in this direction, in various fields like education, health, finance, insurance, etc., however there are more efforts required in these direction. More on awareness to rural folks, which will really change the game and Bharat will stand apart in the entire world. I am confident many such initiatives, will be taken up by upcoming start ups for implementing and deploying various technologies with focus on awareness.