Bhopal, Mar 11: Under the national capacity building programme for rural industries programme co-ordinators, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) Bhopal have jointly organised a five-day national Rural Industries Programme from Tuesday here. The programme was sponsored by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

At the inaugural function of the programme chief guest Ashok Noronha, Managing Director, MP Khadi & Village Industries Board, G Sampat Kumar, Dy General Manager, Small Industries Development Bank, Raman Gujral Regional Co-ordinator EDI, Bhopal, UN Tripathi, AGM, SIDBI, Project Officer Vinay Verma and other dignitaries were present.

Addressing the gathering Noronha said ``development of India is based on rural industries, we should focus ourselves in developing rural industries base in this country. According to him, EDI strategy has been of special significance in developing capacity of collaborating NGOs in conducting RIPs and in turn, systematically promoting micro entrepreneurs in rural segment of the country.

Sampat Kumar, while addressing the audience said that RIP has emerged as a comprehensive programme generating employment for rural poor in industrially backward areas by grounding of enterprises on techno-economic considerations rather than grants/subsidy related considerations.

According to UN Tripathi, SIDBI, being an apex development bank for promoting, supporting and nurturing small-scale industries in the country reposed faith in EDI led RIP movement across the country with a belief that potential galore of rural entrepreneurs can effectively mitigate the ubiquitous phenomenon of poverty and unemployment in rural India. The programme would be continued in the state, he added.

Raman Gujral, said that EDI promoted with a mandate of spearheading the concept of rural entrepreneurship development movement across the country. It replicates such model into various rural and backward part of the country since last three decades. EDI has taken a further lead by taking initiatives to suitable modify the entrepreneurship development process for promoting entrepreneurs in remote rural set up of the country and in process developed a cross culturally tested successful model of promoting rural entrepreneurs, called Rural Entrepreneurship Development Programme (REDP).

The Programme attempts to address the problems such as rural unemployment, urban migration and under-utilisation of local skills and resources, and is designed as a comprehensive Business Development Services programme, he said.

According to Vinay Verma, RIP project co-ordinators from different states like Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are participating for their capacity building through this programme. The objective of the Programme is to update the Rural Industries programme Co-ordinators, so that the Rural Industrialisation process in the concerned states gets an impetus.