Design ‘For the other 90%’

Posted on June 7, 2007 by indra

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”

–Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

The other 90% refers to the billions of people living on less than $2 a day.

A billion customers in the world are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses, a $10 solar lantern and $100 house.” Paul Polak told a crowd of inventors recently. Surprisingly, the few offspring of the other 90% when after the necessary training through some affirmative actions of some benevolent join the clan of inventors, they also get themselves engaged in designing for the same 10% class.

Polak is psychiatrist by profession, but presently runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe richest 10%, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis.

As reported in media, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum housed in Andrew Carnegie ‘s 64-room mansion on Fifth Avenue is exhibiting presently the works of inventors dedicated to ‘the other 90%’.

One of the exhibits is the simplest and yet most elegant design that eases the task in which millions of women and girls all over the world spend many hours every day in the year. Many paintings and sculptures might have depicted it sexy or more sophisticatedly elegant postures. But the work is just fetching water, the basic requirement to live. Balancing heavy jerry cans on the head is back breaking work and sometimes causes crippling injuries. And the inventors have come out with the design of the Q-Drum, a circular jerry can, holds 20 gallons, and rolls smoothly enough for a child to tow it on a rope.

Each object on display in exhibition tells a story. Design ‘for the other 90%’ demonstrates how design can be a dynamic force in saving and transforming lives, at home and around the world. As claimed, “some of these design innovations often support responsible, sustainable economic policy. They help, rather than exploit, poorer economies; minimize environmental impact; increase social inclusion; improve healthcare at all levels; and advance the quality and accessibility of education.”

In another case, Martin Fisher, an engineer from Stanford has founded KickStart, an organization that has helped 230,000 people escape poverty. Its human -powered pumps cost $35 to $95. Pumping water helps a farmer grow grain in the dry season, when it fetches triple the normal price. According to Fisher, customers had skipped meals for weeks to buy a pump and then earned $1,00 the next year selling vegetables.

“Most of the world’s poor are subsistence farmers, so they need a business model that lets them make money in three to six months, which is one growing season.” KickStart works for them Is it not something that requires emulating?

Designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs from all over the globe are devising cost-effective ways to increase access to food and water, energy, education, healthcare, revenue-generating activities, and affordable transportation for those who most need them.

Prof Anil Kumar Gupta of IIM-Ahmedabad and his work on grassroots innovations through National Innovation Foundation is also an endeavour with similar motives. Many of the innovations can change the life of people at the bottom of the pyramids. NDTV-Profit as well as NDTV India used to cover some of these stories.

CK Prahalad his book “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits” proposes the involvement of the big industrialists in the game of alleviating the poverty of the millions and provide them with a cheap way to improve the quality of life. According to him, even big multinational firms can help cut poverty and boost profits at the same time by tapping a huge market of 4 billion low-income consumers in developing countries. “There is a deeply held assumption that the poor will not appreciate high quality or will not accept high technology and they have no need for products and services that are innovative. However, that is not true. The bottom of the pyramid can be a focal point for innovations for the large company too.”

Reliance’s Rs. 770 mobile phone, and $ 100 (our HRD ministry’s $10) laptop of the One-Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) are endeavour in the same direction. Even Intel’s recent announcement of $200 laptop teaming with Taiwan’s Asustek Computer Inc, the world’s largest maker of motherboards is a step with the similar mission. All these will empower the poor people of the world that are in billions.

I wish and propose that the educational institutes of India participate in the game in big way by involving its students in these projects of ‘designs for 90%’. Why can’t the Indian farmers produce the same quality of fruits? Can some fruit plucking devices reduce the damage on the surface? Can someone devise a safe fruit-polishing machine? Can an Rs 20 filter be provided in each family to provide safe water? Can some cheap means kill the mosquitoes? Can oil from Jatropa plants grown on waste land be directly used in rural equipment? Thousands and thousands of innovations are the national requirements. It will provide India a competitive edge. These innovations must and will come from everyone from all professions from a cook, a janitor, a carpenter, a housewife or a designer from all part of the country. Only this process can make the country developed in real sense.

Posted in education, management | Leave a comment

India’s Agriculture: From Abundance to Scarcity

Posted on June 7, 2007 by indra

As one with the experiences of the years of food scarcity in India as a kid in 50s and a young man in 60s, I was happy and proud when India became self sufficient about food grains. I was excited, when India started exporting grains, wheat and rice in particular. However, there are inklings of India slipping behind in food security trap. India is fast getting into food importing from food exporting.
The contribution of agriculture to the GDP has declined from 38 per cent in 1975 to around 19 per cent now. But 68 per cent of India’s workforce still depends on agriculture as a means of livelihood. Can the productivity of farming be increased to bring in prosperity? Can a major percentage of the rural population be diverted to some more lucrative non-farming employment? Perhaps the answer still seems to be in negative.

The annual per capita food grain production had declined from a high 207 kg in 1995 to 186 kg last year (a level reached in 1975). And that is the critical concern, though people are shifting to high-end food consumption. But the average annual rate of growth of agriculture in the last five years has been 1.87 per cent, while it was 5-per cent in the mid-1980s.

Even in Punjab, the yield from one hectare has dropped from 4,700 to 4,000 kg a hectare in two decades. And as a result, the country’s wheat production has stagnated at around 70 million tonne. The yield of rice is around 1,900 kg per hectare. Yields of pulses have reached a plateau at around 600 kg per hectare and the total production has not exceeded 15 million tonne, while the demand is around 18 million tones. India imports pulses today in large quantity. In oilseeds, India has doubled its production in the past two decades to 26 million tonnes, but still oils fall short by 3 million tones because of increased consumption.

