Indra’s Drishtikona (Viewpoint)

A Letter to Chaiman, ITC Ltd and President of CII

Posted : June 16, 2005 at 9:43 pm [IST]

Dear Mr. Deveshwar,
Allow me to briefly introduce myself. My name is Indra , an IITian from Kharagpur (1957-61) with a rural background. I have been writing about ITC’s e-choupal and rural mall initiatives on my blog (www.drishtikona.com). As it turns out, I found my entries on e-Choupal getting the maximum number of hits, comments and queries from individuals interested in pursuing post-graduate thesis on the subject. Frankly, I wish if we could have an e-Choupal in my village (Pipra, near Sasaram, Bihar) as well.

The reason I am writing this letter is to emphasize upon yourself my desire to expedite your present programme of covering 1,00,000 villages in next ten years.

1.I myself and many million of villagers will like you to cover every village of India, at least those with population above 1000 or more in next 5-6 years. Do you think if you really take it as a project of national importance and sell it to your corporate friends and colleagues in CII, it will still be impossible?

2.Another route for the faster expansion may be the integration of all similar initiatives of various organizations and NGOs for connecting rural population in IT network.

3.One another addition to these e-Choupals could be a soil-testing lab that could advise the farmers about the right kind and quantity of fertilizers for different crops. Unfortunately, hardly few from the large number of graduates in agricultural sciences, engineering, or rural management, work in villages. Where should the farmers go for guidance for improved modern best practices? Moreover, farmers today are the most exploited lot. The system makes the intermediaries rich. There is nothing in system to protect the farmers from adulterated seeds, fertilizers, and insecticides. The system does neither ensure them the best price for their produce. E-Choupals in expanded mode can be the only hope.

4.In the same way, I dream to see those rural malls similar to one that you have started in MP at every 200 km on all the expressways and highways of the country that will cater to all sorts of requirements of the rural farmer families. Your commercial plantation plans can also bring miracle for the rural poor if the right trees as one for bio-diesels are taken up on huge lot of land lying unutilized almost in every village.

5.An initiative of rural housings has also huge possibilities and will be good business proposition too. Quite a large number of rural households can afford to build decent houses. But they require some innovative inputs regarding availability of architects, good masons, low cost materials and financing at interest rates that is being offered in metros by banks. The architecture departments of state engineering colleges, banks, and cement and steel companies can group together and come out with designs of some model rural dwellings based on local requirements. Banks can devise some financial packages for rural housings. Once it catches up, the employment in rural area will go up. The economy will boom.

As I was reading in ” Stanford Social innovation Review”, summer 2005 issue, Cemex Patrimonio and Banco Azteca have been working on the housing project for low-income group in Mexico and are successful. Indian entrepreneurs and manufacturers can take some lessons from Cemex’s ‘Project Patrimonio Hoy‘ and its offshoots- Patrimonia Hoy Escolat for improvement of schools, Patrimonia Hoy Calle Digna for improving infrastructure in neighborhood. We can certainly emulate or come out with some model good enough for Indian conditions.

India’s villages and small towns must also develop in a way that does not make them an eyesore. Villagers are even today building their houses but they hard follow any engineering based layout. They just try to replicate their old clay ones with bricks- same very thick walls, and very heavy wooden doors. If they see some good houses getting built in the village, they will rush for it too. Manufacturers of steel, cement and other accessories must take up some initiative on the line of Cemex. You can certainly impress upon some of your friends such as Dr. Dubey of IIT, Kharagpur, Mr. Kamath of ICICI, or Mr. Kumar Mangalam of Grashim for some such initiatives.

As head of CII, you have so much of resources. I wish your era at CII would be giving a special upward push to rural issues and problems. I can say it will be a win-win for industry as well as the rural mass.

I wish you a successful tenure.

- Indra

Category: Rural development |