The hubs would be created using local resources for making value added products and generate employment over the next 6-7 months through partnership with private sector, Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told a CII seminar in New Delhi.
"We need you to be involved in Panchyati Raj. You are the elite of this country, you have global exposure, you have intellect and you have the initiative. We need you," he said to the captains of the industry.
Referring to the 2002 sectarian violence in Gujarat, Aiyar said a lot of unemployed people were the ones who actually engineered the riots as they were frustrated, because high economic growth had touched only a few.
"Much of the growth was due to refinery at Jamnagar, petrochemical units in Vadodra and fertilizer units around Barauch, while the mass employing textile industry languished," he added.
"How do we make them feel that they too are participants in the process of growth?" he asked, adding that empowering people at the grassroot level would enable them to claim their entitlements and this was the answer to reduce the vast gap between the few who had benefited from economic reforms and higher growth rates and the larger deprived population.
Aiyar said the country needs to build a partnership model that involves the public, private and panchyati Raj (local body) institutions to empower people in rural India. "People have to be made to feel that they are in control of their destiny," he said.
There were almost 2.5 lakh local bodies with 30 lakh elected representatives in rural and urban India, off which 10 lakh are women.
This is a case of gender empowerment, whereby women are becoming the voice of the people. "Without uplifiting this vast majority of our population we cannot sustain the upbeat economy on a long term basis and attain purna swaraj," he said.
Aiyar said the Panchayati Raj ministry was working in Assam, Chhattisgrah, Haryana, Karnataka and Kerala to try and involve small villages in various projects of industrial houses.
The ministry is on the verge of signing a MoU with IOC in Haryana for a bio-diesel project in Faridabad on October 9. The ministry also has almost 25 MoUs ready in Karnataka, which would be signed very shortly.
Aiyar appealed to the top business honchos to go rural in their approach, and bring these people in their business map for greater stability and long term sustainable economic growth of the country.