The incomes of the farmers across the country rose by a measly 0.28 per cent as compared to 4 per cent in other sectors. A recent national sample survey showed that 40 per cent of the farmers want to opt out of their current profession. And over 20,000 farmers commit suicide out of despair over failing crops and high debt every year. Farming is no more a superior engagement, as we knew from our traditional sayings.

Why has the farming lost its ground and luster?

Overall land under food grain cultivation has remained static at 120 million hectares, rather it is dropping further steadily. In the past decade or so, there has been a major diversion of land meant for wheat and rice cultivation into commercial crops such as oilseeds and cotton. Further, as per one estimate, 7.5 lakh hectare of agricultural land are being diverted to other uses for urbanization and industrialization such as real estates, roads, SEZs, industrial parks every year. A revitalization process for wasteland available in plenty in the country is necessary, but it has not yet started in a big way.

Fragmented holdings: As estimated, 78% of the farming population owns only 32% of the land. Even 15 years ago, over 60 per cent of the rural households owned less than one hectare. The average size of holdings declined from 2.63 hectare in 1960-61 to 1.06 in 2002-03. As per one estimate, the average landholding is only 0.37 hectare today. Farming is increasingly becoming an unviable activity. Is it not a high time for a change in policy in favour of consolidating the land holdings for genuine farmers? Why can’t the land ceiling acts of the states be modified or dropped?

Public investment in agriculture as a percentage of GDP has dropped from 3 per cent to around 1.7 per cent. Irrigation didn’t get the desired priority. In India, 47 million hectares (Mha) of irrigated land produces 56% of food grains, while the rain-dependent 95 Mha land yields just 44%. Another estimate indicates that only 40% of the sown area of 142.8 million hectares having assured irrigation. Even 60 years after Independence, 60 per cent of the farmlands are still dependent on good monsoons for reasonable crop productions

Between 1981 and 1991 the annual growth of land being brought under irrigation was 2.27 per cent. But between 1991 and 2004, that figure dropped to 1.15 per cent. In real terms, between 1985 and 1995, 14-lakh hectare were brought under irrigation. But between 1995 and 2005 that figure fell to 6.85-lakh hectare.

Strangely for the 10th Plan, while the target of spending Rs 90,000 crore towards investment in irrigation was met, the potential added was only half of the stated figure of 16 million hectare.
The performance of the government has been dismal. According to the ministry of water resources, 388 irrigation projects spread all over the country still remain incomplete: 340 were started before 1992, and 40 before 1974. Till 2003, Rs 78,449.63 crore had already been spent on them, and an additional Rs 89,872.72 crore was additionally needed to complete. Had these projects been completed on time, over 20 Mha of land would have come under irrigation. However, only about 7 Mha worth of irrigation facility has actually been created. Why can’t an effective central government agency such as NHAI be created for irrigation projects? Why can’t private companies be involved? Why can’t some accountability be built into the system? Who will ensure the timely completion of 240 new irrigation projects proposed?

Over 58% of irrigation is from groundwater using an estimated 6.5 million diesel pumps and 11 million electric pumps. Costly diesel required makes farming virtually unviable for small farmers. Wherever the pumps are on electric power, that is either free or wrongly tapped, the farmers are overusing and wasting it. Groundwater tables have dropped rapidly. Over 15% blocks in the country are now groundwater deficient. Surprisingly, Punjab has lower land productivity despite intensive use of largely subsidized water and fertilisers. While Moga’s fertiliser consumption was 243 tonnes per ha in 2005-06, Wayanad in Kerala used 49 tonnes per ha, Chatra in Jharkhand only 67 tonnes per ha and Tuensang in Nagaland just 0.07 tonnes per ha.

A recent report of the Punjab Farmers Commission found that the water table had reached the critical depth of more than 10 meter in as much as 85 per cent areas in central Punjab. And now the Punjab Government is shifting at least one million hectare under paddy to other less water-consuming crops. In Karnataka, ground water levels are depleting at an alarming rate of 70 cm a year. Noone for certain can say anything about the finance minister’s pet projects of the renovations of the thousands of heritage water bodies of the country.

In other countries, the farmers can realize one-third of the market prices of the commodities. Indian farmers manage to get only one-fifth of the prices, as the balance goes to financially strong middlemen. May be the contract farming can be the answer.

Poor financing policy has slowed mechanization. Unfortunately, the financial institutes and banks have never been farmer-friendly. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s (Nabard) guidelines for financing of farm machinery requires farmers to offer not only the underlying asset (tractor) but also land as collateral security. Moreover, this land pertains to a minimum holding of eight acres, that too “perennially irrigated”. Given that this kind of land nowadays fetches no less than Rs 5 lakh, it means pledging an asset worth Rs 40 lakh for a loan of Rs 1-3 lakh. This is one reason that tractor sales have been stuck at around 2.5 lakh.

And the way out:

Contract farming may be one way to improve the earning of farmers as it may exclude the intermediaries who grab the maximum advantages. In contract farming, the farmer provides a commitment to deliver a specific quantity of a commodity at quality standards agreed upon by the purchaser. The sponsor on its part pledges to support the farmer’s crop with all possible inputs and to purchase the commodity. The Government also plans to set a target of involving 10 per cent of the farmers in contract farming in the next four years. However, a simple and transparent dispute resolution mechanism must come out for safeguarding unscrupulous ones.

The decline of wheat is largely attributed to an “ageing” wheat variety which has been in use since mid-’90s. The scientists must come out with some new breakthoughs with some high yielding varieties. As reported, a new high-yielding variety of pulse is being introduced.

