YOUTH, SKILL, JOBS, INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 07:52:00 +0000

A world class Centre of Excellence in Maritime and Shipbuilding(CEMS), the first of its kind in Asia www.cemsindia.org was launched by Hon'ble Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari in Kochi . The project is with partnership of Siemens and Indian Register of Shipping and has a cost of Rs 766 cr. It will provide advanced skills for ship building and repair. Have been working on it for past 10 months, right from inception. Hope we create an institution that outlives us ! http://pib.nic.in/newsite/pmreleases.aspx?mincode=46

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:45:00 +0000

Orientation sheet for Taste Entrepreneurship Movement

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 07:32:00 +0000

Team member: Select a team member with complimentary skills

Product: Select a product that people understand need and will buy without much persuasion and has good profit margin

Product/Service Development: Choose a product based on cheap sourcing, your skills and clear market need.

Investment generation: Remember cash generates cash

Pricing: Price a product that ensures good profit and is within buying capacity of target customer

Place: Sell the product at a place where you can get multiple consumers at one go

Strategy: Think hard on how you will you sell and follow it

Negotiation: Negotiate from a position of strength not from a weakness

Deal closing: Close a deal as soon as it serves your minimum threshold mark

Reinvestment: Reinvest your profits in the same or new product, do not let cash be idle

Marketing: Aid your product by catchy advertisement that catches people attention

Medium: Sell product by all mediums available direct to people, to sellers, via online or offline

Payment: Do not settle for payments later as soon as you sell, take the payment

Restrategize: If things do not work leave it, try something else

Taking help: Take help of family friends, relatives anyone you think can help you

Profit Sharing: Share profit between partner and you by the amount of effort put by both

Good will: Do not compromise on your good will

Ethics: Do not give false promises to customers, play the game fairly

Best of Luck!!

Work Hard to be the best team in college, this is the first taste of entrepreneurship !!

Food & Entrepreneurship: An analogy

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 07:39:00 +0000

Comparing cycling & entrepreneurship: a small video

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 13:11:00 +0000

Skill Development in India-the untold story

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 08:25:00 +0000

One guy had the vision, he was late C.K Prahlad ( bottom of Pyramid concept pioneer), in his speeches he talked about "I would like to see 500 million skilled technicians by 2022" ,the year India celebrates her 75th birthday. Nice Idea, nice gift .

Sadly, we took not just the idea but also the visionary number. 500 million sounds like a cool number good to quote and write about.Manmohan Singh the erudite Prime minister loved it. It was an aspirational target, not thinking what will these 500 million people do, is local employment demand for it, will people move out to demand areas . At almost half way from 2010 to this 2022 vision, we have clear answers.

The 500 million target was broken as below amongst 20+ ministries and the NSDC.

All this was good NSDC followed with skill gap surveys targeting areas of need but within the wrong framework provided. No one questioned this basic figure and here we were all wrong. NSDC was to be setup as a PPP but industry did not put in any money. The govt put in 99% of the money and made it unique model

Some who try to put the 2+2 argue using people entering the work force logic which actually points to the other way. It is normally quoted ad nauseum that 12 million people enter work force every year, this is primafacie is incorrect, economists say it is not ~6 million people.With population rates dropping to 1.4 this figure goes further down. At best even if we were to assume 12 million people the target would be 12*12=144 million people not 500 million. Worst case: The target cannot be more than 250 million people.

The target needs to be halved. Lets face it, that’s what India needs and lets do it with quality.

Taste entrepreneurship Fun concept video

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 13:04:00 +0000

A sacalable model for entrepreneurship development in Indian Colleges

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 18:09:00 +0000

Every third person in India is a youth. By 2020, 64% of the country would be in the working age.[1]There is a mad scramble for jobs today and this is only going to intensify. Some people view this as a demographic dividend but this could also be a ticker bomb we are sitting on.

A combination of young population and high unemployment can be explosive (Arab Spring). With a focus on higher education, more and more people are enrolling and studying but as education levels go up, unemployment levels have also gone up[2].It is easier for high schooled to get a job than it is for a graduate(NSSO data: unemployment rate amongst illiterate men (15-29 yrs) in urban areas is 2.5 % against 5.3% for graduates or higher in 2011-12).This phenomenon worsens as we go to rural areas, where the problem is more pronounced

Our fascination for government jobs, our approval of job seekers and skepticism for first generation entrepreneurs make them outliers, who pave their way against stiff societal opposition. First generation entrepreneurship does not have a nurturing ecosystem. A new NREGA like model can sow seeds of entrepreneurship and be a game changer..

