President for strong linkage between corporate, farm sector

President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday made a strong case for forging a linkage between the corporate world and the agriculture sector to promote rural development.

New Delhi: President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday
made a strong case for forging a linkage between the corporate
world and the agriculture sector to promote rural development.

"Location of food processing and other agro-based
industries close to rural areas will optimise benefits for
both - business persons and farmers," she said while
inaugurating the three-day international conference on
`Dynamics of Rural Transformation in Emerging Economies`.

Farming models that include participation of industry
could be developed to achieve economies of scale and promote
socio-economic development, she added.

"During the global downturn the negative impact on India
was less than that elsewhere. One reason was that we were able
to sustain domestic demand, much of it coming from rural
areas," Patil said.

About the government`s efforts to reduce rural migration,
she said, "To prevent desperate migration to cities, our
effort is to reinforce the rural infrastructure. Even as
urbanisation increases, the rural economy will continue to be
a principal tool for the development and sustainability. By
2050 the world population would have risen to 9 billion."

About food security she said, "with a population of over
one billion, food security is a critical issue. At present we
have a targetted Public Distribution System as a mechanism for
distribution of food commodities with a focus on the poor."

Stressing upon the need for development of rural
area, she said, "Twenty five per cent of the world`s
population lives in the rural areas of the emerging economies
of India, Brazil, China and South Africa."

"Development of rural areas ..is to be undertaken in a
globalized world, where what happens in one part of the world
gets transmitted to other parts rather rapidly," she said,
adding hence, financial regulations that prevent the
recurrence of a global financial crisis will provide for a
more stable environment for growth."

A fairer WTO trade regime for agriculture products will
positively impact the rural transformation efforts of emerging
economies, she added.

On the occasion, Rural Development Minister C P Joshi
pointed out, "If we could only achieve this single target (of
transforming unskilled labour into skilled and semi-skilled)
on a satisfactory scale, the transformative dynamics of rural
India could take a quantum jump."

Talking about the failure of the prevailing education
system which failed, Joshi said, "there is a need for such
learning which makes a person competent to undertake a vast
array of jobs."

PTI

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