Solve the problems of the villages to help the cities

Here’s an article I wrote for the 13th World Business Dialogue’s corporate weblog called Brainforum. The original entry can be found here

I remember reading a comprehension passage during my school years titled “A billion strong or weak” which in a Rashomon-esque manner illustrated how we can look at India either as a billion mouths to feed or as 2 billion powerful hands that can be put to work.

Idealistic in many ways, it emphasized on a very important part which I only realized after coming to college.

The economy has to ensure that there’s inclusive growth. This isn’t a rant against capitalism, neither is it a cry for pity. Over the last 2 years I have immersed myself to learn more about the developmental sector and the problems that face our nation. A talk with an eminent social entrepreneur (and one of the first Oxfam GB trustees from a developing nation) made me realize that most models of capitalism don’t benefit the poor because of the way they are structured. The poor end up having no savings because they are caught in a vicious cycle of loans and debt out of which there is no escape. This isn’t to say that capitalism in itself is wrong, in fact I believe that market based approaches to alleviating poverty are in fact very essential for progress. But the form of capitalism that I subscribe to should be inclusive in nature.

I am increasingly getting attracted to localized businesses where profits are generated by not mass production but through production by masses. Ventures that employ an entire community to meet their demands, using local technology, tweaking it to optimize it and increasing productivity. This is why I was so impressed by the work the Honeybee Network was doing along with Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network. It was born out of the need for an institutional framework that would provide handholding support to the rural innovators and link them to the formal systems of technical, financial and marketing services. The idea being that of survival entrepreneurship. Given the dire condition of our villages, innovation is but a necessity rather than a marketing strategy. Some of these village technologies really need that extra push to help them becoming marketable products for the masses. There is already a lot of talk of adopting locally generated and decentralized energy to equip communities to take care of their own energy requirements. For example Bihar based Husk Power systems which uses Rice husk to generate locally produced energy for the bottom of the pyramid. I believe a lot of grassroots innovations are sustainable and just need mentoring to make their processes more efficient rather introduce completely new technologies, most of which might be inappropriate for that region. More investments in such businesses will indeed be a step in the right direction for emerging economies, economies in transition such as India as well as the least developed nations.

In Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, Mehta says that Mumbai’s average population per square kilometer in some areas is 15000 persons per square kilometers. Think about that for a second. Berlin has 2000. He further adds that Mumbai faces a lot of problems such as power shortages and water issues. But he then adds saying that most of the people who come to Mumbai come from the villages which face the same problems. Fixing some of our villages problems will in turn fix the cities problems.

Traders play with money with little or no accountability and finally its the investors and entrepreneurs that suffer. Actually, let me rephrase, its the citizens that have to suffer, which the billions at the bottom of the pyramid that suffer the most. The recession isn’t something inevitable and as long as the development isn’t sustainable and the goals aren’t created for the long term future, there are always going to be these cycles of economic downturn.

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