Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

Prime Minister calls for rural industrial revolution powered by Panchayat - Private Partnerships

The Prime Minister has called for Rural Industrial Revolution powered by panchayat-private sector partnerships to ensures the benefits of rapid economic growth flows to rural India. Dr Manmohan Singh said the potential of partnerships nationwide between the private sector and the panchayats in every corner of India and this must be tapped. He said that the government is establishing Rural Business Hubs and focusing on increased investment in agriculture, rural infrastructure, education and health to ensure equitable growth.

The Prime Minister was speaking at the speaking at the National Presentation of Rural Business Hubs organized by the Panchayati Raj Ministry and CII in New Delhi today. He said, "we need to ensure that the processes of economic growth reach out to the far corners of the country." The Prime Minister said the government attaches great importance to integrating agricultural markets across the country and removing the constraints under which they function so that farmers get far better remuneration for their produce through efficient, non-distorted markets.

The partnership coupled with the investment , Dr Manmohan Singh hoped will open up a vast "opportunities for business to expand into rural areas in a way not possible in the past and opportunities for our countrymen in rural areas to log onto a virtuous growth cycle we intend to generate." The Prime Minister pointed out that Agro-industry, and Rural Industry offer enormous potential to transform the rural economy and said "in agriculture there is scope for taking advantage of the panchayats to assess and meet local needs for supplying inputs, for meeting storage and post-harvest needs, for engaging in contract farming and direct procurement, for marketing agri-produce and for agro-processing."

In the field of energy, the Prime Minister said that apart from non conventional sources of energy, there is the "possibility of panchayats being engaged as the last-leg distributors of electrical energy, there is no reason why panchayats cannot be the DISCOMS of rural India." He said similar possibilities exist in the field of rural credit and finance and asked why Panchayats could not be explored as alternative credit delivery and loan recovery agencies.