rural management_debasish & kushankur_feb

8/7/2019 Rural Management_Debasish & Kushankur_Feb

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Rural Management: Bridging the gap between Policies and

Practices in Rural India1

Abstract: The meaning of rural poses many challenges tointended audience to define it precisely. Concise understanding ofit requires perspective of both management and development.The discourse engages with discursive and diverse communities,which is both plenitude and endless wealth. Rural managementtries to capture the connotation of rural with a holistic approachof inter-disciplinary scholarship which, in turn, makes a modestattempt for coupling policies, practices and research. There isreportedly a move to extend the space for poor people in rural to

mitigate the plights. Still, question remains in the line of impactassessment of policy driven practices. The paper tries to figureout the missing links amongst the different perspectives of ruralalready discussed in many chapters of rural management. It is areview of these linkages by incorporating few perspectives acrossthe 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 RuralManagement, Anand. The former author is a third-year fellow participant and second authoris a second-year doctoral participant at IRMA. They can be reached at [email protected] and

[email protected] respectively.


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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 policieswith 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 terrainemerged 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


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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 butstill 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 threeentities. 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


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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 industrystrives 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.

rural management_debasish & kushankur_feb

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