Occasional Publication 15

MOTIVATING PROFESSIONALS FOR

RURAL WORK:
A CHALLENGE FOR MANAGEMENT
INSTITUTES IN INDIA

MV d Bogaert sj

Institute of Rural Management Anand

Post Box No.60, Anand 388 001, Gujarat (India)
Phones: (02692) 40177, 40391•Fax: 02692-40188•Email: corpas@fac.irm.ernet.in
Website: http://irma.irm.ernet.in
September 1998
 MOTIVATING PROFESSIONALS FOR RURAL WORK:
A CHALLENGE FOR MANAGEMENT INSTITUTES IN INDIA1

MV d Bogaert sj

Abstract

Management is the first career preference of the youth today. They seek admission to
management institutions, including rural management institutes. Yet, very few actually
work as rural managers. Rural areas need trained young managers much more than the
urban commercial or business houses. What are the reasons for the imbalance between
needs of rural areas and the input of human resources? The present paper takes up this
question and some related issues, and suggests how rural management institutes can
motivate young managers to work in the rural sector for the disadvantaged sections of the
society.

1.0 INTRODUCTION
The Central Plateau in India is a dry rural region. Today it is one of the most neglected
areas. It is the region that needs the injection of management skills, drive and
commitment, yet remains deprived of it.
The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution have handed the management of
village resources back to the local population and their panchayat structures. However,
unless the people are motivated, provided with managerial skills, and organised, this
effort towards Gram Swaraj may end in a failure. Fifty years from now 40% of the
population in this Central Plateau region will still be illiterate and below the poverty line,
as they have been during the last 50 years of our independence. But it will be worse,
because by now the area will have become far more denuded.
The country is, on the other hand, experiencing a mushroom growth of MBA-offering
institutes. Every other educated youth dreams of a career in computers, marketing or
financial management in an MNC. Not more than 2.5% of management candidates opt
for training that prepares them for work in rural areas. Moreover, of those who complete
post-graduate studies in such institutions less than 50% actually work in rural
organisations or remain in rural areas after a period of 5 years.
In this context, this paper explores the following points:
• Why is there an imbalance between needs of rural areas and the input of human
resources?
• What managerial tasks are awaiting in rural areas?
• The core of the problem of human values.
• What role can Rural Management institutions play?

2.0 THE PROBLEM OF IMBALANCE

The development needs of the rural areas far exceed the meagre input of trained human
resources it receives. The reasons for this great imbalance are many. In a society where
you are what you drive (a Daewoo car), and the main factor that provides satisfaction of
basic needs, comforts, security, status, is money; careers are chosen on the basis of
salaries they offer; not their importance for society, nor the social needs they address.
There is another dimension to this. Since management studies require large investments
by students or their guardians, job seekers flock to organisations that offer more in terms
of salaries and perks. Managerial work in rural areas, whether in government or non-
government sectors, has little to offer in this respect. As a result, we have the imbalance
of trained young managers competing for careers in non-rural areas, while rural areas
which need their services are neglected. The reasons for this situation may be broadly
classified as social, institutional and conceptual; though these are interrelated factors.

2.1 Social Factors

The mass media represents careers in business management as the modern elite
employment par excellence where everybody who matters should be. Compared to them,
work in rural areas is not given any importance or prestige except an exceptional person
who undertakes environment action.
The global market attracts today’s youth. The global market is the place to be in. It has
modern instruments, it produces glittering products, and it provides scope for travelling.
It is the place for making quick profits. The global market is the ultimate metropolitan
setting where business is transacted in a highly organised and competitive set-up. The
advertisements and publicity that goes with it highlight the global market as the place
where things happen. The publicity is heavy in terms of visual messages. The youth
greatly influenced by visual messages naturally wants to be part of it. Hardly any young
person will think of rural areas as the locus where a future can be made.
Work in rural areas demands from the individual a strong ideological orientation.
However, Indian society today is not interested at all in any ideological ferment. There is
dire absence of any ideals that motivate people to make sacrifices for a cause, for others.
Corruption and cynicism have replaced idealism. These together create the social context
wherein the youth is disinclined to take up careers in rural management. Moreover, very
few rural managers have developed into figures that serve as reference points or ideals for
young people who would like to work in rural areas.

