Young and Restless India » Rural

Grass Root Innovation

Raj — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:27:07 +0000

India’s databank of grass roots inventors is swelling as the nation officially marks the 2010s as a decade of innovation according to CNN article titled “India’s inventors seek markets in innovation decade“.

The country’s National Innovation Foundation (NIF) has 140,000 entries compared with 10,000 when it was set up by the federal government in 2000. But 10 years later, India acknowledges that bringing its innumerable small-scale experiments to the masses remains a challenge in an economy that is attracting businesses worldwide partly because of high-tech capabilities and a growing middle class.

According to the NIF, most geniuses on its roster are school or college dropouts with little means and access to markets. India needs to promote research and development efforts for its poor and for its massive informal economy in order to put their existing know-how to mass use. But experts regret that most Indian innovations have not hit domestic markets, let alone international.

Khadi- New Fashion Statement

Raj — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:14:07 +0000

Sabyasachi Mukherjee is a young, hip, Bengali designer is insisting that khadi can be a great fashion statement. Khadi, which is simple homespun weave championed by Gandhi in the 1930s to boost the rural economy and give India a sense of nationalist pride during the fight for independence, is refined, sophisticated, eco-friendly and comfortable, and has too long been regarded as the poor man’s fabric. Read more about it in BBC.com article titled “Indian designer champions homespun“.

According to Mukherjee, to wear Khadi is a sign of being well-dressed and cultured. At the same time it should help India’s rural craftsmen and women to share in the country’s growing wealth and economy. According to the article, he has dressed superstar Aishwarya Rai in homespun for two films currently in production – Ravana and Guzaarish – and the actress Vidya Balan in Paa which is due to be released in November. The nostalgia may be part of the style, but Mukherjee is very much in the new wave of Indian designers – a graduate of India’s National Institute of Technology and recipient of the Femina British Council/Times of India prize.

Fashion writers have labelled him “intellectual”, but he describes himself as a modern, practical and a socially aware businessman. It’s vital to him that the rural poor share India’s growing economy – a Gandhian concept and one that puts India right at the centre of being Indian.

His surprise hit earlier this year was the chhotu sari – the sari worn for hundreds of generations by women in the tribal areas that are woven to calf length for freedom of movement. It was, he decided, the perfect metropolitan sari for young women – long enough to give them the flowing shape, but short enough to differentiate them from their mothers and to allow them to show off their ankles and shoes.

Educating Rural Indian Youths

Raj — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:28:49 +0000

Courtesy mckaysavage on flickr

Yahoo India news article titled “Giving young India a foothold into the future”. The leading companies in India have joined hands with the central government to improve the career prospects of bright young people from rural India. In a public-private partnership effort to be shortly announced, foundations run by Wipro chief Azim Premji, Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Group and others corporate chiefs will fund the coaching of school leaving rural youth to prepare them for engineering, medical and other technical entrance examinations.

Around 4,000 youth will be selected every year from a network of 576 schools across the country set up to promote quality education in the rural areas. The government and the private sector may share the cost equally.

This unique public-private model for education is one of the ways India can translate demographic challenge into demographic dividend. Still the number of rural youth wanting to get good education is very large and India needs to move aggressively in tackling this issue.

Girl’s School Reshapes Rural India

Raj — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:18:04 +0000

Krishna Chaudhry, 16 year old girl is inspiring her classmates to seek independence through education in rural Uttar Pradesh. She has been an inspiration for her classmates by challenging them to refuel This is reported in Voice of America article titled “Girl’s School in Uttar Pradesh Reshapes Rural India”.

This is a great demonstration that empowering rural girls is an effective way of bringing positive change to rural India. “I ask them to go to school and make their own destiny,” Krishna says in the article. “I try explaining to them that if they don’t go to school the society will suppress them. I tell them to stand for their own rights and make your own career and not to leave everything in the hands of the fate,” she adds. As for Krishna’s personal inspiration – “that one is easy,” she says, she looks toward women world leaders like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Budget 2009-10 Youth and Rural Friendly

Raj — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:43:11 +0000

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the government would make it a priority to reach 9% gross domestic product growth in the medium term and would seek to spend 9% of GDP on infrastructure development by 2014. Budget release was heavy on spending for farmers and the poor, a core constituency of the Congress party-led ruling coalition, funded by a surge in borrowing and an increase in the fiscal deficit to 6.8 percent of GDP. With the Budget supporting the rural economy, the bullish rural growth plans will get a major boost. Read more about the impact of budget on fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies here.

The Economic Times article titled “Budget 2009-10: Happy about shiksha, naukri & Bluetooth” says that India’s Budget for 2009-10 is also focused on Young India. The budget allows weaker sections access higher education with interest-free education loan which will enable poor and rural youth to have better access to education. The article also notes that implementation to make sure the subsidy for poor students will reach the beneficiaries is tough. Gen YRI concern on Energy and conservation was not tackled in the Budget. But the verdict is that the FM has done a lot for students, a section of the salaried class, women and also for infrastructure.