Young India is following her heart, are you?

September 29, 2009 15:45 IST
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The all new world class sea link, the surge of 3G ready mobile phones, India's say in world matters -- we are fortunate to be born in a blooming nation in the 21st century. Sure enough, this is changing the mood of Indian youth. They are game for exploring different and unusual fields and are continually moving farther from the security of 9 to 9 jobs -- they are tending more and more towards something they are passionate about, something that stems from their very heart.

Does all this strike a chord in your heart? Sounds like your story? Then welcome, to India's new-youth bandwagon, which is driving growth like never before. These are the youth, who want to work, but on their terms and do just what their heart says. YOU could be a part of this brigade.

India is following her heart

Over the past few years, many enthusiastic souls have been quietly and voluntarily involving themselves with causes like educating children and adults in the underdeveloped sections of cities, environmental drives including no pollution drives, plant more trees campaigns, no honking campaigns, liberation and education of child labourers, development of small villages and much more.

Janhvi Somaiya is passionate about the work she does, "I have been visiting a village called Saphale on the outskirts of Mumbai , for six years now. It has been an enriching experience and I am happy I can make a difference to their lives."

Meenakshi Iyer from Chennai, a member of the Satark Nagarik Sanghathan that works towards making people aware of the Right to Information Act says, "I have made it my life's mission to make citizens aware and alert of their rights."

Jishaan Roy, a final year medical student from Kolkata, believes in disseminating knowledge he has to the underprivileged people.

"I like conducting astronomy workshops for children in Pune. They feel excited about seeing the stars and planets and I feel satisfied to see them so happy with a little effort of mine."

Sunita Mahendra, an accounts manager in a private firm in Delhi helps her local NGO to maintain their finances. "The NGO I volunteer with deals with injured animals and birds. So, it becomes important to keep the finances in check for paying the doctors' bills, for medicines, for other equipment and I'm glad I can help them out with this. I feel good knowing that I too am contributing to the spirit of life."

Young India needs to choose between intent and action

With awakening taking place among the youth of India, there has been a strong urge to strike a balance between domestic, professional and social life. People today want to spend quality time with their family along with putting constructive hours into their professional lives.

However, they also wish to contribute towards building a better society, and give back to the system. What they need is an opportunity to strike a balance by utilising their skills they exercise in the professional field for the cause of building a better society.

Moreover, the time has come to convert intent to real action. Not just to think about doing, but actually doing it. Go ahead and volunteer.

India is looking for volunteers like you

Passionate Indians keen to work for the society now get a platform in the form of iVolunteer.

iVolunteer, an initiative of MITRA, a not-for-profit organisation working in the social sector in India, is now urging people to go ahead and do it -- in this case, go ahead and volunteer.

iVolunteer India Fellow Professional is an exclusive volunteering programme for 50 Most Passionate Indians to come and share their professional skills in rural development organisations for mutual benefit.

Therefore, if sharing your time as a volunteer enthuses you, if your heart feels that you can give two months of your life to something exciting and help serve a key sector of the country as well, you are in the right place.

You could visit www.ivolunteer.in/professional and find out what is in store for you and what fits you the best. We wish you the best of luck!

The sickle and the superwoman

Rohit Viswanath, Nilofer D'Souza / Forbes India

Published on Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:40 in India section

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In Greek mythology, a tribe of women called the Amazons inhabited the island of Themyscira, a world without men. They lived in 1200 BC and were immortalised in Homer's Iliad as the Antianeira - 'they who fight like men'.

Women in Badiya, a tiny hamlet in the Himalayan foothills, may have never heard of the Amazons or the Iliad, but, they run their villages not much unlike the ancient Greeks - with minimal patriarchal interference.

Rural India is undergoing a gradual change in its social landscape. As more men leave for cities in search of the 'great urban dream', women are being thrust into the role of family head, becoming the sole caretaker for everything from farms to parents. According to the Draft National Policy for Women in Agriculture (April, 2008), prepared by the National Commission for Women (NCW), "An estimated 20 per cent of rural households are de facto female headed due to widowhood, desertion, or male out-migration."

Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Rita Sharma, says, "We are aware of the phenomenon. Nearly 13 per cent of rural households are headed by wo-men today."

The figures may vary, but it is still considered significant as in the 1970s only about five per cent of rural households were headed by women, according to a Delhi-based labour economist. It's not as if women were never involved in agriculture. According to NCW's draft policy, women constitute 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce. But it was the men who took decisions about which crops to grow, how much bank loan to take and whether it was worth pledging the farm to a moneylender.

Now, the women are getting to make some of the decisions. Yet, even as they step into their husbands' shoes, they have had to face several challenges. The biggest constraint remains less access to land, credit and technical assistance. In addition, they have to battle tradition, and deal with organisations and equipment geared to service men.

Filling the Vacuum

The man-to-woman ratio in Badiya village, in Tehri district of Uttarakhand state, has witnessed a gradual decline over the years and is now approximately 30:70. Joining the army seems to be a favourite option for the men.

Vinita is one such farmer who now heads the household while her husband is away. Her family owns about 400 square metres of farm land. Like before, she gets up at sun rise, tends to the livestock, works on the land, and also looks after her three young children and aged mother-in-law. But the difference is that she's the boss now. She sells the surplus and uses the money for household expenses.

But Vinita is an exception here rather than the norm. Most women in a similar position take over production of food crops for home consumption rather than for the market.

The women of Badiya still don't have a say in property rights. That means they can't negotiate with banks or micro-finance organisations. In any case their holdings are so fragmented and the scale of their farming so small that they don't pledge the land.

The vacuum created by the men leaving the villages has forced the women to come together. In Badiya, the women have formed a self help group to address common problems.

They pooled in their meagre funds to buy fertilisers and other inputs. As this co-operation helped increase farm productivity, though marginally, the women began to sell whatever little surplus they grew each season. Over a period of time, they had enough to pool in Rs 320 each to set up a shop of their own which became the first one to make daily provisions available to the hamlet.

A similar pooling of resources is helping women in villages around the town of Doddaballapur in Karnataka. Under the Government's Stree Shakthi programme, self help groups of women pool in funds, from which money is lent to those in need.

These self help groups are also successfully challenging the patriarchal land ownership. In some cases, men have added their wives' names as co-owners of their land. Where such joint ownership doesn't materialise, help comes in the form of a pool-in fund run by the self-help groups. However, in the total number of title deeds, women account for just 10 to 20 per cent of ownership, according to State Vice-President of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (a farmer's movement), N Venkata Reddy.

Senior Fellow, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Dr Surabhi Mittal, says, "Policy must be conducive to the changes that are happening. Once married, the women should have a joint title to the land, so that they become eligible for credit, Kisan Credit Cards and other government schemes for small and marginal farmers." Joint ownership will enable them to access various entitlements essential for commercially viable small scale farming, including horticulture and animal husbandry.

Outside Help

Being responsible for the farming doesn't come easy to women. Duties like ploughing and harvesting that were taken for granted as part of a man's chore have become an issue. Also, the additional responsibility often adds to their drudgery. "The women of rural Uttarakhand work an average of 14-18 hours a day. Women who want their children to go to school take on the work children traditionally did such as caring for cattle and poultry," says Manager Uttaranchal Gramya Vikas Samiti, Pawan Kumar.

In Uttarakhand, NGOs working to improve rural livelihood realised that the women needed help. Kumar says, "We realised that the women's lives were tough given the sheer amount of their workload. Our main goal was drudgery reduction."

They helped introduce high-yielding varieties of seeds and also improved agriculture tools. The women have now begun growing cash crops like mustard and groundnuts that fetches them a higher margin in the market.