2.2 Institutional Factors

Management institutions that offer training in rural subjects may also bear part of the
responsibility. If their courses are of very high quality, students interested in business
management but unable to get into an Indian Institute of Management see them as a by-
pass to careers in management. After a stint of two or three years in a rural organisation,
where they may serve a bond, they hasten to switch over to industrial or business careers.
The style of living, the way in which management institutions advertise their
programmes, the comforts offered, the syllabus and the field placements, may convey a
message different from what the institution officially offers.
The values of the management faculty also play an important role. These values transpire
in the interactions with students during lectures, counselling, and day-to-day contact. If
the faculty members have not had a personal exposure to rural life or are not interested in
the future of rural people, especially the poor, or avoid escorting students for rural
fieldwork, a credibility gap is created which goes against the latter taking up rural
management as a life’s vocation.

2.3 The Conceptual Factor

A last reason is that the concept of management has till now been totally identified and
monopolised by industrial and business management. Rural management has not had a
chance to develop into a full-fledged science of its own. Compared to the resources that
have been bestowed on the development of industrial and business management, very
little energy and human resources have been spent on developing the concept of rural
management. Also, political will needed to give a thrust to rural management has been
lacking. It is therefore hardly surprising that rural areas are bereft of trained managerial
inputs?

3.0 MANAGEMENT OF RURAL RESOURCES AND RURAL

MANAGER

3.1 Managerial Tasks in Rural Areas

A rainbow of tasks are needed to do full justice to the challenge of rural management.
They range from work in rural industries or formal organisations to work in the informal
sector. Five categories can be distinguished: the first two describe the type of work while
the other three are categorised as the type of roles a young manager is called upon to play.

3.1.1 Rural Industries and Formal Organisations

Rural industries, though established in rural areas, are essentially industrial enterprises.
These enterprises are dependent on rural products, though they can as well be sited in
urban areas. Rural industries/enterprises comprise factories, dairies, sugar factories,
where the principles and practices of factory management as applied to industry are
utilised with minor or major adaptations to the rural situation.

3.1.2 Rural Projects or Missions

Projects are not contained within four walls, as is the case with factories. They operate in
a widely open environment but they are organised within a formal intellectual framework
of their own. The manager exerts authority over persons working under him or her,
though they may be hundreds of kilometres away. Projects such as construction of dams,
drinking water schemes, plantation of trees are often undertaken by government
departments. Working for such projects therefore often means accepting a low salary
(compared to the salaries offered by urban commercial firms), very few perks, and of
course, low social status.
Missions share many characteristics with projects. They are of temporary nature.
Missions work through a small core team but depend for their execution on the voluntary
contribution of non-government organisations, people’s groups, or on contractors. Some
examples are missions on literacy, education for all and watershed. Working for such
missions has the same problem as for projects, resulting in very few young mangers
opting for such work.

3.1.3 Rural Co-operatives and Federations

The manager in a rural co-operative, whether it is a milk co-operative, credit society, tree
growers’ co-operative, or a fishing co-operative, deals in a structured way with free
human beings who are not his/her subordinates. The manager’s role is that of a servant of
the co-operative’s members.

3.1.4 Non-Government Organisations

People heading non-government organisations often call themselves volunteers or
activists, but they are entrepreneurs and institution builders entering the unorganised
sector and organising people to achieve certain objectives. They are managers of
resources as much as those in the rural industries, rural projects, missions and co-
operatives.

