The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Farmers’ groups to be trained in counselling

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 26, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Farmers’ groups to be trained in counselling

Special Correspondent

NABARD to take up training in counselling in five districts

— Photo: K.Gopinathan

REACHING OUT TO FARMERS: Deepak B. Gore (left), Chief General Manager of NABARD; Devaki Muthukrishnan, Regional Director, RBI; Sudhakar Rao, Additional Chief Secretary and Development Commissioner; Prakash P. Mallya, Chairman and Managing Director of Vijaya Bank; at an awards function in Bangalore on Tuesday.

BANGALORE: For the first time in the country, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has taken up a programme in the State for training select farmers’ groups to provide counselling to other farmers in distress against resorting to suicides.

Under the programme, members of some of the NABARD-sponsored farmers’ clubs have been provided a short-duration training on counselling.

Disclosing this at a function in Bangalore on Tuesday to mark the silver jubilee of the bank and also present State-level awards for the best performance under the self-help group (SHG)-Bank linkage and farmers’ club programmes, bank Chief General Manager Deepak B. Gore said such a training had been provided in five of the six districts which had been declared as distress districts by the Centre in the wake of the huge number of suicides by farmers.

The districts where the training on counselling had been provided include Belgaum, Chitradurga, Shimoga, Hassan and Chikmagalur.

While NABARD would only provide training on counselling to the interested farmers’ clubs, it was left to these clubs to identify farmers in distress and counsel them.

Inclusive growth

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Regional Director Devaki Muthukrishnan said there was a need to have inclusive growth to ensure sustainable overall growth of various sectors in the country. Financial inclusion was a must to achieve the inclusive growth. Additional Chief Secretary and Development Commissioner Sudhakar Rao, who inaugurated the function, hailed the services rendered by NABARD in the field of rural development.

Karnataka State Co-operative Agricultural Bank Ltd. chairman M.N. Rajendra Kumar, Vijaya Bank Chairman and Managing Director Prakash P. Mallya and Corporation Bank Chairman and Managing Director B. Sambamurthy spoke.

Vegetable lamp

Launching the silver jubilee celebrations in a unique way, NABARD officials lighted an eco-friendly green lamp which was made of vegetables and fruits such as papaya, pumpkin, tomatoes and plantain stem.

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