Sharma says the Government is keeping a close tab on the trend. "Even under our own employment schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, almost 50 per cent are women, going up to 80 per cent in states like Tamil Nadu," she says. According to her, Government agencies are working on various initiatives to help women farmers. Earlier agricultural extension agents were largely men. Now more women have been encouraged to join the profession. The men have been trained to be sensitive to the women farmers. The Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, for example, is developing lightweight equipment, including ploughs, keeping in mind the needs of women farmers.

For Vinita's family, earlier, the paddy harvest was just enough for the family of six for three months. Now with the improved seeds and soil fertility, the yield has increased five-fold.

The concept of banking was introduced to the village. "Bank itself was a foreign word, unheard of in our remote hamlet of Badiya. Today, having seen the advantages of banking each and every woman has come forth and proudly states that they all visit the bank at least once in two weeks," says leader of a self help group, Prameela.

Breaking Social Barriers

With men gone, some social barriers are breaking down too. Vinita, an upper caste woman-farmer, would never have joined hands with Ranjana Devi from a lower caste, while her husband was around. But today all village women come together at meetings where they discuss and solve problems over a cup of tea. This cup of tea hasn't been an easy brew.

They have had to battle old prejudices. During weekly meetings held at members' homes, tea is served in metal and plastic glasses depending on what caste one belongs to. "Elders still don't allow us to mingle at par, hence these practices, but we have overcome all our mind blocks personally," says Prameela.

Missing meetings is out of question. It is, after all, a matter of survival. The initial feeling of incompetence and lack of confidence was overcome within a few meetings.

Challenging the Old Order

The new role assumed by women has changed the perception of their family members towards them. La­kshmi, a woman farmer from Badiya says, "Earlier my husband would speak and I would listen. Today, all major househ­old decisions are taken through mutual discussion. Even my in-laws respect me because I have become a major breadwinner."

Consultancy group Pragmatix carried out a survey in five Uttarakhand districts. It found a 93 per cent rise in the number of women influencing household decis­ions in the last three years. But some old attitudes die hard. While men are receptive to the changing status of women, they still view domestic duties as part of the woman's responsibility.

With all the hurdles and the extra work, what is driving the women to take up a bigger responsibility in the villages? Hope for a better life for their children. Back in Badiya, Vinita says she is much more confident today that her 15-year-old daughter will get good education. After all, Vinita is not only making money of her own but also getting to decide how it will be spent.

Doc who charges only Rs 2

A Ganesh Nadar, Rediff News
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Dr Ravindra Koelhe, MD, lives and runs a clinic in Melghat, Maharashtra. His fee is Rs 2 for the first consultation and Rs 1 for the second.

Not only is he a doctor and social worker, Dr Koelhe has also taken the government to court for having failed in its duty to protect the Korku tribals of the region.

After completing his MBBS, he worked in Melghat for a year-and-a-half only to realise that he needed more expertise to handle the problems of the tribals. So he went back to medical college for an MD in preventive and social medicine.

"I have now been here for 24 years. In those days there were two public health centres and no roads. Once a week, I used to walk 40 kms from Dharni to Bairagarh to reach my clinic. I used to see at least one tiger every month. Since the last three years I haven't seen a single one," he says remembering his early days as a young doctor.

After completing his MBBS from Nagpur University, he decided to work in rural India. An ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave, he was also influenced by Ruskin Bond who wrote, 'If you want to serve mankind, go and work among the poorest and most neglected.'

He toured the rural areas of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and decided that Gadricholi in Maharashtra was the most backward amongst his travels and decided to work there. His mother discouraged him since it was a Naxalite affected area. She told him that Melghat was equally backward and that he should work here instead.

Dr Koelhe has been in Melghat since then. It has been 24 years now.

Melghat means the place where mountains meet. It lies on the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border and is easily one of the most beautiful places in the country, its greenery only broken by the brightly coloured clothes of the Korku tribals who have made these mountains their home.

