The Rural Tourism Network Enterprise (RTNE), a social enterprise, has made a unique venture in tourism sector which brings much needed alternate livelihood opportunity to village entrepreneurs while providing a budget travel option for tourists. The business model is outlined in an article in Business Standard thus.

“RTNE identifies local entrepreneurs to form a Destination Management Company (DMC) — more like a franchise. These entrepreneurs identify village households or small low-cost hotels that are ready to take guests in their homes or outhouses.

The franchisee then trains these households on the minimum standards required to run a healthy and tourist-friendly administration. While they keep track of availability of rooms, for every Rs 500 a household gets for a room, Rs 100 goes to the franchisee and Rs 100 to RTNE. In return RTNE provides tourist traffic and trains the franchisee, besides providing access to finance to improve amenities.”

Just one of the many ventures of  IFMR Trust, RTNE is the result of an extensive survey conducted in 2008 to understand the potential of rural tourism.

The survey indicated that although rural tourism business models like home-stays… had gained in popularity, rural tourism had not yet reached its growth potential…due to several gaps in the rural tourism supply chain, such as lack of information on the destination, accommodation content and real-time availability of room inventory; lack of access to easy and cost-effective bookings; non-availability of cost-effective accommodation, and inadequate safety and hygiene at the accommodation.

RTNE then works with the DMCs to ensure quality on all such gaps as documented extensively in their field report to ensure quality for the tourists.

The tourist destination are currently concentrated in the Konkan region of Maharashtra and in south Sikkim, but Business Standard reports that “Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have also set the ball rolling.”

A visit to the RTNE website however reveals a few elements of inconvenience to a tourist. The “login” portal doesn’t have an associated “Sign Up” link leaving us to wonder about the usefulness of the login portal. The information about various destinations available are plenty, but apparently online booking facility is not available and one has to send a “booking request”. Clearly, some work needs to be done to make the website more convenient for the tourist. This may also inevitably force the tourist to doubt the quality of services extended during the stay.

But from the social perspective, RTNE seems to be an enterprise carefully structured  to overcome shortcomings identified by sound observations in  rural tourism sector and hence is likely to positively impact rural population by tens of thousands if not millions.

[Article Source : Business Standard]

Of the 5 billion medical injections administered in India every year, 62 percent are unsafe – startling figure that brought Marc Koska, inventor of non reusable K1 syringes, to India

This is how the article starts – one of the innumerable “startling” facts waiting to jolt the social entrepreneur inside us into action. With the population at large struggling for basic necessities, medical care and medical safety get relegated to the background and even numbers like 300,000 – the number of people killed as a consequence of usage of unclean syringes – seems adjustable.

However, this particular fact jolted Marc Koska into action. Marc heads the company, Star Syringe – which pioneered the non reusable K1 auto-disable syringe and also spearheads the UK-based charity SafePoint.

SafePoint spearheaded a campaign across the country in November last year, which propelled the government to make the use of Auto Disable (AD) syringes mandatory in all public health centres from April 30

While reading the article I was inclined to think of the ban on smoking in public places and wanted to know what if this directive too went the same way. The last paragraph provides an answer – “At the moment, not using AD syringes is not a punishable offence”

Social entrepreneurs play a vital role in goading the government to take cognizance of issues of the land and pass legislation to tackle them. However, in a country like India, passing the legislation is, but, just a start. We also need to ensure that laws are implemented in the spirit.

On the sidelines – Read this article while reading up on Marc Koska. Incidentally, I also read an article on Social Edge a couple of days back “Are the Only Innovations in Social Entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon?“. I have not yet taken a side in this interesting debate. At the same time I want to mention it at this point because sometimes there are underlying reasons why the very same facts have varying affects on various people. The same incident can be life-changing for one and life-as-usual for another. Something for us to chew on!

Goldman Sachs will be training 29 Indian women under it’s 10,000 Women program, an intiative to provide business and management education to under served female entrepreneurs. As reported by the Business Standard, Goldman is partnering with the National Entrepreneurship Network, London Business School and the Indian School of Business to provide 150-hours of classroom instruction and mentoring along with assistance in launching and expanding the business.

The 10,000 Women initiative is inspired by UN and World Bank research which shows that investing in women leads to real economic growth and improved living standards. In fact, a 1% increase in female education directly correlates to a 0.2% increase in the GDP. The program also aims at removing social hurdles for women in countries where their participation in business has traditionally been restricted. According to the program website,

A critical – yet often overlooked – condition for reducing inequality and ensuring that the benefits of globalization are more widely spread is a robust and growing class of entrepreneurs, managers and financial leaders in developing countries – especially one that promotes opportunities for women.

The tremendous success achieved some 10,000 Women Scholars from other countries is profiled here. 

