|
Blog Home
News Home
Write your Column at iVarta
India, Asia and Global
Breaking Stories, Latest News Headlines, Opinion, Analysis
Columns and Discussions Business, Social and Community Networking.
Comprehensive
Collection of India News, Articles, Columns, Analysis and Research Papers.
Facts about India, Indian History, Culture, Yoga, Meditation & Ayurveda and
more…
|
|
|
|
Aug-07-2009
Author's Home Page
Views expressed here are author"s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is
at the bottom.
 Feedback to author
Summary
The presentation offers an innovative true education program called the Y4DBRABT (Youth for Development Empowered with Basic Rural Agro-Biogenics Technologies) to improve secondary school education for rural youth. The true education programs are designed to stimulate thinking abilities and challenge student"s creative and innovative talents for intellectual development and wealth generation1* (*see references).
We invite (in India) motivational speakers interested in giving back to society and community what they have received from it. Ideally, motivational speakers should have a background as a successful industry or technology manager and a strong desire to contribute time and resources (mostly technical and financial) to the various stake holders of the project which is in formation/implementation stages.
Introduction
By any reasonable measure the development of more than 638,500 rural communities spread across the land have not received required attention in 20th century. Most of rural India lacks basic amenities defined as PURA (providing urban amenities for rural areas) by Dr. A. J. P. Abdul Kalam. Confused Indian elites, both within and outside government, are dominated by ill-understood applications of Gandhian truism. With a 20th century socialistic mindsets many have helped perpetuate dependency of rural masses on government subsidies and continued with top-down bureaucratic policies and practices inherited from British India. The combined bulk of government subsidies have a cash value of Rs. 20,000 per family2.
Secondary school education as also in most other education set-ups is not helping rural youth to be innovative. Most of the current secondary education programs are not based on a model of true education designed to provoke and catalyze independent thinking to cultivate indigenous ideas for wealth generation through rural development. Secondary education is not empowering rural youth with applied science and technical skills. What is missing in education for rural youth is an awakening of indigenous "constraint-based innovation" - innovation that relies more on ingenuity in product, process and people to solve a customer"s problem by creative improvisation3. Lacking true education to stimulate and catalyze thinking the innovative potential of rural youth remains dormant.
The secondary education for rural youth needs reforms to make it relevant and to help rural youth escape from generational cycle of poverty. Higher education for gifted and talented in colleges, technical institutes and universities proved to be a viable ticket for economic mobility in 20th century and same may be just as important with secondary education for accelerating rural growth in 21st century.
Traditional Secondary School Performance
The education models used for secondary schools in rural India for last six decades have failed as evident from a very high drop out rates accompanied by massive migration of semi-literate unskilled rural youth to urban slums to escape pervasive rural poverty. An estimated up to 80% Indians make less than Rs. 100 per day. Some statistics and observations for the poverty trap are:
. Globally, 2.4 billion of 6.8 billion people in 2008 were poor with income of less than Rs. 100 per day. Eight to fifteen plus percent of 2.4 billion poor in the world are "very poor" Indians. Very poor Indians make Rs. 50 ($1) or less per day.
. Unemployment rate in 2008 for youth age 15-19 was 26%. Unemployment and lack of marketable skills have direct relationship; only 10% male and 6.3% female rural youth have marketable skills.
. Unskilled rural workers are agricultural workers with a daily income of Rs. 20 to 40, which is not enough income for a decent living in 21st century as up to 80% is used up to provide two square meals.
. Fifty to 87% rural Indians own farm land4 and only a third of the farms have irrigation water supply for multi-cropping. Remaining farms produce one crop a year at the mercy of monsoon. Up grading infrastructure for rain water harvesting to provide safe drinking water and for irrigation farming is sorely needed.
. The increasing aspiration for a decent living forces most farmers in dry season to seek employment in areas with irrigation at low farm wages or move to urban slums. Migration disrupts children"s education. By empowering youth with required skills through reformed secondary education (Y4D - youth for development5 or equivalent) migration and slum habitation can be controlled and disruption of children"s education avoided.
