The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : India Inc. ‘should address farm crisis’

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 15, 2007
ePaper

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

India Inc. ‘should address farm crisis’

Special Correspondent

Business houses can help government deliver benefits of welfare schemes, says industrialist

SHARING A POINT: Ratan Tata, Chairman,Tata Sons, (right), with Venu Srinivasan, Chairman-CII National Summit on CSR 2007 and Managing Director, Sundaram Clayton Ltd at the CSR Summit organised by CII, in Chennai on Thursday.

CHENNAI: The benefits of the Government’s welfare schemes did not always reach the target groups, Venu Srinivasan, Chairman-CII National Summit on CSR 2007, and Managing Director, Sundaram Clayton Limited, said here on Thursday.

Industrial houses could help here, he said. He said industry had expertise in man management, financial management and business planning and could easily provide the missing ingredients of leadership and organisation and establish the “last mile connectivity” to take the benefits to the people.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) could therefore focus on “unlocking” the last mile connectivity, he said.“There is also a need in CSR to involve small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which contribute significantly to employment generation and exports. We should leverage the vast army of SMEs innovatively. Industry and industrial associations must come forward to build clusters of SMEs with CSR in places such as Coimbatore, Ludhiana and Hosur,” he said.Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session, The Hindu Editor-in-Chief N. Ram said the Government and corporate houses should address the silent crisis in India’s agricultural households and rural areas. Lack of livelihood opportunitie s had resulted in distress in the rural areas and farming communities.

“During 1997-2003 alone, there were 114,000 suicides in rural districts mainly on account of distress.”

Mr. Ram said that India’s high-level economic growth had not yielded any positive results on the social development front. Despite the 9 per cent GDP growth, several development indices, such as healthcare and education, had not improved significantly.

“Education is the elementary resource of all modern society, but, excepting in a few states, there is no law to make primary education compulsory. Though India had a magnificent start in endowments for higher educational institutions, the country seems to have fallen behind over time with gradual decrease in grants.”

He appealed to industry and industrial associations to adopt schools. Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata inaugurated the two-day summit organised by the CII.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu

News Update

Stories in this Section