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Immiserised Bharat
Despair and Hope in Rural India
Speaker
In the early 1970s, India was experiencing severe poverty and hunger due to the great droughts of the previous decade. Although the Green Revolution was starting, agriculture and rural issues were largely ignored by urban residents and the media. Reports on monsoons, crops, and prices were seldom highlighted, lacking the appeal for widespread attention. Significant studies like those by V M Dandekar and Nilkanth Rath on poverty were published in specialised journals and went unnoticed by the general public. As a result, rural despair, evident then as now, remained hidden from mainstream discussion.
Fast forward to the third decade of the twenty-first century, and rural India, or Bharat, significantly lags behind urban areas in terms of income, infrastructure, governance, education, and healthcare. This gap has widened, especially since India’s economic growth accelerated over the last thirty years. Numerous initiatives over the past seven decades by the government, private sector, and civil organisations aimed at rural development have had mixed results, often falling short of expectations. While there have been significant achievements, they are isolated instances rather than widespread improvements. Additionally, resource scarcity, particularly water, has become a critical issue, yet remains largely ignored.
The pressing challenge is to connect these isolated successes, despite the difficult conditions, to create a more prosperous rural landscape.
Join us for a lecture by Prof. Shreekant Sambrani, followed by a Q&A session to delve deeper into these issues and explore potential solutions.
Speaker
Shreekant Sambrani
Shreekant Sambrani holds a B Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay, an M S in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University, and a Ph D in Economics from Cornell University. After brief teaching assignments in the United States, he joined the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1971. He then served as Chief of the Research Bureau of The Economic Times.
He was the founding Director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, the first institution of its kind globally, recognized as world-class by various agencies. From 1982 to 2011, he led his own management research and consultancy organization, serving elite Indian and global clients.
Sambrani has extensively researched and published on rural enterprise, poverty, and unemployment in India. His pioneering work in horticulture production, processing, and marketing is widely acclaimed. He is also a columnist for Business Standard and other periodicals.
As a consultant, he has advised leading Indian and international companies on strategic issues and conducted management audits, offering turnaround strategies and helping organizations navigate global challenges. Despite his diverse interests, his primary passion remains rural India, especially the marginalized peasantry.