After taking the automotive industry by storm with the launch of its small car Nano, Tata has set its eye on low-cost housing. Hours ago, Tata’s housing division has announced a low cost housing project in Boisar, a suburb in Mumbai, that is aimed at allowing people in the lower income segment own a decent home for about Rs 3.9 lakh and Rs 6.7 lakh.

A snippet from Business Standard

Talking about the launch of ‘Shubh Griha’, Brotin Banerjee, managing director and CEO of Tata Housing said: “……Our study shows that around 48 per cent of the people in the lower segment are currently staying in rented accommodation. As a real estate company, we are sensitive to the need of providing this segment with their own home along with a community life, we believe in empowering them and giving them the pride of owing a house in a city like Mumbai.”

No doubt this project is as ambitious as that of Nano. But after all the fanfare during its launch, the lower and lower-middle economic sections of India is still waiting to know Nano can actually deliver on its promise. That being the case, it would be too early to speculate on the success of ‘Shubh Griha’ project. So, for now, in spite of having initiated a series of highly successful social initiatives, and in spite of proven success in business, Tata’s capability to combine both to improve the quality of life of the lower economic sections is yet to be established.

Sulabh’s founder, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, was recently named the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate.  Sulabh has been working for decades to address sanitation, health, and hygiene in India and other countries.  Through inventive toilet designs, new biogas technologies, and his struggle for human rights, especially for those of the “untouchable” caste, Dr Pathak is recognized worldwide as an innovator and social reformer. A Business Standard article explains further:

The social reformer, who triggered the revolution against ’sanitation crisis’, has been the main force behind changing social attitudes towards traditional unsanitary latrine practices in slums, rural villages and dense urban districts, and developed cost-effective toilet systems that have improved daily life and health for millions of people.

Dr Pathak will receive the award in Stockholm during World Water Week in August.

A few headlines regarding the World Bank recently caught my eye, mostly because they are not the usual development headlines I am used to reading.  In the Business Standard’s “Migration to urban areas is good, says World Bank,” and domain-b.com’s “India’s rural job schemes are barriers to development: World Bank news,” the focus is on a new World Bank report that encourages a population shift from villages to cities.  More than that, the World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography says that current schemes to improve rural life are contrary to development, as pointed out by domain-b.com:

The central government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) scheme and other poverty alleviation schemes act as policy barriers to economic development and perpetual alleviation of poverty, according to the World Bank.

In short, the report encourages the process of rural-urban migration.   This approach seems to be the  opposite of the upswing of efforts to address rural poverty and improve rural life so that the majority of India’s population has the same economic opportunity as in urban areas.  Instead of focus on rural schemes, the report advocates improving infrastructure in cities to boost economic activity.   Here is a quick look at the reasoning, as quoted by the Business Standard article:

“The world’s most geographically disadvantaged people know all too well that growth does not come to every place at once,” said Indermit S Gill, director of the World Development Report (WDR) and chief economist, Europe and Central Asia. “Markets favour some places over others. To fight this concentration is tantamount to fighting prosperity,” Gill added.

What does it mean for India when an international force such as the Bank supports a shift from rural to urban areas?  Will improving basic infrastructure in urban centers really address the pressure of large increases in city population?  While I’m not against migration as a whole, I remain skeptical about putting emphasis on encouraging rural to urban migration and discouraging rural schemes for poverty alleviation.  This debate also points back to an earlier post I wrote on urbanization.  Is this another development report gone bad?

About 138 farmers in Pune stand to gain in their productivity today thanks to their membership to Abhinav Farmer’s Club. According to a report in Business Standard, Dnyaneshwar Bodke, using his education in Horticulture Training Center founded the club to share his knowledge on farming exotic fruits, vegetables and flowers to his fellow farmers in 2004.  Funded by National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) and Canara Bank this club since then seems to have transformed into a peer-to-peer knowledge sharing platform in which farmers brainstorm various aspects of farming. As a result, the sophistication of their farming methods and their productivity seems to have vastly improved.

“Traditional farming compelled the farmers to wait for the required weather conditions to start farming. But, since we do our business in greenhouses and sheds, we are able to control the conditions in which the crops grow. That’s the reason why we are able to excel as we don’t have to depend on nature for the right time to begin,” adds Bodke.

How has this helped the stakeholders? Apart from earning bounties to the farmers, this has also provided employment to over 700 others in the periphery.

The numbers are there for all to see. In 2007, AFC produced 13.2 million flowers and some 250 tonnes of vegetables. Its yearly turnover is a little above Rs 10 crore. Farmers affiliated to the club use drip irrigation and operations in the farms are labour intensive. This keeps their costs under check.

The example set by Abhinav Farmer’s Club along with and the now famous e-Choupal initiative by ITC seems to support the point that access to information is probably the best way to empower the rural India – a point valued by Comat Technologies, a successful social business earlier covered by ThinkChange India.

