|
|
Honey bee publish details |
| More
Information |
|
|
| Name |
|
|
|
| Address |
|
|
|
| District |
|
|
|
| State |
|
|
|
| Country |
|
|
|
| Category |
|
|
|
| Title |
Decentralised, Distributed and Dynamic Designs for Development: Can Polity be Reorganised? |
|
|
| Abstract |
|
|
|
| Details |
"More doors the economic growth opens for entrepreneurial aspirations of youth, greater becomes the concern for a balanced development across regions, sectors and social groups. I have argued since 1984 that ‘a change not monitored is a change not desired’. How do we track the accessibility, availability and affordability of opportunities to the disadvantaged youth for fulfilling their developmental potential?
In a federal state, more and more action initiatives will have to be taken at the panchayat, district and state levels for harnessing innovative and inclusive energy of the youth and others. When do great institutions, cultures and civilisations start declining? When they become complacent, develop deep inertia and become indifferent or sometimes contemptuous of new ideas, innovations and initiatives. When this happens, creative people stop talking about their new ideas openly, they keep it to themselves and often refrain from owning their ideas boldly. They start flaunting narrow identities, they don’t take pride in collaborative achievements, and they get satisfied with too little, too early and thus a downward spiral sets in. Let us look at the optimistic signs of avoiding that and moving towards a vibrant creative society.
Bottom up action steps as illustrated here may make a small positive difference: One of the most serious stress points particularly in agriculture and allied sectors is the declining input productivity. The cost is increasing, margins are decreasing, climatic fluctuations are taking their own toll and in situ value addition is still a far cry. Most start-ups are urban based, including those addressing rural needs. The logistical, technological and institutional gaps are not getting bridged at a pace as evident in other sectors of the economy. The online filling up of forms and applying for converting their ideas into enterprises is almost impossible for majority of the grassroots innovators. Yet many public programs rely only on such means to look out for these innovators and entrepreneurs.
Linking innovation, investment and enterprise for attracting rural youth: Way back in 1997, the Gujarat GIAN was set up by the Honey Bee Network in collaboration with the Gujarat government, IIMA and SRISTI to link innovations (formal/informal; from and for grassroots) with investment (financial, social, mentoring, policy) and enterprises (social, economic, cultural, ecological and other for-profit and non-profit). Can similar platforms be created in each state to provide handholding support at the doorstep of the innovators and creative communities? The idea was to reduce transaction costs for each stakeholder in the value chain. The in situ incubation model is inevitable for rural enterprises. We cannot disconnect rural youth with the responsibility of taking care of their families while pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams. The residential model might work for urban middle class youth but is unlikely to work for incubating rural enterprises.
Finding the rural youth with a zeal for innovation based enterprises will require out-of-the box approaches. District level challenge awards may be one of the ways to discover such ambitious youths. The action learning workshops to spot talent may be another option.
Gaming to scout potential youth entrepreneurs: Organising small games to identify the youth who can take an idea to its fruition, may just prove to be another way of identifying and recognising them. Of course, the family members of grassroots innovator may also be inclined to take up entrepreneurial challenges. The innovation can also be sourced from formal R&D system.
Mapping unmet needs to challenge the rural youth: LBSNAA, India’s premier training institute for civil servants, has recently launched a very important portal known as LINK. Lbsnaa.gov.in (LBSNAA Innovation Network) maps unmet administrative, social and other needs and seeks out solutions for them from anyone. At long last, the young officer trainees have decided to become more accountable for seeking unmet needs and also match these with extremely affordable and accessible solutions. I had expressed this need in a special issue of The Administrator, LBSNAA journal, which I edited in 1992 on administrative innovations. Each state can create similar platforms for “Mapping Unmet Needs” along with solutions at the district and state level. Mobilisng the students, faculty, traders, entrepreneurs, professionals, farmers/artisans directly or through village panchayats can address these needs urgently. A District Innovation Fund, created by the 13th Finance Commission, may be used to seed fund the bottom up ideas for solving problems and also upload these on an “Unmet Needs Platform” so that other regions facing similar problems can use these as such or as analogical pathways. There is a huge inertia which has persisted over decades and is evident in the continued sufferings of farmers, workers and poor people.
Letting children show the way: A dynamic and sustained interaction amongst the children and college students with unmet social needs is imperative. Once the younger generation becomes impatient with prolonged unsolved problems, they will grow into more empathetic leaders with inclusive identities in future. Children creativity workshops held every year before summer school (ss. sristi.org) organised by GIAN and SRISTI have shown the ability of children to recognise the unmet needs which engineering students and some of us invariably fail to spot.
Open source multi-media, multi-language content must be delivered to every single government school in a time bound manner so that even if teachers lack interest in some schools, children can learn on their own through phone based applications or uploads. IIMA students of Shodhyatra course pooled in 200 GB data, subjects and topics for each class from 1 to 12 and shared these with the Chief Secretary of Meghalaya. Besides this data from Wikipedia was circulated among all the schools of the state post their yatra in December 2018.
Conserving cultural and technological creativity together: Every school and public building must dedicate a wall to be painted by a local folk artist. Local mechanics may be trained to teach children the art of working with their own hands.
Countrywide Learning and Augmenting Social Innovations by Communities (CLASIC): There are a large number of public domain innovations like plant varieties, low cost herbal pesticides or water management practices, that are yet to be taken up for farm validation and value addition by farmers or other users in each block. Once found useful, these may be certified for formal promotion through radio, TV and other extension systems.
Developing horizontal markets: Social enterprises and SHG based horizontal trade (one group buying products of another) and agile risk funds at block and district levels must invest in local ideas. May be each Chief Minister could have an Inclusive Innovation Cell in her/his office to coordinate various innovation based initiatives. Will they do that? We’ll know in time.
" |
|
|
| Volume No. |
Honey Bee, 29(4) & 30(1) ,3-4, 2019 |
|
|
| Sout |
|
|
|
| Call Number |
|
|
 
|
|