Can the PM’s mega Rs 25,000-crore assistance plan to states give a push to agricultural productivity? Can the resolution to boost the growth rate of the sector to 4 per cent be realized? I suggest few steps:
1.Ministries need restructuring. Water resources, fertilizers, agricultural universities and laboratories, extension centers, and rural development must get integrated under one ministry.

2.Agricultural universities and laboratories must move to farmers both physically and digitally, and make a breakthrough with some real high yielding seeds.

3.Panchayats must be made responsible for the building and maintenance of waterbodies, canals, and check bunds.

4.Holdings for the real farmers must be allowed to increase up to at least 50 acres.

5.All retailers in organized sector must buy straight from the farmers under transparent contract system offering the best price, as perhaps ITC is doing that.

6.With fast improvement of rural connectivity, the entrepreneurs must move the manufacturing to the rural homes as much as possible.

7.Agriculture and farming must remain attractive enough to keep the younger generation of the farmer family attached to it.

8.Financial institutes must not treat farmers with suspicion, and provide credit with some practical and flexible product design.

Posted in agriculture | Leave a comment

Latest Trends in Machining in ‘My Writings’

Posted on June 5, 2007 by indra

Today, it has only one document on ‘Latest Trends in Machining’ practices. Machining and manufacturing has been my life-long interest. At one particular time, I refused to take over a higher position in hierarchy and responsibility to be nearer with machining in my professional career.

I have been rare individual in one respect that even while working on shop floor or in managerial assignment, I kept on writing. It started with writing an educational series for the supervisors in that automobile firm where I started working. I could get that published through Tata McGraw Hill, New Delhi.

I did publish another book named ‘Mr. Supervisor as Mr. Manager’ through a lesser known local publisher to satisfy my ego. I have also circulated two very important documentations on manufacturing- one on gear manufacturing that must have been procured by each and every gear manufacturing company, and the other on automobile manufacturing. I could not do much marketing for the later one. However, I shall try to put tI don’t know if you have noticed it or not. The blog is having a new icon ‘<a href="http://www.drishtikona.comhis on my site under 'My Writings' for the benefits of those who are or will be working in automobile manufacturing companies. It is all because of the insistence of Anand and Shannon.

Automobile Manufacturing will contain subjects such as engine components manufacturing, sheet metal stamping, body welding, painting, and vehicle assembly and testing. I wrote this, as I didn't find any book where all these subjects were available in one place. I am sure there must be one available today. However, the readers may recommend their friends in machining and manufacturing sector or in engineering colleges to read them. I shall also love to get some comments and suggestions that may help me to improve upon the content.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bihar: Some News, My Views

Posted on June 1, 2007 by indra

1.For nearly five weeks, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar didn’t attend his office at Patna Secretariat due to his wife’s illness and her subsequent death on May 14. The bureaucrats ran the government as the Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi had been also on a two-week Australia, Singapore trip to study their tax structure.

While all the people are sympathetic with the premature death of Nitish’s wife, the news that no one was heading the government during this period is disturbing and presents a case of lack of management organization and a system. Nitish Kumar must have a protocol of seniority among his cabinet members so that in absence of the CM and his deputy, a cabinet member automatically becomes the acting presiding officer of the cabinet and takes all the routine decisions. I wish Nitish Kumar or for that every head of any institution must build the discipline in its organization.

2.Twenty-eight of the 30 students of ‘Super 30’, the most innovative and exemplary coaching institute in Bihar have passed the highly competitive Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) this year. Anand Kumar, director of Super 30, reactions was equally interesting, “We were sure of positive results as we teach them to eat, sleep, walk and talk only IIT.” It speaks highly of the focused and dedicated skill building that reminds one of the famous Dronacharya and the way he trained Arjuna in archery to aim at the bull’s eye and nothing else. Interestingly, Bihar’s Additional Director-General of Police Abhyanand, still teaches physics at the institute. It must be giving the desired break from the fatiguing police work chasing criminals and kidnappers of Bihar.

As reported, Super 30 is only five years old. Its success can serve as a model for other such institutes across India, but more so it must make some more Anand Kumar grow in the state and the country who can take up the task for the deprived class for preparing for the highest ranked and the most sought after examination of the country. Why is it not happening? It is matter of concern. But Anand Kumar must expand too. Bihar requires more of them with a new IIT coming in Bihar. Interestingly, early this year, Norika Fujiwara, a former Japanese beauty queen and actress, made a documentary film on Super 30 for its innovative and successful attempt to send poor children to India’s top engineering colleges.

3.Manish Kumar of Gyan Niketan, Patna secured 99.4 per cent marks in Class-X examination of the CBSE. I was happily amazed to know that Kishore Kunal, IPS, is the founder of Gyan Niketan too. Some more students of Gyan Niketan such as Prashant Suman got 98.4 per cent while Robin Raj 98.2 per cent. If I am not mistaken Kishore Kunal also runs the institutions such as Mahavir Mandir and Mahavir Hospital too.

I wish Kunal could have concentrated in setting up schools of the same standard in every district head quarters of the state, as Bihar needs them in hundreds. And I still plead that all the schools in Bihar should switch over to CBSE to bring a uniformity and to downsize the number of employees in the Board. But can Gyan Niketan come up with a mission that makes its students passing class XII compete in IIT entrance examination without any coaching that is costly and unnecessarily additional load for the students?

