This week’s review - top posts:

1. Vinay’s feature on the bank for sex workers in Mumbai
2. Santhosh’s post on The Hindu’s interview with Pradeep Nevatia
3. A documentary fable about global warming, highlighted by Shital last week

Reaching into the archives:

Just last week, Prerna discussed The Talent Vacuum in India’s educational system (which also generated many hits), focusing on the need for an overhaul on a systemic level.

Please send along any other opportunities to info@thinkchangeindia.org.

Jobs

• Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) is an autonomous society responsible for implementation of poverty reduction projects in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. They are looking for 3-4 interns to work exclusively on health and nutrition interventions. More information here

• The Indian School of Microfinance for Women, founded by SEWA Bank and FWWB India and headquartered in Ahmedabad India is looking for a summer intern to help them build a nation-wide financial literacy program in India, funded by Citigroup Foundation. Sounds exciting? Get the full scoop here

Competitions

• Reminder: Apply for The Social Entrepreneur for the Year 2008 - India, held by The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme. The competition was established to recognize outstanding social entrepreneurs in India. Enter by June 5th.

• Energy and the Environment: Tata Power promises an environmentally conscious power plant in Cuttack and also pledges to pay above market rates for acquiring the land. The national government launches its ‘Green India’ campaign that will plant trees over 6 million hectares of degraded forests over the next 10 years.
• Women and Media: Women at the National Conference of the Network of Women of Media (NWMI) come together to call attention to the potential of journalism to move beyond simply the known, traditional outlets.
• Affordable Autos: In an attempt to compete with the Tata Nano, a joint partnership including Nissan, is looking to build their own 1 lakh car
• PPP: The state of Maharashtra has hired the International Finance Corporation as a consultant in advising them in implementing public-private partnerships.
• Sustainable Banking and Improvements The Financial Times has nominated ICICI, BlueOrchard, ABN Ambro and YES Bank for their Sustainable Banking Awards. Also, RBI will be sprucing up its banking in Lakshadweep to make it more accessible to various communities.

A thoroughly inspiring story reminding us that the most important examples of innovation occur where we least expect them to.

Farmers who visit Amai Mahalinga Naik’s two-acre plot on the hilltop near Adyanadka in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka return spellbound. Irrigated farming at this height is very surprising. This 58-year-old illiterate farm labourer has developed this with his own labour. His hard work, vision and never-say-die attitude have turned around destiny in his favour.

You can read the entire article here.

On the other side, the state of Punjab must finally come to terms with its production focused approach to agriculture and how it has wreaked havoc on the once fertile ecosystem.

Punjab’s grand narrative, a success story of bumper harvests, conceals dangerous sub-plots of pesticide poisoning, water shortages, soil salinity, fertilizer runoff, skyrocketing cancer rates, farmer indebtedness and drug addiction.

The full article is here.

We have mentioned this opportunity before. But the folks from Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation wanted us to throw in a reminder to our readers about the ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ Award 2008. The deadline is for application is 5th June, 2008 and you can access the online application here.

Here are some basic details on the award:

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation and The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship , in collaboration with United Nations Development Program (UNDP) are inviting applications for India’s Social Entrepreneur Of The Year Award 2008. Five finalists will be selected following an intensive search and selection process including expert reviews and site visits. The winner will be announced in a ceremony coinciding with the India Economic Summit in November 2008.

We have previously featured last year’s award recipient Harish Hande and his organization Selco.

Your daily dose of headlines:

• Health: The pharmaceutical industry in India fears that one in five drugs sold in the country are fake. A study undertaken by the by the drug controller general will focus on this.
• Transportation: India and France on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in railways, including constructing world class stations, signaling and telecom technologies.
• Agriculture: The Government of India is planning to set up 30 mega food parks in all the states so that cold chain facilities are available in catchment areas comprising not more than three to four districts. [Source: iGovernment]
• Employment: There is a mismatch between skills and available jobs, with 80 percent of jobs needing vocational training, and 90 percent of incoming job seekers lacking these skills. While the country needs 250 million skilled workers, only 700,000 have the proper skill sets.

Livemint reports that India’s insurance companies (private and state-owned) are expanding rapidly in rural markets, and have topped the IRDA’s mandatory rural targets.

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) is Government of India body set-up to regulate the insurance sector, which has gone through significant liberalization in the last decade. IRDA has continuously emphasized the importance of covering under-served markets, especially in rural areas and has established strict annual rural sales targets for companies. Turns out companies see this mandate as an opportunity:

An analysis of data from seven life insurers for 2007-08 (data from previous years was not made available by the companies) accounting for at least 80% of the market, reveals that all of them topped their individual targets laid down by Irda. The targets vary every year.

Significantly, insurance firms did even better in terms of their so-called social sector objectives. The “rural business“ of these firms includes policies sold to both rich and poor people in rural areas. “Social business” includes only the number of policies sold to poor and
economically backward people.

