Editorial
Monga victims to get overseas jobs
Implement the action plan to help them out
The economic backwardness of people living in certain places in the northern districts, which experience a near famine-like situation (monga) almost every year, is an indicator of the grinding poverty that has shamefully become a perennial feature there.
Against this backdrop, Palli Karma Sahayak Foundaton, an NGO, and the Bureau of Manpower Export and Training have taken a commendable initiative to help the overseas jobseekers from the monga-hit areas secure placements abroad. The PKSF and the Bureau have signed an MoU under which training programmes will be arranged for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. The PKSF will also offer financial assistance to the jobseekers to go abroad. Obviously, this will open a new avenue for the monga victims to come out of the vicious poverty cycle. This is the kind of action plan that should have been adopted long ago for the poor people in those areas who remain by and large unemployed during the monga days.
The planners have to ensure that development of rural areas does not become a lopsided affair. There is no way to overlook the truth that the people living in some areas of northern districts are not well covered by the conventional development schemes. Even the reports carried by the press on the extremely precarious existence of monga victims apparently failed to sensitize successive governments.
The planners have to take note of not only economic but also social backwardness of the people cut off from the mainstream of development activities. So the training programmes have to be designed in light of the people's needs and limitations. The local community leaders will have to play an important role in motivating and organising the potential jobseekers.
The monga prone areas pose a challenge to all our development plans. The affected people suffer silently or try to move to urban areas in search of jobs. That is responsible to a great extent for the speedy growth of slums in the cities which offer far less than what people need to live even a modest life. If the situation improves in the backward rural areas through employment, both local and overseas, it will have a wholesome impact on almost every aspect of our collective existence. It's more than a humanitarian issue; it is a question of meting out justice and maintaining social equilibrium.
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