BANGALORE: “There is a huge opportunity for marketers and businessmen at villages in our country. As a majority of the people in India live in villages, they are virgin markets. They can be tapped by service, infrastructure and manufacturing sectors and more employment can be created out of that,” Secretary to the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj and Principal Secretary of Administrative Reforms Shalini Rajneesh said on Thursday. Speaking after inaugurating a two-day national conference on ‘Marketing to Rural India’, organised by PES Institute of Technology, she said, “Employment can be generated in rural areas if the three sectors—service, infrastructure and manufacturing- concentrate on villages and provide jobs to the villagers by imparting them the required skills.” Picking an example of how women’s self-help groups have managed to raise a capital of Rs 600 crore just by pooling in Rs 10 per person a week, she said, “It could have been done better if there was rural marketing in place.” Lamenting that the farmers are still exploited by middlemen, she said that there is “a huge opportunity lying in agro-processing units.” She advised the MBA students to use the opportunity and said, “If you don’t do it, somebody else will. This will be an opportunity which you will lose.” Mentioning that there are 6,000 gram panchayats in the state, Shalini welcomed the students to come up with business plans or projects involving any of the 6,000 panchayats.
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