Bhubaneswar: A two-day rural management conference focussed on the evolution of the social and economic environment over the past two decades, which, in turn, has created an enhanced need to understand rurality.

The International Conference on Rural Management at the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, concluded on Sunday and stood on the shoulders of the 17 sustainable development goals as charted by the United Nations.

The event was designed to explore how rural management and its thematic areas intersects with, and underpin, the efforts towards sustainable development.

The conference was inaugurated by chief guest Amarjeet Sinha, the Centre's ministry of rural development secretary. "The challenge of poverty is multi-dimensional. We lose sight of our objectives when we focus only on our specialised sectors," he said.

Saurabh Garg, principal secretary of the state government's department of agriculture, highlighted the four major roadblocks in the rural sector: insufficient penetration of formal financial system, need for high capital investment in agriculture and allied sectors, need for focus on supply aspect of farm produce, and penetration of technology for development and business.