This scalable inclusive model involves mimicking real life entrepreneurship in colleges with the least cost, time and in an entrepreneurial manner. In order to testthis approach multiple pilot experiments were conducted in Haryana and Karnataka. In a college, everyone studying in any course, in any year had a right to enroll, to test 15 teams of 2 students (complimentary skills) were given “trigger money (Rs 1000 per team) for a short duration (a week with 2 weekends included) to go out and generate profits. They were no pre requisites and rules. The students kept the profits/losses. At the end of the duration the principal amount was to be returned. Money was routed through known hands of the teacher. These experiments threw surprising results.

Students quickly thought of an idea and went out to implement it since they were competing and had limited time. They handled inter personal team issues, learned, earned and sharedprofits. They used their skills (opened study classes, beauty points, sold self made paintings), sold local products (handicrafts, khadi clothes) and local resources (local delicacies) and came up with tangible selling propositions. They convinced strangers, shed their inhibitions and hesitations and enjoyed the process. Girls participated as keenly as boys did. The peer pressure of competition made them work hard, the incentive of keeping their profits and the recognition through awards motivated them, involvement of college authorities ensured they returned back the money and the short time frame allowed them to focus. The process initiated them to business realities and removedthe inhibitions to try. This taught the first alphabets of entrepreneurship so that they construct sentences and weave entrepreneurship stories in the future.By and large it infused energy, fun and provide a way to express business acumen.

Such experiments are not completely knew, similar efforts with encouraging results have been done by premier business schools like the Indian School of Business,Stanford University and the Deshpande Foundation in India. However the idea now is to scale up and make it available for every Indian student, studying any course, in any college in the country.

The durable asset created here is change in behavior and learning experience for creating new businesses. This sprinkles the seeds of entrepreneurship all across the country. Close government linkages to other government programs can provide the fertilizers (nurturing mechanisms) and irrigation (conducive ecosystem) for them to grow into a full entrepreneurship venture.

Sincethe program isobjective, cost and time effective it can be readily scaled up. Use of technology, online and mobile media makes it possible to further reduce time and costs. In terms of costs in less than 1/4^th of a dollar (per team), in terms of time- in a week’s time and in terms of quality- by students actually doing it, we gave a taste of entrepreneurship at places where conventional ecosystem may not reach in the near future.

The scale up requires a PPP model with government and private sector coming together to make a corpus fund. An autonomous body called the National Entrepreneurship Foundation under the new entrepreneurship ministry can be formed.Given that it is a rolling fund, a one-time fund is regenerates and sustains operations. At the cost for less than 30 crores we can cover all 35500 colleges in the country. There would be some non-performingassets (NPAs) but implementation by a private player and strong processes would mitigate this risk. The nurturing ladder from colleges to states to national level requires efficient benchmarking, accreditation and rewarding systems. A database of potential entrepreneurs will make it easy for government and private players to identify job creators and link them to government programs. Such an ecosystem cannot be created in isolation. It needs bodies like the new Ministry of entrepreneurship or Ministry of small and medium enterprises, industry bodies, skill development bodies to come together to take specific roles to ensure we create an ecosystem of entrepreneurship in colleges.

Long back, introduction of cadavers revolutionized the teaching in medical schools, the introduction of trigger money and its associated nurturing system is a game changer to awaken the entrepreneurship spirit of the youth in a cost effective manner. This dedicated trigger money provides an opportunity for students to taste entrepreneurship in a fun way and sow the seeds for a bumper entrepreneurship harvest.