But the region's beauty is overshadowed by its hostile terrain. Its infrastructure is deplorable. The roads are pathetic, the only way one can access its remote villages is in rugged four-wheel jeep.

Melghat's problems are far too many. There is no power for miles, new power lines are discouraged because this a designated tiger reserve. Though the tiger is rarely spotted here, the so-called presence of the tiger has contributed to the total neglect of this region.

The poor tribals live off the land. They cultivate their small patch of fields on the incline of the mountains. There is no irrigation system and no wells because there is no power to pump the water.

In this wilderness, Dr Koelhe has stayed on to alleviate the misery of the tribals.

He feels Melghat is a socio-economic problem, which needs to be dealt with holistically. "We as doctors can look after them when they fall sick, but there are other shortcomings that have to be addressed like education, skill enhancement and assured economic activity through out the year."

"When I came here the infant mortality rate was close to 200 per 1,000 babies. Now it is 60. In Kerala it is 8 and in rural India 9. We have to bring it down to the national level. That is why I have filed a public interest litigation in the Mumbai high court."

Discussing the case, he says, "We have filed our affidavits. Now the government has to reply. They don't file a reply for months together. Who can do anything? We want to sit down and discuss the problem and solution, but they don't want to sit with us. We cannot force them."

Stressing on the need that it was important to improve the health of the tribals he feels the attitude of doctors assigned to the government's public health centres has to change.

"They have to learn to serve. They should not make the tribals feel they are doing them a favour."

Highlighting the problems of the area, he says farming depends on the rain and tribals are jobless with no avenues of income for eight months in a year.

To add to that, there is no availability of food in Melghat from March to October. Milk is scarce and irrigation facilities are absent. Before 1978, tribals used to hunt and eat small animals like the rabbit to sustain themselves but after the region was declared as a tiger reserve, hunting became illegal.

Since there are no veterinarians, the cattle owned by the tribals often die without the right medication. There are 20 artificial insemination centres but are all shut for want of vets.

The Melghat area shot into the national limelight last year because of infant deaths due to malnutrition, but Dr Koelhe said it was wrong to label them as 'malnutrition deaths.' "It is more like starvation," he had said when I met him last year while reporting the infant deaths.

"There is no availability of food here from March to October. The mother is therefore malnourished, and thus we have neo-natal deaths," he explained.

Milk is in short supply because the milk co-op closed down due to the competition between the Jersey and Indian cow. "The Jersey doesn't get enough nutrition here and the Indian cow does not give milk here. The reason being, the cow does not get enough nutrition. Where does it have the energy to give milk?" he said.

The tribals are unable to rear poultry for their livelihood because the chicks often die within the first two days. "There is a vaccination that has to be given in the first 36 hours after birth, but how do we give it? Since the tribals are a scattered population, it is not possible."

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the government's programme to provide rural employment for 100 days, was started here, but was then halted. Bhandu Sane, the founder of the non governmental organisation Khoj, told rediff.com that the NREGA was not functioning in the Dharni and Chikaldhara talukas. Moreover, workers who had worked under the NREGA had not been paid wages totalling Rs 3 million in the Chikaldhara taluka. Wages were also pending in Dharni.

Dharni has been declared a drought hit area. Many areas in Chikaldhara also face drought.

"What we need is awareness. There are 400 schemes to look after the tribals from the womb to the grave, but the tribals don't even know what these schemes are. And those who know are not interested in implementing them," says Dr Koelhe resignedly.

The tribals have to be provided with safe drinking water and need well stocked ration shops in every village. "The agricultural board is closed. It has to start again. Irrigation facilities to store water are needed and tribals have to be taught the use of fertilizers and pesticides."

"The best thing the government has done here is to open more than 300 schools. In those days there were no teachers. The even better thing that the government did was to introduce Korku text books in 1985. Now primary education is in the Korku language. This has gone a long way in making the tribals literate and given them confidence to attend school."