Indigenous Innovative Slumdogs
Urban Indians, NRIs and foreign press finds living in slums degrading but for most migrant rural workers it is a step to upward economic mobility. For example, the residents of Dharavi slum in Mumbai are among the most disadvantaged communities in the world in terms of their access to education, capital and land. Many workers came to the city in search of employment and they resort to entrepreneurship when they fail to land a steady job. Dharavi is a hub for 15,000 single-room factories with an annual output of more than Rs. 70 billion ($1.47 billion). The street smart operators include recyclers, potters, furniture makers, private schools, cable service providers, beauty parlors, pubs, rat killers and businesses to provide water and electricity.
Dharavi represents essence of Indian innovation skills of making something out of limited resources in an insular economy. Unlike in America and developed West where innovation is linked to large R&D projects in basic sciences for creating new technologies for mass marketing at huge costs, Dharavi"s innovators rely more on ingenuity in product, process and people to solve a customer"s problem by creative improvisation rather than scientific and technological breakthroughs. They also rely on frugal engineering to serve customers at the bottom of a broad based economic pyramid to make lives easier for millions of everyday individuals.
Economic Incentives Driven Motivated Rural Youth
Innovative thinking is needed to reform secondary education for a personal goal oriented rural youth. The primary goal for most rural youth, also urban youth anywhere, is to make a decent living. A vast majority of people get education to access upward income mobility offered to skilled educated workers in today"s ICT (information and communications technologies) world and manufacturing industrial environment. We need to accept the basic fact that every person anywhere needs income for a decent living with 9 needs, which are food, energy, home and housing, mobility and connectivity, education, medicine and healthcare, leisure and entertainment, socially acceptable family values and old age security.
The needs of youth in 21st century India are much more than those promised with slogans such as "garibi hatao" (remove poverty) and "roti, kapda aur makan do" (give us food, clothing and shelter) by socialism and communism inclined politicians of last century. Today socialism appeals to ignorant and naive as most Indians now aspire for a minimum income for a decent living. A minimum estimated income consistent with purchasing power and cost of living for decent living in 2009 is estimated at Rs. 3,500 ($70) per month per person.
In rural India poverty alleviation is the challenge that demands addressing basic needs of the bottom of pyramid society. The first step should be to prepare students for industrial development of all villages in India. Average population of each village in India is less than 1,100. Preparing students for industrial development of rural communities means to train and provide youth with introduction to scientific and technical education of immediate interests (vocational training) in addition to a required background in life and social sciences.
The Y4DBRABT Model
An urgent need for industrialization of rural India is to accept a premise that rural youth are potential agents of change for better. The best way to escape poverty trap is to invent a new product, which we propose is an innovative reformed secondary education program called the Y4DBRABT. We subscribe to an adage that incumbents very seldom invent the future. Agree or disagree that is your prerogative!
Three elements of the Y4DBRABT are
1. The Y4D program is offered by V-LEAD (Vivekananda Institute for Leadership Development), a unit of SVYM (Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement) at Mysore, Karnataka5. It empowers youth from rural and slum areas with life and social skills to conduct CNA (community needs assessment) to identify areas needing development and a personal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to identify skills they should have to tackle it. Government programs such as NREGA, NABARD, CAPART, etc are available for rural youth guided by credible established NGOs to participate in rural development infrastructure projects to build roads, water harvesting ponds or dams, etc.
2. The IBT (Introduction to Basic rural Technology) offered by Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District, Maharashtra is "learning by doing" training at a farm based workshop to introduce youth to applied science and technology for farming and establishing farming related businesses. This well established program is being promoted as the Plan 100 by Lend-a-Hand India.org of New York to educate 20,000 rural youth in five years6.
3. An integrated rural development scheme using a business plan is titled Agro-Biogenics program developed by Mr. P. V. Hariharan7.
