Its the time to Pay Back..

Friends, few so called Human Rights organizations, NGOs, and anti national forces are cooking sinister plans to demoralize our army, by raising a demand to withdraw AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act). FYI, AFSPA is an act which empowers our army to eliminate terrorists hiding within citizens. If this act is withdrawn our Army deployed within the states where proxy war is imposed by our enemy, would be paralyzed.
Few corrupt, ISI funded media houses are also supporting such so called Human Rights Organizations, and NGOs so innocently. No one seems to be interested in supporting our Army. We must support AFSPA, since that’s the only way we can pay back to our Army.

Notes:
1. NDTV never allowed Gen. Bakshi to complete his points, they rather provoked him to wrangle. A soldier who knows what exactly is happening, couldn’t resist himself. Point to be noted that he is a soldier and not an orator.
2. NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan happens to be the fiancée of J&K CM Omar Abdullah. She also won the Jammu and Kashmir State government award for excellence in journalism.
3. What is happening in North East is very much under control but situation is at the boiling point.
4. Media, NGO is claiming that unlike the situation in early 80-90s, situation of J&K has changed. True. It was possible only because of AFSPA, if it is revoked, state will be thrown back to earlier situation.

Rethinking rural education

Avinash Sheshare, a class VII student at a small boarding school in Yamgarwadi village near Solapur in southern Maharashtra, explained to me the concept of convex and concave lenses more innovatively than I had learnt even at IIT. He took the sole of a worn-out rubber slipper, which had 5-6 equidistant holes punched in lengthwise, put a soft drink straw in each of them, and was ready for the demonstration. “Imagine the sole to be a lens and the straws to be sun rays,” he said in Marathi. “I bend the sole to make the straws point inwards. This is how a convex lens works. When I bend it the other way to make the straws point outwards, it becomes a concave lens.”

The school where Avinash studies is meant for the children of Paradhi and other nomadic tribes, many of which the British had branded “criminal tribes” because they were the most militant in the anti-colonial struggle. Even today, people belonging to these tribes suffer from extreme poverty and social exclusion, and rank lowest in formal school education. However, it would be naïve to think their minds are uneducated. As I discovered during my recent visit to Yamgarwadi, their children have amazing knowledge of the environment around them. These boys and girls knew the medicinal properties of the locally grown “weeds”. They could identify different birds with their sounds. They could name the stars in the night sky. In a little room that served as the “science laboratory” in the school, all the various types of snakes, crabs and scorpions kept in specimen jars had been caught by the children themselves. And how incredibly talented they all were in singing, dancing, playing local sports, and using their magical hands to create things of beauty in wood, mud and grass!

Avinash and his friends are lucky because they found a place in this RSS-inspired school founded by Girish Prabhune, a social activist and author whose lifelong and widely acclaimed work for the social uplift of the nomadic tribes in Maharashtra deserves far greater governmental support than he has got so far. But I doubt if the formal primary and secondary school education system, rigidly and unimaginatively structured as it is today, can either open its doors to, or meaningfully benefit, all the children belonging to the diverse communities in rural India.

My thoughts on this subject are provoked by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s address to the nation on Thursday on the historic occasion of enshrining education as a fundamental right of every child between the ages of six and 14. He made a fervent appeal for the fulfillment of this “national commitment to the future of India”. Noble and well-intentioned words. However, it must be said that our governments, Central as well as state, have not got their act right on either of the two crucial aspects of the Right to Education in rural India—access and content.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has no doubt succeeded in enlarging access to primary education. However, as many as eight crore children who come out of primary schools find their path blocked to further schooling because there simply aren’t enough secondary schools in the country—a reality that has prompted many educationists to comment that these children are not “dropouts” but “pushouts”. The Central government’s Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan remains a woefully inadequate response to remove the bottleneck in secondary education.

But a far more debilitating shortcoming is the quality and content of the education imparted in our village schools. Apart from the well-recognised fact that the system demands rote learning that impairs children’s creativity, it also attaches little importance to either the local knowledge resources or the specific development needs of India’s diverse communities. It functions under the premise that education is only that which is rammed into young minds by text books and guidebooks. By corollary, those who are out of the school system or have underperformed are deemed uneducated, with all the negative sociological and psychological consequences. The relevance of much of what is taught in schools does not become apparent to rural children. Conversely, what is relevant to them and their communities is not taught to them. For example, isn’t it astounding that agriculture is not a subject in secondary schools in rural areas, although most students studying in these schools come from kisan families? Similarly, the school curriculum completely bypasses the native skills, traditionally acquired learnings, and the rich artistic-literary heritage of our various “backward” castes and tribes in rural India. No wonder, children belonging to these communities perform poorly in the formal school system and end up swelling the ranks of the “uneducated” and “semi-educated”.

