For more than seven long decades, we have gone through cluster approach, which has given more affluent cities, skewed distribution of population and less holistic growth. Now, when we are aspiring to create “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, we can’t afford to undermine the tremendous potential posed by the villages and specifically in areas in which literacy rate is higher, quality of education is good the only thing they lack is not having enough job opportunities locally or only traditional job are available in limited number.

We have frequently come across a phrase “Out of the Box Thinking”.

Be it any front, though leaders, motivators, policy planners and executors have referred to this phrase as a trigger to mobilize the mass. When it comes to nation building and reshaping the country to face the uncertainties of the present and the future, should we go out of the box or stick to the basics?
This is a much needed point to ponder upon at a time when we are thinking and making plans towards “Atmanirbhar Bharat”.

After more than seven decades of India’s independence, we are still at a point where we are planning to address the unprecedented uncertainties, like the COVID 2019. In so many years we have rolled out and executed so many plans, breaking the growth points in to clusters and deploying specialist facilitators, who are burdened with exploring “Out of the Box” ideas. This is why we have grown only in limited fronts and never exploited our complete potential, especially, which is lying hidden in the rural parts of the country.

However, in an attempt to doing so, we have somehow diverted out focus from the most essential and sensitive aspect – our population, or human resource, or manpower as we call otherwise.

We created metro cities and top of the tier cities, which are affluent in all respect. We have encouraged migration to these affluent cities so that they grow them further to develop them as world cities, which has ended up in a skewed distribution of the population. The villages and hills of India are gradually becoming a sparse geography. But at a time, when we face uncertainties like the present one, we are realize that we are still largely dependent on rural India.

So, why not our strategy for a self-reliant India (“Atmanirbhar Bharat”) be skirted around our rural economy?

And, this is very much possible in case of service sector as there are so many favourable points to support the cause. The digital and ICT (Information & Telecommunication) revolution has bridged the digital divide among urban and rural masses. There is hardly any different in the education and skill level among the two. The rural youth is very much employable and trainable to address to the job demand of the various service sector. Digital payment system and transaction processing have improved a lot. Reachability, communication and knowledge sharing are no more matter of worry.
The only emphasis that is coming up as solution to support “Atmanirbhar Bharat” is job creation for the rural poor and employable youths. The other being, raising our strategic village and hill locations as potentially viable job destination, especially for the service sector.

This is the most doable way to avoid any future crisis scenario like reverse migration of the same educated youth (now jobless) of the villages and hills of India. This, in turn, would account for an even distribution of population and creation of ecological balance. There would be a homogenous economy across the country, where the rural poor and employable youth would not think about migrating to distant locations to meet their needs.

Time and again, we have witnessed that we have always faced back towards the rural India and hills for solutions whenever we become over-saturated with the busy, stressed and disturbed city life. Then why not, our hills and villages become permanent destinations for our livelihood?

If we truly wish to become “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, we have to focus on job creation at the grassroots level. We need to strengthen our rural economy and nurture our emerging towns and selected villages as the new pins in the employment map of the world.