Instead of discussing what the government should do for the tribals, Dr Koelhe firmly believes that the tribals should be taught to be independent and demand what is theirs.

"I run training classes here for batches of tribal youth. We tell them about their rights and the schemes available for them. We teach them to demand what is their right and tell then never to bribe," he declareS proudly.

He also advises them to grow vegetables which are necessary for their nutrition.

"We are not here to duplicate the government's work, but to supplement it. I tell all my patients to go to the public health centre, and come to me only if they are not satisfied there. Even then after seeing them I always send them back to the PHC. I also call the PHC to explain the problem so that they can solve it."

The doctors at the PHC respect him and follow his advice. The cooperation of the medical faculty in this area makes life easier for the tribals who feel assured with Dr Koelhe around.

Dr Ravindra Koelhe can be contacted on his Bairagarh landline: 07226-202002, Dharni landline: 07226-202829 and mobile: 094231 46181.

The manager who does funerals for abandoned bodies

Shobha Warrier in Chennai, Rediff News
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A lazy Sunday morning, when the majority of people relax with a cup of hot coffee and a newspaper, S Sreedhar is at the mortuary at the general hospital in Chennai. The hospital authorities hand over 17 bodies wrapped in a white cloth to him. No, they are not his relatives. In fact, all those 17 people are strangers to him -- unclaimed bodies with no one to give them a last farewell.

Sreedhar takes all these unknown bodies to the cemetery, and gives them a decent burial after showering them with rice, flowers and milk with a prayer on his lips. They are buried because the names or religion of the dead are unknown. If the deceased are Hindu and from an old age home, he gives them a proper cremation according to Hindu rites.

Back home, Sreedhar, associate vice-president, IndiaInfoline, does not feel bad that his weekly holiday starts in a burial ground. On the contrary, he feels calm and blissful, having bidden farewell with dignity to some unknown souls.

Sreedhar started this service of cremating the unknown 24 years ago in 1985 after he happened to read the book Daivathin Kural (God's voice) by Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, the Paramacharya or senior shankaracharya of the Kanchi Mutt.

"In the book, he says that a dead man should be given a decent farewell irrespective of the cast or religion the person belongs to. When the atma (soul)) leaves the body, it should be given a proper farewell. This is the belief of all Hindus."

The observation made Sreedhar think of all those unknown and unclaimed bodies in the hospitals and the abandoned old people in old age homes. And when he expressed his desire to cremate the abandoned bodies to the Paramacharya, he blessed Sreedhar and asked him to go ahead.

Soon after, when he went to an old age home called Vishranthi, he found that Savithri Vaithi, who ran the home, was not there. She had gone to cremate a person who had died that day.

Ever since she started Vishranthi, Savithri Vaithi has been performing the last rites of all the inmates who die there. He told her he would like to take over her job.

Within a few days, he was there at Vishranthi to collect the body of an elderly woman. She had a son and a daughter, but the man who lit her pyre was Sreedhar, a stranger.

That night, he couldn't sleep. The image of the old woman came to haunt him, and he could only think of the futility of all relationships.

"I couldn't eat or sleep that night. At that time, we had the conventional type of cremation where firewood was used, not the electric crematorium. So I lit her pyre and cremated the body of a total stranger."

Then, there was this old man on his death bed in a government hospital, yearning to see his only daughter. He had refused to see her when she married a man of her choice. Sreedhar went to see the daughter to let her know that her father was in the last days of his life and longed to see her.

But she refused to forgive her father or visit him. He told the old man that his daughter was not at home and that he had left a message for her to come and see him immediately.

For more details log on to www.dharmaa.org

Email: sreedhar.1955@rediffmail.com

Phone: 98407 44400

He gave up a 5-star job to feed the mentally ill

A Ganesh Nadar in Madurai
Rediff.com, Article Link

'I don't feed beggars. They can look after themselves. The mentally ill won't ask anyone for food or money,' says N Krishnan who has been feeding them thrice a day for the past seven years.