For RTE to become meaningful to these communities, and for it to make its fullest contribution to the realisation of a progressive vision for the “Future of India”, big and innovative changes are needed in the school education system, especially in our rural schools. Smart kids like Avinash abound in India’s villages. What they need is not just the right to education, but also the right education.

Original Source

On the verge of the Shift

United Nations: There was a sense of disbelief among ministers and ambassadors from diverse nations when the chairperson of the 11th Info-Poverty World Conference held at the United Nations introduced the jeans-clad Chhavi Rajawat as head of a village in India.

For, from a distance one could easily mistake Rajawat, an articulate, computer-savvy woman, for a frontline model or at least a Bollywood actress.

But she is sarpanch of Soda village, 60 kilometres from Jaipur, in backward Rajasthan and the changing face of growing dynamic rural India.

Thirty-year-old Rajawat, India’s youngest and the only MBA to become a village head — the position mostly occupied by elders, quit her senior management position with Bharti-Tele Ventures of Airtel Group to serve her beloved villagers as sarpanch.

Rajawat participated in a panel discussion at the two-day meet at the UN on March 24 and 25 on how civil society can implement its actions and spoke on the role of civil society in fighting poverty and promoting development.

It is necessary to re-think through various strategies of action that includes new technologies like e-services in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in an era where resources have become limited, she told the delegates of the international conference.

“If India continues to make progress at the same pace as it has for the past 65 years since independence, it just won’t be good enough. We’ll be failing people who dream about having water, electricity, toilets, schools and jobs. I am convinced we can do it differently and do it faster. In the past year alone, I and the villagers in Soda have brought about a radical change in the village purely through our own efforts. We have had no outside support – no NGO help, no public, nor private sector help,” she said.

On achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Rajawat said she sought full support from outside agencies and the corporate world.

“I thank United Nations Office for Partnerships (UNOP) which had deputed its senior adviser in India Mr Babu Lal Jain to visit Soda and extend all support in the opening of the first bank in the village. That made all the difference.”

“In three years I will transform my village. I don’t want money. I want people and organisations to adopt projects in my village as often projects fail owing to lack of a local connect and that is what I am here to provide by bridging that gap. I want the conference to help bring about faster change so that this generation can enjoy that kind of life that I – and you in this audience – take for granted,” she said to thunderous cheers from the delegates.

Source of Article

Inclusive Capitalism

Economists, social historians and market researchers engaged in defining the Great Indian Middle Class are apt to lose themselves in a vast territory governed by approximate figures. The swelling numbers of such a class are elusive and its patterns of income and consumption much too variable: defining the nature of the beast, moreover, in terms of style and taste can be a waste of time. But if indicators must be found—and labels sought—then Fabindia would feature high on the list of trendsetting establishments that have shaped the way a prominent swathe of the urban Indian middle class dresses and furnishes its homes.

There cannot be many professionals in Indian cities who have not, at one time or another in the last 25 years, possessed either a Fabindia shirt, kurta, bed cover, dhurrie or napkin. More than any arrivistefashion dictator, social marketing whiz kid or aggressive foreign retail chain, Fabindia has defined the look of the Indian middle class. It has succeeded in doing so by adhering steadfastly, in four decades of planned growth, to principles of quality, fair pricing and customer satisfaction. But, above all, in its overriding commitment to provide work to thousands of village weavers and artisans, in more than a dozen states, who produce handwoven and handprinted fabrics, often solely for Fabindia.

A couple of unusual aspects of the Fabindia success story distinguish it from other Indian export cum retail enterprises. Although it began in 1960 exclusively as an exporter of fabrics, Fabindia never went into direct manufacture. Without the draining costs of infrastructure and the encumbrance of labor unions, prices stayed low and profit margins were tight. Unlike many export houses in the formative decades of the 1970s and 1980s who burnt their fingers in retail markets, or grew so fast in exports that they grew out of touch, Fabindia’s retail business steadily overtook its exports. “In the late 1960s, if we managed to sell fabric worth Rs. 3,000 locally we considered it a boom month,” recalls Meena Chowdhury, who joined Fabindia’s American founder John Bissell as a part-time dogsbody on a salary of Rs. 150 a month in 1962 and is now a senior shareholding director in the company. Today, Fabindia’s total turnover is Rs. 250 million and its retail outlets continue to grow apace.