3.1.5 Unorganised Rural Sector

Another type of role that a trained manager can play in rural management is as the
facilitator in the unorganised rural sector. The role of a facilitator deserves more attention
because people working as facilitators in rural areas function as spearheads of a trust for
shaping people’s organisations. There is a great need for such facilitation in the poverty
stricken dry regions of Central India. Initially, they are like paratroopers dropped behind
enemy lines, entirely depending on their own resources. Most of the leaders of the non-
government organisations today, described in the preceding category as entrepreneurs and
institution builders, started out as facilitators in the unorganised rural sector. The reason
why poverty has been so resistant to earlier efforts to overcome it, is precisely that rural
people never had the benefit of being properly motivated and organised. It is not
sufficient to motivate the rural people but they must also be enabled and strengthened to
organise into self-managed groups, which later on should be federated under umbrella
organisations.
3.2 Managing Rural Resources
Underlying the categories of rural tasks described above is the management of rural
resources for the rural population. It would be worthwhile to examine the nature of this
underlying process, which would lead us to the perception of the difference between a
rural manager and the one who works in the urban context.
The rural facilitator described here is a person on a mission and therefore shares
characteristics of the second group of managers mentioned above. Alone or with a small
team of other workers he or she enters a rural area where people are not yet organised,
though they are part of the official panchayat structures and gram sabhas.
The team works on its own initiatives, or is sent by an organisation, such as the UNICEF,
a Rajiv Gandhi Mission, an NGO, or a development organisation. They use managerial
skills to survey the area, establish rapport with people. In addition, they motivate the
people to undertake a common activity such as protecting the village forest, start a
savings club, grow mushrooms, run a watershed, help the people to acquire the needed
skills, to organise around this common activity, and then manage it by themselves in a
sustainable manner.
The real managers of rural resources however are the local people themselves. Therefore,
the facilitator, (and the accompanying team) should not be called managers. Although the
facilitators use managerial skills, they are neither the decision-makers nor the bosses of
the people. They facilitate the decision making of the rural people. The latter are the real
rural managers. This process of enabling and escorting people to the point where they
can effectively manage their resources is of temporary nature. After the task is
accomplished, the facilitators should move out to another area and commence the same
process again.
If the facilitator’s role is a temporary one, why should it be needed? This is a question
often asked. The experience of those who work in poorer rural areas has demonstrated
that by themselves rural poor are unable to initiate the process of organisation. They need
an outside catalytic agent to escort the process, which is of temporary nature.

3.3 Objective of Rural Management Institution

The task of Rural Management Institutions in India is to train students for each of these
five forms of managerial interventions. It would be an ideal course if students coming out
of Rural Management Institutions could commence their work in the fifth sector, the
unorganised sector, which is the most challenging one. As they advance in age, they are
likely to be absorbed into professionally managed non-government organisations or are
assimilated into co-operatives or rural projects promoted by industries or development
agencies who sponsor work in the fifth sector. Finally, they may be absorbed as faculty
members in their Alma Mater from where they received their initial training.

3.4 Rural Manager vis-à-vis Business Manager

Before proceeding to the next section, it is good to reflect on the vital importance of
promoting a concept of a rural manager as an alternative to the business manager. The
latter today holds 99.90% of the attention of the world as the professional person who
creates wealth in the world and sees that goods are marketed. The rural facilitator
commands hardly 0.10% of attention and would be considered today as an idealist
believing in utopia, an aberration or a failure. The two represent opposing models of
dealing with the environment. The business manager dominates the scene in a profit-
driven economy that ultimately is not viable. The concept of the rural manager is
envisaged for an economy focussed on survival. Needless, to say, the future lies with the
latter.
This can be represented in the form of contrasting paradigms, as presented in Appendix I.
In this case, watershed leaders consist of a small team of local village leaders temporarily
catalysed and escorted by a professionally trained rural facilitator. The contrast is
overstressed for the sake of helping the reader to come to a deeper insight. This contrast
is not so stark in reality
.

4.0 THE CORE PROBLEM OF HUMAN VALUES

The description of tasks in rural management and types of managerial roles may sound
totally impractical and utopian when related to the situation from where today’s
professional managers come, i.e., from business management schools.
It is indeed true that extremely few students who knock for admission at the gates of
Rural Management Institutes today can even imagine a start of their rural work as taking
place in the unorganised sector. Moreover, there are very few role models in the rural
sector for the youth
Some hero figures do exist and young people with a grain of idealism can look up to
them as role models. There are those who twenty five years ago started non-government
organisations in the region which are now well known, viz., Prof. Mohammed Yunus of
the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Smt. Ela Bhatt of SEWA, Ahmedabad. More recently,
some of these catalysts have paid with their life for their idealism like Sister Rani Maria,
MSW trained rural worker. She was pulled out of a bus and cruelly murdered on February
25, 1995 at Udaynagar in Devas district, not far from Indore by henchmen of local
landlords and Sanjay Ghosh who was abducted by ULFA in Assam on August 4, 1997.
Students who opt for rural management in spite of all the glitz that washes over them can
be influenced in their value system. This is possible if they are exposed to the stark
poverty that still exists in rural areas. They should be enabled to see the poor people in
flesh and blood and given an opportunity to work with them in rural conditions.
One cannot do better than refer to Gandhiji’s Talisman:
“I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much
with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man whom
you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use
to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to control over his own life and
destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving
million? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.”2
If students can be brought into direct contact with the rural poor, especially women and
children, it will motivate them to work for them. But this contact must be from close
quarters so that the youth may see for themselves as to what can be done for the rural
poor. Moreover, the youth must perceive rural work as that which involves the rural poor.
In other words, they must learn to work with the rural poor. It would be even better if
they can for some time be associated with effective measures/projects designed to help
the rural poor to overcome poverty. Such experiences are likely to motivate a certain
number of students to take up work in rural areas. Some may discover a vocation to take
up such work when their studies are over.
However, the means of familiarising the students with the rural poor must be deployed
with caution. The experience of meeting poor people may depress students and make
them helpless. This is not desirable. They must also see what can be done to effectively
help the poor. It should stir their compassion and interest. It is only when they are given
an opportunity to actually work along with the poor in the latter’s efforts to rise out of
poverty that they will discover in themselves, unknown corners of their own humanity,
and develop a determination to do something effective about it.

