Rural Empowerment - why we need it?

As been reported in various publications recently, rural economy has vast potential both in terms of purchasing power and productivity. With a huge customer base (about 600 million), this economy attracting attention of both domestic and multinational enterprises. Even though this unprecedented attraction to this customer base is widely welcomed and appreciated, brings in another task of upbringing these people to sustain this economic wave.

Purchase power of these population as measured by these multinational entities and statisticians is the result of their lifelong savings and not from the recurring income standards. Unless we improve the economic standards, they will slid off the wave unnoticed causing systematic economic unrest caused by the widening of income and living standard disparities. Its hard to devise a quick fix to this problem given the limitations and the constraints.

We have to provide solutions to this section of the society to improve their economic capabilities both in terms of income and stability. Given the nature of their livelihood based on farming and agro based industries, it is hard to produce more with in same unit of land. We can't really crank up the production given all these constraints an unexpected natural calamities.

Other option is to improve their earnings is by increasing the value of their productivity. As the commodity prices are regulated by the market forces and partly subsidized by the government for the poor to feed themselves within their budgets. This option is not only feasible but also will have a greater impact on inflation and other economic factors.

The best option is to find a middle ground by reducing the cost of farming by utilizing advanced farming methods, by improving resource utilization and by minimizing fertilizer/pesticides which minimizes the capitol needs and by improving their marketing capabilities so that their produce can fetch reasonable prices. All of these can be achieved by educating these farming communities on these with proper guidance and information sharing. Let's call this as "Rural Empowerment"

Rural Empowerment should provide the necessary information to rural communities in a most usable form that can be easily digestible, readily accessible when needed so that they can make educated decisions based on their experience, available information and their better judgment. This can be achieved by utilizing the ubiquitous communication channels by customizing the content and delivery choices based on the user needs and providing a way to request any specific information needs with ease of use.

Role of Social Enterprise in Rural India

Over 60 percentage of Indian population is living in rural India, primarily depending on agriculture and small-scale industries for their livelihood and almost half of them living below poverty line working as laborers, small-scale farmers(with irrigable land of below an hectare). Its an inordinate task for any government to provide necessary facilities and social welfare activities to cater these under-served below poverty line population.

Given the state of infrastructure and government priorities, a lion share of government spending is being allocated to infrastructure improvements and social welfare activities that feed the people in need. These efforts are not sufficient enough to cater everyone in need. We often come across the news about suicide deaths, malnourishment among kids and women, hungry and sick kids begging on the streets etc....

In my opinion, the right approach is to emphasize on rural empowerment, providing access to information, educate them on the tools and facilities that they can use to overcome these hurdles and provide a clear path for them to lead better lives rather subsidizing.

There may exist many solutions to help and empower these rural dwellers and their interests will be better served when the entrepreneurs come forward with solutions that help these people in need by offering elegant solutions to these peoples troubles. So far, we have seen great success by micro financiers who provide sensible lending to these rural population providing the most needed capitol for their farming, small-scale industries etc. We have seen a great many successes with these micro financiers in not only empowering the rural population but creating wealth and attractive returns on the investment in their enterprises. They have proven that there is wealth of untapped potential still to be uncovered among these population and unlimited avenues for these social entrepreneurs to explore and succeed with passion and satisfaction.

India needs great many minds and social entrepreneurs to alleviate these troubles and improve standards of living, empower the rural population, providing information and tools to better organize their lives. This is certainly possible with a social entrepreneurship revolution. I urge my fellow indian citizen, lets hold hands and seed and fertilize this moment and uncap the vast hidden potential among our rural India.

Long live humanity, Long live social entrepreneurship.