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Informist, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – There is a need to work on ways to diversify incomes in the rural economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, while speaking at the Bharat Grameen Mahotsav organised by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. "We need to work in a time-bound manner to make irrigation affordable in villages, and promote micro-irrigation. We need to see how we can adopt the mantra of 'One Drop More Crop' and look for easier rural enterprise creation, and increase natural farming opportunities in the rural economy," Modi said on Saturday. 

 

The prime minister underscored the goal of providing maximum economic assistance to villagers, enabling them to engage in farming, and creating new employment and self-employment opportunities. His words assume importance as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to present the Union Budget for 2025-26 (Apr-Mar) on Feb. 1. In the last few budgets, the Modi government has been aiming to make Budget-centric allocations for four groups— the poor, youth, women, and farmers. At the same event, Sitharaman reiterated that the government continued to maintain focus on these four groups. 

 

The prime minister also said there was a need to create more farmer producer organisations, as this has helped farmers to get reasonable prices for their crops. He also stressed the need to create more "Amul-like" cooperatives in the country. "Today, milk production is giving farmers the most returns. We need to work on making five-six more Amul-like cooperatives, whose reach is across the country," Modi said. Launched in 1946, Amul is owned by the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation.

 

Modi also called for adding more farmers to the natural farming campaign and said there was a need to add more micro, small and medium enterprises to self-help groups. "There is a need for MSME products in the country, but we need to work on their products' branding and marketing. We also need to take care of our GI (geographical indication) products' packaging and branding," he said.  End

 

Reported by Pratiksha

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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