Address at the Laying of Foundation Stones of Development Projects in Saifai, Etawah

Celebrating the Progress of Villages

I am indeed delighted to participate in the laying of the foundation stones of development projects in Saifai. My greetings to the distinguished guests, the organisers and all the members of village community participating in this beautiful function. I greet all the citizens of SAIFI and nearby villages and wish for their happiness, health and welfare. I was thinking what thoughts I can share with you on this occasion. I have selected the topic ?Celebrating the progress of villages?.

What can be the highest mission of the rulers? I am reminded of two couplet of Saint Poet Thiruvalluvar in Thirukkural, a great treasure of the nation with three sections. One deals with righteous life, other deals with economic development and prosperity and the third about the essence of family life. One of the Kurals reads as:

Meaning ?the important elements that constitute a nation are: being disease free, prosperous, highly productive in farming and other fields, harmonious living and strong defence?. All our efforts should be focused towards building these five elements at various levels in a coherent and in an integrated manner. In another kural, Thiruvalluvar says about the importance of education. The Learning enhances the intellect and prepares for a qualify life. Learning is the protector of adversity in one?s life. Education also provides a path for leading a righteous life to the individual, family and society that in turn brings prosperity to the nation. The multifunction, in which I am participating today consists of training the farmers, banking, sports, healthcare and rail connectivity, is indeed the celebration of the village life.

Development of villages

In our country, seven hundred million people (70% of the population) are living in the six hundred thousand villages. The villages have to get economically developed in the country. The next less than two decades are very important for India for transforming from a 'developing' country to a 'developed' nation. The development of the villages is the foundation for the national progress. I am glad to see the planning of multiple actions for the development of SAIFAI and neighbouring villages. Actually, when I see SAIFAI Village of Etawah district, the type of thinking on various developments, I am sure, the blessings of Chief Minister will spread to every part of hundred thousand villages in Uttar Pradesh.

Employment Generation through entrepreneurship

There has been substantial growth in our educational system and we are generating over 10 million graduates, diploma holders, and Higher Secondary students every year. However our employment generation system is not in a position to absorb the students passing out from the schools and colleges leading to increase in educated unemployed, year after year. This situation will lead to instability in the social structure. We need education focused and oriented towards employability. A multi pronged strategy is needed to make education more attractive and simultaneously create employment potential ? how do we do that?

Firstly, the educational system should highlight the importance of entrepreneurship and prepare the students right from the college education to get oriented towards setting up of the enterprises which will provide them creativity, freedom and ability to generate employment opportunities. Diversity of skills and perseverance in work makes an entrepreneur. It should be taught to all the students. In addition, college syllabi even for arts, science, and commerce courses should include topics and practical where such entrepreneurship is taught.

When the students come out the secondary schools and colleges, they will also have entrepreneurship diploma in addition to the secondary school certificates and college degrees.

Secondly, the banking system should provide venture capital right from every village level to the prospective entrepreneurs for undertaking new enterprises. They should give preference to those who graduate with a formal training in entrepreneurship. The banks should also be able to identify innovative ideas and nurture them to become economic success. Banks have to be proactive to support the innovative products for enabling wealth generation by young entrepreneurs by setting aside the ?conventional tangible asset syndrome?. Definitely this involves certain amount of calculated risks, which can be eliminated by making an analysis of successful venture capital enterprises. Thirdly, there has to be an economic pull for human resources; for example generation of marketable products and enhancement of purchasing power among the people. This can come through the implementation of PURA (Providing Urban facilities in Rural Areas).

The Government and the private enterprises should become facilitators for creating this entrepreneurship scheme through the support of the banking system and the marketing system. This is one way of reducing the employment gap leading to upliftment of the 260 million people living below the poverty line. I am very happy to see in these gathering very famous entrepreneurs, industrialists, educationists, bankers and administrators who can provide the leadership in this direction for Uttar Pradesh are also present.

I would like to mention the programme of PURA and how a PURA enterprise will look like.

PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Amenities)

For bridging the rural-urban divide and achieving balanced socio-economic development, the country is poised to launch and create 4100 PURAs ? Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas. It involves identification of rural clusters with growth potential and creating four types of connectivities for them:

(i) Road, transportation and power connectivity

(ii) electronic connectivity in the form of reliable telecom, Internet and IT services

(iii) knowledge connectivity in the form of good educational and training institutions.

Leading to Economic connectivity and there by prosperity of the villages.

PURA task profile

PURA is designed to benefit the village community as a whole. Different connectivities are designed for economic development of villages. This will enable the village community to get better education, better healthcare facilities, good sanitation facilities, good physical connectivity, good communication facility, without disturbing the civilizational heritage. It will help them to get all the urban amenities in their villages. The economic development will be realized through improved agriculture and producing value added agro products through agro-processing industries and determining the core competence of the village, both in raw materials and skills and develop cottage and small industries through technological input. It will also involve establishment of market system with infrastructure to store grains, chilling plants for preserving milk and vegetables and food processing units. All this will enable generation of employment potential for the village community.

UP has got hundred thousand villages that is 1/6th of the villages of the country. These hundred thousand villages can be broken into nearly 1200 PURAs having a population of nearly one lakh each having a cluster of 50-60 villages depending upon the region. Saifai and nearby villages can be transformed into a PURA complex of the region.

Conclusion

Uttar Pradesh is one of the three states, which has shown substantial progress in agriculture. Development of village clusters in Etawah district will be directly benefited by the new projects, which are commencing today.

Etawah ? Mainpuri railway line will make Etawah a nodal center for the entire village cluster in these two districts involving nearly 2400 villages. This rail connectivity will provide easy access to the local products developed in this region to the markets in eastern and western parts of the country. The rail connectivity with electronic connectivity under PURA will make the market reach of our farmers much larger. This will enable them to ?manufacture locally and market Globally? and improve their economic benefits and earnings far beyond what is to day, comparable to their city dwelling fellow citizens ? still retaining the great advantages of living in a very pure village environment.

The planned state level sport complex at SAIFAI will enable selection and nurturing of sports personnel living in the villages and around. This will not only create sportsman spirit among young population but also generate number of sports personnel of national and international level.

The planned 100 beds hospital at Saifai will provide modern health care facility to the rural population who were required to travel several kilometers for such facilities and this hospital needs to be connected to all the primary health centers all around. Hence, it enables the health security among people. And also, this hospital should be connected through tele-medicine with Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences and King George Medical College, Lucknow for getting quality diagnosis and possible treatment from medical experts for the village community. PURA will make this hospital facilities reach many more villages beyond SAFAI without any additional burden.

The farmers training center at Saifai will enable the farmers to learn the application of technology to agriculture and agro processing area. Above all, this training center will also bring to the farmers the importance of multi-cropping leading to soil fertility. This training center can have linkage with educational institutions such as IIM-Lucknow, Central Institute of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), Lucknow and Pant Nagar University for getting up-to-date knowledge on soil, seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, organic farming, agricultural waste management based on current research and herbal plants and herbal products and marketing techniques . These inputs will empower the farmers of this region of Uttar Pradesh. Today, the planned programmes being started in SAIFAI and its surroundings will bring the economic prosperity and health security. It is essential, the SAIFAI initiative is integrated and enlarged with the envisaged PURA programme of the country.

I wish you all success in your development mission.

May God bless you.