5.0 HOW RURAL MANAGEMENT INSTITUTIONS CAN

CONTRIBUTE
Given the fact that it is human values that make the difference in preparing a youth for
rural management, let us consider some measures that a rural management institutes can
take in this direction.
Introducing a credit course on Management Ethics as applicable to rural managers or
facilitators is a good measure one can take, but is of limited effectiveness. By the time
students reach the stage of post-graduate studies, they are 20-22 years old and their
values are set. No amount of lecturing changes the values of a person. One ounce of
exposure to living beings is better than pounds of talk or papers. If a course of Ethics is
introduced, however, it must be made interesting by a faculty member who really
believes in what he/she says.
The following practical steps may help to make students deeply aware of their values, be
more true to themselves and inclined towards work amongst rural people:

5.1 Introduce a Hands-On Culture

As an integral part of the post-graduate studies, students can be asked to grow or rear
some living beings by themselves. It implies that they have to use their hands to cultivate
a tiny plot of land, to nurture a couple of small animals. If the latter thrive, if the venture
yields tangible benefits including profit, it is a sign that a student has taken good care of
it.
Activities, which would fall under this would be:
• growing mushrooms,
• tending a tree nursery,
• rearing rabbits or chickens, and
• practising vermiculture.
Even washing one’s own plate and cutlery after meals as a daily routine helps to break
down the inbred contempt middle class persons have for manual work.

5.2 Field Laboratories

One of the mechanisms for ensuring face-to-face interaction between students and the
rural poor is a field laboratory. This may be set up and maintained in poor tribal villages,
rather than in better off places where irrigation facilities are present.

5.3 Vikas Vahini Scheme

To launch a Vikas Vahini, a scheme under which outgoing students on their own or in a
small team can undertake a project designed by them among the unorganised rural
people. For a period of three to five years, they are assured of a monthly honorarium that
permits them to cover their ordinary living expenses. A student or team could also be
placed in a non-government organisation working amongst isolated people, but which
does not have the means to cover the monthly expenses of the Vahini members. The
Vahini should keep regular contact with the Rural Management Institute and the
volunteers should gather for an annual meeting where they meet students, teachers and
report on their work.

5.4 Developing Linkages with Like-Minded Institutions

It is important to have contacts with people and organisations who can help to mould the
values of the students for working in the rural sector. There are various ways to achieve
this. Some are listed here.
a. To invite as speakers for the convocation, not only intellectual luminaries or
administrators, but also workers, who have played a pioneering role in organising the
unorganised sectors in the rural areas.
b. To institute a Sanjoy Ghosh Award for the most innovative rural manager of the year.
It could be awarded on the occasion of the annual convocation. Such gestures make
the students and the public reflect on what the Institute considers important.
c. To encourage young faculty to do a sabbatical in a rural non-government organisation.
It will give scope to the person to intensify his or her grasp of how rural people think
and what they aspire to.
d. To link up with foundations, such as the Ashoka Foundation,3 which support creative
initiatives of young professionals interested in trying out new ideas in the informal
rural sector.