4.Nobel laureate Amartya Sen will head a panel that will oversee the opening of an international university in Nalanda in Bihar, and its first meeting will be held in Singapore in July. Other members of the panel are Sugata Bose, a grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who teaches at Harvard University in the US, Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo and a minister each from China and Japan. All three countries are expected to fund the university. After the Singapore meeting, three more meetings will held in China, Japan and Bihar. The state government had begun acquiring 500 acres of land for the university. The proposed university will be fully residential, like the ancient Nalanda seat of learning. In the first phase of the project, seven schools with 46 foreign faculty members and over 400 Indian academics would be established. The university will impart courses in science, philosophy and spiritualism along with other subjects. A renowned international scholar will be its chancellor.

I wonder why the name of India is not in the participating countries of the meet and in providing the fund. Why can’t the new IIT proposed for Bihar is one in the institutions in the proposed university? Why can’t the participating country establish an institution each in specific field of arts, science, or technology that be its showpiece and internationally the best? The project must aim at setting up a global village for eminent people who wish to live in vicinity of a great educational university? May be the professors teaching there may decide to live there forever.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Innovating India

Posted on May 31, 2007 by indra

For quite sometime Anand suggested and is trying to put all my papers and books that I have written on my website http://www.drishtikon.com. He has already put my last book, ‘Latest trends in Machining’ that is now freely accessible for all working in engineering industry and who is interested to know the latest about machining technology.

I wanted to find out if I can scan my articles published in different journals from its reprints and convert into a format that can be edited, updated, and put into pdf and on website. One day I discussed the problem with my nephew Prakash, who is a student of IT in a private college in Vadodara. He had some solution that I did not know. However, I was surprised to know about the innovations that are coming from our young friends in different colleges.

Young innovators in many a academic institution across India are full of ideas and are also incubating, creating new technology platforms, and coming up with real-world solutions. In most of cases, it is happening as a bunch of enthusiastic and motivated batch mates share a common passion for creating cutting-edge software platforms that can make a difference to mankind.
The India leg of the ‘Imagine Cup’ provides the opportunity and the challenge. This year approximately 12,000 students from over a 1,000 colleges participated for the India leg of the Imagine Cup. The number of innovators is increasing every year. Some of the achievements are as follows:

1.Batch mates Deepak Jagdish, Vasundhara Kantroo, and Avi Mehta, known in group as Team Blue Leaf, are final-year B.Tech students at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute for Information and Communication Technology, Ahmedabad. The trio are making waves for ‘Recog’, their unique innovation, which has won them first prize at a national level competition recently. Recog is a software platform that integrates handwritten notes, textbook pages, newspaper cuttings and other printed media. It identifies the context of the content and tries to find meaning in it. The trio are now going to Seoul to take on innovators from around the globe at the Imagine Cup, world’s premier student technology competition, where more than 1,00,000 students from nearly every country in the world will compete with their innovations.

2.Vaibhav Rastogi, Anand Mohan, Shailendra Sason and Patel Alkesh Maganbhai-the four BTech batchmates from IIIT Allahabad, have created ‘Aabha’ a multilingual document summariser. It’s a software which when given a document, automatically prepares its summary. In their words, ”our system can summarise documents in English, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati and Telugu. Moreover, the design is so modular and generic that given a few linguistic modules, it will work for most languages”. That’s not all, the foursome have quite a few innovations to their credit. For example, they have created a multilingual chat and conferencing module which facilities multilingual chatting, conferencing, PowerPoint presentation sharing et al.

3.Pranav and Shivanand Thakur from the Army Institute of Technology, Pune and IGNOU Lucknow have created ‘Educational Content Identification and Grabbing System’ (ECIGS). Software that minimises search options on the Net and increases efficiency in finding relevant and useful content.

4.Roshan Sumbaly and his friends from BITS Pilani, Goa created, ‘eduGRID’. It’s aimed at solving the problem of ‘low student: teacher ratio’ in educational institutions. “Gone are the days when a teacher used to give personal attention to every student. Students can use our software to learn themselves. It answers queries in an interactive and conversational fashion (speech as well as text). Indeed it can’t be a ‘replacement’ for a teacher, but yes, it can be a ‘substitute’ when a teacher is not around.”

Many of these youngsters from India are also making a mark globally now. Indian teams have featured twice in the global top three in the last five years of Imagine Cup. In 2003, students from the Vivekanand Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Mumbai, won the second prize globally for their solution Sanjeevani aimed at the healthcare industry.

However, India lacks the ecosystem that exists in countries like US and Israel to nurture innovators. ‘More VC firms must provide seed capital for the good innovators. Some educational institutions such as IITs, IIMs are having the incubation fund for the prospective entrepreneurs.

India will have to go miles and miles to make its presence felt among the developed nations. And the idea of innovations must spread in all sectors of activities of services, manufacturing as well as agriculture.

Ideas come fast and fade off faster, so what’s needed is a place where these innovations can be nurtured and allowed to grow. India needs to set up incubation centres across the country.

CII, big IT companies, banks and even MNCs such as Microsoft are also taking the initiative and providing the incentives and other opportunities to the young innovators.

Remember, all the four groups mentioned in the story are from institutions other than IITs. It gives a hope that India can reach a respectable position in the field of innovations that cam make it compete and win.

It will be interesting to mention a recent survey about innovation- friendliness of India. An Economist Intelligence Unit survey finds that though India’s environment is slightly more conducive for innovation than China’s, over the next five years, the latter may not only narrow this gap, but also surpass India on overall outcomes by spending far more on R&D. The gap is huge: $6 billion last year in India against $136 billion in China.

Can India maintain its lead even with lesser spending in R&D, as the spending does not have a direct relation with the quality of innovations?

