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Small towns and rural India have been witnessing a revolution. With urban markets getting saturated, marketers are looking at small towns and rural regions to achieve exponential growth. But the point of contention is can organisations market their products in regions where a limited number of jobs are created? While many small towns and rural regions have turned into industrial zones, one must acknowledge the fact that most of the jobs created are blue collar jobs. The rise of income levels in a region is largely dependent on the increase of white collar jobs. So, what perception do organisations have about the talent in these regions and what are they doing about it?
There is absolutely no denying that people in small regions are equally talented if not more than their urban counterparts. For companies looking to make inroads into a small town or rural regions, roping in local talent is extremely important. An individual from a region understands it better as compared to someone who comes in from a different area. This coupled with the fact that employees from urban areas are reluctant to work on small towns and rural areas make a strong case for organisations to give serious thought about their strategy regarding these regions.
One of the factors that go in favour of people in small towns is the drive that they bring to their work. Dr Y V Verma, director - HR &MS, LGEIL confirms, “We have observed that people in metros have high career aspirations. Moreover, the fighting spirit in these individuals in not high. Compared to their urban counterparts, we prefer to hire freshers from small towns. In fact, close to 95 per cent of all the fresh B-school and engineering graduates we have hire are from small towns.”
MCX has introduced the concept of trader work stations in rural areas. This has led to business opportunities for the broker/sub broker as well as employment for individuals to help clients trade on it. Dr. Chandra Dwivedi, group head – HR, MCX opines, “HR needs to concentrate more effort in providing domain and functional training to employees from rural areas. However, there exists immense potential in rural India from a talent standpoint.”
While it is heartening to see companies moving white collar jobs there is a lot more that needs to be done to empower the people from small towns and rural areas. Shrirang Sarda, managing partner, Sarda Group explains, “Before looking at small towns or villages, we need to understand the situation in cities like Nasik or Indore. These cities do have the requisite infrastructure and talent potential but it turns out to be like the chicken and egg story. What comes first? While the established centres continue to grow, organisations continue to ponder whether they should enter a smaller market and the problems they are likely to encounter.” So far it has been only the organised retail segment that has moved to small towns to drive growth and is in turn driving employment.
A factor that also needs to be considered while trying to judge the rise in employment in small towns or rural India is the classification of tier II or tier III town and changes to the classification. Sometimes, the same town is considered to be tier II by some people and tier III by others. Priya Ranjan, director, Bharti Axa Life Insurance feels, “It all boils down to economic development. As time passes so do classifications. The small town today may receive investments, etc and turn into a larger city.” In such cases while there would be still employment generated in the region it can no longer be considered a small town or rural area.
It really does not matter what classification or terminology one uses to refer to a specific region. If employment opportunities are not concentrated in pockets and can be driven in all parts of the country, India Inc can give itself a pat on the back.
Illustration Shobha Varadkar
(Please send in your comments/queries to vishaal.shah@timesgroup.com)
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