Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan calls for inclusive & holistic development in rural areas
Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan
Hyderabad: Governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan on Tuesday called for inclusive and holistic development in rural areas. She stated that it was important to ensure access of health, education, and opportunities for the vulnerable sections.
The Governor was virtually participating as the chief guest at the 63rd Foundation Day celebrations of the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (NIRDPR), Rajendranagar. She emphasised the need for offering capacity- building training programmes so as to enable them to have increased livelihoods.
"Investing more on rural healthcare and creating better infrastructure in rural areas is vital," she added.
Referring to the initiatives of the Central government, Dr Tamilisai said rural development was witnessing a major transformation in terms of approach and investment.
She exhorted rural development professionals to promote community-driven initiatives with the area-specific approach.
Dr Tamilisai released the 31st series of 'Rural Development Statistics', which provides data on various parameters concerning multiple facets of rural development.
Nagendranath Sinha, Secretary, Union Ministry of Rural Development, attended the function virtually and gave his message to NIRDPR employees. He shared his thoughts on issues like nature of change the rural India is undergoing, the Prime Minister's vision of eradicating poverty, possibilities of expanding scope of service providers of rural areas, advantages of NIRDPR as a apex body networking with the multiple institutes. He wished NIRDPR to be a hub of rural development, like other think tank institutions, like NitiAyog.
A session was organised with former DGs and DDGs for visioning future of NIRDPR which was chaired by Dr G Narendra Kumar, DG, NIRDPR. A proposed vision was shared by Prof. Jyothis Satyapalan and retired IAS officers S M Vijayanand, Mathew C Kunnumkal and Dr W R Reddy gave their suggestions to make NIRDPR more vibrant.
In the afternoon, rural management institutes' meet was held. Nineteen institutions, both physically and virtually, participated to discuss ways and means of collaboration.