“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
Sun-tzu, Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)
Taking heed of the great general, I decided to do my research thoroughly before entering the quagmire that is rural India. I decided the best way to find out more was to talk to people in the field. I started to source and contact some dynamic people in the diverse rural communities that contain 70% of India's population.
There are few people I know who have made rural development their fulltime jobs and I spent some time on the phone understanding what makes them tick. Here a few interesting and varied comments from such angels of change.
Manish Kumar founding member www.farmsnfarmers.org, Vaishali, Bihar
Farms n Farmers (FnF) is an organization started by alumni from IIT, Manish Kumar and Shashank Kumar. FnF targets to improve land profitability and hence increase revenue generation for land owners, farmers and farm labourers. Other focus areas include maintenance and augmentation of fertility, and improvement of farms' condition, so that long term profitability can be achieved in all aspects.
This is what Manish Kumar had to say to me.
“We were able to convince farmers to move away from growing the traditional wheat and rice and grow rajma (kidney beans) as the yield on rajma is 4 times that of wheat and rice. However the very next season those same farmers went back to growing wheat and rice.”
This baffling realization didn’t make any sense to me, why would anyone not want to grow something that makes 4 times the profit, what’s the reason behind this irrational behavior? I know that old habits die hard, but seriously? This strong resistance to change doesn’t stop the team of farmsnfarmers from continuing with their Gram Revolution, their work now reaches 25 villages and 1000 farmers.
Chakra Adari, Hyderabad, India
I got to know Chakra when I lived in New Jersey. He founded and ran an IT consulting company with 100 consultants and eventually decided to return to Hyderabad to be involved in co-operative farming about 2 years ago. Due to the division of land into smaller sections, the amount of farmland eventually reaches a size where farming becomes unprofitable and such farmers lease their land to willing lessors to earn a rental income. The essence of co-operative farming is to pool such smaller sections of land for mass farming, thereby generating returns through economies of scale, mechanized farming, high yield seeds, etc.
I told Chakra about my mission and this is what he had to say.
“Any project where you want to work with rural India, will take at least 2-2.5 years to complete.” This conversation was a fall from grace kind of experience for me, as I was under the impression that all I needed to do was travel through rural India, come up with a project plan and implement it. When someone with international business experience has been on the ground trying to put together a project for co-operative farming for the last 2 years then you need to take that advice seriously.
Raja Sekhar Malapati, Chennai, India
Here is someone who has been doing what I want to do for the last 15 years on a fulltime basis. I stumbled upon his blog http://ruralindia.blogspot.com/. Malapati has travelled exclusively through rural India, trying to understand rural India, lived with the villagers and now works for a VC fund called VenturEast India in Chennai, investing in rural projects.
This is what he told me
“I urge you to travel through rural India, don’t ask any questions and just live their life. Eat their food, live in the same space as them, do the work they do, use the transport they use and then you will realize why they behave irrationally and do things which don’t make any sense”
You can find more information on Raja Sekhar Malapati at http://www.blogger.com/profile/02768426014090050947
Harsh Vivek, Associate Operations Officer, IFC South Asia - Advisory Services (the World Bank Group), New Delhi, India.
I was fortunate enough to get connected with Harsh Vivek who works with IFC, which operates a portfolio of impact projects across India. Harsh walked me through a variety of projects and some of them were extremely lean and innovative ideas.
- Husk Power Systems: This project uses discarded rice husks (shells) to generate electricity and is based out of Patna, Bihar. Since August 2007 it has installed 60 mini-power plants that power around 25,000 households in more than 250 villages and hamlets and impact lives of approximately 150,000 people in rural India. You can find more information here http://www.huskpowersystems.com/
- Reuters Market Light (RML): What happens when the world market leader in news and information enters agriculture? You can make intelligent, informed and effective business decisions. This is exactly what happened when Reuters launched RML. Using a mobile phone a farmer can check the best market for his produce the best time to sell, the highest yielding crop to grow, weather forecast. Having such a service at your fingertips can make farming a very profitable experience. RML has been around since October 2007 and it is estimated that the RML service has been used by over a million farmers. http://www.reutersmarketlight.com/impact.php
Harsh said “I want to congratulate you for taking the decision to quit your job”. Sometimes as an entrepreneur or a risk taker you tend to doubt your decisions. Hearing words of encouragement from Harsh, I felt reassured of my decision to follow my dream.
All of these angels of change have given me invaluable advice and also cautioned me on what to expect. As I set out on my journey, I will get the chance to meet them face to face and be part of an already existing Gram Revolution. I hope to learn as much as possible so I can make a meaningful contribution.
I strongly believe in the lessons of one of the greatest thinkers of our times C.K.Prahlad who is a proponent of “solving poverty through profitability”.
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