Tamil Nadu - Dindigul   

Providing jobs to villagers, best way of recasting village economy, says VC

Staff Reporter

"We need to find new parameters for a sustainable future. To achieve this, we need a new culture that is able to achieve personal fulfilment."

DINDIGUL: Networking of sharing, caring, mutual nurturing and developing the `culture of giving' are a must to establish economic permanence. `Putting the people first' is the basic key for achieving it.

This was highlighted by speakers at a workshop on `Economy of permanence and dynamics of a sharing community,' held in Gandhigram Rural Institute here on Monday.

Inaugurating the workshop, Mother Teresa University Vice-Chancellor, D. Janaki, said rural economy was need of the hour. The best way of recasting village economy was to provide jobs to villagers.

Purchasing power of villagers needed to be increased through various employment schemes.

In his presidential address, GRI Vice-Chancellor, T. Karunakaran, said, "Now we have networking for war, trade and technology. But the missing framework is values of physical and social technologies. What we want is economics for life, sociology for life, education for life, governance for life and above all a philosophy for a sharing and caring society. While sharing is an effective antidote to warring, neighbourhood community is antidote to technology and social entrepreneur and trusteeship to capitalism."

University of Rotterdam Economist, Leo Simon Jozef Andringa, said "We need to find new parameters for a sustainable future. To achieve this, we need a new culture that is able to achieve personal fulfilment. We also need to develop a way that is more respectful of nature and of future generations."

Former GRI Vice-Chancellor, N. Markandan, said `learning-by-doing' system should be adopted at secondary and higher secondary levels, besides teaching democratic values.

"People must live in communities and govern themselves, sharing the material wealth and comforts by tapping natural resources according to their needs without degrading the environment. Such an exercise will prevent even military conflicts and killing of innocent people."

The workshop coordinator and GRI professor, L. Raja, said the workshop was aimed at evolving strategies of realising the concept of sharing community and for sharing resources for a peaceful societal order and striving for a new economic and social life.

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Providing jobs to villagers, best way of recasting village economy, says VC

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