Clearly, access to insurance products would provide much needed economic stability to the rural poor. It can be argued that IRDA is a example of a unique model - using regulatory mechanisms to promote ’social business’. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) also has pursued a similar strategy, by mandating cellphone companies to focus on rural markets. Of course, we have covered the social impact of cellphones in this space before.

[Graphic Credit: Livemint]

A documentary fable by Mumbai filmmaker Nitin Das was handpicked to be a part of the UN Environment Programme’s “Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign.” Over two billion trees have been planted around the world under the campaign, and all sectors are encouraged to engage in voluntary action to address the issue of climate change. The film will be a part of the campaign’s advocacy:

Meanwhile the film by Das, portrays the journey undertaken by a small boy in a tiny Himalayan village who is entrusted by his chieftain to seek solution to the problems of sudden food shortage and climate change in his once prosperous and happy village.

The boy trudges up mountains and journeys to an old sage at the top of the mountain who hands over a fistful of seeds to him with the counsel that planting them will restore the lost peace and happiness of his village.

See what the monk says to the little boy about the solution to global warming by watching the video below.

Byrraju Foundation (a philanthropic foundation founded by Satyam head B. Ramalinga Raju and his family in 2001), is organizing India’s first National Conference of Rural BPOs named ‘Jyotismay’. The conference is to be held on 16th May, 2008 in Hyderabad, and you can register to participate in the conference through this link. It is important to note that the foundation also runs a pioneering Rural BPO outfit called GramIT.

The conference is an effort to provide collective voice to the Rural BPO industry which is still at its nascence. As we have noted in this space before, although there has been intense media coverage and interest in Rural BPO pilots across the country, the net job creation by the industry is still minimal. However, a national conference where Rural BPO players from across the country can come together and learn could be the right trigger to create a large-scale movement.

Top 3 posts from the week:

1. Although from the previous week, Prerna’s discussion on waste management continues to attract readers and comments.
2. Vinay’s featured interview with Gautam Ivatury of CGAP from last Sunday was the most read as a new post from the past week.
3. Santhosh’s post on the partnership between Airtel and the IFFCO also generated a lot of interest.

Reaching into the archives:

One of Vinay’s first posts just as this blog was kicking off focused on challenges that emerging economies face with making initial adoptions of new technologies widespread. Read it again here.

Your daily dose of headlines:

• Technology: Trak.in reports that a DesiWiki will help Indian start ups to increase their knowledge base on the technical aspects of starting a new venture.
• Education: In order to encourage students to stay in school, the government approved a merit scholarship that will award deserving students of lower income sections with Rs 6,000 annually.
• SMEs: Indo American Chamber of Commerce (IACC), in association with the World Trade Centre (WTC), aims to host the fifth Indo-US economic summit in September 2008 to strengthen links between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and USA and create opportunities for them to work with each other in areas of mutual interest, access technologies, form joint ventures and sign trading arrangements. [Source: Business Standard]

Many of our prior posts have spoken to the urgent need to overhaul, or at the least, significantly revamp the education system in India, as evidenced by the massive rise in demand for both primary and higher education institutions in relation to dwindling supply (not to mention the relatively low quality of instruction/infrastructure at pre-existing schools, particularly those in rural areas). The following except from Ramesh Menon’s, “The Talent Crunch” speaks to the gravity of this problem in explicit (and horrifying) detail:

Sam Pitroda, chairman of the National Knowledge Commission says that of the 90,000 MBAs that come out every year, only around 10,000 are worth employing. Kiran Karnik, former NASSCOM president, puts the blame at the door of India’s education system, saying that only 25 per cent of the country’s engineering graduates deserve jobs. No wonder companies today have to invest heavily in training fresh graduates, helping them to unlearn and pick up skills. As there are dramatic changes in politics and business as well as international scenarios, there is a need to keep updating the syllabus almost every year. Manohar Chellani, Secretary General, Education Promotion Society for India, New Delhi, points out that there is tremendous scope for improving the quality of education in India, and delay in doing it will cost us heavily.

The National Knowledge Commission has said that India will have to bring in education reforms if it has to emerge as the workforce of the world. India today needs at least 1,500 universities, but has only 370. There are more than 550 million young people in need of education but do not have educational institutes to go to. India also needs around 1,500 IITs, 1,500 management institutes, and 1,500 medical schools. A million good schools are also required. All that the present education minister, Arjun Singh, has done in his tenure is to fool around with reservations and suggest that Rahul Gandhi be made prime minister.

Though the IT industry needs 3.5 lakh engineers a year, only 1.5 lakh are available. This could lead to a shortage of over five lakh engineers in the next few years. A recent Nasscom-Crisil report says that the IT industry is expected to create about 11 million jobs by 2010. In another two years, the II sector would need half a million professionals. Presently, it employs over 350,000 but is short of around 90,000 workers. In another year, the shortfall is expected to cross 200,000. In 2007, the job market was vibrant. 2008 promises to be better as India goes on to vitalise its various sectors, which require over 1,000 CEOs across industries.

