Rural Development
There is a greater need today to make rural areas more vibrant through diversification into dairying, poultry, fisheries, vegetables and fruits and linking up the rural production centres with the urban and foreign markets to realise higher returns on the investments in the products. Moreover, infrastructure elements like credit and marketing, farmer-friendly agricultural policies and a constant appraisal and dialogue between farmers’ groups and state agricultural departments are essential to realise the full potential of the sector.
Today we cannot look at the environment and rural development as two distinct subjects. There is need to invent or procure alternate sets of eco-friendly technologies that lead to sustainable development in different circumstances such as organic farming. From these, each rural community can choose whatever will suit its purpose. We need to learn from, and also try out when found relevant, practices from the available set of ‘best practice’ illustrations to speed up this process of ‘learning by doing’. A good example of such practice is creating a group and channelising their savings through micro credit which functions like mini banks for the development of agriculture.