Posted in economy, education, management | Leave a comment

Leaders Must Drop Caste-based Perks

Posted on May 31, 2007 by indra

The whole of Rajasthan is burning. More than a dozen protesters have lost life. The state all over is under siege. Jaipur Highway is under army. Trains are moving through Rajasthan. And for what a silly reason! Gurjjar community wants it to be designated as Schedules Tribes. But why do they want that? It is because that gives certain advantages in government jobs.

Our constitution makers incorporated reservations for the scheduled castes and schedules tribes in employment. However, that was only for just 15 years. But our politicians have gone on extending and perpetuating that till date. And then came the reservations recommended by Mandal Commission and incorporated by VP Singh, the great. With Congress coming in power in 2004, the floodgates of divisive politics opened with reservation for OBC in the institutions of higher learning initiated by disgruntled Arjun Singh. Meira Kumar pushed for the reservations in private sectors. And the Gurjjar protests in last few days are the manifestations of the mistakes committed by the crooks in society. A 80 year old army man is behind this uprising. It becomes difficulty to digest these news.

How can Gurjjars be schedule tribes? Neither their look, nor social status supports the demand. I can’t even imagine that my friend Sirohi or neighbour Baddhana are from schedule tribes. I don’t find them anyway inferior to the so-called upper castes in look, IQ, or social status. Many questions are becoming pertinent. Has Indian society changed so radically that a community, at present categorised as OBC, would willingly opt to move down the social hierarchy in return of prospective material benefits? In Haryana, Jats have been demanding OBC status, although they rank higher in the caste ladder. And Jats in Rajasthan have already succeeded to get into OBC category. How can it be different for different states? How can the caste leaders decide it? If at all, it must have been done by dharmacharyas and must be done on countrywide basis. In my childhood, I did remember some castes trying to put on sacred threads and getting into business of conducting the rituals to prove that its belongs to the highest caste. Today, perhaps, the same caste is ready to get coverted into schedule caste, if officially done and if all the benefits are made available.

It is high time that all politicians decide to leave back this way of winning election. It is also high time that the so-called Dharmacharya or Sankaracharya denounce the caste system in Hindus. It is also high time for the educated and intellectuals in all the communities to drop the mention of castes all together. It is not going to serve any purpose of the nation. It will only divide the country and its people to a limit from where it will be impossible to return and evolve as a nation. The nomenclatures evolved over the ages are totally outdated and out of place in this twenty-first century with globalisation moving so fast.

It reminds one of the well-to-do people getting them enlisted into refugee list in the post independent period. As I understand a similar thing is happening to get into BPL list. It can stop only if every benefit comes on basis of merit, and if the government stops giving doles and subsidies. The government and the community leaders must empower every citizen of the country to live a respectful life instead of making them beggars.

Posted in indian politics | Leave a comment

Create Job in Rural India

Posted on May 29, 2007 by indra

Today morning I was entering the park for my walk. Aryas were coming out from the yoga club of the park. Arya had two packets in hand. On seeing me, he exclaimed, “Mr. Sharma, here is satoo from Bihar.”

“Are you sure it is from Bihar?” I wish it had come from there and not from some basements in Noida packing it.

My thought reactions started. Credit goes to Guru Ramdev who is making the urbanites interested in these rural dietary and practices.

Employment must be created in rural India through many manufacturing shifting there. Once the rural India gets connected with road and electrified, these opportunities will reach sky.

However, it requires a major mindset change of the rural society. Over the period, the lifestyle in rural India has changed. While the workloads of male members of landowning communities have reduced, the women have become totally idle.

Let me tell the story of my village and it must be the same for other villages too. The village has two types of families- landowners and landless. In good old days, the farmers owned and used cattle such as bullocks for farming and transportation, buffalos and cows for milk and butter. Almost all the operations were manual requiring a lot of manpower and so it was time consuming too. While most of the males members of the landowners used to supervise and facilitated the tasks of the manual labourers, some used to work themselves too. Ladies in the households had all the task of rice making and grinding of wheat, beside the cooking and other household works. Mills were scarce. Ladies of the families of manual labourers used to work for rice transplantations, weeding, and harvesting as well as in some of the household work such as drawing water from wells and making, drying, and storing of the cow dung cakes for cooking. With the coming in of tractors, diesel pumps, and even combine harvesters, mushrooming of rice and flourmills, and now the cooking gas, the need of manual hands have reduced drastically. The ladies from the deprived class too have emulated their counterparts of ‘badka log’, and hardly do anything but cooking. Major work of cultivation for each crop in a season hardly takes 15-20 days. For the rest of the year, there is hardly any work in traditional farming of rice and wheat to keep the people engaged.

And the situation of lack of engagement in rural India is getting into the mindset of the people, both male and female of working age. The woman folk are losing interest in stitching and knitting, and many other skills of yester years very fast, and even in the cooking some difficult items that they used to like. The knowledge of the preparations of many of the food items- litti, satoo, gur, tillawa, some seasonal sweets snacks such as haldi, methi, and sonth, and many such items that varied from region to region, will soon be lost and become part of history only. Leave the other things, even the women will soon forget or have already forgotten the folk songs they used to sing while doing any household work. Will it not be a cultural loss? How can the traditional knowledge be kept alive? Perhaps it requires some marketing and innovation to make the old items suited to the present needs. The story of the popularity of satoo in the urban areas is one example. And now think for a moment. The satoo can be made and packed with different additions such as masala satoo, sweet satoo, sweet and sour satoo, to make it tastier. The same can be said for the production of ‘goor’ and related products that used to keep a lot of people engaged in a season. Why can’t some young man take the initiative of getting that done in rural areas, market and supply to the retail outlets in urban India?

