Please Share:: 
India Equity Research Reports, IPO and Stock News
Visit http://indiaer.blogspot.com/ for complete details �� ��
APJ Abdul Kalam has for the past decade been talking about how to make India a developed country. In his latest book, 'Target 3 Billion', co-authored by Srijan Pal Singh, he recommends a sustainable and inclusive system to uplift the rural poor through entrepreneurship and community participation. In an interview with Shobhan Saxena, the former President of India talks about his new concept. Excerpts:
Will you explain the concept of PURA that you talk about in your book?
PURA means Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas. The concept started a decade ago. It came from Prof Indireshan, who was director of IIT, Madras and Delhi, and a close friend of mine. We have a huge rural population - nearly 600,000 villages and a lot of migration happens from villages to cities because urban areas have certain facilities like power and education. Under PURA, we are looking at how capacity building can be done at the village level itself; how we can use the core competence of a fishing village or a farming village or a village connected with tourism to develop it.
How will it help eradicate poverty?
Poverty begins if there is no capacity building. For example, a fisherman catches fish but because of the short shelf life - a few hours - of his catch, he sells it to a middleman for very little profit. He does so because he doesn't have the infrastructure - cold stores etc - to grow. So our purpose is to identify a core competence and then give knowledge to people so that they can enhance their capacity. PURA talks of three connectivities - physical, like roads and trains; electronic, like telephone and internet; and knowledge. If these three connectivities are given to villagers, then economic connectivity will come to villages. This will empower the villagers and poverty will come down.
So you think FDI in retail will be good for our villages?
Villagers only know how to produce things. We have to tell them how to market their produce, how to do value addition. One of the things we have talked about a lot in the book is cooperative farming. In India, farmers have small holdings but if they form a cooperative, it becomes a large holding and then the farmer has bargaining power. FDI in retail will help the farmer only when the farmer is empowered to bargain.
More than 60 years of independence and hundreds of thousands of crores spent on development and we are still the poorest country in the world in terms of absolute numbers. Where have we gone wrong?
In the past, the government, private and public sectors have taken up rural development in parts. For example, starting educational institutions and health-care centres, laying roads, building houses, building marketing complexes, providing communication links in rural areas have been taken up in the past as individual activities. During the last few decades, it has been our experience that these initiatives start well, just like heavy rain resulting in multiple streams of waterflow. But as soon as the rain stops, the streams dry up because there are no waterbodies to collect and store that surplus water. For the first time, PURA envisages an integrated sustainable development plan with employment-generation as the focus, driven by provision of the habitat, health care, education, skill development, physical and electronic connectivity, and marketing as a public-private partnership initiative.
That is why a roadmap has been provided for the implementation of the sustainable development system of PURA for the empowerment of 600,000 villages of the nation.
How can a country alleviate poverty if it can't even decide the number of poor people it has? The figure ranges from 350 million to 800 million. Why is it so difficult?
According to me, the Planning Commission has come out with the number that out of a billion people, 350 million live below the poverty line, and the numbers may vary. What is more important is how we are building capacity in them for value-added empowerment.
In the past 20 years, we have been following American-style capitalism in the hope that prosperity will trickle down but it hasn't. Does it make sense to follow a model that has polluted the planet right in front of our eyes?
The Indian economy, compared to the economies of the West, has withstood the American and European-originated crisis much better. PURA is being promoted uniquely from India as a capacity-building tool among rural and suburban areas, and it will be a model system for collapsing economies. In the book, we have talked about the system of social stock and triple bottom line, which means assessing along the equation: benefits = income + societal change + environment impact.
India spends billions of dollars on arms every year. How can a country have sustainable development when it's spending its precious resources on weapons?
In an ideal situation, all nations should be friendly without any conflict and war or arms race. Unfortunately, our neighbours are armed with nuclear arsenals. So for peace and sustained prosperity, we need a minimum deterrent to combat any situation. Of course, we always have the nuclear doctrine of no-first-use.
India is going to test the Agni-V next year, which may take us into the club of nations with ICBMs. Will that lead to a new arms race in Asia as predicted by China?
China is a nation which already has ICBMs directed at all parts of the world. You can ask the Chinese this question.
You are a regular visitor to the US but a few of those visits have been controversial because of certain security-related incidents. Has the frisking at American airports made you bitter about the American obsession with security?
I am invited to the US to teach and to lecture, and to many other nations. I don't want to waste even a minute thinking I should be given certain privileges. Any check, at any airport in the world, is a matter of a few minutes. It is something I will always be willing to go through.
A Russian court is due to deliver a verdict on the Bhagavad Gita - to decide if it is extremist in nature. What do you think about this controversy?
India's epics and history have withstood thousands of years. We do not need any certificate from any country.
