The land of the poor :-(

“Jobs arrived in India barefoot and threadbare. This is how he chose to dress, as an expression of a specific ideal or aesthetic. In India he was confronted for the first time with people who were poor – not the way California hippies were poor, by choice, but poor by fate. It was an eye-opener for him. The complete contrast with the material comforts of American life was intense and shocking, and it challenged everything he thought he knew up to that moment.”
The above is an excerpt from the book iCon by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon. The book is about Steve Jobs, the man behind the company which challenged the way people thought and gave them things beyond their imagining, Apple. He came to India much earlier than he became the man the world recognizes today, in search of peace, in search of true knowledge, in search of his ‘guru’. It has been many years since then. Governments have changed, people have become more ‘educated’, industries have been flourishing; money has been flowing now in India like never before. Today the world talks about Ambanis and Mittals and the world of technology has had the Indian impact in the western world which even Jobs recognizes today.
So, what would be the picture in front of Steve Jobs if he happened to visit India in the near future? He would perhaps land on the Mumbai airport, his plane caressing the world’s largest slum, Dharavi. He would then be escorted to his hotel and along the roads would notice small children thrust into begging. As a face of the technology world, he may want to visit the mecca of Indian technology, Bangalore. He better choose either to go on a chopper or make a trip at the time of a public holiday else the traffic would kill the good old man! And ironically, these are just the few of the ‘best’ places that any visitor to India may want to see. The Himalayas and the other tourist attractions are replete with so much commotion nowadays that the ‘firangis’ are easily baffled.
Today we may be able to boast of some of the richest men of the world belonging to India, but the fact remains that poverty is not abating. The number of people living below the poverty line is increasing by the hour. ‘Every fourth poor is an Indian’ has become a cliché (and is sadly true). Diseases like AIDS, cancer are engulfing the urban and rural alike and we still feel ashamed to discuss sex in front of our children while make no fuss about the tobacco that we smoke even with little children at home. Beggary is a bigger ‘industry’ than 'khadi'. The money is indeed flowing into our economy and India is getting rich but the percolation of this huge wealth is not yet happening. Add to these the troubled borders of India. Surrounded by arch rivals, petty beggars, infiltrators, have-nots, politically unstable nations and those that have a long history of stabbing on the back, India is indeed not in the situation which most of the European nations enjoy (with all of them surging forward competitively). Add to this our internal security threats and civil agitations like the ‘gujjar’ uproar recently. Sadly for India, though a lot of positive things are happening, we still are years behind the true independence that every human being dreams of; the true happiness is still elusive.

COOPERATIVES: A PERFECT MACHINE TO BRING ABOUT ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT

It is very rare that solutions to problems of overblown proportions exist and be perfect in all respects. The idea of cooperatives is one such solution. For a country like India which is moving up in all frontiers and fast emerging a power to be reckoned in the world, there’s a need to make the foundations stronger than ever. This nation building is possible only when all sections of the country are economically strong and socially secure.

The basic principles on which a cooperative system works advocate empowerment through responsibility, power and profit sharing. This form of a set-up does a two fold job. First, it makes sure that the collaborating parties share the profit thus bringing about an atmosphere of economic independence. Secondly, it improves the managerial skills of the whole society involved in it and hence they get a social elation based on their acquired confidence.

We all know how small fishes of the sea team up together to scare away the big predators underwater. Think of a cooperative as a similar setup. While the isolated people would have to face tough times and may wilt and perish, the joint effort of such small seemingly powerless islands would make a giant landmass which would not only float and be self-sustaining but may be able to encourage other organizations as subsidiaries to thrive on its support.

Some may argue that even a cooperative setup may turn out to be a private-profit-maker for a few who would exploit it. This is in fact the sorry story of some unsuccessful attempts. What we need to realize is that such failure would exist only when long term gains of a cooperative are not properly communicated to the people. They need to understand that trust is a very important building block of any cooperative organization.

India has a very long history of cooperatives. A large number of success-stories of our nation communicate to us the power of cooperatives. One must question why the cooperative system has more often than not worked wonders for our nation. The answer is simple; a cooperative helps in harnessing the versatility and potency of the cottage industries. With more than 70% of Indian population living in villages with little or no access to the development that our nation now boasts of, it is logical to think that instead of thrusting the big profit ravenous industries into the villages the underprivileged would be far better off if cooperative industries were able to grow amidst them.

The “India Rural Infrastructure Report” has pointed out that providing telecom connectivity alone to this 70% of India would require funds to the tune of more than Rs. 92,690 crores. Add to this an additional Rs.55, 243 crores for power supply, Rs.5, 892 crores for roads and transport and Rs.4, 488 crores for water and sanitation. As is evident from these numbers, the fact that infrastructure in villages is largely owned by the government faces a funds constraint. Now, consider the fact that 9/10th of village households do not own telephone and 50% of the households do not have power connections. Imagining fully developed rural areas and hence a developed India is impossible without solving this desperate situation; dearth of funds and huge requirements pose a problem that seems hopeless. The only viable solution can be envisaged through the installation of proper cooperatives involving the occupational activities of the region. Right now every 4th poor person on this planet is an Indian. If this scenario has to change we would need to empower each and every individual by heralding a cooperative revolution across the borders of the nation.

I wish to illustrate a simple example which can act as a prototype for an ideal cooperative. The “Yashasvini micro health insurance scheme” which is an initiative taken up in Karnataka, has ensured health care surgery in good hospitals to 20 million farmers in the state. This includes expensive heart surgeries as well. All this is made available to the farmers at an astonishingly low cost of Rs.5 a month! This proves beyond doubt the power that a cooperative system can yield and the far-reaching effects that it may have.