Oppurtunities to work rurally and compete globally

Urban population is increasing day to day as people are migrating towards urban seeking for better oppurtunities. People from urban are even moving towards metros. Bangalore and Chennai are getting congested like anything as people from whole India are migrating towards it. In one way, people can enjoy this scenario as they get oppurtunity to see faces of their fellow contrymen from different states. It is really nice at country like India where people from different states come with different languagues, different life-styles, different tastes etc... but still they will join hands to work for some common causes.

In other side, It is really painful to see that why people are migrating towards metropolitan by leaving their families and favourite memories at their natives. In my experience, I have seen migrants to be enjoyed for some initial days at metros, but sooner they get bored and like to go back to their native. This applies to people who have migrated to abroad also. But, they are not able to go back to their native because of changed lifestyle and their needed money is available only at metros.

We may think that people who migrate from rural to urban to get richer life are selfish. They don't thought to improve the class of rural by working there and pulling people there. They haven't taken a fair decision to live with whatever available in rural. Though these sentiments may seem good to think, it is not at all possible for "majority" of people to live with these thoughts. I feel that it is not advisable to keep our young talented world-class people to work on local tasks alone selfishly. This is age for them to take calculated risks and try out new experiments. They want more challenges in life that are available in abundance in our metropolitans. Also we are living in global era where migration of rural to urban / urban to metros becomes inevitable.

The solution for this problem shall be improvement of rural infrastructure to world class. It should help our talented young world-class people to work globally by sitting rurally. They should be able to start new ventures and compete globally. While reading this post, if you feel that this is a well-known problem with well-known un-realistic solution, you are wrong. Let me walk you through one of the sucess story to understand how to work rurally and compete globally.

Mr.Nagarajan from usillamptti (a small town near Madurai) has come up with a grassroot innovation called garlic peeler to peel-out dry garlic skins. This device as you see in the below picture peel-out garlic skins within minutes.



NIF(National Innovation Foundation) has recognized Nagarajan's Innovation. NIF helped to protect this innovation by IP (Intellectual Property) rights and helping him to market globally. When chatting with him, he mentioned that he devised this to ease garlic pickle preparation but companies are finding many applications out of this device. He has sold this device to many great Indian companies. He casually said that he has approached all major Indian players and aggresively targetting global markets. He also proudly mentioned his device will peel-out skins of all types of garlics compared to similar foreign devices that would peel-out their local garlic species only. He has internet in his office room and check mails. Wow! This is good successful model to work rurally and compete globally.

We are working for other's problems without solving ours...

Last month, I took a workshop on "Technology Innovation" for a group of around 50 pre final engineering colleage students from TamilNadu. It was very nice discussion with these bright young chaps. They had lot interesting questions and thoughts.

One girl asked why India has not produced (branded on India's name) any major innovations (jazzy innovations like iPod, blackberry etc)? She may know the answer that Indian's are doing their best by working in foreign countries and branding their innovations on foreign company names. Still, she thought aloud to make her point clear and to others also to think. Parking this question for a while, I diverted the topic by asking for their interesting aspirations after their college studies. As usual, all hands raised for joining a software company (some were particular to join MNC). I searched but did not fount atleast one entereprenur aspirant in that crowd. That's all. I have answered to her question...

One guy asked me about job requirements in IT industry after some twenty years. I parked this question for two hours and updated them about success stories of Innovation, IP rights and its ROI (Return on Investment) etc and asked whether the question is still valid?! I think I have confused him ;-) he thought for a while and still he felt the same. He felt that if everything is automated and robots have come, where will humans would get oppurtunity to work. Some people think Robots as saturation point. What is after Robot?! No answer... Ok if not Robot also, We have long way to go. We are working on problems that are tip of iceberg. We are ultimately working for others (other foreign countries) problems. We have just started to start work on our problems. So the oppurtunities are infinite! You can find oppurtunity based on your thoughts. Big thoughts --> Big oppurtunities...


I insisted them to take some mini project or final year project that would benifit rural people. They can apply their talents and skills to our people first during their colleage studies and then go to solve foreigner's problems. I saw some twinkle in their eyes. I was happy that I made my message clear.

Football Yoga

T-Shirts with football logo, Dailies and website full of football news, SMS updates on football, football Ads on all TV channels... Footbool... Football... Football... People are so crazy with this sport for last one month. People in rural areas too have started playing this game and watch their football heros on TV. Finally, football has find a place in people's daily routine of this season. One interesting news is China has come up with Football Yoga recently. Wow! what is that?

Holding a ball in hand, practitioneers make it move through every joint of the body to musical accompaniment and the ball seems to work with the body in a perfectly way. This football yoga is jointly created by coaches from the Asian Yoga Federation and the Indian Gandhi Yoga and Natural Treatment Institute.



We have to wait to hear about its results. Still, it is good to see Yoga is taking different flavous...

Gift a Tree

Compared to last generation, we have lot of occasions created to present a gift. Many day’s like friends day, Valentines Day, mothers day are advertised and celebrated more religiously ;-) If you analyze the gifts that we share these days, they are mostly fancy artificial things. It is not that they love these things and they gift. They are narrowly forced to, as these are available in the market easily.