India Equity Research Reports, IPO and Stock News
Visit http://indiaer.blogspot.com/ for complete details �� ��
APJ Abdul Kalam has for the past decade been talking about how to make India a developed country. In his latest book, 'Target 3 Billion', co-authored by Srijan Pal Singh, he recommends a sustainable and inclusive system to uplift the rural poor through entrepreneurship and community participation. In an interview with Shobhan Saxena, the former President of India talks about his new concept. Excerpts:
Will you explain the concept of PURA that you talk about in your book?
PURA means Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas. The concept started a decade ago. It came from Prof Indireshan, who was director of IIT, Madras and Delhi, and a close friend of mine. We have a huge rural population - nearly 600,000 villages and a lot of migration happens from villages to cities because urban areas have certain facilities like power and education. Under PURA, we are looking at how capacity building can be done at the village level itself; how we can use the core competence of a fishing village or a farming village or a village connected with tourism to develop it.
How will it help eradicate poverty?
Poverty begins if there is no capacity building. For example, a fisherman catches fish but because of the short shelf life - a few hours - of his catch, he sells it to a middleman for very little profit. He does so because he doesn't have the infrastructure - cold stores etc - to grow. So our purpose is to identify a core competence and then give knowledge to people so that they can enhance their capacity. PURA talks of three connectivities - physical, like roads and trains; electronic, like telephone and internet; and knowledge. If these three connectivities are given to villagers, then economic connectivity will come to villages. This will empower the villagers and poverty will come down.
So you think FDI in retail will be good for our villages?
Villagers only know how to produce things. We have to tell them how to market their produce, how to do value addition. One of the things we have talked about a lot in the book is cooperative farming. In India, farmers have small holdings but if they form a cooperative, it becomes a large holding and then the farmer has bargaining power. FDI in retail will help the farmer only when the farmer is empowered to bargain.
More than 60 years of independence and hundreds of thousands of crores spent on development and we are still the poorest country in the world in terms of absolute numbers. Where have we gone wrong?
In the past, the government, private and public sectors have taken up rural development in parts. For example, starting educational institutions and health-care centres, laying roads, building houses, building marketing complexes, providing communication links in rural areas have been taken up in the past as individual activities. During the last few decades, it has been our experience that these initiatives start well, just like heavy rain resulting in multiple streams of waterflow. But as soon as the rain stops, the streams dry up because there are no waterbodies to collect and store that surplus water. For the first time, PURA envisages an integrated sustainable development plan with employment-generation as the focus, driven by provision of the habitat, health care, education, skill development, physical and electronic connectivity, and marketing as a public-private partnership initiative.
That is why a roadmap has been provided for the implementation of the sustainable development system of PURA for the empowerment of 600,000 villages of the nation.
How can a country alleviate poverty if it can't even decide the number of poor people it has? The figure ranges from 350 million to 800 million. Why is it so difficult?
According to me, the Planning Commission has come out with the number that out of a billion people, 350 million live below the poverty line, and the numbers may vary. What is more important is how we are building capacity in them for value-added empowerment.
In the past 20 years, we have been following American-style capitalism in the hope that prosperity will trickle down but it hasn't. Does it make sense to follow a model that has polluted the planet right in front of our eyes?
The Indian economy, compared to the economies of the West, has withstood the American and European-originated crisis much better. PURA is being promoted uniquely from India as a capacity-building tool among rural and suburban areas, and it will be a model system for collapsing economies. In the book, we have talked about the system of social stock and triple bottom line, which means assessing along the equation: benefits = income + societal change + environment impact.
India spends billions of dollars on arms every year. How can a country have sustainable development when it's spending its precious resources on weapons?
In an ideal situation, all nations should be friendly without any conflict and war or arms race. Unfortunately, our neighbours are armed with nuclear arsenals. So for peace and sustained prosperity, we need a minimum deterrent to combat any situation. Of course, we always have the nuclear doctrine of no-first-use.
India is going to test the Agni-V next year, which may take us into the club of nations with ICBMs. Will that lead to a new arms race in Asia as predicted by China?
China is a nation which already has ICBMs directed at all parts of the world. You can ask the Chinese this question.
You are a regular visitor to the US but a few of those visits have been controversial because of certain security-related incidents. Has the frisking at American airports made you bitter about the American obsession with security?
I am invited to the US to teach and to lecture, and to many other nations. I don't want to waste even a minute thinking I should be given certain privileges. Any check, at any airport in the world, is a matter of a few minutes. It is something I will always be willing to go through.
A Russian court is due to deliver a verdict on the Bhagavad Gita - to decide if it is extremist in nature. What do you think about this controversy?
India's epics and history have withstood thousands of years. We do not need any certificate from any country.
No comments:
Post a Comment