India lives in its villages. And India's most important characteristic on which its strength rests is 'unity in diversity'.  We have grown with this fact.  The belief that people residing in urban areas are better off than their counterparts toiling in the villages is highly relative.  It really depends as to what really one wants to look at, in tangible form or intangible form. Whatever the case be, it is evident from the practices that the back end support to industrial power houses is provided by this strong rural working population, working hard through their lives.

The thinking that standard of living in the villages in tangible terms is poor or relatively bad, is obscure.  It has given birth to an idea of focusing on developing better infrastructure in the rural areas.  It is also necessitated out of issues related to migration (from rural areas to urban areas), which is posing a great challenge to the urban development departments of the respective governments to reconsider their public policy concentration and to move towards rural areas.

The same phenomenon is observed for business houses so far as product focus, innovation, and its designing is concerned.  The planning of the government has resulted in flow of capital and circulation of money in the rural areas.  It has resulted in improving the purchasing power of rural mass. On the other side, the business houses have recognized a huge potential of selling their products and services to rural population, which comprise of around 70% of India's total population, nearing 850 million citizens.  Though in many segments the requirement of rural folk is similar, however their buying behavior is different than urban buyers.  This is one kind of diversity. 

Another kind of diversity is cultural, geographical and regional differences in rural aspirations as to their need for different kind of products and services.  The entrepreneur of the future has to think in these lines and get into a mode of catering through specific products rather than generic ones to sustain in this market space.

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