Philosophy

• Fabindia was founded with the strong belief that there was a need for a vehicle for marketing the vast and diverse craft traditions of India and thereby help fulfill the need to provide and sustain employment. We blend indigenous craft techniques with contemporary designs to bring aesthetic and affordable products to today’s consumers.

• Our endeavor is to provide customers with hand crafted products which help support and encourage good craftsmanship.

• Our products are sourced from all over India. Fabindia works closely with artisans by providing various inputs including design, quality control, access to raw materials and production coordination. The vision continues to be to maximize the hand made element in our products, whether it is handwoven textiles, hand block printing, hand embroidery or handcrafting home products.

View Fabindia’s commitment to creating jobs in the rural sector at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting – 2007.: www.fabindia.com

Apart from the “parent body”—a nucleus of four famous shops in Greater Kailash market in south Delhi—and a three-storey outlet in the suburb of Vasant Kunj, Fabindia now has shops in Bangalore and Chennai. A 250-square-meter twin outlet opened in Pali Hill in Mumbai in September, taking Fabindia’s retail floor space to a total of nearly 2,230 square meters nationally. That was not the future Bissell could have imagined when he started his one-man export company in two small rooms adjoining his bedroom in his Golf Links flat. He called it Fabindia Inc. and incorporated the modest venture in his hometown of Canton, Connecticut, thousands of kilometers away.

Two women provided the initial impetus that eased Fabindia’s birth and changed the direction of Bissell’s life. Not long after he came to India his grandmother died in Connecticut, leaving him a legacy of $20,000 that he used as start-up capital. And the day after he landed in Delhi he met Bim Nanda, whom he fell in love with and eventually persuaded to marry him, and who, in turn, persuaded him to stay on.

Two remarkable business partnerships, one Indian, the other British, also developed in the restless 1960s, as the sandyhaired American plowed through the dusty, small towns and villages of north India, knocking on doors, showing swatches to weavers and coaxing entrepreneurs to produce the flat weaves, pale colors and precise weights in handloom yardage and cotton carpets that he wanted. After many trial and error starts in Panipat—not then the boom town it is now—he forged a link with the Khera family, a connection that flourishes to this day. In 1964 he also met Terence Conran, progenitor of the Habitat chain that ushered in a furnishings revolution in Europe, who believed that Fabindia’s Bissell embodied the honesty and clarity of purpose to source the right materials out of India.

The business model of Fabindia is fairly simple and profitable for people who actually sweat! Its fully owned subsidiary, with venture funds, facilitates setting up of manufacturing units that are owned by funds (49%), by artisans themselves (26%) , private equity (15%), and rest by employees. Fabindia also in turn acts as the principal buyer, but the units are free to sale their goods to other buyers as well. The profits after taxes are shared yearly amongst the equity holders. So, the artisans earn in more than just one way as their share-value  also grows as the sales go up!! : Fabindia: A success story

Like any business venture, Fabindia was susceptible to the winds of sweeping political and economic change but it prospered by abiding by the rules. In 1975-76, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, Fabindia was forced out of its second premises in a house on Mathura Road. Bim Bissell recalls that, later on, John would laugh and say that he owed Sanjay Gandhi thanks for effecting the rule that barred commercial establishments from operating in residential properties because that is what prompted Fabindia to open its first big showroom
in Greater Kailash market. “It was my father’s belief that retail outlets should move to suburbs rather than the city center to service the needs of the newer and younger householders,” says William Bissell, John’s 32-year-old son, who has been pushing Fabindia’s growth in other cities since he joined the business and will soon be introducing a Fabindia line in children’s clothing.

