In the half-an-hour-long meeting in his office, Ramesh shared his vision for the BRLF and the role planned for corporate sector in it, sources said.
Ramesh was accompanied by Rural Development Secretary S Vijay Kumar and other key ministry officials, while Tata was joined by his successor Cyrus P Mistry during the meeting.
Under the BRLF program, the ministry will raise a corpus of Rs 1000 crore with equal participation with the top corporate bodies in the country. The program is still at formative stages and the Finance Ministry has already made an allocation of Rs 500 crore for it, sources said.
The program is aimed at creating necessary infrastructure in the under-developed tribal and rural areas of Andra Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
The Rural Development Ministry has already written to Tata, Reliance, Infosys and Wipro for help in putting together Rs 500 crore which will be used for generating livelihoods in 170 tribal districts of the country.
The foundation will be an independent body of about six to eight well-known professionals and government representatives on the lines of other such bodies which have been playing an active role in other sectors such as health and education.
