ABSTRACT
The chapter elaborates on the conceptual foundations of community of purpose and explores its effectivity in mitigating market separation of rural producers. Extant exogenous approaches undertaken to provide rural producers with direct access to market have mostly done so sporadically, by incorporating measures that are not designed in accordance with rural context and needs. Community of purpose, on the other hand, attempts to secure active participation of rural producers in the process of production and distribution, by triggering purposive collaboration between relevant rural–urban agents. Effective networking, derivative of cultivating community of purpose, has enabled us to identify the same as a strategy to boost market opportunities of rural producers. This chapter, by citing field instances from rural India, illustrates the effectivity of cultivating community of purpose to boost the performance of rural economy, and subsequently concludes by proposing a social knowledge management platform, which supports the cultivation of such purposive community.