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"Ashutosh did his MBA in Strategy and Finance from Indian School of Business in 2011, along with an exchange programme at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where he studied International Development. He worked with the Development Office of a Member of Parliament and then with Evidence Action, where he was responsible for scale-up and institutionalization of the Deworming and the Weekly Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation program reaching 36 lakhs children in Delhi. He is currently working on a new cost effective and scalable model to institutionalize entrepreneurship development in Indian colleges by providing a real life taste of entrepreneurship to students in a public private partnership model with government authorities, industry bodies and civil society partners. He can be reached at pratap.ashutosh@gmail.com

[1]‘State of the Urban Youth, India 2012: Employment, Livelihoods, Skills,’ a report published by IRIS Knowledge Foundation in collaboration with UN-HABITAT

[2] http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/xDm2iBx0MFCZLnKUwmkefN/The-youth-unemployment-conundrum.html

Pride, Politics,Progress & selfie

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 04:01:00 +0000

In complete darkness , you see the stars. Its is the presence of darkness that is critical. Such was the political vacuum in India that it accentuated Narendra Modi's role. Undoubetdly his presence has brought in one person who has little to take for himself. The same however cannot be said for the party he belongs which will always be torn due to conflicting interests.

Modi's style has brought in the first phase of what he thinks people are lacking, pride in the nation, respect in the world and a peek into the goodness we all have. Selfies with world leaders adds to his and the nation's presence, selfies with young kids endear him to people but selfies hardly solve anything. A 10 second job in individual and collective vanity. To make matters worse such is the band of his followers who do not think deep and must be in defence of whatever he does. Selfies, photo ups add little to changing real India, it only makes people feel good and rather puts them in a place where they cannot really question the PM, he has gone to their emotional system and hence logic counts little.

Great work has been done in Yemen, Nepal in army operations in Manipur and in launching initiatives for financial inclusion but we must not be blinded. Swatch Bharat Abhiyan is a great tool for people who hardly contribute, but for people who really contribute the idea looks just good for media. Celebrities will not clean up anything they will pose and feel, thats a great success but deep in villages its water for toilets that matters.It is the presence of dustbins, the presence of toilets in urban areas that will ensure people do not relieve in public.

#Selfiewithdaughter is another example, a 10 sec effort is a great move but does not attack where most needed, the idea that women and men all are equal, must have equal opportunities in education, health and decison making. Research on female nutrition suggests that women eat last hence the least as little is left in poor families. Hence #rotiwithdaughter seems a more deeper change move. There is a serious lack of depth and no one in the media seems to really question that, all are self absorbed to be on the right side of power. What else explains Lalit modi taking his word on social media rather than mainstream media, his doubts that people would air the wrong side.

Modi has added to India's optimism, he is the best person we have but he is just setting the stage, the actual play is yet to get live, these are just fillers but the content of development for the poor is yet to roll out. His focus on Yoga suggests it is a long term game for him not a T20 match.

I am sure he will do well, but only when his party allows and his followers understand they are people in India apart from him who are as partiotic as he is if not more.

Bihar- dreams and despairs

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 20:03:00 +0000

Its been a while since I wrote on this blog, partly because I became a Victim of everyday work. There are lot of things I wanted to share much from my travels then from books. Visited Bihar many times , always left saddened

1. Looks life an African capital to me, alive from those movies. No traffic lights, no coherence, no pride in human identity.

2. People I meet are generally unhappy they did not get a govt job. Sad to see this metric define human happiness levels.

3.Sad about Bihar since I expect a lot from here, every second person I meet is sharp, has knowledge but does not use it at all, that's a big worry , sad lives, something is super wrong .

4. All said í done corruption and mai baap culture rules, no one has learnt anything and may not learn too.

5. Bihar is the most promising and most dissapointing place in India. Young stupid people waste lives to be mercenaries of uneducated politicians in the govt service. Those in service have sold all good morals long back and do nothing for ppl.

6. Bihar ppl are an afraid lot, for god knows what, smart ppl being afraid of unsmart ppl is doom as it is Bihar.

Ps: on board a 6 hr late train in Patna, hope time meant something.

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 18:31:00 +0000

Delhi elections: whom to vote whom to not

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 06:01:00 +0000

1. AAP Vote because

1. Clean money
2. Need to be promoted to ensure check on Bjp after congress is too powerless
3. Has selfless volunteers, they brought young to politics
4. Made their stand clear and joined politics
5.Made mistake but admitted
6. Its the tadka in politics the spice of Indian politics
7. Will help them grow which is good for Indian politics

Do not vote for AAP because

1. They need to do dharna, with central govt of Bjp there is no way things will be easily granted to them
Not a smooth ride for them due to allignment issues with centre.

