Focus on rural growth: Pranab

Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee today urged industry to create a win-win situation where basic economic issues in rural areas were addressed, while businesses grew.

"Can businesses develop a model of rural investment, thus setting on roll a cycle of income generation, increasing disposable income, leading to greater demand and supply for goods and services, and improving overall economic prosperity at the grass-root level?" he said while inaugurating the 32nd National Management Convention here.

While boasting of India's strong fundamentals in terms of GDP growth and economic reforms, Mukherjee said the circles of exclusion were still there and economic disparities were still looming large on the horizon.

A nationwide development must return to the corporate conference room and occupy a central place in all managerial discourse, he said.

Terming the theme of the convention""The best of the best:spirit of the challenger"" as apt and timely, he said, "Challenge if you can, I urge you, your conventional wisdom, and challenge if you will, the present pace of India's economic growth, challenge if you can imagine, the opportunities that lie in rural India and of course challenge if you must, the lacunae in India's social, economic, and business edifice."

Earlier KV Kamath, managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank Ltd, gave a businessman's interpretation to the same sentiment by announcing that the rural opportunities are going to be the next big opportunity. Creation of mass markets through affordable prices, transforming the inclination to change of mass markets into business opportunities were the two suggestions he put forward.

Giving his own example, Kamath said that the transactions at the ICICI Bank's branches have come down to 25 per cent of its total transactions in 2005 while the branches alone handled 94 per cent of the total transactions in 2000 even as the customer base now touched 14 million from below one million four years ago.

He termed the ability to change and response to change as the key factors of a company's growth. Satyam's Ramalinga Raju, who is the chairman of the two-day event, and Sunil Alagh, president of the All India Management Association (AIMA), also addressed the meeting.