For more information on N Krishnan's trust, log on to: http://www.akshayatrust.org/

Do you know Extraordinary Indians like N Krishnan? Please send us their name, contact information and a description of their work at extraordinarylives@rediffmail.com

N Krishnan feeds 400 mentally ill people on the streets of Madurai three times a day, every day, all 365 days of the year.

The 28 year old has been doing this for seven years via a charity called the Akshaya Trust.

A look into the kitchen reveals a spotlessly clean room. Sparkling vessels stacked neatly, groceries and provisions all lined up in rows -- rice, dal, vegetables, spices -- all of the best quality. One would think this was the kitchen of a five star hotel.

Maybe Krishnan achieves that effect because he was once a chef at a five star hotel in Bengaluru.

"Today's lunch is curd rice, with home made pickle, please taste it," he says, serving me on a plate made of dried leaves.

The food is excellent.

"I change the menu for different days of the week. They will get bored if I serve the same food every day," he says with an enthusiastic and infectious smile.

Krishnan cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner with the help of two cooks. He takes it himself to his wards on the street each day.

"I don't feed beggars. They can look after themselves. The mentally ill won't ask anyone for food or money. They don't move around much too. I find them in the same place every day."

That morning he put the food in a large vessel, the pickle in a smaller one and loaded it into a Maruti van donated by a Madurai philanthropist.

Ten minutes later we stopped near a man lying on the ground by a high wall. Krishnan put the food next to him. The man refused to even look at it, but grabbed the water bottle and drank eagerly. "He will eat the food later, looks like he was very thirsty," said Krishnan.

At the next stop, he laid the dry leaf-plate and served the food. He then scooped some food and started feeding the mentally ill man himself. After two morsels, the man started eating on his own.

We then crossed a crowded traffic signal and stopped the vehicle. On seeing Krishnan, four individuals moved slowly towards the Maruti van. They stood out in the crowd with their dirty, tattered clothes and unshaven beards.

They knew this Maruti van meant food. But they did not hurry, knowing that Krishnan would wait for them.

Krishnan served them under a tree and carried water for them. "They are not aware enough to get their own water," he explained.

And thus we went around the city till the Akshaya patra was empty. Of course, it would be full again for dinner later in the day.

As we returned, a startling fact hit me. Not a single mentally challenged person had thanked Krishnan. They did not even smile or acknowledge him. Still Krishnan carried on in a world where most of us get offended if someone doesn't say thank you, sometimes even for doing our jobs.

The food costs Rs 12,000 a day, but that doesn't worry him. "I have donors for 22 days. The remaining days, I manage myself. I am sure I will get donors for that too, people who can afford it are generally generous, particularly when they know that their hard earned money is actually going to the poor. That is why I maintain my accounts correctly and scrupulously."

He then pulled out a bill from the cabinet and showed it to me. It was a bill for groceries he had bought seven years ago. "This bill has sentimental value. It is the first one after I started Akshaya."

The economic slowdown has resulted in a drop in the number of donors. Earlier, they sustained meals for 25 days.

Software giant Infosys and TVS were so impressed with his work that they donated three acres of land to him in Madurai. Krishnan hopes to build a home for his wards there. He has built the basement for a woman's block which will house 80 inmates, but work has currently halted due to a lack of funds.

This, however, is not the sum of his good deeds. Krishnan also performs the funerals of unclaimed bodies in Madurai. He collects the body, bathes it and gives it a decent burial or cremation as the need may be.

He gets calls, both from the municipal corporation and general hospital for the funerals.

He recalls with a little prompting how one day he saw a mentally ill man eating his excreta. He rushed to the nearest restaurant and bought the man five idlis. The man ate voraciously, and then smiled at him. The smile made Krishnan want to do it again and again.

Krishnan has not married and wonders if anyone would want to marry a man who spends his days cooking food for others. He is firm that his life partner has to agree to this kind of life.

