Roy stresses on need to strengthen institutions

Minister for Food and Civil Supplies Saryu Roy, while stressing on making the institutions in society too firm to be molded with time, expressed disappointment over elected bodies at village level turning into yet another replica of the Government.

He also flayed the policy about ‘ease of doing business’ and instead talked about ‘ease of doing responsible business’, “otherwise this would lead us no where and help in building storehouses of wealth for few. Institutions should be strengthened enough so that any regime change could not affect their soul and mold as per their own likes and dislikes,” said Roy speaking during 37th foundation day of NABARD on Thursday.

The Minister also talked about preferring happiness index over GDP growth to achieve real development. “Instead of measuring GDP growth, talks should be more about happiness index where NABARD has a great role to play due to its connect with people at grassroot level and the mandate given to it as an institution. We have been working so far for capital formation at lower level through building series of self-help groups and funding them. But what has changed in so many years? Reports suggest that funding given is not reaching up to them and informal transactions are still taking place despite all the measures. Gradually Gram Sabhas and Gram Panchayats have reduced to replications to the Governments,” added the Minister.

Chief General Manager of NABARD in the State Sharad Jha while presenting a report card of the achievements of the bank setup in 1982 for rural institutionalised financing, said that it had helped immensely in contributing about 20 per cent of entire infrastructure to come up in hinterlands of the country.

“The bank has been able to fund 51000 SHGs last year in Jharkhand and we have set a target for another 60,000 this year with fund of Rs 600 crore to be given to them for various economic activities. In Jharkhand as small finances Rs 800 crore would be given this year of which Rs 300 crore is for drinking water. Under rural infrastructure development fund (RIDF) our outstanding in about Rs 1 lakh crore which contributes nearly 20 per cent of the infrastructure coming in rural India,” said the CGM.

He also lauded NABARD’s sound financial position with Rs 2960 crore net profit and the balance sheet of Rs four lakh crore. The CGM on the occasion shared some new initiatives like ‘e-shakti’ thought digitisation of all the bank accounts with SHGs and distribution of KCC.     

Retired chief secretary Shiv Basant, former MD of Jharcraft Dhirendra Kumar, Director of ICAR, Palandu AK Singh, former Director Shivendra Kumar and several other experts were invited to express their opinion on role of NABARD in development of farm and allied sectors in the State.