Potential for and Benefits of the Y4DBRABT Education
ICT in India: Introduction to computers and telecom use is a part of the Y4DBRABT training. The ICT is spreading in India through affordable wireless telecom; computer-density in 2008 was about 5%. With total number of telephone connections in the country at 385 million on January 1, 2009 and addition of more than 10 million new connections per month the overall tele-density is now about 40% and increasing at a rate of about 1% a month. The telecom based ICT offers a high potential for employment of rural youth at the ICT service providing Kiosks. The entrepreneurs like Sriram Raghavan are busy establishing kiosks for providing ICT services to rural communities at a reasonable price of Rs. 15 per event8. With establishment of ICT services kiosks even illiterate farmers are becoming ICT-literate to benefit from internet accessibility for better prices for their crops and other agri goods they generate/produce and for supplies they require.
The BGPG Technology9: The Y4DBRABT education incorporates training in the alternate energy (or RE = renewable energy) production through biomass based power plants in addition to solar and wind power. Rural India suffers from energy poverty with up to 16 hours a day power blackouts, which contributes to it remaining under developed. A pilot study9 was completed at the VA in June 2009 with a biogas-power-gas (BGPG) plant using a 4 kW (4KVA) diesel generator modified to run on a hybrid fuel with 80% biogas. Using this biomass based technology captive power can be generated in rural communities by rural youth at about Rs. 10 to 12 per unit. Such power units require investment of less than one lakh rupees ($2,000). Such a rural area based power technology can provide sufficient locally produced captive power at an affordable price for cell phone battery recharging in villages with average population of less than 1,100. The spread of the Y4DBRABT education model will promote enterprising high school graduates to set up and operate captive power plants in areas where grid power is not available for spread of ICT applications designed for rural communities. It will also motivate them to be ICT-literate to operate ICT services providing Kiosks.
Impacts of ICT- and RE-Technology-Literate Entrepreneurs: Given assured power supply, cell phones and knowledge/know-how gained in training at schools offering the Y4DBRABT programs rural youth will be empowered to start ICT-services and agri-biogenics related businesses in their communities. They will have global connectivity at their finger tips; they will be motivated to establish captive off-grid power plants in areas not provided with grid power; all kinds of other related economic development activities will take off and they will be able to figure out how to use agro-biogenics technologies for mass producing consumer products for urban markets and may be even on global scale by connecting to global giants like Wal-Mart.
In rural areas the ICT learning curve speeds up once the ICT-literate entrepreneur managed community based services provider is established with availability of power, cell phones and kiosks for providing printing out caste certificates, land records, etc. The kiosks service providers are investing in services tailored to illiterate villagers such as voice-enabled applications and local-language softwares to facilitate the illiterate villagers learn how to quickly use the kiosks provided services. Once they get over the fear of operating digital machines and phones they want to figure them out and be regular customers for ICT services.
With rural population estimated at 70% of 1.2 billion Indians and the government"s emphasis to inhibit additional mass migrations of rural unemployed to urban slums in tier 1 cities India is on move. Indian government is developing 64 tier 2 cities to be centers of education10. A reformed secondary school education with the Y4DBRABT concepts of true education in at least one school per 10,000 rural populations can provide a farm workshop based training environment for all villagers to help accelerate village development.
Financing Youth Entrepreneurs11
Entrepreneurs need finance to implement viable projects and India"s banking and financing systems are not yet set up to service all citizens of India. Mr. Nandan Nilekani has been appointed as a minister to the Unique Identification (UID) Authority of India to develop and implement a UID system. The UID should enable various government departments and bureaucracies as well as banking and financial service providers to issue UID linked smart cards. Potentially, the UID may even enable all service providers to be networked to eliminate confusion that comes with duplications and redundancies.
The national UID linked smart card service will enable all citizens of India to access banking and financial services, which will increase the scope of available business opportunities for skilled rural youth. The Y4DBRABT program is designed to produce skilled workers to exploit potentially lucrative opportunities for wealth generation.
Progress comes from hard choices and hard work, not miracles. The Y4DBRABT graduates, the leaders of NGOs and government bodies are not miracle workers. Rural communities guided by leaders trained at V-LEAD, VA or LAHI staffs have to learn to systematically develop to manage their growth. Actively partnering with banking and financial sector is essential for implementing small business projects in rural communities.
