EIGHTH ANNUAL CONVOCATION ADDRESS
BY DR. M.S. SWAMINATHAN
21st April, 1989
It is a privilege to be here on this happy day when the eighth batch of 60 students of IRMA’s Post-graduate programme in Rural Management is graduating from the world of learning to the world of action. I have witnessed the birth and growth of this unique institution, even since the idea emanated from the fertile brain of your Chairman, Dr V Kurien over 12 years ago. During the decade of your existence, our country has made remarkable progress in many areas of economic activity and social equity. The progress made in the dairy sector under the Operation Flood Programme is an outstanding example of the impact of good management in improving the economic well being of the small milk producers. The 382 graduates made available by IRMA prior to this convocation are playing an important role in generating widespread awareness of the critical role of management in helping the men and women working in the un-organised sector in our villages to derive economic benefit from their toil and skills. I am confident that the graduates of this year would not only keep up the high traditions of service set up by the former graduates but will apply their time and talent to help the country face the new challenges we face today.
During the 10 years of IRMA’s existence, we have added to our population over 125 million girls and boys. Smt. Indira Gandhi who delivered the first convocation address of IRMA used to remind us often that youth and the poor constitute the two genuine majorities of our country. The poor suffer from a lack of opportunities – opportunities to acquire new skills, for the full expression of their innate genetic potential for physical and mental development, for marketing their produce at remunerative prices – and other opportunities which make life on this earth worthwhile. Can you help to cover rural India into a land of opportunities? Can you help the country to understand why, in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, “We are a poor people inhabiting a rich Country ..?” Can you help to promote a new deal for the self-employed men and women in rural areas whose life is a daily struggle for the basic minimum needs of food, water, shelter and work? Can you help the country to overcome the famine of skilled jobs in the country side and thereby enhance the income of the poorer households?
I am aware that although our current obsession must be with the challenges of today, we cannot ignore the new challenges as will face in the coming years and decades. While IRMA should continue its valuable work on the problems of today, we cannot ignore the fact that for tomorrow, the greatest challenge is how humankind can live in harmony on this finite globe and establish sustainable relationships to its finite shrinking resources as well as with infinite space. How can we accelerate the pace of economic development on an ecologically sustainable basis? To answer this question, institutions like IRMA should train a large number of developmental ecologists who are well versed in the science and art of sustainable development. Otherwise, ecologists will be viewed as votaries of the status quo. Sustainable development, to be meaningful in the context of an expanding population and shrinking land and water resources for the traditional rural professions of crop husbandry, animal husbandry, fisheries and forestry, has to be a dynamic concept. Developmental ecologists will have to help us to meet the needs of today without destroying the prospects of future generations to meet their needs.
Anand has become a symbol of the power of co-operation. Synergy and symbiosis have been important principles in the organisation of the components of the human body. Your studies on the co-operative organisation of rural professions as well as activities like saving and sharing water through Pani Panchayats, planting and protecting trees through Van Panchayats and stimulating through co-operative societies both production of small scale producers of milk, vegetables and grain and consumption by the rural and urban poor, have shown how efficiency and equity can be combined in rural development. We have several unique examples demonstrating the power of co-operative organisations in promoting desirable blends of productivity and profitability, stability and sustainability and efficiency and equity. Can we make such unique achievements universal? This can be done only through the art and science of management which helps through a systems approach to put the pieces together and handle multi-dimensional problems through existing uni-dimensional structures.
The complexity of the social and technological tasks we face in rural development makes it imperative that those serving the rural areas must become masters of innovation, captains of organisation and servants of the poor. I will like to share with you my understanding of these requirements.
First, innovation helps us to generate multiplier effects among the resources available to us. The innovative spirit in us should be capitalised for finding solutions to the economic, employment, energy, equity and ecological aspects of rural prosperity. The economic issues relate to the cost, risk and return structure of rural professions – both on-farm and off-farm. The employment strategy requires on integrated view of the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of economic growth. It should lead to labour diversification and not just to labour displacement. In particular, the development of a dynamic and socially relevant services sector needs urgent attention. Most of the ecologically sound and cost-efficient technologies in Agriculture need the support of effective services. This is particularly necessary under conditions of very small holdings of land and/or livestock. At the same time, the services sector can help to provide skilled and purposeful employment to youth belonging to families without assets. Energy issues relate to the promotion of an integrated energy supply strategy based on available forms of renewable and non-renewable energy. Considerations of equity demand specific attention to the generation of skilled jobs for women. The poorer the household the greater is the need for women to have independent access to income. Ecological imperatives necessitate the development of simple tools for the measurement of sustainability in agricultural and industrial productivity. For example, for spreading interest in wasteland development, we need a Paisawari system of expressing the biological potential of land.