Vote for Bjp because

1. Allignment with centre govt
2. Modi govt policies maybe fastracked

Do not vote for Bjp

1. Where are funds coming from
2. There will be a tussle for leadership, cannot escape this.
3. Weaker opposition in india overall .no party will question their wrong,AAP will have a long way, may loose relevance

Vote wisely , but do vote, your choice makes delhi and democracy stronger !!

Scalable entrepreneurship development in Indian Colleges

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 08:15:00 +0000

Spoke on scalable model for developing entrepreneurs in colleges at an American Center event in ISB Mohali

Entrepreneurship education in Indian colleges:RTI reply

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 01 May 2014 14:36:00 +0000

Recently I had written to the Ministry of Higher education by RTI to understand the efforts for entrepreneurship education in Indian colleges.

I had asked the following queries

1. What are the different schemes of for entrepreneurship promotion in higher education institutions with the cost outlays

2. How many students in colleges took the benefit of entrepreneurship schemes

3. Latest impact report of these schemes

4 How many colleges along with their type that teach entrepreneurship.

5.How many faculty members have been given some sort of entrepreneurship training.

6. List of entrepreneurship in-charges by college name

Ministry of HRD forwarded the query to UGC who said that they have no information on any of the above

Youth in Indian politics, what stops them, what encourages them

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 15:14:00 +0000

The invisible, vulnerable group: Child Beggars

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 12:44:00 +0000

This is a daily situation. Your car/bike is at a signal. Suddenly there is someone on the window/touching you if on a bike. You turn and see a young kid, or a mother with a child asking for money.

What do you do? Look away, try to ignore them. lose you temper, shout at them, become a little irritable. Why?

Because you really don’t know what to do, and it bugs you. Should you give them money and perpetuate the act of begging or should you just ignore them, which is what you do anyway, and keep feeling a little guilty for not having helped them. If you give them money, it encourages them to continue begging as a profession.

On the other hand, if you don’t give them money, you feel a twinge of remorse, because giving money is the only real thing I can do for them. And yet, is there anything I can do?

The law forbids begging, we should start asking authorities of what they are doing. Start by not giving any money and tweeting, facebooking, emailing( indiawithoutbeggars@gmail.com) a photo and the location. We will take it to the authorities and demand rehabilitation of these beggars.Slowly we can change the status quo.

Don’t encourage begging, dont give money”

Read more about it at www.indiawithoutbeggars.org

Why is mainstream media silent on this

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 11:33:00 +0000

Social media has been abuzz with allegations of corruption between NDTV and the finance minister. Here are few links.

http://pcwedsndtv.blogspot.in/

http://manushi.in/2014/01/27/ndtv-chidambaram-accused-of-money-laundering-scam-of-rs-5500-cr/

http://www.aboutcorruption.org/p-chidambaram-and-ndtv-in-trouble-over-money-laundering-and-bribery/

Its high time mainstream media takes this up.

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 05:35:00 +0000

कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती / हरिवंशराय बच्चन

Hear it on https://m.soundcloud.com/anupamkher/04-lehron

लहरों से डर कर नौका पार नहीं होती
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती

नन्हीं चींटी जब दाना लेकर चलती है
चढ़ती दीवारों पर, सौ बार फिसलती है
मन का विश्वास रगों में साहस भरता है
चढ़कर गिरना, गिरकर चढ़ना न अखरता है
आख़िर उसकी मेहनत बेकार नहीं होती
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती

डुबकियां सिंधु में गोताखोर लगाता है
जा जा कर खाली हाथ लौटकर आता है
मिलते नहीं सहज ही मोती गहरे पानी में
बढ़ता दुगना उत्साह इसी हैरानी में
मुट्ठी उसकी खाली हर बार नहीं होती
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती

असफलता एक चुनौती है, स्वीकार करो
क्या कमी रह गई, देखो और सुधार करो
जब तक न सफल हो, नींद चैन को त्यागो तुम
संघर्ष का मैदान छोड़ मत भागो तुम
कुछ किये बिना ही जय जय कार नहीं होती
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 11:48:00 +0000

Happy that the Jan Lok pal bill was not passed in 2011

I have liked Amitabh Bacchan movies right from childhood, what was it that made me like it? This lean, tall, poor, often orphan guy would take on people more powerful and did this with all his frailties. He had no magic wand but made way, to emerge by sheer will. We were all glued thinking we all can actually do what this person has done. However in 2 hours we knew it is a movie and the hero will surely emerge successful here but not in real life.We were proved wrong a month ago. AAP has made reality of an idea, no one would have believed a few years ago. It is the new angry man standing for all that we think someone should stand for.

