Rural India becoming the epicentre of growth: HUL chief

In an address to the shareholders of the  company at its 79th Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Mumbai today, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) chairman Harish Manwani said rural India was becoming the epicentre of India's growth story and presented marketers an exciting growth opportunity .

In the speech titled 'Rural India - An Emerging Powerhouse,' Manwani said, "It is often said that there are two Indias - Bharat which exists in the villages and India which thrives in the urban areas. If our country has to have real progress and make its mark on the global stage, then these two Indias must converge. Prosperity will have to come to our villages, towns and cities."

Referring to the good all round progress rural India had made over the last two decades, he said a new sense of energy was driving rural India.

Drawing attention to how rural growth would add to pressures on natural resources, Manwani said, "The explosion in rural consumption and growing competition for scarce resources demands that we embrace a new collaborative model of development.

All stakeholders - government, NGOs, civil society and corporates - had a role to play in enabling growth while overcoming the attendant challenges, Manwani said and added, with the right kind of public-private partnerships, these challenges could be addressed by finding innovative solutions and building on the opportunities.

He also spoke about the various challenges that rural India was faced with and talked about the need to improve agricultural productivity levels in the country. He said,  "Consider that if only our agricultural growth can pick up to 4 per cent as envisioned by the Planning Commission, the cascading impact that rural prosperity will have on the national economy could add up to an additional 2 per cent to our national GDP growth and enable us to go for double-digit growth."