Ujjain: “A sharp decline of agriculture workers in rural areas has been noticed to their migration in bulk towards urban areas for employment opportunities and better living environment. Prior to this, such type of migration used to be held due to drought, agriculture crisis and other calamities.”
These views were expressed by ISSR’s national fellow and Institute of Social and Economic Change Bengaluru ex-director Prof RS Deshpande. He was delivering a keynote address during the inaugural session of a two-day national seminar on, ‘Status of rural poverty and migration: Impact on agriculture’. MP Institute of Social Science Research (MPISSR) in association with Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) has organised the seminar. It began on Wednesday morning at Bharatpuri Administrative Zone located MPISSR building.
Prof Deshpande while referring to components like infrastructural development, migration for livelihood, success and failure of poverty elevation programmes and benefit of equality tried to highlight rural poverty, migration and agriculture scenario. He further said that the target of development programmes should be to bring poor persons fully out of state of poverty and not on maintaining their status quo by providing them required assistance of livelihood. MPISSR president Dr Nalini Rewdikar chaired the programme.
Prior to it, MPISSR director Dr Yatindra Singh Sisodia gave the welcome speech and also highlighted the significance and objectives of the seminar. Seminar coordinator Dr Manu Gautam conducted the proceedings and also proposed a vote of thanks. Three technical sessions were conducted post-lunch wherein 15 research papers were presented. The participants including faculty members of different universities and academic institutions from 10 states of the country held discussions on various aspects. Prof Ganesh Kawadia (Indore) will be chief guest and keynote speaker of valedictory function to be held on Thursday at 3 pm.
