Radical Initiatives

Arindam Gautam
In my previous piece that appeared last week, I had harped on the importance of agriculture for inclusive growth. There is no gainsaying the fact that agriculture plays a significant role in the process of inclusive growth, but at the same time there is a need to ponder over some other pertinent issues also.

While in the previous piece I had pointed to the fact that most of the social benefits undertaken by the corporate sector were either considered by them as an expense or eyed with charity and, therefore, they devised certain strategies that were either short-term or relief-oriented. In this piece, I would, however, like to make special mention of some really constructive and sustainable steps that corporate India had taken. I would like to finally advocate a few suggestions to be adopted by corporate India in a bid to expedite the process of inclusive growth.

First of all, I would like to make a special mention of the following initiatives:
E-Choupal: Launched in 2000, this initiative of ITC is really noteworthy. Basically, e-choupal is the application of information technology for the supply of agri-materials to the organization (ITC) and the proceedings back to the farmer through the use of internet. With the help of this, a farmer can know the future weather condition, current selling price of his good etc through the kiosks established at several locations This has benefited both the parties as now there is a direct transaction between the two parties without the involvement of intermediaries, thus cutting down on expenses for ITC as well as reducing the chances of being cheated by brokers.

Fabindia’s Project and the Taj Initiative: FabIndia, a rural handicraft retailer, sources all its products directly from village artisans and has created around 1,00,000 jobs in rural India. Another similar case is of the Taj Group of Hotels where it has been made mandatory for all the front-office staff to wear Varanasi hand-woven sarees. I believe these two steps will definitely arrest the trend of departing from the ancestral vocation of several sections of the populace. At the same time, it will also discourage the trend of migration of the aforementioned people towards urban areas in search of better job prospects, thus reducing the burden on urban areas. Apart from the impact of the migration of these youths to the urban areas, these youths find themselves incompetent in urban areas as compared to their counterparts there, not because their cerebral capacity is less but because they have been rendered unemployable due to a faulty system of education.

Having dwelt on the above, it is imperative that now I offer some suggestions on the same lines.
India being a rural country still has the Panchayati Raj System (PRS) in vogue at several places. For example, Tamil Nadu, considered the most urbanized among the Indian States, still has 56 per cent of the population living in the rural areas. Panchayati Raj in Tamil Nadu controls 352 lakh sq km or 56 per cent of the land area, and 175 lakh work force is in the rural area making 62 per cent of the labour. As such, it is necessary that prior to the commencement of any project, the corporate sector takes the PRS into confidence. I personally feel that had the Tatas done so, the Singur impasse would not have resulted.

Moreover, things today have come to such a pass that the common (rural) populace do not trust the corporate sector and eye them with disdain owing to years of fraud and cheat committed on them. Therefore, the rural people are reluctant receive any help from them or engage in any joint activity with them. Thus it is necessary that first of all corporate India tries to build a sense of trust and confidence.

Another important task is to groom the rural youth. It is a known fact that the cerebral capacity of a rural youth is no less than his counterpart in the urban areas. It is only due to lack of exposure and proper grooming that they cannot match their comrades in urban areas. This will not only prove beneficial to the rural youth but also to the corporates who have been greatly facing the problem of attrition of the urban youth to the MNCs. If it is seen that the youths are lacking in education, some organizations that need technical workers can outsource this work force from the rural areas instead of giving the same job to a qualified urban youth and paying him more.

It is high time that some Indian corporates looked at zero budgeting concepts and made the most possible effort to outsource all factories to rural areas in a bid to develop the process. I believe that instead of earmarking a fixed sum of money as a part of their routine corporate social responsibility, they would do well if instead they set up plants in rural areas and utilize the aforementioned money in logistics and supply chain to the requisite place.

Last but not the least, there should be a change in the archaic mindset of corporate world that characterized rural India as ‘‘low tech-low investment’’. Instead, rural items like handicraft should be marketed as high class with celebrity endorsements. This has already happened in some parts of the country, and I feel the corporate sector should try to emulate the same in case of Assam’s mekhela chadar and bell metal utensils.
(These are excerpts of the paper presented by the writer at the Centre for Management Studies, Dibrugarh University recently) source: the sentinel assam