Motivational Speakers
The necessary background (knowledge and know-how) for offering motivational seminars to spread the applications technology appropriate for assimilation and to accelerate rural development is available for those interested in spreading a culture of true education to rural communities. The necessary background includes the introduction to the Y4DBRABT from "gurus" at V-LEAD, Mysore, NIE (NIECREAST program) also at Mysore, SVYM organic farming at H.D. Kote, and VA at Pabal, Pune. There is a linkage between motivating rural youth and community leaders and true education. The success will be guided by how fast we can motivate rural youth and farmers to adopt the modern tools offered by the Y4DBRABT education to generate wealth and escape from generational cycle of poverty.
Once the potential for wealth generation through organic farming and access to off-grid locally produced renewable energy for delivering captive power at affordable costs in each village is understood by rural communities then the next step(s) in rural development would unfold. Rural communities should at least realize the power they stand to gain by loosing dependency on bureaucrats and grid power supply. A potential solution to eradicate energy poverty in rural India where 16-hour a day power blackout is the norm is within their reach with training of youth and motivating rural elders to install renewable energy power plants (biogas, biomass, solar and wind) for captive off-grid power supply to the rural communities.
The motivational speakers stand to gain a feeling that once you have reached a targeted horizon at the hill top, another horizon appears to go for. A new horizon is always waiting for you once you reach a targeted mountain top.
Feedback to author
References & Notes:
1. Bhamy Shenoy, "True Education for Critical Thinking and questioning," private communication.
. Contact Dr. Shenoy at bhamysuman@hotmail.com for a booklet, "TRUE EDUCATION: A simple and practical way to ignite the thinking of students,"
. Bhamy Shenoy, "Education: Learning vs. Coaching"
2. Nandan Nilekani, "Imagining India" (The Penguin Press, New York, 2009), page 355 - 357.
3. Devita Saraf, "India"s Indigenous Genius: Jugaad," a two part series, WSJ, July 13 and 15, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124745880685131765.html and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124763207577343651.html . A large number of Indian innovations don"t become more widely known because of our automatic tendency and focus on smart innovations by Western and Japanese inventors. Indian elites, schools and media pundits should memorize the following quotes:
. Within our secondary education and business schools, instead of students reading up on case studies about "Coke vs Pepsi" and having summer internships at Sony, we must attempt to have students study the Aravind Netralaya model and intern at Amul and Jaipur Rugs. This will create a pool of talent which then understands the vast business opportunity in "constraint-based innovation" and creates the investment and management talent to make this opportunity a reality.
. Within our media, we need to regularly lionize efforts like the Tata Nano and plenty of others so that more Indians know about the kind of great innovation work that happens in our country.
. Lastly, among ourselves, we must learn to give Indian products and innovation its respect and its price rather than automatically assuming that something coming from an American or Japanese company is automatically superior.
. Remember, a country that does not respect its heroes is soon left with none.
4. Multiplier accelerator synergy in NREGA? by Mihir Shah, Hindu, April 30, 2009
5. A Power Point Presentation, "Youth for Development (Y4D), Agents of Change for Better" (Delivered May 8, 2009 at V-LEAD, Mysore) is available on request from the author.
. Times of India, Mysore, March 1, 2009 report titled, "Youth Trained in rural Development."
6. "PLAN 100 - A Silent Revolution"" http://www.vimeo.com/1257780 or see video at http://video.google.com:80/videoplay?docid=-4673280825423781745&hl=en
7. INTRODUCING APIX_SEP/AGRO-BIOGENICS? 06222009
. The following are the websites that would present certain details, which gives an overall picture: APIX_Blog at website: http://www.agro-biogenics.com; Energy and materials Through Wastes etc; APIX_30_Pilot Project
. Our project is not mere Biogas system, but our biggest "revenues" are from the Fibrous matters that we get from the different Plants systems and various unused Agro-wastes. For examples, see:
. (i) http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/39017/Sustainability-through-Vegetation-and-Organic-Resources-Conversion-I
(ii) http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/406378/Re-Sustainability-through-Vegetation-and-Organic-Resources-Conversion-I
(iii) http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/406416/Re-Sustainability-through-Vegetation-and-Organic-Resources-Conversion-I
(iv) http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/406430/Re-Sustainability-through-Vegetation-and-Organic-Resources-Conversion-I
. Also visit the blog cites: http://sustainabilityengineering.wordpress.com/
8. An Internet for Rural India by Malika Zouhali-Worrall, http://www.digitalopportunity.org/spotlight/an-internet-for-rural-india
9. Anil Joshi, private communication, July 10, 2009; INDUSA Endowments funded this study. Contact: Mr. Yogesh Kulkarni, Managing Director VA, or Anil Joshi at vapabal@gmail.com. Using biowaste and a modest investment of less than one lakh rupee for a hybrid (diesel-biogas operated) generator rural communities can produce captive 3 to 4 KW off-grid power at affordable price of Rs. 10 to 12 per unit.