[News Source: Business Standard]

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni  plan to create a social fund aimed at supporting various projects that will create job opportunities for rural youth and transform India’s Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs).  PanIIT Alumni, which conducted the PanIIT 2008 Global Conference from 19-21 December, is working on three important projects in India - Indo-US collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE), IITians for ITIs, and Reach 4 India.

Quoting from the article about IITians for ITIs:

Ranjan Kumar, coordinator (India), IITians for ITIs project said the project was initiated by IIT alumni in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII’s) Southern Region and academia to push for sustainable excellence in technical/vocational training in India by creating institutions similar to the IITs, but focused on vocational education and highly-skilled workers.

As part of the phase I, over the next two years, around 40,000 students will be trained from around 300 government ITI institutes. It has also decided to set up a 24X7 call centre in one of the southern states to connect the workers with the experts and the industry.

This piece of news comes at a time when I have come across two interesting articles. One article published in Businessworld carried the byline “As IITians bring global glory, bright engineers from lesser-known institutes build the country.” Though the article was more about how engineers from “second-rung” colleges were the ones actually contributing to India’s infrastructure, it does bring questions related to contribution of IITians towards their nation’s growth. The second article is about a survey conducted by IIT alumni.

The brain drain has stemmed to a great extent, even leading to claims of reverse brain drain. I feel that the social entrepreneurship sector in India has just started gaining momentum and could benefit a lot by the entry of experienced IIT alumni and also of socially concious new passouts. In this context, I find initiatives like E4SI (Engineers For Social Impact) and MADD (Making A Difference Differently) trying to ensure that social development space gets the top talent it requires.

[Story source: Business Standard]

Corporates, non-profit organizations and individuals are helping re-build government schools in Andhra Pradesh by adopting schools under the School Adoption Scheme – started around three years ago by the state government. To summarise the scheme:

Private companies or philanthropists build schools or additional classrooms in the existing government schools. Some extend teaching and learning material, uniforms, furniture or bear the salaries of teachers and other activities. In return, the government allows the companies or philanthropists who donate Rs 5-10 lakh to name the schools or the block they build after someone they love.

The article cites a number of instances where schools have benefited and also gives a stark comparison of the schools before and after adoption – which ensures that it is not only the name of the school that changes. The number of schools benefited thus far is 14. A number which pales in light of the high level industrialisation in the state and the number of corporates having operations here. Also, the current beneficiary schools are located in and around Hyderabad.

We feel that the School Adoption Scheme (which in itself is part of the Sarve Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)) holds a lot of potential not just to improve school infrastructure but also to ensure relevance of the school with respect to the society today. Reason being, the school children and the staff interact with the so called other part of the society and thus ensure that they do not exist in isolation.

Public Private Participation in SSA: The link here broadly outlines the public private model in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Do read it.

[Story source: Business Standard]

Recently, Business Standard carried three articles under the Smart Cards byline. The articles – “Smart choice, sloppy plan“, “Andhra villagers now have pension on their fingertips“, “From Dhenakal to Bellary” – track the introduction of smart cards in various states of India.

The first article mentions how the people of Rajasthan are caught up in the problem of plenty. Rajasthan government issued around 100,000 health cards to people in its state for health insurance – but in the process it stopped issuing the smart cards issued by the central government under the National Health Insurance Scheme(NHIS). The central government scheme holds many strengths. It is valid across all states. A lot of research has gone into designing the smart card under NHIS – for example, it will help the migrant labourer since it is acceptable at establishments across the nation. It was also an effort at national standardisation and would have also been an effective tool to collect statistics.

The second article narrates how smart cards have given a boost to financial inclusion efforts in Karimnagar and Warangal districts of Andhra Pradesh. The state government, in a bid to inclucate “banking habits among the poor”, distributed around 200,000 smart cards in the two districts. At the same time, it gave the list of receipients of the cards to the banks who agreed to be part of the project. The banks, consequently appointed Zero-Mass in Karimnagar and FINO (Financial Information Network and Operations Limited) in Warangal to disburse cash from social welfare schemes using the smart cards. This simple chain has helped in reducing chances of corruption and at the same time, drawn in people who were hitherto uncovered by traditional banks.

A FINO smart card

The concluding article talks about similar efforts in the Orissa and Karnataka. This time, Zeromassa and FINO are replaced by the ubiquitous postman and banker. Smart cards are being used to disburse money under the Social Security Pension and NREGP schemes. The project is expected to roll out in December 2008 and BSNL’s assisstance is being sought for connectivity.

The overall picture is that of optimism though the Rajasthan episode calls for eschewing populism. In a country like India where the budget for social welfare schemes are sizeable, smart cards will not only ensure that entire welfare money reaches the intended beneficiaries but will also help in reducing the delivery costs of such welfare schemes.