e. To organise on the premises of the Institute a rally for non-government organisations,

people’s groups, panchayat bodies, and individual persons from rural areas, with
whom the organisation has worked. This should be an annual event. The rally should
be gradually turned into a tradition. Faculty and students should be involved in
organising such a rally.
6.0 CONCLUSIONS
The challenge of motivating professionally trained students to opt for work in the
informal rural sector is a formidable one. As is usual with innovations, they are not likely
to rise from the centre, from the Institute itself, but rather from the margins or the
periphery, from outside the walls. Institutions, however, can facilitate experiments and
encourage creative individuals by supporting them, welcoming them and providing them
a base from which to operate. Innovations often come from the rural people themselves.
They may be the most practical ones amongst a handful of choices. It is perhaps time for
Institutions of Rural Management in India to establish contact with each other, form a
network, create a forum where they can meet and exchange information.
Rural sector is the most challenging sector and the organisation of the unorganised rural
masses remains a huge unfinished business. It was a task that Gandhiji commenced but it
remains unfinished. There are young persons in India, a very small number today, who
are ready to walk in the same direction and risk their life for the cause. Sanjoy Ghosh
said, “Few professions can be as satisfying and as abundant as development. There are
many ways in which each one of us can get involved, but nothing compares with actually
jumping into the thick of working for mankind.” 4
Let us give them a chance today. The task is immense.

Endnotes
1 This paper is based on notes prepared by Dr MV d Bogaert sj, Xavier Institute of
Development for Action and Studies (XIDAS), Jabalpur for discussions with students,
faculty and management of IRMA, Anand during February 23-25, 1998.
2 As quoted by Robert Chambers, N.C. Saxena and Tushaar Shah (1989) To the Hands of the
Poor. Intermediate Technology Publications: London, page 241.
3 The present addresses of two foundations which enable rural experimentation are:
Ashoka Foundation, PRADAN
T13 Green Park Extension 3 Community Shopping Centre
New Delhi 110 016 Niti Bagh
F. 011.619.80.02 New Delhi 110 049
T.011.619.10.30 T&F: 011.66.86.19
619.99.40
4 Sanjoy Ghosh (1994) “I want to be in Development,” Changes, October-December.
 Appendix-I

LEADERSHIP IN ORGANISATIONS:
TWO CONTRASTING PARADIGMS

BUSINESS LEADERS WATERSHED LEADERS

1. Driving force of the economy
Monetary Survival and Gain Survival of Ecosystem & all living
beings in it.
2. Driving force of individual companies/management
Profit motive – induce Consumption Conservation: Manage with the
limited resources present within a
system – Survival.
3. Features in Managerial behaviour considered as “ideal”
Manager as Entrepreneur risk-taker, Innovation on the basis of Local
Innovative, daring, Outward & Forward resources. Allow things to Grow.
looking. Makes things happen. Does not force the pace of nature/
people.
4. Inter-organisational pattern of behaviour that follows from items 1 and 2
Competition in a free and open Shared Management of resources
Market. Fight; Predator. even with those with less, lest they
Hijack these resources.
5. Management of Physical resources, raw materials, energy
Optimise output of resources, Attention to restoration of local
endogenous/exogenous; use them resources through Natural
freely, V.G. Energy. Regeneration, Human Labour,
Recover costs, as fast as possible. Recycling waste.
Cost-consciousness. Use of Solar energy.
6. ‘Hinterland’ from where material resources are drawn, types of resources
utilised, mode of extraction and pollution caused.
Draws Resources from any part of the Draws Resources primarily from Own
World, the best and least – priced. Watershed. Attention to Renewable
Does not hesitate to Exhaust resources Resources. Low-depth and Low-cost
or to Scarr Nature and to Pollute. Interventions.

BUSINESS LEADERS WATERSHED LEADERS

7. Use of Human Resources, type of power used to marshall Human Resources
Uses Human Resources as an Input. Does not ‘use’ Human Resources but
Wields Authority over them. Lays off rather Co-ordinates them for activities
Human Resources if no longer needed/ based on a Shared vision. Exercises
profitable. ‘Ethical’ Leadership counts on Solidarity
of members to Protect the system against
marauders/Free riders.
8. Technology used for production
 Technical innovation, capital-intensive, Uses appropriate technology. Labour-
gigantic in size, equipment uses vast intensive often rooted in ancient customs
quantities of fuel, water, energy. and wisdom. Local materials and sources
of energy – that can be maintained
locally.
9. Markets developed or used by organisations and locations of sites of production
Globalisation of markets etc. is a Attention and priority to local. Stable,
Structural compulsion. Escape from markets of goods produced from organic
Local restrictions. Produce goods where material, ethnic goods, produced locally.
costs are lowest.
10. Types of Technology and Physical Resources utilised and outcome thereof
A technology based on chemicals, non- Stress on renewable materials,
renewable resources, plastics causing Reprocessing organic products helping
pollution, health hazards. natural restoration.
11. What the economy and type of management do to human beings
Tends to be less people-friendly, it It forces inhabitants of watersheds into
Scatters communities, is not friendly solidarity, to work with nature. It is
to families, women, children. Friendly to women, children, families.
12. Outcome of production of wealth
It impoverishes the losers, in the It helps rural groups to rise out of
process of generating wealth poverty and to restore nature’s wealth.
 Appendix-II
STATEMENT OF VALUES OF XIDAS, JABALPUR