A major thrust on milk production and cultivation of vegetables and fruits suited to the local conditions may increase the engagement. Many innovations such as bottling of sugarcane juice or cleaned sugar cane pieces in plastic bags for tasting its juice can be attempted. However, it requires roads for fast transportation to reach market. Direct procurement promised by the big retail houses may make this diversification of crops happen. All other regions must emulate the successful states such as Punjab where the progressive farmers have started farming in a way that a commercial enterprise is run.

As we understand, a person must have engagement of at least 8 hours a day to register a justified contribution to the GDP of the nation. And it is possible to create work in the rural India. Some one is to take the lead. I wish the real smart students from IIMs and other B-schools with their rural projects come out to make this happen for the sake of providing work and eliminating the possibility of getting the fifty percent of the population totally lazy and living on dole either of the government or from the children working far away from the villages. Perhaps one way will be the through the success stories of self help groups throughout the country and getting the whole lot of the unemployed idle population in some useful engagement. There can be hundreds of products that can be innovated, produced in rural areas and marketed too. If a high school drop out can set up a readymade garment unit employing about 70 women in a rural Rajasthan, why can’t it be emulated in other states?

India’s sincere bureaucrats, intellectuals, educationists and its NGOs must look into the ways to change the mindsets of its people regarding hard working over the government favours and doles.
Everything must be aimed at creating jobs in rural areas.

Posted in economy, governance | Leave a comment

Productivity and Innovation can make India win

Posted on May 29, 2007 by indra

I was going through an article in ‘Business Standard’ that tells so highly of the success of China and particularly that in manufacturing. I also got the shocking news of Indian government canceling the study tour of China by officers of Indian Administrative services. China didn’t issue visa for some officers from the Arunachal Pradesh, as China considers Arunachal as part of its own territory. Every one visiting China or reading about its growth story gets stunned. Nowadays both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister keep on referring to China in all their public or private speeches. It is understandable if China is to be a benchmark. But why can’t we create the success stories ourselves in whatsoever area we are actively involved?

It is not that the India is standing and waiting. Many are creating the benchmarks that others in the country can follow. Recently I read a story of a textile company in Coimbatore that I shall like people to appreciate and emulate.

KPR Mills on the fringes of Coimbatore has come out with a unique way to improve productivity, according to P Nataraj, MD, KPR Mills.

“We found out that it takes 15 minutes for one person to move around one line in a spinning mill to check for breakages. Therefore to ensure that the time taken be reduced without employing more, one of our employees suggested roller skates. We brought a trainer and on an experimental basis, we taught a few girls to use these skates. We were amazed at the outcome. They were now going around the line in five minutes as against the earlier 15 minutes, without burning much of their energy. For us, the productivity improved by a whopping 60%.

Slowly, we copied this to other facilities around Coimbatore. It has generated tremendous interest amongst other textile mills in the region. Soon, most of the big spinning mills will see people skating around. From the employee angle, the girls feel they have wings to fly and fatigue levels are low. Both the employees and the management stand to benefit,”

And see how they coped with the manpower issue.

“KPR Mills were planning to expand its operations, and wanted more manpower. It employed girls from remote villages on contracts for three years, provided them with hostel facilities inside the factory so as to take care of the absenteeism problem. Allowing them to be idle after the factory work appeared to be dangerous. It decided to enroll the girls with Alagappa University and Annamalai University for distance learning programme.”

The idea of the contract system was to ensure that the workforce is committed to work for the period. “Upon completion of three years, girls are equipped to work on the shop floor and are educationally qualified. Under our societal set up, girls are married when they are around 21 to 23. So, on completion of the contract, we give them Rs 36,000 which they can use to get married.”

Is it not an innovative humane HR approach?

As reported recently, a Kerala company involved in tackling the problem of dumped food waste, and a Karnataka firm has provided thousands of rural families dung-based biogas plants. The two firms are among 10 global projects short-listed for the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, popularly known as the “Green Oscars”. Why can’t these firms be made the benchmarks and the IAS officers emulate them in their districts in different states?

Ratan Tata, in his capacity as the chairman of the Investment Commission, recently wrote a letter to the Prime Minister warning that major projects entailing a combined investment of nearly $60 billion are meeting delays and roadblocks for no apparent reason. Does it require a visit of China for the IAS officers attached to the project in any manner to get over these delays and roadblocks? With support from IIMs, IITs, and huge lot of technical and managerial talents in our country itself, all in administrative positions must work to help creating a brand for India in their respective fields.

Basically, India must work on improving its productivity in every area and come up to the world standard, be it road making, shipbuilding, agricultural yield, or distribution and transmission losses in power sector. We can have our own unique way depending on our social setup and requirements. It is bound to give results that many will envy.

And India can keep on creating the success stories of productivity and innovations in every sector and activity. IAS officers, the cream of the educated class, must create their own success stories rather than visiting China to copy their systems and on return to come out with the great and simple excuse that the Chinese system can’t work in our environment, culture or way of governance based on democratic system.

Posted in governance, management | Leave a comment

Booming and Bubbling India-III

Posted on May 27, 2007 by indra

Acquiring World over: Sun Pharmaceutical Industries acquires Israel-based Taro Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, a multinational generic manufacturer, in an all cash deal for $454 million (Rs1, 844 crore).

Rural Connectivity improving fast: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged Rs 480 billion to dramatically step up its spending on roads in rural areas for a four-year project ending in 2009 to connect 66,000 villages.

