Union Minister for Home and Cooperation, Amit Shah made an emotional appeal in his address at the 41st Annual Convocation of the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) on Monday, wherein he asked graduating students to improve the lot of rural folks.
“You will not get satisfaction even after earning crores of rupees, but after making a person self-sufficient in your life, you will get self-satisfaction. Salvation comes only when there is contentment in life and satisfaction comes from working for others”, said Shah to the graduating students.
The Union Home Minister said that today 251 youth have been conferred degrees from here. He said that the person who moves from “himself to other-selves” and thinks of others in place of himself is the only one who has wisdom.
Remember there are people, your own countrymen for whom two meals a day is a dream. If you take a vow to improve their lives you will experience self-satisfaction, urged the Minister who has been entrusted with the charge of the cooperation ministry as well.
“Today, my request to the students who have been conferred degrees is that you should keep working for rural development in the country throughout your life .It will be a Guru Dakshina to IRMA if you take vow that throughout your life your vision will be related to rural development”, said Shah.
Amit Shah said that rural development is not theoretical, it happens only when people devoted to it work for villages. He said that if rural development is to be done in modern times, then its curriculum has to be suited to the times, it has to be formalized and according to the needs of today’s times, rural development will have to be converted and implemented on the ground. I believe that IRMA has taken it to the ground level in this holy land of Sardar Patel and Tribhuvan Bhai.
The Union Cooperation Minister also remembered Dr Verghese Kurien on the occasion and said he established this institute to promote sustainable, situation-friendly and equitable socio-economic development among the rural people and this objective should always be there before the graduating students.
The Union Minister said that IRMA also needs to contribute more to promote the cooperative sector as the cooperation is inclusive. Cooperatives have to be made more inclusive, transparent, modern, and technology-intensive and through cooperatives, the individual and the village have to become self-reliant. All this can happen only when institutions like IRMA will increase their contribution, said Shah.
Besides IRMA faculties, those present on the occasion included NDDB Chairman Meenesh Shah, and GCMMF MD R S Sodhi, among others. Several of them tweeted after the event saying it was indeed an inspiring speech from the Minister.