Will the new government focus on and ensure by creating non-agriculture employment? Unless, every family thinks of having engaged after the farming work for extra earning, poverty can’t be eliminated. What all can become part of these rural Enterprises?
I wish some younger entrepreneurs start thinking intensively for creating a large number of new micro-entrepreneurship projects in rural region of Bihar. Every village can grow as a small manufacturing enterprise for at least something or can provide opportunities for some service entrepreneurs, may be micro ones. With the policy such as MUDRA, finance may not remain constraint. However, the bank officers are to be motivating rather harassing lot.
1. Talents of the young girls who come to a village after marriage with certain skills such as stitching apparels or different items for household uses including cheap sanitary towels, or for knitting sweaters, or making stuffed toys can be exploited to create extra earnings for the families. An effective link between traders and these talented ones will be necessary in the ecosystem.
2. The Panchayats can be persuaded for getting the school buildings or the panchayat house for opening a skill centre, and schools such Usha Silai Schools can be sponsored with a sole objective of starting a cooperative business.
3. Other enterprises for young men such as maintenance services for agriculture machines such as tractors, pumps to electronic gadgets that are flooding the rural areas fast, can also have potential. Today, all the users go to small towns nearby.
4. Every village can have some tutors engaged for providing tuitions to students of different levels, some even helping for getting distant education for higher level courses. With gradual increase in earnings and increasing interest in education, many parents are today able to pay for this. For instance, my cousin’s wife has been providing the tuition against payment for a number of years.
5. Another attractive area may be small scale home based food processing such as pickles or satoos or some traditional seasonal snacks. Many traditional snacks such as bhoonja, tilwa, ladoo with methi, sonth, and haldi as constituents, that used to be a delicacy for winter season, are disappearing fast. And with good packing and quality assurance, one can thinking of selling it on line. Could any one imagine that upala (cow dung cake) are getting sold on-line in festivals season. One can explore and get into the right business. There is no point in having these production bases in urban areas. With improving road connectivity, transportation will hardly be a bottleneck. However, a mind set of extra earning rather than wasting time in watching useless serials on TV must change.
There can be hundred of ideas for creating jobs and it will be in national interests that graduates of engineering and management schools are roped to carry out the feasibility studies and suggest ways and means to create non- agricultural work in rural region.
6. One such idea is certainly for the graduates in agricultural sciences. Can’t they think of opening low cost advisory or technical assistance services for the farmers to improve their yield and earnings? What can be the way for improving the yields from the prevalent small land holdings, say 3-5 bighas? Some can advise the best combinations of crops, plantations of fruits and vegetables to maximise the earnings of the individual small farmers who are in majority today. Some graduates in science can open small labs for finding the chemical composition of the soils in different regions of a village to suggest the right type of fertilisers, and may be a switch to bio-fertilisers.
7. A similar service may engage some trained young persons for various healthcare services. A safe maternity home and maternity advisory service can too be an engagement and a future business proposal.
8. A weekly market in every panchayat may create opening for selling home grown vegetables and other eatables. With households getting nucleus, even a rural family may like to have alternative of cooking at home.
9. Some young men can think of getting into rural tourism, as many in urban India will like to spend a night in village if it provides excitement and entertainment.
10. Rural India itself can create employment and business. Organic manure from the waste generated in villages, housing, marriages etc can provide a lot of scope for creating business and employment for the local population. The need is to make the activities marketable and sell it through different entrepreneurship.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/the-good-earth/A-greener-way-out-of-farm-crisis/articleshow/49614230.cms
11. http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/amul-s-not-so-marginal-farmers-115102300023_1.html Can the new generation of Bihari farmers take a lesson from Gujarat get into dairy farming in big way? If GCMMF can enter into other states like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal bringing similar prosperity to its farmers, why can’t happen in Bihar?
Mushroom farming or government encouraged plantation on large scale on idle government land can change the fate of many poor in rural Bihar.
With the fast social changes coming in villages, many requirements of the people living there will need many services requiring some enterprises. The government must ensure a 24×7 electricity for the rural enterprises to be better in productivity and competitiveness.
http://www.ndtv.com/photos/news/kushalta-ke-kadam-aiming-for-independence-20606?pfrom=home-campaigns#photo-263178