Indra’s Drishtikona (Viewpoint)

Let Us Build Rural India?

Posted : June 20, 2005 at 10:55 am [IST]

Time and again, a question crops up in our mind. What and how can we do something for our villages? I don’t how many of you will share my concerns and will agree to my observations and do something. It is all about rural Bihar.

How many of us visit the village school and talk to the teacher/s there and also students during our visit to the village? I think every one who has achieved certain amount of success in life must make it point to visit those rural schools and talk to the teachers and if possible to the students. We should discuss about the necessity of a good education and opportunities after good schooling. Why can’t our senior citizens, some may be teachers in life, force the teachers to teach with sincerity?

Today with good communicating capability in English and may be one more subject beside some basics of computer application, one can get some jobs. There are ways and means to improve the proficiency in English. We can explain all that. We can further explain the need of learning one skill at least, may be carpentry, may be masonry, or may be plumbing, but to be the first class in that skill.

Those of us who are in IT area must investigate into the possibility of e-education and its scope in villages. I am sure one day the teacher will be only a good facilitator. Every student will have the opportunity to get the same lecture on the subject thus removing the effect of a good or bad teacher. I am so particular about rural education. Over the years, the rural education has deteriorated significantly with poorly qualified and politically protected teachers and loss of interest for education of their wards among the parents, as they don’t find much benefit out of education regarding employment.

Have you seen the miserable sanitation conditions in rural area where there are no public toilets? How inconvenient and shameful it is particularly for the women folk- more so for the underprivileged ones? How filthy it is when you see and smell all that as soon as you come out to go somewhere from the village? At least rural Bihar has not improved from Mahatma Gandhi’s Champaran days that he has written in his autobiography. Is it too costly or difficult to construct some? Can we not help in getting some public toilets built in our villages?
Have you seen some folk of village dying because he had reached the final stage of the disease before his dear ones took him to some doctors in some town or city? Will it be too costly to organize a health care camp to cover all the rural areas? Can’t some of us approach the doctors of a nearby town or IMA to organize one in our village? Doctors can be paid some token remuneration too. Will it not be a good publicity for the urban doctors too? Is it not because we never think innovatively to serve as we do to get a good name and promotion in our profession?

Can we not encourage our villager friends to go for planting of at least five trees of commercial or medical value? Even many of the unprivileged class can plant some in their courtyard. Can you imagine the difference it will make in the ambience and will serve as a long-term investment too?
Can some successful persons in apparel and clothing industry of the country take some real interest in training women and girls in rural areas? An entrepreneur in this area could engage a large number to provide extra earning to the family. Why can’t it be done if a Hong Kong entrepreneur can use the women of Bangladesh following this business model?

But all this must start with education. Firstly, the adults are to be convinced that there is need of education and there are possibilities of employment too. Their sons and daughters need not be only engineers and doctors to have better employment and better living. We can certainly do something about it.

We must start and contribute something for our villages particularly for education and health care. If we are fortunate ones, we must part with some of our fortune for some good thing to happen in the society too.

Is it not a way to serve the place where we were born?

- Indra

Category: Rural development |