As captains of innovation, it will be upto you to determine what forms of technology blending will help you to serve rural areas in a meaningful manner. We should preserve the ecological and social strengths of traditional technologies and marry them with the economic competitiveness and consumer appeal associated with frontier technologies. May I request the Chairman of the National Dairy Development Board to foster the growth of Technology Blending Centres in our villages under different agro climatic conditions so that our rural women and men can derive benefit from the scope offered by new technologies for combining intellect and labour and for spreading decentralised production technologies.
Next, I wish to say a few words about your role as Captains of Organisation. Decentralised production will be efficient only if supported by key centralised services. NDDB has demonstrated this in the Dairy Sector. Biotechnological applications such as the establishment of Biomass Refineries or the promotion of micro-electronics industries or the introduction of Computer aided extension services, all need for their effective diffusion well organised services preferably provided by rural youth. This is equally true in the case of integrated post management, scientific water conservation and use and improved post-harvest technology. You have demonstrated the pivotal role of producers’ organisations for ensuring that the producers gets a fair share of the amount paid by the consumers. For example, few countries in the world have the capacity to produce the range of vegetables, fruits and flowers we can. At the same time, both producers and consumers do not derive full benefit from our immense horticultural power. The reason is not the absence of technologies but the inadequacy or in-appropriateness of many of our support systems in the areas of storage, processing and marketing. The greater our efforts in innovation, the greater will be the need for appropriate rural organisations.
Thirdly, neither innovation nor organisation will make our villages better places to live, if rural managers do not also become servants of the poor. Gandhiji underlined this point when he stressed that the pathway to Sarvodaya is Antyodaya. What use is our education if millions of our fellow citizens continue to live under sub-human living conditions? Swami Vivekananda had posed this question in many of his lectures. Albert Einstein once said “Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavours in order that the creation of our minds shall be a blessing and not a curse”. The most serious malady of our society is insensitivity and indifference to degrading poverty. We, who have had the privilege of education and of opportunities for satisfying work, have by habit become silent spectators of the vicious cycle of illiteracy, poverty and environmental degradation on the one hand, and of greed, corruption and conspicuous consumption and display of wealth, on the other. The quantitative and qualitative dimensions of our poverty problem are no doubt vast, with a high growth rate in population consuming the benefits of development at a rate which makes the poverty problem remain in a status quo situation. This situation can be changed only through education, innovation and organisation. At the same time, the educated and well to do should consider themselves as trustees of their know how and wealth and use them for the benefit of the economically and socially handicapped sections of our population.
A great challenge before you is the standardisation of delivery systems and organisational structures which will ensure that new technologies reach the unreached. You should work on the public policy package necessary for promoting group co-operation among families living in a village or a watershed or the command area of an irrigation project. Group Insurance schemes and other incentives for group endeavour are essential for helping to poor to overcome the handicaps of poverty.
Rural India is a land of opportunities and is crying for greater attention from professionals. However, it will be difficult to attract or retain youth in rural professions unless they become both intellectually exciting and economically rewarding. New technologies like biotechnology, information technology, space technology, micro-electronics and management technology have opened up unusual opportunities for promoting the Gandhian pathway of production by masses through a meaningful integration of brain and brawn. The National Dairy Development Board has shown that the scope for spearheading agrarian and rural prosperity is immense. For capitalising on those opportunities, you should feel enthused by what each one of you can accomplish rather than get overwhelmed by the difficulties and constraints which are inherent in any innovative work. You should try to convert every calamity into an opportunity for progress. It is always wise to remember the following homily from Julius Ceasar.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
is bound in shallows and in
miseries, On such a full sea are we now
Afloat,
And we must take the current
When it serves
Or lose our ventures.
If you use your training at this great institution to identify new opportunities for wiping the tears of the millions of children, women and men who still go to bed hungry in our country, you will be taking our land and our people to a happy future. If, instead, opting for a risk free society, we succumb to a national failure of nerve, and if we chose inaction as our response to negative criticism, the tears of sorrow in our country-side will soon become a veritable flood.
I am confidant that you will work for tears of joy rather than of sorrow. I congratulate you on your choice of rural management as a profession and wish you much personal happiness and professional fulfilment.