It’s worth remembering the famous monkey story at this juncture to analyze the above scenario
There were five monkeys inside a room. When one monkey goes near the door, hot water was poured on all monkeys. Other monkeys thought going near to the door caused hot water to be poured on them. So they quarreled with the monkey that went near to the door. Then this monkey is removed from the room and another monkey is put inside the room. When second monkey goes near the door, hot water was poured on all monkeys. Other monkeys thought the same as earlier and quarreled with that monkey. Then this monkey is also removed and another new monkey is brought in. By looking at these, new monkeys thought that they have to quarrel with the monkey whichever goes near to the door. Finally, all old monkeys are removed and five new monkeys are brought in. Pouring of hot water is also stopped. Now if any monkey goes near to the door, other monkeys will pull and quarrel.

So some practices are accustomed based on ignorance and short thinking. We would feel and think differently, if we know big picture and are given freedom (freedom from fashion). Our selections and its consequences would be different then.

Our gift practices like tie a band on our hand, or heart balloons etc are similarly forced by the narrow options available on the market on these occasions and the custom followed by our friends. Why not we plant a tree or donate a meal to orphanage or do some similar social activities as gift to express our love? I think we don’t have enough advertisement to market these activities. It is not followed as practice as advertisement plays a crucial role on our thought process today. Because of less advertisement, we haven’t thought about these. Let the change comes slowly and steadily so as to permanently last long for years. Let the readers of these blog be a change agent to the society by gifting a tree on auspicious occasions.

Ruropedia presents shows some easy ways to gift a tree:

1) SEVA - Madurai is committed to do this service. You can contact them for any auspicious occasions. Please visit their site from links column of this blog and contact them. They would plant trees on requested date and time for your beloved person.

2) I saw the below Ad in last Sunday newspaper. It's worth share with you all.

3) Please visit "Tree for Life" link from the links column.

Happy planting trees!

Taxation - Rich to Poor?!

I have observed many young rich folks (ideally software Engineers), when they get their first job salary in five digit numbers, open their wings broadly and fly over luxury. They don’t even care about their savings or taxes for initial months. They may not worry till for first year unless they get bored about their luxury. I have also seen people who feel savings / tax reductions are complex subjects to understand and they don’t show interest on that. There are few exceptional cases, they may drop some portion to charity right from their first income. Some are so philosophical saying that, atleast it goes to the government only. Let Government do the best to the poor. They may optimize their ignorance with a philosophy!

Let us leave all above people for time being and take the last philosophical cases as it is interesting. These people should understand that their contribution is not going for the needy directly. It goes with lot of bureaucracy overheads. Some peanuts from our share go to infrastructural development or needy poor after paying salaries for all government employees. It is from your salary, Government employees are paid but still they will not respect youL. To do more evil to this, our taxation law is also another problem. The concept of tax is brought to collect from Rich and share it to poor. Whom do you think are more taxed? It is not big company owners whose turnover are in lakhs. It is these educated upper middle class (i.e. Software Engineers). Rich people with companies can spend to all their needs and pay tax to the rest whereas our employed middle class people have to pay tax for their income first and spend for the rest. I don’t know whether these philosophical people might have thought about all these scenarios before they postpone to save / tax savings through charity. If not, please think it over.

So, very small amount is going to poor from rich. Also with sales tax, service tax etc, poor is also forced to pay to Government as rich. So there is no difference in terms of rich and poor for Government. Oops….

Grassroot Innovation from and for weavers

We admire innovations like iPod, TV on mobile etc for our entertainment. It is doubtful, even one person might have heard about iPod in the village that I visited last week. Still, there is innovation in that village. This is more to do for their livelihood.

I have got an oppurtunity to visit T-Ramanathpuram, village near usilampatti to check the progress of a grassroot Innovation. I went along with a NIF (National Innovation Foundation) Coordinator. It was nice meeting with him and learnt many activities of NIF on my travel.

T-Ramanathpuram is peculiar village where half of the population speaks Telugu and other half speaks Kannada besides Tamil. Weaving is the main livelihood option for this villagers. They are registered to some silk societies in Madurai/Kumbakonam/other cities. Society people would give specifications for sarees to weave based on customers taste and feedback through some agents. The agents being mediators between the society and weavers provide specifications, threads for manufacturing etc. Weavers do their job perfectly and return back the finished goods to agents and collect their labour cost. They are paid around 200 bucks per saree. It will take three days to weave a saree after the base thread (thari) setup. If it is a double border saree, two person would be needed for three days and they both has to share the 200 bucks. The second person's job is less, he would arrange the thread continuously for the border to come properly, but still his presence is needed. The second person job is called in tamil Kommai poodaradhu. Because of the need of this second person, many parents of ourprevious generation haven't sent their kids to school. They have involved them also for these tasks. Many people in this village are illiterates.

We visited a small house where a innovation for double saree weaving is installed on trial basis. There is a mechanical setup called Juccard as you see in the below figure. This is the innovation and this eliminates the need for second person. It automatically takes care of border design. Hence it improves the productivity. 6 man days effort is reduced to 2 man days effort. Wow! What an innovation for these villagers! They can now earn that 200 bucks very earlier. They can even have mulitple thari setups and earn multiple times more than current setup!



When we are interviewing the villager who uses this Juccard setup, he feels thankful to this innovation and felt that their village might have flourished well and many might have graduated if this innovation had come up some 20 years back. Better late not never, Atleast now this innovation has nurtured to this level with the help of NGOs like Honeybee, SEVA and Autonomous bodies like NIF. India shines babe!

Unfortunately, I was not able to meet the innovator. The person in photo is the user of this innovation. The innovator is from diferent part of Tamil Nadu. He came to this village, installed and trained this person.

Await to get updated on NIF and Honeybee network...