No matter what deep down it has shaken the conscience of the people. It has brought hope. It has made politics look as an option to many people who had given up on it.

When someone stands for something it is bound to conflict with those, who benefit from the status quo, not just the current government but people who indirectly benefit from that association. If the establishment was good enough we would not need Amitabh Bacchan or Arvind Kejriwal to fight with it.

Since it stands for something new,with its own ways, accepting the changing realities will take time for all. There will be periods where just like in a movie we all will say "Yahan isne galat kiya, aisa nahi karna chahihe " but that very fact that we think about it, discuss, write and offer our opionion shows that we care for it and want to see it through.

AAP though has many things to take care of. An umbrage of vested interest would be unleashed on AAP, people would try and color it with lies, nothing would be spared to destroy it since this is what suits the current powerful. It may make mistakes and lose the track.It may misjudge and misread things for other complulsions. However it must always remember that people who actually care for AAP are the marginalised in the system, people who had no say in the system for many many years, people whose voices have been crushed and need someone to tell them that they can speak.

We must be prepared for a lot of controversy ahead. Since the methods are new so would the results be. When we are not looking for good governance but questioning the way we are governed we can very well imagine how deep the faultlines are. People who have been used to the current style of governance would vehemently resist a style that largely takes their power away and distributes it to the people

What is needed is a rational long term perspective for India. Even without AAP the possibility of a hung parliament was not ruled out, with the emergence of AAP the possibilities becomes even more pronounced. The national mood is not for AAP, it is for honesty and clean politics. Everyone must adopt to it. AAP birth is a lesson in miscalculation of people's mood by established parties, they must not misread the national mood now.

Anna and all of us must be happy that the Jan Lok pal bill was not passed in 2011 else we would not have the political entity-AAP. Jo hota hai acche ke liye hota hai.The rules of the politics has been changed by AAP. Awareness of the rules is now being made to old players by the new born.

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 11:53:00 +0000

Recently I came across a a list of things to do to be successful. I really liked the simplicity of the advice. Few words can mean so much (http://www.businessinsider.com/hard-things-you-need-to-do-to-be-successful-2014-1?IR=T)

You have to make the call you’re afraid to make.
You have to get up earlier than you want to get up.
You have to give more than you get in return right away.
You have to care more about others than they care about you.
You have to fight when you are already injured, bloody, and sore.
You have to feel unsure and insecure when playing it safe seems smarter.
You have to lead when no one else is following you yet.
You have to invest in yourself even though no one else is.
You have to look like a fool while you’re looking for answers you don’t have.
You have to grind out the details when it’s easier to shrug them off.
You have to deliver results when making excuses is an option.
You have to search for your own explanations even when you’re told to accept the “facts.”
You have to make mistakes and look like an idiot.
You have to try and fail and try again.
You have to run faster even though you’re out of breath.
You have to be kind to people who have been cruel to you.
You have to meet deadlines that are unreasonable and deliver results that are unparalleled.
You have to be accountable for your actions even when things go wrong.
You have to keep moving towards where you want to be no matter what’s in front of you.

The Despande Fellowship Program- Now Accepting Applications !!! Hurry

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:46:00 +0000

We are pleased to inform you that the Deshpande Fellowship Program is now receiving applications for tenth batch. Deshpande fellowship program was begun in order to empower a major untapped resource in the development field: hungry young people with plenty of potential to go for in their field who are held back only by their skills and self- confidence. DFP seeks change that and help participate to realize the true potential and ambitions.

This rigorous 7½ month residential leadership development program,Through NGOs visits, village studies, entrepreneurial and Leadership activities and intensive course work, fellows gain skills needed to become true leaders in their chosen field.

With a concentration on social entrepreneurship and innovation, the DFP has transformed over 200 fellows into entrepreneurial young leaders. Kindly spread the words with your colleagues, friends and who interested to become part of the Fellowship Program.

