Editorial published in "Agriculture & Industry Survey" magazine in November 2025 issue
The harsh truth of returning to one’s village
We must ask: what kind of rural India are we building if it cannot retain, let alone attract, its most capable children?
Not long ago, we met a young man who had returned to his native village after more than two decades in the Indian IT industry. His story is one that captures the complex relationship between modern India’s success and its rural roots.
He had studied at one of the country’s most respected regional engineering colleges. After graduation, he began his career with a major IT firm in Bangalore—a journey that, like so many of his generation, led him to the United States. Over the years, he built a successful career in the technology sector, became a US citizen, and settled there with his family. Life, by all measures, had rewarded his talent and effort.
But as his parents grew older, he felt a pull stronger than any professional ambition—the need to return home. So, he came back to his village to look after them and to spend time in the place where his life began.
It was refreshing to see him there. He spoke with reason, carried modern perspectives, and had a clear sense of how the world was changing. Villagers listened to him with curiosity. His presence brought an air of balance and a spark of confidence to the community. He talked about new ideas—about farming techniques, about technology, about how small villages could organize themselves better. For a brief moment, he represented what rural India could become if only it could draw back its own sons and daughters.
But within a few months, the mood changed. Reality—rural reality—caught up.
He got entangled in a dispute with a neighbour over something as trivial as the length of the road passing next to his house—a few feet of earth, the kind of matter that should have been settled in five minutes with common sense and goodwill. Instead, it became a festering legal issue. Petty jealousies surfaced. Then came the slow, grinding machinery of the rural administrative and legal system.
When he tried to transfer ancestral land—held in his grandfather’s name for decades—into his own, he was met with endless procedural hurdles. Files moved slowly. Signatures were delayed. Every small step required repeated visits to government offices. Months slipped away in this cycle of waiting, explaining, and re-explaining.
By the time we met him again, the optimism was gone. He was weighed down by fatigue and frustration. The same young man who once spoke about renewal and rural transformation now said quietly that he had begun to understand why no one wanted to come back.
And who could blame him?
This story is not an exception—it is the rule in much of rural India today. The few who return, who want to rebuild the link between their education and their land, often face not gratitude or cooperation, but resistance, delay, and disillusionment. The social fabric of the village—marked by local rivalries, jealousy, and mistrust—has become a deterrent for precisely the kind of people rural India most needs.
For educated young people from farming families, the dilemma is real and painful. On one side lies emotional connection—the land, the heritage, the parents who still live there. On the other lies economic and psychological reality. Farming is hard, uncertain, and poorly rewarded. Bureaucracy is cumbersome. Litigation is rampant. Rural India, as it stands today, is not designed to welcome its brightest back.
The result is that the very generation that could rejuvenate rural India—those with education, exposure, and a sense of enterprise—either stay away or retreat after trying. Their ancestral lands remain, but their energies are spent elsewhere.
Meanwhile, agricultural universities continue to educate students who are often far removed from the life of the soil. Many enrol in agriculture not to farm but to secure government jobs. Policy discussions on rural revival talk about technology and sustainability but rarely address the human and institutional barriers that drive people away in the first place.
We must ask: what kind of rural India are we building if it cannot retain, let alone attract, its most capable children?
If a young professional who has seen the world and wants to give back to his roots finds himself trapped in legal tangles and petty disputes, then something is deeply wrong in our rural governance. We cannot hope to modernize agriculture or make it sustainable if returning home means enduring endless friction and humiliation.
Yet, there is still hope. Each time one such person returns—even for a short while—he or she brings light, reason, and perspective. A single educated individual in a village can shift the tone of local discourse, encourage innovation, and inspire others. If India can make it easier—legally, economically, and socially—for such people to stay and contribute, the change in rural life could be profound.
The challenge before policymakers is not merely to mechanize or digitize agriculture. It is to humanize rural India—to make it a place where a returning son or daughter feels respected, supported, and productive.
Until that happens, rural India will continue to lose not just its youth, but its future.