. Next project for us in the RE technology is biofuels from algae. The project requires expertise in the study of organism and synthetic biology in addition to established expertise in the engineering technology, process scale expertise, financial support and oil and gas industry knowledge.
. Algae are the least developed of biofuel options but probably have the most promise especially in terms of yields.
. Algae need sunlight but don"t require fresh water or large swaths of arable land to grow. It also feeds on carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Placing algae ponds or factories next to coal-fired power plants, refineries or other industrial polluters could feed algae while reducing carbon dioxide in atmosphere.
. Brett Clanton, "Algae viewed seen promising input for alternative fuels," at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6356734.html
. In America oil majors including Chevron Corp, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Exxon-Mobil have committed large investments to develop biofuels from algae plants.
10. "An Increasingly Affluent Middle India Is Harder to Ignore," WSJ, July 19, 2009 at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124644098036578807.html, gives a marketing outlook for India"s tier 1 through 4 cities and how consumer trends are creating new markets.
11. Mr. Nilekani has outlined a process for ICT development in his book, Imagining India (The Penguin Press, New York, 2009).
. According to Mr. Nilekani today Indians identify themselves with multitude of numbers when interacting with the state and some persons have multiple numbers of each kind; we have passport I.D., ration card numbers, PAN (permanent account number) for tax payers, etc. India"s phantoms include for many persons there are multiple BPL (below-poverty-line) numbers, voter registration numbers, PAN numbers, etc. For example, the number of BPL numbers circulating in some states is more than the state"s entire population. This dysfunctional system is responsible for wide spread bureaucratic and other forms of corruption that inhibits as much as 95% of allocated government funds reaching the intended poor people.
. India lacks a unique numbering system for each person comparable to unique Social Security Numbering system in America and developed European countries. Mr. Nilekani"s new job is to rectify this deficiency and eliminate waste (corruption and bureaucratic inefficiencies) now running at 30% to 95% of funds allocated for rural development and help very poor in rural communities.
. Using single-citizen-networked, UID linked smart card system infrastructure similar to the unique numbering system of SSA (social security administration) of America is a priority for the Central Government for introducing reforms at every level of life in India to eliminate corruption and bureaucratic hurdles faced by aam aadmi. By bringing in to system all of more than a billion Indians the pace of reforms will be boosted.
. The weakest aspect of India"s economic reach is in financial services. Linking UID smart card to financial services will open up banking system to hundreds of millions of more people. Once the UID smart card system is operational it will enable all citizens of India to access banking and financial services; only 20% of Indians have such access to banking and financial services in the present dysfunctional system.
. The UID smart card services will introduce inclusive growth for an estimated 80% of Indians who lie outside as they do not have bank accounts. Bank accounts will facilitate savings by aam aadmi to invest in education, spend on health care or to feel secure enough to move money where ever they move to take up jobs away from their village homes and farms.
. Instead of continuing with current wasteful subsidies to poor program that has invisible value of Rs. 20,000 per family a suggestion is to switch to providing cash awards to deserving families by depositing money in their UID smart card connected bank and financial services account. A bank deposit of Rs. 20,000 enables the skilled entrepreneur to borrow up to Rs. 1 lakh for viable development projects such as those identified in this essay.
Author's Home Page
|
|
|
|
|