Interested one apply directly by using attached application or can be downloaded from online-http://www.dfp.org.in/.

For more information you can reach us at fellowship@dfmail.org or 9740011883

We look forward to hear from you soon.

Note: Last date for application will be 28.11.2012, Hurry to apply!

Political party vs movement

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:45:00 +0000

Most of India against corruption supporters are people who dislike/hate politics, they are people who can contribute in spurts of anger but do not have the spirit of political cadres, Arvind kejriwal's attempt for a political party is welcome step but in the short term looks very hard to be a difference making reality.His audience-the youth is an impatient group who wants to see quick changes. However 5-10 years down the line if the resilience continues it would surely be a force to reckon with.

While they may win 1-2 lok sabha seats on account of the anti-corruption media coverage and the actions of the current government,but the ideological difference between a party vs movement is a huge setback. Kejriwal's attempt looks logical, a much needed step, it speaks of an impatient reaction that any crusader is bound to take sometime or the other, when all he sees is a deadlock. However the reality of an election is different, fighting an election would show them why netas are the way they are. they make every day decisons which would bewilder them,everyday ethics tests,friends and allies who maynot be upright and inevitably compromising the ideals of any sane/educated individual.

Good people having political ambitions is a good sign for the country and Arvind must not be potrayed as the one selfish guy.I personally think there is a need for a political role for young educated Indians, but converting the movement into a party will not work. Politics has its way which goes far beyond the imagination of the movement. A more grassroot movement from villages is required to change politics, since it is they who tide the scale and actually elect governments.Social media youth votes add but do not decide the course.

The best thing that can happen now is that Ram Dev and Kejriwal come together to make a party. This can work since Ramdev appeals to a much wider audience and compliments Anna's movement.Organically the Anna team would get a new set of leaders who steer the movement to a much focussed path of truth and course correct Kejriwal when his compulsions overwhelm him.It can be the much required moral guide and people's force, providing support and channelizing the youth energy to a political goal. This adds pressure to the current framework both as a party and a movement.In this way the movement has a political voice, but is itself largely neutral allowing new people to jump in the path of righteousness.

Who knows in the next 10 years the relationship of Anna movement to Kejriwal party would be similar to the one between RSS and the BJP, sans a tint of religion.

Sanitation work in villages

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 07:26:00 +0000

After a long time !!

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:59:00 +0000

It’s been a long time since I wrote, much of this is because I was seeing if it would be appropriate to write or not given the setting in which I work. However I would love to tell stories, stories that keep me going, stories I wonder about, for their sheer truth rural India offers. Here are two of them

I go to a household in Haryana trying to ensure the villagers have toilets and hear a moving story. A lady in 40s tells me that she has 3 adolescent daughters and how it is a real problem for them to go out in the open. I specially recommend construction of a toilet asap. The next day as work is to be started my team finds that she was lying. She had a toilet built up a bit far from the house. I wonder why did she lie, if she had said she has issues in using them, I would still have considered it. The problem with the experience is that once you hear another such a story I would be suspicious, in case there is a real family that has 3 adolescent daughters it would be hard for me to believe it is a true story. The question now is how we filter them the fake from the truth because they both come so many times in a day

In this place I rarely see women who are empowered. I saw one today. In a Primary health clinic in one of the villages I meet a staff nurse. In such a setup the doctor is never there in the evening- they are all on call 24x7, Oh ya do not know why they call 24x7. The staff nurse comes to this, out in the blue village 25 kms far on a bus that only runs twice a day. She has a night shift and is worried about her safety. What does she do? She hires a woman from the village to provide company and have someone by her side in case she needs it. Instead of complaining she finds a way, being unmarried and given the eve teasing, I am sure she has a very hard time, but she still does her best in a male dominated society, trying to provide services to people who need it most. In such a setup with no cleaning staff, a place where the chowkidaar is not provided by government but hired by the doctors themselves and has not got his monthly wages in 6 months. We still have a few who have the heart, treat rural women with care they truly deserve. The staff nurse was one.

It’s been two months since I penned some thoughts, looks words come by a bit difficult when all you do is executionL.

After a long time !!

noreply@blogger.com (pratap ashutosh) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:53:00 +0000

It’s been two months since I penned some thoughts, looks words come by a bit difficult when all you do is executionL.