Around 2 months back, I had the privilege of listening to Dr. Harish Hande. Youth for Seva (YFS) arranged for this wonderful lecture. For those, who don't know about Dr. Hande, pls. visit this link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harish_Hande
Dr. Harish gave some really insightful views and here are the excerpts:
1) He could get into IIT because 600 mn others didn't know what IIT is. Had they known, it was close to impossible for him to get into IIT. Maybe true.
I myself am really fortunate to get one of the most subsidized educations in the world. Even the lunch that we ate was subsidized by some 8 Rs., which was paid by the govt.
2) Travel and explore when you are young. In case your dad is not uber-rich, always have rich-friends :)
3) How to gel with a different community: It is better not to know the language initially because when you don't know a language, you are all the same (same as the auto-rickshaw driver)
4) The deeper you go into the economic strata, the more you pay for basic services like cooking gas, electricity etc.
5) India's Human Development Index is a pathetic 131 (8% growth is actually a mirage and even that is history now)
6) Rural cooking : 2 meals a day = 2 packs of cigarettes!!
7) 20mn girls in this country are collecting woods, and as the forest cover is receding, it takes them more time to collect woods as compared to the prev. generation. So many households live on the forest eco-system which is getting destroyed at an alarming rate. Look at the malls in Bangalore and Gurgaon with all the glass buildings. They are so energy-inefficient.
8) Street vendor is the ultimate social-entrepreneur (there are 2 crores of them in India) - he/she will come to your house daily to distribute vegatables (be it floods or any calamity), they will take 900 Rs. loan in the morning, pay interest of 100 rs. (11% per day!), 15 rs. for policemen, 50 Rs. for the cart and sell off all their stuff by the evening. Comprare them with Kingfisher, with all the Chartered accountants and technology at its helm, it still incurs an annual loss of 7000 Cr.!!
9) Have you ever heard of any non-english speaking person getting any equity investment?? The world is skewed towards privileged people, who are most likely to default and commit frauds.
10) Privilege education is actually a bottleneck. It constraints your thinking, makes you shallow and reduces your risk-appetite. And this is particularly true for Indians. Selco receives far more applications from MIT and Yale than IITs to work in their rural-labs (some 300 kms from Bangalore). They have stronger tie-ups with MIT D-lab than any IIT in India.
11) Some of the so called 'ordinary folks' working in his organization 'Selco' have come up with the most radical ideas. Recently, they faced a problem of lighting a rural household, which had 3 different rooms. An ordinary B.Com grad viewed this as a problem of 'lighting 3 rooms' rather than 'light in 3 rooms'. He created a small hole on roof-top to light all the 3 rooms with same solar-light; he white-washed the kitchen walls to reflect more light there.
12) India can be the center of business-model innovation (soft super-power of solutions) - whether it be solutions for poverty alleviation and sustainability. Only in India, you have such a confluence of rich and poor, educated and uneducated. The youth of this country has to be more sensitive towards the rural india.
13) If Poverty is alleviated, Dubai will collapse :)
14) Frustration is the key to motivation (perhaps the most powerful line of the evening) - There is nothing wrong in being frustrated, esp. when you are young. Don't settle down until you find your destination; keep looking!
Dr. Harish gave some really insightful views and here are the excerpts:
1) He could get into IIT because 600 mn others didn't know what IIT is. Had they known, it was close to impossible for him to get into IIT. Maybe true.
I myself am really fortunate to get one of the most subsidized educations in the world. Even the lunch that we ate was subsidized by some 8 Rs., which was paid by the govt.
2) Travel and explore when you are young. In case your dad is not uber-rich, always have rich-friends :)
3) How to gel with a different community: It is better not to know the language initially because when you don't know a language, you are all the same (same as the auto-rickshaw driver)
4) The deeper you go into the economic strata, the more you pay for basic services like cooking gas, electricity etc.
5) India's Human Development Index is a pathetic 131 (8% growth is actually a mirage and even that is history now)
6) Rural cooking : 2 meals a day = 2 packs of cigarettes!!
7) 20mn girls in this country are collecting woods, and as the forest cover is receding, it takes them more time to collect woods as compared to the prev. generation. So many households live on the forest eco-system which is getting destroyed at an alarming rate. Look at the malls in Bangalore and Gurgaon with all the glass buildings. They are so energy-inefficient.
8) Street vendor is the ultimate social-entrepreneur (there are 2 crores of them in India) - he/she will come to your house daily to distribute vegatables (be it floods or any calamity), they will take 900 Rs. loan in the morning, pay interest of 100 rs. (11% per day!), 15 rs. for policemen, 50 Rs. for the cart and sell off all their stuff by the evening. Comprare them with Kingfisher, with all the Chartered accountants and technology at its helm, it still incurs an annual loss of 7000 Cr.!!
9) Have you ever heard of any non-english speaking person getting any equity investment?? The world is skewed towards privileged people, who are most likely to default and commit frauds.
10) Privilege education is actually a bottleneck. It constraints your thinking, makes you shallow and reduces your risk-appetite. And this is particularly true for Indians. Selco receives far more applications from MIT and Yale than IITs to work in their rural-labs (some 300 kms from Bangalore). They have stronger tie-ups with MIT D-lab than any IIT in India.
11) Some of the so called 'ordinary folks' working in his organization 'Selco' have come up with the most radical ideas. Recently, they faced a problem of lighting a rural household, which had 3 different rooms. An ordinary B.Com grad viewed this as a problem of 'lighting 3 rooms' rather than 'light in 3 rooms'. He created a small hole on roof-top to light all the 3 rooms with same solar-light; he white-washed the kitchen walls to reflect more light there.
12) India can be the center of business-model innovation (soft super-power of solutions) - whether it be solutions for poverty alleviation and sustainability. Only in India, you have such a confluence of rich and poor, educated and uneducated. The youth of this country has to be more sensitive towards the rural india.
13) If Poverty is alleviated, Dubai will collapse :)
14) Frustration is the key to motivation (perhaps the most powerful line of the evening) - There is nothing wrong in being frustrated, esp. when you are young. Don't settle down until you find your destination; keep looking!