India’s talent crunch a myth: Only 9 per cent of Indian employers found it difficult to fill positions because of lack of suitable talent as against 41 per cent of employers worldwide. Additonally, as opposed to the global trend, the crunch seems to be easing off in India. The global recruitment firm Manpower conducted the study in late January 2007.

Finishing schools for improved employability: Dale Carnegie, one of the prestigious universities in the US, and other agencies are exploring the idea of setting up an IT finishing school in Karnataka and elsewhere for providing specialised training to fresh engineering pass-outs to make their ready for IT industries.

Auto makers partner state-run ITIs: Auto and autoparts makers, such as Toyota and the Sona Koyo group of autopart makers, are partnering state-run ITIs to train students to meet their specific requirements and save on the time spent training workers. The number of workers required in the industry is estimated to go up 10-fold to 25 million. Of this, a tenth, or about 2.5 million workers, are likely to be directly employed in the industry in shopfloor positions such as machinists and technicians.

India Flying High: The mega carrier being created by merging Air India and Indian Airlines – National Aviation Co. Ltd (NACL) – will begin its first direct non-stop Indo-US flight on August 1. While AI and IA have placed orders for 111 new generation planes, their aging fleet would get 25 new Boeing and Airbus by this year-end. In 2006, the aviation industry witnessed a growth of nearly 50% with 16 million passengers buying around 30 million seats. Projected figutes indicate that over 70 million passengers are expected to fly by 2010.

Indian mangoes go to USA and Japan too: After the US, India has started exporting mangoes to Japan with the first consignment of one tonne of Banganpalli mangoes from Tirupati sent to Tokyo. It will be through mango-growers cooperatives and involve women’s Self Help Group to ensure that farmers get better price for their produce.

India as destination: IT solutions and software provider 3i Infotech launched a new Global Development Centre (GDC) in Chennai. The centre will focus on enhancement and development of the company’s flagship insurance solution ‘Premia’ and banking solution ‘Kastle’.

Manufacturing too flourishing: Wärtsilä Corporation has received an order for six turnkey biomass-fuelled power plants from German-based company Bayernfonds BestEnergy 1 GmbH & Co. KG in April for a total value of approximately euro 100 million.

NXP (Next eXPerience) Semiconductors, the new semiconductor company founded by Philips, is partnering with mobile communication service provider Reliance Communications (RCom) to bring out low cost handsets in India. The price of the handset could be around Rs 800 ($20) with features such as colour display, MP3 player and FM radio.

Arham in Sriperumbudur: Arham Plastics has commissioned a new plant in Sriperumbudur, primarily to meet demand accruing from increased requirements of Korean auto major Hyundai. Arham will be thereby doubling its auto components production capacity,

India Fusion research becomes neighbour’s envy: “The Indian programme is very ambitious. I believe $130 million has been spent by the Indian government for this kind of research while we have spent just $30 million so far,” said Song Tao Wu, the deputy director general at the China’s Institute of Plasma Physics.

IT goes superfast: India’s IT exports are growing at more than 30% annually and are expected to cross $50 billion in early 2008. Indian enterprises are expected to invest Rs 8,974 crore on information technology (IT) in FY08 – an increase of 26% when compared with the FY07 expenditure of Rs 7,123 crore. However, IT still has miles to go before it catches up with global giants in terms of productivity. An American IT professional contributes nearly ten times higher to the company’s turnover than his Indian counterpart.

Entry-level salaries increase: Major IT firms and even some mid-size ones have increased their entry-level compensation packages by 10-16 per cent, as competition intensifies to attract the best talent from campuses. TCS is offering annual salaries ranging between Rs 2.7 lakh and Rs 3.3 lakh, depending on the colleges and course streams. Wipro is contemplating a 10-15 per cent hike in freshers’ salaries. For graduates joining in 2007, it had offered Rs 2.4-2.7 lakh per annum. The Infosys compensation package for graduates joining in 2007 stood at Rs 2.75 lakh per annum.

India ahead of China’s offshore market: China’s push to become an alternate off shoring hub for MNCs tackling soaring wages and high attrition rate in India remains a distant dream as its market is developing slower than expected. Despite massive government support and huge visibility on the global arena, China’s offshore market has not taken off as expected and still has a long way to become a potential alternative to India, according to technology research firm Forrester.

Europe convinced: Some, if not all West European Governments are gradually realising that offshoring and offshore outsourcing is not a choice for Europe – it is a fact. Corporate Europe is already gearing up. Europe’s top 500 companies could potentially save Euro 50 billion annually, or almost Euro 100 million on average per company, by offshoring many of their back-office activities.

Biopharma growing: In India, biopharma, the largest segment of biotech, grew by 32% to $1 billion in 2005-06. The domestic biotech sector is growing at a CAGR of 35%, and is expected to touch $5 billion by 2009-10, according to estimates. The focus area of leading companies such as Biocon, Dr Reddy’s, Panacea, Shantha Biotech, Workhardt and Zydus, is vaccines and bio-generics.

Sweetening India: Sugar production of India, the world’s second largest producer after Brazil, is all set to touch 27 million tonnes in 2006-07 season with output already crossing 26 million tonnes till 15 May. The sugar production in 2005-06 season stood at 19.3 million tonnes. Sugar year runs from October to September

And the cement industry: The demand for cement in the country is projected to go up to 200 million tonne a year by 2010 from 149 million tonne at present, by which time the capacity will have risen to 240 million tonne a year from the current 165.

Indians excel: Indian-born Srinivasa SR Varadhan on Tuesday accepted the Norwegian Abel Prize, known as the ‘Nobel Prize for mathematics’. King Harald presented the award worth 6 million kroner ($920,000) at a ceremony in Oslo.