XIDAS, Xavier Institute of Development Action and Studies established in 1995 at Jabalpur is a
newcomer amongst the centres of higher learning and research in Rural Management that dot the
skyline of Madhya Pradesh. What it stands for is symbolised by the emblem above. A few words
of explanation follow:

1. The way India and the rest of the world are evolving, makes one wonder whether a day will
come when life itself disappears from this earth. Life, as human beings experience it, begins
at the grassroots, a rice plant. The emblem represents a seedling growing out of a cod of soil,
watered by a living stream that surrounds it. Seedlings do not grow spontaneously, they are
sown, nurtured, and protected by farm women and men. The latter live in settlements which
lie within watersheds, areas where all water falling out of the sky gets collected and
evacuated through one stream. These watersheds are the only units, whose boundaries are
drawn by nature itself. All the people living in a watershed share a common destiny and
should be able to live off the resources within the watershed.
Recent legislation by the Government of India is making clear that watershed inhabitants are
now recognised as the owners and the managers of all its resources: Gram Swaraj as
Gandhiji dreamt of.
The question arises: how will these watershed inhabitants manage their resources, unless
they acquire the needed skills, motivation and determination, unless they are given an
opportunity to learn it? God forbid that Gram Swaraj become a bad dream. XIDAS joins the
rural and underprivileged people in dreaming of Gram Swaraj together. XIDAS wants to
work for the realisation of Gandhiji’s dream.
2. The lump of earth also represents the globe of the world with its longitudes and latitudes,
covered by crops, forests, greenery. It is bathed by oceans and rivers. Leaders at world level
 see to it that the fruitfulness of life on earth is maintained and increased so that mother earth
can feed a growing world population. The lump of earth at the grassroots and the world at
global level are closely linked. They are two aspects of the same life and depend on each
other. The global, however, wields so much power that it tends to ignore and crush the local.
It does so at its own risk.
The more this happens, the more the world loses its regenerating power and abundance of
life – as it is doing at present. A moment may come when it is too late to revert the rush
towards total collapse.
The question again arises: can rural people at the grassroots be so strengthened that they
command the attention and respect of the global? The world is rediscovering the value of
herbal medicines. A contribution of indigenous people to the world. Similarly, the wisdom of
the ages, the skills of sustainable water and soil management, the culture of human living,
the art of happiness, these are heirlooms that mankind needs to assure its survival. They are
guarded by grassroots people.
Rural India faces the inroads of the global society, good ones and bad ones, but it cannot be
permitted to be swept off its feet. It must grow so strong, confident and vocal that it can
bargain with powerful marketing interests, obtain a fair price for its products, and protect
forests and watersheds from marauders or from internal collapse.
Once again the challenge arises of helping rural people to face these tasks. XIDAS wants to
be part of this struggle.
3. Confident of the inner strength of a nearly five centuries’ old missionary tradition that
started when Francis Xavier stepped ashore at Goa in 1542, XIDAS is determined to provide
training of high quality to rural workers, villagers, and also to post-graduate students, who
are willing to throw in their lot with the needs of the rural population, and the losers in
other sectors of the society, and who feel called to escort, empower, and equip the
custodians of life at the grassroots to keep themselves strong and nurture the earth as
they only can.
Some of the best minds in India will certainly volunteer to become rural managers and
escorts at that interface and the battle of the small seedling to grow and flourish will be won
in due time.
What exactly has to be done and how it has to be done in this very particular field of
management, XIDAS co-operating with others, will find out. Once a workable idea has been
found and tested it is bound to ripple out far and wide. The march of a true idea, once its
time has come, will not stop.
‘X’ stands for Xavier, it also stands for the ‘X’ of Excellence. Nothing but the best is good
enough for the battle of survival of mankind at the grassroots. It is a matter of life and death
for the whole world.

15th April, 1997 XIDAS Team, Jabalpur

Xavier Institute of Development Action and Studies
P.B. 5, 599 South Civil Lines
Jabalpur 482 001
Madhya Pradesh, India