I am indeed delighted to address and interact with the women entrepreneurs of Karnataka organized by the Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka. My greetings to all the members of AWAKE for the good work they are doing for the women community. I would like to share some of my thoughts with you.

The heart of India lies in its villages, as there are approximately 6,00,000 villages in our country and around 70% of our population reside in the villages. Hence the villages have to play a crucial role in bringing about overall development in the country. The next two decades are very important for India for transforming from a 'developing' country to a 'developed' nation. The responsible citizens, particularly women are all the more important for the nation as their thoughts, the way of working and value system will lead to fast development of a good family, good society and ultimately a good nation.

The Nation has a vision for the India of 2020 and by that year hope that India can join the ranks of developed countries. For this, we would have to double our present growth rate of Gross Domestic Product and to achieve this, five key areas have been identified in which we need to focus our attention. These areas are: -

(1) Education and Health care

(2) Agriculture and Food Processing

(3) Information and communication technology

(4) Infrastructure development and

(5) Self-sufficiency in areas of critical technologies.

I have a message for all the women entrepreneurs who are gathered here today. In all these five areas, which have been listed for focused attention, the role of women is very clearly interwoven. For example, in areas of health care, education, agriculture and food processing, it is the women who provide a major portion of the services, which go into these sectors. As such, your role in shaping the future destiny of our country is very very important. You must dream and think about how to make our nation join the ranks of the developed nations by 2020.

PURA

To achieve this vision, I would like to share with you some thoughts on possible missions. For bridging the rural-urban divide and achieving balanced socio-economic development, our Pradhan Mantriji, as part of his Independence Day Announcements, has declared the Rural Development Programme called PURA - Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas. It involves identification of rural clusters with growth potential and creating four types of connectivities for them -

(i) Road, transportation and power connectivity

(ii) electronic connectivity in the form of reliable telecom, Internet and IT services

(iii) knowledge connectivity in the form of good educational and training institutions, and

(iv) Market connectivity that would enable kisans and others to get the best prices for their produce.

The Government has decided to implement the PURA strategy in 5,000 rural clusters across the country in the next five years. But the success of this ambitious programme lies in the collaborative efforts and active participation of all the village leaders at the grassroot levels. Moreover, a woman with her inherent characteristics such as compassion, patience, perseverance, honesty, sensitivity to social issues, constructive approach towards problem solving and hard work, will be able to play a vital role in realising this mission. Such women, when empowered through the democratic process, can collectively produce spectacular results.

I am reminded of Mahakavi Subramaniya Bharatiar, who in 1910 composed the poem envisioning women of India:

This beautiful poem means

She walks with raised head,

With her eyes looking straight,

She has her principles,

Unafraid of anybody!

She has a lofty

And knowledge based pride,

Such cultured women,

Don't falter from the chosen path.

She drives ignorance away.

She welcomes the bliss of life.

With learned mind,

This is the Dharma

Of emerging woman.

The dream of the poet, I am sure, will become a reality.

Suggested role for women entrepreneurs

The women entrepreneurs can create awareness about PURA amongst the village community so that they can come forward to willingly contribute in this development programme. The contribution could be in the form of -

(a) Promoting and facilitating illiteracy eradication campaigns in the village

(b) Explaining the usefulness of computer education in village administration for providing transparent governance and economic advancement.

(c) Forming village cooperatives for central procurement, storage, preservation, processing and marketing the goods at attractive price.

(d) Working for providing better nutrition, sanitation facilities, safe drinking water and access to reproductive healthcare for healthy families and communities.

(e) Fighting against the social evils such as dowry, female foeticide, child marriage, child labour, domestic violence, and ill-treatment and harassment of the socially backward classes.

(f) Encouraging women to attain economic independence through formation of Self Help Groups with the help of micro-credit and organising various skill training programmes.

(g) Facilitating the conservation of energy through effective utilization of solar power, recyling the waste for energy generation and management of water through rainwater harvesting etc,

Empowerment

When a child is empowered by the parents at various phases of growth, the child gets transformed into a responsible citizen. When a teacher is empowered with knowledge and experience, good young human beings with value systems emerge. When an individual or a team is empowered with technology, transformation to higher potential for achievement is assured. When a leader of any village empowers his or her people, leaders are born who can change the nation in multiple areas. When women are empowered, society with stability gets assured. When the political leaders of the nation empower the people through visionary policies, the prosperity of the nation is certain. When religions are empowered and become spiritual force, peace and happiness will blossom in people's heart. Empowerment of various layers of management structure is indeed the best instrument to maximize the performance of a given fund to the developmental tasks. Such an empowered stage will lead to creation of enlightened citizens with value system resulting in prosperity of the nation.

As per the Census of 2001, women account for 48.3% of our total population. Many agencies, both Government and private, are taking initiatives in the areas of training and capacity building, employment and income generation, welfare and gender sensitization with the ultimate objective of empowering women both economically and socially for making them equal partners in development. We had declared the year 2001 as 'Women's Empowerment Year' and efforts were made at various levels in many sectors for mainstreaming gender perspectives into all laws, policies, programmes, regulations and budgeting allocations of the Government. I am sure with.

Conclusion

The process for transforming India into a developed nation has already commenced. All of you are working towards this cause in your own way. We find many individual success stories of women for income generation in the fields of agriculture, agro-processing, cottage industry, handicrafts, sericulture, herbal farming etc. Women are also leading movements against social evils with certain amount of success. Now there is a need to make concerted efforts as a nation to work persistently towards the singular goal of making India a developed nation by the year 2020.

For this, I suggest small groups of interested women entrepreneurs and public leaders from other States to have a workshop in the Entrepreneur Development Institute to see for themselves what can be achieved by way of gender empowerment through efforts like the one made by AWAKE. I am sure this would enlighten women entrepreneurs of other States as well and encourage them to take on efforts like the one which we have seen here.

May God Bless you.

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