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"Everyone wants to move to Bangalore or Mumbai. It is for the corporate sector to shift this trend."

Mr Sam Pitroda

Bangalore , Nov. 11

CORPORATES should set up their back offices in rural India to generate employment for a large number of youth. With rural employment centred on agriculture, such a move would help in providing gainful engagement to the underemployed youth.

"We should make rural India the back office of urban India," said Mr Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the Knowledge Commission, while answering questions posed by audience attending the 13the Quality Summit on Friday here.

He said corporate sector should not rest content with urban India being the back office of developed countries. "I do not expect the governments to bring about this change. It is for the corporate world to take the lead," said Mr Pitroda.

Addressing the gathering from Chicago through video-link, Mr Pitroda said the need to create more jobs in rural India is urgent. "Everyone wants to move to Bangalore or Mumbai. It is for the corporate sector to shift this trend."

At the same time, the manufacturing sector has to expand its production base as growth of Indian economy would not be coming from the agriculture sector alone. Stating that government policies were not geared to encouraging local innovation, he said. "They find it easy to import."

As technology was being increasingly used for all round transformation of the society, identifying and understanding the challenges of technology, environment and society had become important. He said the Knowledge Commission, a no profit body, would be entering into dialogue with CII and other groups to coordinate in this task.

Mr Subodh Bhargava, Chairman of VSNL, in his address stressed on the synergy in technology, environment and society to bring a balanced development. Mr Bhargava said the challenges are many and they include IT deployment for decision-making or customer relationship management, increasing investment in research and development and talent management considering the vast pool of human resources of the country.

Lamenting that India was heading towards a crisis of `gurus', he said "there were not enough resources to build teachers in academic institutions and scientists with competence for research and development could not be tackled by slogans alone".

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`Make rural India the back office of urban India'

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