Harjit Gill of Dakoha village in Punjab made history by taking over as the 527th mayor of the city of Gloucester in England. He is the first Asian to be mayor of the historic city – famous for its docks, the 1300-year-old Gloucester Cathedral of Saint Peter’s and, lately the locale of the first Harry Potter film.

Indian artists going rich: Indian artists never had it so good – an auction of modern and contemporary Indian art here including those by masters like M F Husain, Francis Newton Souza and Tyeb Mehta – has fetched a fabulous $ 8.809 million. The auction was held by the Christie’s last evening and the highest price of £ 720,000 went for Syed Haider Raza’s La Terre (1985).

India in space: “The Chandrayaan-1 mission is making substantial progress.” The CARTOSAT-2 satellite launched in January this year has special cameras that have a resolution of less than one metre, and is being used for detailed map development applications and disaster management activities. The successful launch of INSAT-4B that has 24 DTH transponders has been a major milestone. The EDUSAT, a satellite dedicated to education, has connected around 10,000 classrooms, benefiting rural and remote areas. Other achievements are the pathbreaking demonstration of the capability to recover an orbiting satellite through the Space Recovery Experiment, the successful ground testing of the indigenously developed cryogenic stage for the Geo-Stationary Satellite Launch Vehicle, and the demonstration of the Supersonic Combustion Ramjet required for advanced rocket systems. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Chandrayaan-1

Retail on move: Aditya Birla group announced an investment of Rs8,000-9,000 crore over the next five years to start a retail chain. Bharti, Reliance, and Aditya Birla Retail Ltd (ABRL, the name of the group’s company in the retail business) enter the $300 billion (Rs12.3 lakh crore) Indian retail market. According to Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which will partner Bharti in a wholesale venture, store chains currently account for 4% of retail sales, but this number is set to increase to 35% by 2015.

Billion Club Expanding: From January this year until now, at least 20 companies now have a market capitalisation of $1 billion taking total number of publicly traded Indian companies with a market cap of $1 billion each to 146 from just 98 companies a year ago. The Indian stock markets are now flirting intimately a combined market capitalisation of $1 trillion.

Exemplary Telecom sector: With an addition of 5.15 million wireless subscribers in April, the total telephone users are now 212.02 million, the world’s fourth biggest and tele-density is 18.74%. Total broadband connections in the country has reached 2.43 million by the end of April with an addition of 0.13 million connections during the month, compared to 0.09 million added during March, a growth of 5.65%. India has many ‘firsts’ to showcase in global telephoney. Just this calendar year, India has had the distinction of having the world’s lowest call rates (40 paise), the fastest growth in the number of subscribers (15.31 million in 4 months), the fastest sale of a million mobile phones (1 week), the world’s cheapest mobile handset (Rs 777) and the world’s most affordable colour phone (Rs 1,234).Roaming tariffs are slashed by 50% and call rates are as low as 40 paise, as against Rs 12 in the UK, Rs 2.5 in Sri Lanka and Rs 7 West Asia. Reliance Communications launched the world’s cheapest phone at Rs 777. In Sri Lanka, a handset costs a minimum Rs 4,000. In most other countries, the minimum price for a handset is $80 (Rs 3,200).

NSE 3rd fastest growing bourse: The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has emerged the world’s third fastest-growing exchange in terms of increase in listed companies – outpacing global names such as NYSE, Nasdaq and London Stock Exchange.

“When the history of our time in office is written, I am confident the great strategic leap forward in cementing the Indo-US strategic partnership will count among the most important accomplishments of Presidents (George W) Bush and (Bill) Clinton with Prime Minister (Manmohan) Singh and his predecessors”. Nicholas Burns, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs

This is booming and bubbling India.
—————————————–
T Thomas: Re-branding India

Posted in economy | Leave a comment

Can China be relied on long run?

Posted on May 26, 2007 by indra

It was 1961 or 62, when I wrote a poetry for the first time after the treachery committed by China. Over the years I have not been able to change my perception about that country. Two news items appearing today again raise the same questions. Will India be able to have an amicable relation with China? Does China take its steps just for fair competition or it wants to show its supremacy and look down upon India?

The first news relates to China insisting that Arunachal Pradesh is part of China. The news reads: “A cross-border study programme for 102 IAS officials from across the country was hurriedly aborted by the Prime Minister’s Office after a bureaucrat from the Arunachal Pradesh cadre was denied a visa by the Chinese government. Beijing is understood to have granted visas to all the other Indian bureaucrats. The Chinese officials are learnt to have said that since Arunachal Pradesh is a part of China, the IAS officer from the state was a confirmed Chinese citizen who did not need a visa to visit his own country. China has been consistently maintaining that 90,000 sq km of North-East India, which includes parts of Arunachal Pradesh, is part of its territory. Should it approve a visa to any resident from these parts, it would amount to accepting India’s sovereignty and losing out its claim. In keeping with this policy, the Chinese foreign office is understood to have denied the visa to the Arunachal cadre IAS officer.”

Second news comes from Bangladesh that was basically created by India and Rahul Gandhi takes pride in declaring that.

China beats India again and again in its own backyard. After stalling gas exports and stonewalling a billion-dollar transnational energy corridor to India, Dhaka has invited Beijing to develop its oil sector and build roads and pipelines that will allow China to ship out exports and import crude, respectively, through two ports in Bangladesh. It was only last month, Myanmar committed all gas to China from two offshore acreages, overlooking the fact that two state-owned Indian firms have 30% stake in the fields and have right to proportionate quantity.

How should we take these news items?

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment