Bhopal: A full house confronted the obstacles to rural growth on Thursday at the Flourishing Rural Madhya Pradesh conference at Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (Manit).
The conference in Bhopal is part of the eight day India Rural Colloquy organized by Transform Rural India, a non-profit organization under Tata Trusts.
Students, development workers, politicians, media and two large groups of women in tribal dress convened to hear experts on rural governance, water conservation and the necessity of women for rural progress.
Speakers in the first section were Prof. Karunesh Kumar Shukla, state Women and Child Development Minister Sushri Nirmala Bhuria, and environmentalist Rajendra Singh, otherwise known as ‘the waterman of India’. For a round table on rural governance, the panelists were former Chief Secretary Shri R. Parasuram, Civil Servant Shri Malay Shrivastava, former director of the National Institute of Governance Dr. H.M. Mishra, Shri Amitabh Singh of Debate, Dr. Rama Pandey of Bhopal’s School of Planning and Architecture, Manit Associate Professor Dr Pushpendra Yadav and Shri Anurag Dwary of NDTV.
State Tribal Welfare Minister Kunwar Vijay Shah sent a video of his thoughts and Chief Minister Dr. Mohan Yadav sent a letter to the conference.
The panelists for a discussion on the role of women in flourishing localities were IAS officers Shri Kailash Wankhede and Sushree Harshika Singh, Commissioner Smt. Sufiyah Faruqui Wali, Dr. Anjuli Jain of Manit, Sushree Joyatri Ray of UN Women and Shri Yogesh Mahor of the World Bank.
State Minister for Rural Development Shri Prahlad Singh Patel rounded off the conference with the keynote address.
Transform Rural India works primarily in MP, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, but also designs rural development plans for Bihar, Assam and Maharashtra.
It has six areas of focus: health and nutrition, gender equality, education, employment and enterprise farm prosperity, governance and gender and climate.
A parallel conference ran yesterday in Raipur and similar events will run until 8 August in Lucknow, Ranchi, Bengaluru and Delhi.