His parents were initially shocked, but are now very supportive of their son. They advise him about the cuisine and also about how he can streamline the process.

One wonders why he left his job in a five star hotel to bury the dead and feed the mentally ill. To this he just smiles and says, "I like doing it."

He put his life's savings for a home for prisoner's children

Rediff.com


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For more information on V Mani's work, log on to http://www.socare.org/beta/

Do you know Extraordinary Indians like Mani? Please send us their name, contact information and a description of their work at extraordinarylives@rediffmail.com

Weaving the magic carpet: Forbes India

Neelima Mahajan-Bansal / Forbes India
Published on Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 16:08 in Business section

Jaipur Rugs Website

Article Link : Read

Kanni Devi’s hands work deftly as they knot brightly coloured wool on tightly wound warp threads. “Do taar chodd ke lagaale re; lal jhai sabaj bachcha; kala chalta,” she sings.
Her husband Chottelal, who is working at the other end of the loom, chants, “haanji”, in sync. It sounds like a Rajasthani folk song but is really instructions based on the design template this carpet has. Loosely translated, it means, “Leave two strings and then put the red on the red; put it behind the green; and put it right on the black.”
Kanni and Chottelal are two of the 125 carpet weavers in Narhet, a tiny village close to Jaipur. Narhet is what local administrators term as a “landless village”. No one here owns land. Most belong to impoverished backward classes and 70 percent are into rug-making.
Carpet weaving is an industry associated with worker exploitation in the popular imagination. But over the last three years, things have changed for Kanni and Chottelal.
Chottelal, who has always lived hand-to-mouth, recently took a Rs. 1 lakh loan to build a pukka house. He put both his daughters in a private school, for a fee of Rs. 100 per child. One month ago, he filed a health insurance claim — and got Rs 1,400 — for hospital visits. He keeps his latest acquisition, a Nokia mobile phone, under his loom. “We would love to buy a TV too but because of the hill ranges around, we don’t get TV signals here,” says Chottelal. Kanni wears bright magenta lipstick now, an indulgence that was unthinkable three years ago.
Earlier the couple used to weave carpets for contractors who paid them Rs. 50-60 per day per person. Now they earn above Rs. 100 a day each. The raw material is delivered to them unlike before when they had to travel to town to get it. Chottelal now has a better sense of carpet weaving, as he has received rigorous training.
Like Kanni and Chottelal, scores of families in this village have made the crossover to a better life.
Changing the Template
The soft-spoken Nand Kishore Chaudhary, founder of Jaipur Rugs, is the person responsible for all this. Chaudhary doesn’t speak much English and has never studied in a business school. But the social enterprise model that he has created for Jaipur Rugs has changed the lives of 40,000-odd weavers in villages across 10 states in India.
Under this model, his Rs. 67.75 crore (turnover) company engages independent weavers in far-flung villages — none of whom are on his rolls.
The idea first came to him in 1990, when he realised that the government was keen to promote carpet weaving in the tribal belts of Gujarat. “The government was using co-operative societies to develop carpet weaving in Gujarat. But I felt that co-operatives couldn’t do this well so it would be a great opportunity for me,” says Chaudhary.
So he relocated to Gujarat and, for eight years, developed a weaver network there. He deputed area commanders to oversee the existing business in Rajasthan. “We had 200 looms in Rajasthan by then and wherever we had a concentration of 50 looms, we would depute an area commander to monitor them, distribute raw material and supervise quality,” says Chaudhary.
Communication was a problem in those parts of Gujarat and Chaudhary needed to be in touch with his weavers. So in 1992, he set up a wireless network there! Since then, he has travelled across India to develop a weaver network. By 2015, Jaipur Rugs aims to have 100,000 weavers on board. For that, Chaudhary has deputed two people who are constantly on fact-finding missions across the country looking for new regions where carpet weaving can be done. “We recently found that in Orissa, there are lots of Muslim women who aren’t allowed to go out of the house. They end up becoming beedi workers earning Rs. 10-15 a day,” says Chaudhary. So Jaipur Rugs started a pilot project in six regions with 500 weavers on board about 18 months ago.