In compliance with a Reserve Bank diktatof the early 1970s instructing foreign companies to reduce their foreign equity to 40 percent of the total, Bissell offered shares in Fabindia to close family members and associates. Madhukar Khera, son of a Punjabi refugee family resettled in Panipat who helped his father run a small, struggling carpet business, had decided early on to manufacture for Fabindia. When Bissell’s letter offering the shares came in 1976, Khera, by then a key figure in Fabindia’s success, bought them for Rs. 45,000. Today, he reckons, they are worth at least 400 times as much. That letter, thumped out on Bissell’s trusty Olivetti portable, set down the company’s simple, heartfelt credo: “In addition to making profits, our aims are constant development of new handwoven products, a fair, equitable and helpful relationship with our producers and the maintenance of quality on which our reputation rests.”

Throughout his life Bissell remained a prolific letter-writer—notes, memos and accounts flowed from his Olivetti with the same regularity as pithily voiced observations and opinions, some bitingly funny, others astutely argued, all usually helpful. (After his stroke, he began again from scratch—first painfully holding chalk to slate, then pad and pencil, before graduating to a PC with enlarged lettering.) Almost anyone connected with the Fabindia story—and there are hundreds—has lovingly preserved every scrap received from Bissell, as if, says his daughter Monsoon Bissell, “we were all being invited to participate in some great unfolding adventure story.”

In addition to making profits, our aims are constant development of new hand-woven products, a fair, equatable helpful relationship with our producers and the maintenance of quality on which our reputation rests.     : John Bissell,  Founder, Fabindia

It was also his custom to personally type the company’s annual report, which he would then dispatch to shareholders, employees, friends and—much to the irritation of Fabindia managers—to the company’s competitors. Bissell espoused transparency in all business affairs just as he held on to [Ernst Friedrich] Schumacher’s small-is-beautiful theory of development economics—he hated the office paraphernalia of peons and secretaries and everyone in Fabindia even now prepare their own invoices and make their own tea.

Working for endless hours on Fabindia’s annual financial report, Meena Chowdhury remembers that Bissell would shout across the dividing screen to ask: “How many people do we now employ? One year I said 20, the next year it was 40 and the year after that, I think, I said 82.” A dead silence would follow this exchange, so Meena would go over to assure him, and find the same look of exasperation, worry and unanswered questions writ on his face. “…Meena,” Bissell would say year after year. “How did we grow this big?”

Reference: Fabindia, SPAN Magazine

UNIDO, to develop agri-biz value chains

Source: The Hindu Business Line, Mar 09, 2011

The UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido) and the Kudumbashree State Mission for poverty eradication and women empowerment have decided to expand cooperation in the development of agri-business value chains. Farm experts from Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Sri Lanka had flown down to take part in a workshop at Thanneermukkom, a remote village in Alappuzha district, to pick a few lessons about various value chains practised by local women groups.

FUTURE COLLABORATION

Unido and the Kudumbashree have decided to pursue opportunities of future collaboration in fruits and vegetables processing, setting up of training centres and development of training and entrepreneurship curricula. The international workshop on ‘Analysis and design of pro-poor value chain development projects in Asia” was held from March 1 to 4 with financial support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Thirty delegates representing the participating countries learned about the ‘Marari mushroom’ value chain development project run by Kudumbashree, an official spokesman said here.

MILKY MUSHROOMS

This is an initiative where women groups engage in production of mushrooms under controlled environments, a process that requires technical skills and inputs and made available by the Tropical Botanical gardens and Research Institute of India. The product, ‘milky mushrooms,’ is marketed through the Marari Marketing Company owned by the community groups.

The second value chain to be featured was of garments, in which Kudumbashree supported garment production and marketed through a community-owned company. These projects have helped to improve the livelihoods of more than 600 women across various districts in Kerala, the spokesman said.

UNIQUE EXPERTISE

“Unido has been keen to understand the Kudumbashree model that manifests unique expertise in community development and poverty eradication, particularly among rural women,” said Mr Frank Hartwich of the agri-business unit of Unido. This is an important ingredient in support programmes which should not only focus on efficiency in business and chain organisations but also design programmes that benefit the poor and vulnerable members of the rural society, particularly women.

PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE

The workshop also produced a practitioners’ guide on ‘Pro-poor agro value chain development: 25 guiding questions for successful project design and implementation.’

Mr T. Vijaya Kumar, Joint Secretary, SGSY (Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna) and Mission Director, National Rural Livelihoods Mission, inaugurated the workshop in the presence of Mr Antonios Levissianos of the Unido Regional Office in New Delhi, and Ms Sarada Muraleedharan, Executive Director, Kudumbashree.