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Rural Management: Bridging the gap between Policies and

Practices in Rural India1

Abstract: The meaning of rural poses many challenges to


intended audience to define it precisely. Concise understanding of
it requires perspective of both management and development.
The discourse engages with discursive and diverse communities,
which is both “plenitude and endless wealth”. Rural management
tries to capture the connotation of rural with a holistic approach
of inter-disciplinary scholarship which, in turn, makes a modest
attempt for coupling policies, practices and research. There is
reportedly a move to extend the space for poor people in rural to
mitigate the plights. Still, question remains in the line of impact
assessment of policy driven practices. The paper tries to figure
out the “missing links” amongst the different perspectives of rural
already discussed in many chapters of rural management. It is a
review of these linkages by incorporating few perspectives across
the area of management.
Keywords: rural, rural management, rural manager

1. Epitome of the Context…

Defining a construct for “rural” is of huge challenge and daunting


task for the rural manager in Indian context. The meaning of rural
perceived by academia and practitioners does not carry the same
connotation as they seem to be. The divide we try to sketch
between rural and urban is based on consumption pattern,
income stream, population density and preoccupation of the
people with a number of income generating activities. The result
of course is generating endless discourses with no solid statement
of “rural”; its rarity and accumulation of knowledge nucleus.

1
Authored by Shri Kushankur Dey and Shri Debasish Maitra of the Institute of Rural
Management, Anand. The former author is a third-year fellow participant and second author
is a second-year doctoral participant at IRMA. They can be reached at f061@irma.ac.in and
f071@irma.ac.in respectively.
Government on behalf of social contract choice always tries to
figure out the linkages between social policy and economic
growth. On the corollary, practices hardly make a modest attempt
to cater the needs of the poor. Needless to say, poor and rural are
inextricably linked as policy makers often muddle their policies
with this convention. For instance, PPP (public-private-
partnership) model conceived by think tanks surprisingly are not
making any significant impact on poor on the posterity of global
financial crises. The reasons cited by many sociologists and
economists show that demand-driven approach is somehow
omitted in the well articulated model of PPP.

Therefore, understanding the rural as multidimensional construct


is more important to a rural manager. Decision-activity-relation
analysis comes afterwards. So in the subsequent section, attempt
is made to envisage the contextual familiarity with a conceptual
approach. Facts and figures substantiate the argument whatever
is presented.

2. Rurality in Rural Markets: Marketing Paradigm…

Harish Bijoor (2003) recasts the underpinning of rural:

“The definition of rural is largely pastoral. It is ownership oriented


and deprivations oriented. The rural home is at times a
geographically defined entity. In the beginning everything was
rural. And then developed islands of urban within the large rural
mass. As urban centers developed near the ports, near the points
of business and indeed in areas that showed a great deal of
potential to house the best of facilities that were to grow, the
rural hinterland remained a large mass and urban terrain
emerged as a subset of this”.

From the above preamble of rural market, we can say that


diversity and heterogeneity encompass the rural environment.
Study by Business World (2008) shows that rural market is not as
obscure as it appears to be. Corporate alignment with voluntary
agencies in propelling the reach with a basket of products (TATA
Tea, HUL, ITC, Marico, P&G etc.) is probably a good illustration of
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The objective is to provide
rural consumers with a choice of shopping experience in
consonance with affordability. Packaging and pricing are highly
correlated with the burgeoning sales of new product launch (NPD)
in rural area.

3. Plights of the Poor remain Untouched: Setting


Developmental Agenda…

Rural economy is not uprising in reality. Is poverty declining at a


faster rate? Poverty line is taking its own reckoning measure.
Instead of 2400 Kcal requirement comes down to 1800 Kcal and
per capita income comes near to rupees 500. What is the impact
of health, education and services are not fully reflections of new
poverty line. SGRY, NREGS, RSETIS are really worth programmes
to remove the plights of poor! Wage structure is not as rosy as
being predicted. FCI-Adani’s Grain silos will mitigate the abject of
poverty; it confounds with confusion. NABARD’s refinancing role is
making hardly any impact on marketing infrastructure for better
disposal of produce. Farmers are under the clutches of
interlocking arrangement, the question remains unuttered, and
emergence of inclusive capitalism may have adverse impact on
land productivity, food security and price stability. Minimal or
controllable employment will tend to make a transition from rural
to urban or its circularity of “dual-economy” approach. “Changes
in class and social relations that come about with the transition to
a corporate system of food provisioning” (Gopalakrishnan
and Sreenivasa, 2009) considers a “system of provision” where
producers or farmers are not any better class rather oppressed
mass of the deprived system.

4. Eying at Macro: Coupling Policies, Practices and


Research…
Now the time is ripe to take an indulgent view on the present
policy scenario of rural economy in the context of Government,
Industry and Academia. Today agriculture in the rural canvas is
facing conflicting pressures from different points. Though a rise in
productivity has well been achieved in certain commodities but
still the problem of food security and poverty at village level is
matter of concern.

Trade liberalisation through signing ‘Agreement on Agriculture’


(AOA) treaty made the situation more complex. Today price
fluctuation is one of the most sought after discussions due to
linkages of domestic food prices with international markets.
Coping with price fluctuations would require mechanisms that
ought to be compatible with all the entities. India needed to
import wheat although it declared of having enough buffer stocks
to meet the domestic demand. The existence of minimum support
price has served the role of providing price signals and ensuring
price stability to help farmers take production decision effectively.
Huge subsidies are given on Urea to guarantee equal distribution
of fertilizers at farmers’ level. On the other hand, agriculture
universities identify farmers’ problem from only production and
protection point of view. Being a third player viz., Industry puts in
efforts toward profit maximization through efficient business
operations. Industries eye for procuring raw materials at lowest
possible cost. Commodity exchange deals with speculators,
arbitrageurs. How many farmers in the epitome of hedgers
participate in future market is questionable. So, it manifests the
absence of co-integration and coordination mechanisms amongst
Government, Industry and Academia. So any framework should
suggest that goal should be set based on suitability of three
entities. Then the problem should be identified at community
level after proper discussion with the interest and target groups.
Any policy which is of no interest to all the market players is
destined to fail. At every step of policy making and
implementation, a control system should be in function through
proper feedback mechanism. In most of the cases every entity
indulges in maximizing their own interest without understanding
the overall collective gain. Government looks for only power
game; academics only endeavor to do ‘good’ research rather than
‘right’ research to ensure the fund from the donors and industry
strives to make profit. In a response to this lacuna framework
inquires about involvement of all the parties. The responses to
feedback should come from all three entities to avoid of being
biased to only one.

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