But working with scattered communities of weavers makes it tough to maintain quality standards acceptable to international clients.
Another alarming fact: Each month Jaipur Rugs was incurring a loss of Rs. 5 lakh (on a turnover of Rs. 4 crore) due to defects. “That is Rs. 60 lakh wasted each year due to mistakes!” he says. “After a carpet is woven, it goes through 27 other processes and the defects were proving to be a big drain.”
To tackle that, Chaudhary put in place an army of quality supervisors who visit every loom at least twice a week. The weavers — some of whom have been working for contractors for years — are given intense training where proper processes are enforced. “Changing habits is tough. Weavers, who have worked for contractors all these years, are not used to being process-driven. Even the trainers don’t take us seriously initially,” says Chaudhary. Constant communication, he says, is key.
Chaudhary also embarked on a mission called Zero Defect that is being piloted in Narhet. It lays down the processes that the weaver must follow. Says Deepak Sharma, director, Kanvic, the consultants who have taken on the task, “We developed a booklet for the processes the quality supervisors are supposed to look at — this has a full checklist.”
During a seminar, Chaudhary picked up the idea of implementing Quality Circles, or forming volunteer groups that analyse, discuss and find solutions to larger organisational challenges. “I tried to implement this concept with the weaver community by forming self-help groups for them,” says Chaudhary. “These groups meet regularly, brainstorm and solve problems.”
The Next Level
Chaudhary also ensures that the company implements the most modern techniques to help business. Recently, the company invested Rs. 50 lakh and implemented an ERP package (enterprise resource planning package — a company-wide computer software system). Then, in 2007, it took on board a search engine optimiser to ensure that the company name would show up prominently in Web searches. Says Yogesh Chaudhary, N.K. Chaudhary’s son, who looks after the IT aspects of the business, “Our Web presence was very limited. But after doing search engine optimisation, people can now find our company easily online.” Similarly, they realised that many of the small buyers abroad — who are also the most profitable — did not understand English. So Yogesh launched Jaipur Rugs’ Web sites in other languages.
Chaudhary also realises that increasingly, buyers want to work with companies that do not have exploitative practices. Which is why, Jaipur Rugs applied for and attained Social Accountability International’s SA 8000 Workplace and Human Rights Standards.
Chaudhary believes that everyone working for the company is part of a family.
The Jaipur Rugs Foundation (JRF), a welfare foundation for weavers, fits in perfectly with this belief. Says Devendra Shukla, director, JRF, “The foundation aims to take weavers to the next level and make them stakeholders in the business.” It provides skill training, skill upgradation, computer-aided design training and entrepreneurship development.
It also gets the weavers Artisan Cards, a government initiative that allows artisans several benefits, helps them get health insurance, and forms self-help groups (SHGs) of weavers.
JRF is also trying out a new experiment where it will form SHGs of weavers, bring them together as a company or a trust, and produce carpets under the new company’s own brand. A pilot for this is on in Thanagazi in Rajasthan. The ownership of the brand will lie with the weavers and Jaipur Rugs will don the role of a mentor.
A couple of months ago, Chaudhary got a phone call. The voice at the other end said, “Mr Chaudhary, this is CK. Do you know me?” Chaudhary almost fell off his chair. The person on the line was management guru C.K. Prahalad — Chaudhary had met him at a TiE (an NGO for promoting entrepreneurship) seminar in Jaipur in January and told him about his company. Jaipur Rugs is now being documented as a case study in the fifth edition of Prahalad’s Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Chaudhary is also being invited by business schools like Wharton to talk about his business model. Teams of students and professors from INSEAD and IMD are also visiting his company. Says Chaudhary, “I love exploring. I experiment with small things. When I see the results, I get excited. And that prompts me to do bigger things.”