Director message

Mahatma Gandhi once said that we cannot retain power in Delhi without developing rural India. His concept of rural development meant self reliance, and least dependence on outsiders. Today when we talk stock of rural development, we find the pace quite and not satisfactory in spite of the efforts made in the right direction – why this? There must be some reasons. We have to look into them. We know that India is an agrarian country and about 75% of our population live in rural areas. But unfortunately, most of us do not have any idea about the extent of poverty and the real conditions of rural India. In spite of the efforts made by the Government to promote various development programs over 50% of rural people are still living in poverty. Still our rural poor have to migrate along with their families in search of daily wages which is not assured. They have to work hard, sweat for 10-12 hours and sleep under the sky, and still their children have to roll about on sand under the hot sun instead of attending the school. This is the real scene in our rural India and we need to ask ourselves: are these broad earners getting due? No, not at all perhaps most of us will answer- but why? We have to look into it. Certainly, the reasons are many and of diverse nature. But the first and for most is our attitude towards our rural people. The irony of the situation is that receive our sympathy, but not motivation, they get relief and subsidies, but not rehabilitation. And by doing so we feel great and relieved of our duties towards our rural people. A significant portion of the budget is spent on relief and subsidies. The poor people who receive financial assistance from the Government, lack of adequate motivation and training. In the process, many of them develop a dependency syndrome and expect outsiders to provide the means for their living hood. They are becoming accustomed to relief operations and subsidies and are losing self confidence. But who are responsible for it- the people or our attitude. Of course, our attitude which has injected the germs the germs of dependency syndrome into them. In the prevailing situation, we have to divert our attention from relief operations to rehabilitation as relief is a temporary measure and rehabilitation is a sustained, well designed and enduring activity.

The rural people should not be helped only through relief and subsidies but also through education and creation of opportunities for gainful self employment while checking their influx into urban areas. There is a need for systematic planning for inputs, technology, human skills and marketing. And for this is to set up suitable infrastructure to distribute inputs, disseminate technical and marketing knowledge, and organize skill-oriented training and processing and marketing of the produce.

From our past experience we have realized that involvement of farmers is equally crucial for any research to become farm-worthy. Thus the farmer should be treated as a central component in agriculture policies. We should, therefore, do our best, using agriculture as an instrument to usher in this change and strive to achieve the goal of food for all and a healthy life in the present millennium. Keeping this view in mind Bioved Research and Communication centre has decided to develop Bioved Single Window Centre for farmers practical Demonstration, training and awakening programmes for sustainable agricultural production through the input of modern Agritechnological approach in different disciplines of Agriculture through its established research and extension wing – Bioved Single Window Centre of research and development for sustainable agriculture & rural development.