Are you alarmed yet? If you’re not, well, you should be.

The statistics presented by Menon present a serious problem - we are facing a gap in skilled labour that has the potential to widen exponentially over the course of the next few years. I would argue that this article presents a compelling mandate (along with the research conducted by Pratham) for taking serious steps towards educational reform.

So why aren’t we seeing significant tides of change? Atanu Dey argues the following:

Upton Sinclair had noted that it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. That is a specific instance of the more general principle that economists consider to be a fundamental truth about human behavior: “Incentives matter.” The system does not provide the policy makers an incentive to improve the educational system. Conversely, they have an incentive to keep the system dysfunctional. Given the current structure of incentives, they would lose whatever advantage their gain from the existing system.

In other words, if the system rewards ineptitude and ineffectiveness, then there can be very little hope for change. What Dey does counter-argue, however, is that the scope of the problem is large enough to have the potential to spur the need to act. Think of who the “skills deficit” impacts - not just individuals, but key stakeholders as well - corporations, small to medium sized enterprises, academic institutions. If these forces combine, there is potential for large-scale, sustainable change.

As with most things, however, the mandate needs to come from within in order for the system to change. How can we reach this crucial tipping point?

Please send along any other opportunities to info@thinkchangeindia.org.

Jobs

• The Institute for Financial Management and Research is looking for a Senior Researcher to work out of their Chennai office. The research will primarily comprise of the BoP energy sector. Go here for more information, and the full job description can be accessed here.

Fellowships

• We have blogged about Atlas Service Corps, before, but this is a reminder that their deadline is May 18th for applications. Go here for details.
• Ashoka is looking for its 2nd generation of Youth Fellows (12-24 yrs old) to provide seed funding and support to for creating unique ways of effecting positive change. Go here for more information. The website takes time to load, so we did not link to it.

Competitions

• New Ventures’ Accelerated Funding Program for Sustainable Enterprises is accepting business plans until May 15th. Go here for more information and the application.
• The TiE-Cannan Entrepreneurial Challenge 2008’s deadline is May 12th. Go here for more information.
• Apply for The Social Entrepreneur for the Year 2008 - India, held by The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme. The competition was established to recognize outstanding social entrepreneurs in India. Enter by June 5th.
• Jeevika, a South Asian documentary film festival, is accepting submissions on the topic of livelihoods until July 15th. You can learn more here, as well.
• Freescale Technology Forum is holding a design competition for students to design a product that benefits the environment. Winners get USD 10,000 and a paid trip to meet FTF leaders. More information can be found here. The website is here.

Other Opportunities

• Curruki.org’s Summer of Content is calling upon people like you to submit high quality educational content for middle and high school students. You can earn up to $500 for a unit, and $1600 for a semester’s worth of curriculum. Deadline is June 1st.

You daily dose of headlines:

• Health, Women and Mortality:The lack of inclusion of midwives within the National Rural Health Mission is highlighted as one of the main reasons for the high maternal mortality rate in India.
• Education: Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA) continued to push the government to pass the Right to Education Bill.
• Public Awareness: Swagat Thorat, a freelance journalist, has started a new magazine in braille for the visually impaired.
• CSR: The government is looking to establish a corporate affairs institute that will look at various practices, including corporate social responsibility. In related news, the government has awarded the Rural Electrification Corporation with the Navrtna award honoring its ongoing work in expanding access to electricity to the rural poor.
• Microinsurance: IFFCO-TOKIO General Insurance Co. Ltd. (ITGI) has created a new microinsurance product that targets India’s low income rural population.

The Business Standard features an intriguing anecdotal story about salt pan workers in Gujarat who now run their own company within the industry. Twenty-seven salt pan workers joined hands and efforts to form their own private company, called Sabras.

These workers hold 65 per cent stake in equity and are planning to raise it to 74 per cent. Of the three directors on board of Sabras, two are salt pan workers. The remaining 35 per cent in Sabras is held by Saline Area Vitalization Enterprise (SAVE), a public limited firm.

Besides, there are similar attempts on the anvil for onion and mango growers. Inspired by Sabras project, SAVE now aims to form another company called Veg-India where primary producers will have majority stake of 74 per cent. The producers of Sosiya village in Gujarat are in the process of joining hands in Veg-India for selling sweet kesar mangoes.

A board member of the company, Rajesh Shah (who is also a founder of the NGO Vikas), believes that this is the first time in India that people below the poverty line are one of the major stakeholders. At the same time, he notes that voluntary and nongovernmental organizations need to take notice of promising employment and wealth generation opportunities, and restructure themselves to meet these needs.

To me, the story highlights the fact that entrepreneurial spirit lies within all of India’s classes - a sort of parallel to the touted “American Dream.” If the right mechanisms and opportunities were made available to even manual laborers - such as salt pan workers - then perhaps stories like this would become even more common. And an added benefit is that these “rags to riches” stories signal the creation of a new class of people who have worked at all levels of a production chain.