This editorial was published in the magazine - Agriculture & Industry Survey - October 2025 issue
The harsh truth of returning to one’s village
We must ask: what kind of rural India are we building if it cannot retain, let alone attract, its most capable children?
Not long ago, we met a young man who had returned to his native village after more than two decades in the Indian IT industry. His story is one that captures the complex relationship between modern India’s success and its rural roots.
He had studied at one of the country’s most respected regional engineering colleges. After graduation, he began his career with a major IT firm in Bangalore—a journey that, like so many of his generation, led him to the United States. Over the years, he built a successful career in the technology sector, became a US citizen, and settled there with his family. Life, by all measures, had rewarded his talent and effort.
But as his parents grew older, he felt a pull stronger than any professional ambition—the need to return home. So, he came back to his village to look after them and to spend time in the place where his life began.
It was refreshing to see him there. He spoke with reason, carried modern perspectives, and had a clear sense of how the world was changing. Villagers listened to him with curiosity. His presence brought an air of balance and a spark of confidence to the community. He talked about new ideas—about farming techniques, about technology, about how small villages could organize themselves better. For a brief moment, he represented what rural India could become if only it could draw back its own sons and daughters.
But within a few months, the mood changed. Reality—rural reality—caught up.
He got entangled in a dispute with a neighbour over something as trivial as the length of the road passing next to his house—a few feet of earth, the kind of matter that should have been settled in five minutes with common sense and goodwill. Instead, it became a festering legal issue. Petty jealousies surfaced. Then came the slow, grinding machinery of the rural administrative and legal system.
When he tried to transfer ancestral land—held in his grandfather’s name for decades—into his own, he was met with endless procedural hurdles. Files moved slowly. Signatures were delayed. Every small step required repeated visits to government offices. Months slipped away in this cycle of waiting, explaining, and re-explaining.
By the time we met him again, the optimism was gone. He was weighed down by fatigue and frustration. The same young man who once spoke about renewal and rural transformation now said quietly that he had begun to understand why no one wanted to come back.
And who could blame him?
This story is not an exception—it is the rule in much of rural India today. The few who return, who want to rebuild the link between their education and their land, often face not gratitude or cooperation, but resistance, delay, and disillusionment. The social fabric of the village—marked by local rivalries, jealousy, and mistrust—has become a deterrent for precisely the kind of people rural India most needs.
For educated young people from farming families, the dilemma is real and painful. On one side lies emotional connection—the land, the heritage, the parents who still live there. On the other lies economic and psychological reality. Farming is hard, uncertain, and poorly rewarded. Bureaucracy is cumbersome. Litigation is rampant. Rural India, as it stands today, is not designed to welcome its brightest back.
The result is that the very generation that could rejuvenate rural India—those with education, exposure, and a sense of enterprise—either stay away or retreat after trying. Their ancestral lands remain, but their energies are spent elsewhere.
Meanwhile, agricultural universities continue to educate students who are often far removed from the life of the soil. Many enrol in agriculture not to farm but to secure government jobs. Policy discussions on rural revival talk about technology and sustainability but rarely address the human and institutional barriers that drive people away in the first place.
We must ask: what kind of rural India are we building if it cannot retain, let alone attract, its most capable children?
If a young professional who has seen the world and wants to give back to his roots finds himself trapped in legal tangles and petty disputes, then something is deeply wrong in our rural governance. We cannot hope to modernize agriculture or make it sustainable if returning home means enduring endless friction and humiliation.
Yet, there is still hope. Each time one such person returns—even for a short while—he or she brings light, reason, and perspective. A single educated individual in a village can shift the tone of local discourse, encourage innovation, and inspire others. If India can make it easier—legally, economically, and socially—for such people to stay and contribute, the change in rural life could be profound.
The challenge before policymakers is not merely to mechanize or digitize agriculture. It is to humanize rural India—to make it a place where a returning son or daughter feels respected, supported, and productive.
Until that happens, rural India will continue to lose not just its youth, but its future.
This editorial was published in the magazine - Agriculture & Industry Survey - October 2025 issue