First Prize
Katuri Kodanda Pani
Poverty and hunger go hand in hand. Poverty is a consequence of landless labour and dry land agriculture in most states. By improving the income of poor people through livelihood means, improving their skills to become self reliant and employable, increasing productivity and crop yields, we can eliminate poverty, hunger and improve food security.
If we have universal PDS with wide basket (including micronutrients) to provide nutritional food access to all; decentralise procurement so that state governments buy directly from local farmers what is available and suitable in local conditions, this would help farmers improve their income levels. A widened PDS basket with coarser cereals and pulses would help dry land agricultural farmers…
Have a national council for skill development integrating all institutional training centres; merge the training centres at district level into one training institute; form training groups for agricultural methods, bio-agri inputs, value added products, food packaging, food processing, allied activities (like fishery, poultry, dairy); entrepreneurship in small scale industries, and services (like health, BPO, Grama Seva centres) and get NGOs with expertise, public and private institutions as members of the district training institute. Organise periodic training at the district training institute and regular visits by the training groups to rural and urban areas for getting people to improve their skills.
Establish planning councils at village level with panchyats and NGOs as members, and put the Block Development Office in command to prepare plans for NREGA programme (in creating of assets). This would help people participate in developmental projects. Allocate 5% of the funds for social audit, peoples grievance mechanism and awareness programme about people’s rights under NREGA with NGO partnership; get NREGA workers to provide labour in agriculture and small scale industries; develop the skills of NREGA workers during non-working days by connecting them to the training programmes -- this would not only eradicate poverty, but also develop human resource.
Establish an MDG-Council at the national level with branches at the state level with retired civil servants and judges, NGOs (involved in health, education, child care and women development) and persons from the media as members. Also create MDG-Youth at the national level with branches at the district level with students, rural and urban youth as members. MDG-Youth would reach people, particularly rural poor and in urban slum dwellers, and share with them information and knowledge and assist them in utilising the government and NGO programmes and services. Also, MDG-Youth would do social audit for all the government programmes and schemes related to MDGs. The MDG-Council will train the MDG-Youth in taking information and knowledge to people and for social auditing. MDG-Councils would promote people’s participation, publish discussions, social audit reports and public interest litigations...
Expand school infrastructure by adding more schools along with existing schools under Government-public partnership (design and development by government and management by the village community) to provide quality and accountable education. Expand the number of bridge schools and rehabilitation centres for child labourers and street children through Government-NGO participation. MOU between NGOs and Government with time bound targets to bring girls, street children and child labourers into schools. Educational mobile vans with NGOs and contract teachers provide education during weekends in rural areas where there is no access to education till full infrastructure is developed.
The curriculum should focus on issues of humanity and gender equality. Vocational training in summer holidays to provide the employable education.
Set up mobile women and children courts (with staff from the family courts ) to reach justice to women and children at the door step. Social audit of all the women and children related schemes should be done by MDG-Youth and it should report directly to the National Commission for Women and the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights respectively to make the executive accountable and strengthen the justice delivery mechanism for women and children. Have public discussions on gender equality and women’s empowerment through regular columns on women’s issues by national and regional papers which give probable solutions, status about steps taken by the bureaucrats, the Parliament and judiciary. Also regular coverage of government schemes, how to access them and grievances related to that scheme by newspapers would help.
...Expand the number of primary health care centres and extend their services and facilities to all type of common diseases (including HIV/AIDS and malaria) in rural areas and urban slums along with family planning centric facilities. House surgeons should be effectively utilised by mandatory duties in primary health centres for a minimum of six months. As an immediate step, provide the mobile health vans with ASHA workers, a doctor, general medicines and equipment to reach each village and slum area for a health check up and medication for pregnant women, children and disease affected people. These vans can bring the pregnant women to hospital for institutional delivery. Such vans are urgently needed particularly in Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Running of mobile health vans by Government and NGOs with corporate partnership as is being done by the Andhra Pradesh Government and Satyam.
...Provide sanitation facilities to all by building low-cost toilets and community toilets through MOU between NGOs like Sulabh and the government with time-bound targets to achieve total sanitation and include sanitation projects in NREGA works. Provide safe drinking water to all villages through rain water harvesting along with watershed development and underground flood water storage under NREGA works and maintain these under public-private partnership like the one that currently exists in Tamil Nadu. Mobile safe drinking water tanks to be provided by the government and NGOs in states like Rajasthan where people walk 5 Kms to access the drinking water. Provide bottled water in areas affected by fluoride-contaminated water.
Promote an institute at the global level like the Global Economic and Development Council(GEDC) as suggested by Joseph Stiglitz for studying and assisting policy formulation in developing and poor countries. Call for financial assistance with subsidised interest rates for developing and poor countries for developmental projects through a separate window in World Bank with annual targets for each developmental sector…
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Second Prize Nupur Tiwari
Sixty four million hectares of fertile land, 41% population below the 34 years, 6.75-7.25 projected GDP growth rate but are we heading towards sustainable development? Picture this while our corporate czars are making to Forbes list of the richest: Nand Lal, a daily wager has mere Rs 25 in his pocket and a family of five to support; the nation is looking towards Maha Lakshmi puja of Diwali and another Sarita is forced to commit suicide after being raped by the guardians of society, and while I am penning down my essay hoping to abridge India, 40% of my counterparts in Bharat would fail to even read it...
Achieving the eight Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 was a herculean task in itself and add to it recession woes. India has shown progress in income goals only, that too with huge disparity between its urban and rural areas. 42% population lying below the international poverty line (1.25$ per day) bear a testimony to failure of more than 200 welfare schemes launched in last four decades.
We have no reliable source of data on actual number of poor in our country. According to a CSO survey on the number of BPL families, developed states like Andhra Pradesh were found to have nearly 90% families below poverty line!
Policies evolved on basis of such unrealistic data produce absurd results. The Rs 100 crore loan package of Kerala government for rehabilitation of expatriates rendered jobless due to recession had just fiur beneficiaries! The reason- The anticipated 5 lakh people were mostly construction labourers with no inclination and education to start a business.
In NREGA, UPA’s flagship programme 40% fund was found to have been siphoned off by corrupt officials in Tikamgarh(MP) & Lalitpur(UP).
So the main causes of failure of government policies are:
· Lack of adequate research
· Inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy
Taking care of these causes would require the following steps:
Towards Zero Poverty(Goal-1)
1) 60% population is engaged in agriculture which contributes only 17% to GDP. Raising 1% of agricultural productivity can reduce 0.37% poverty.
2) Reliance of a huge proportion of population on a sector with zero employment elasticity is an unsound economic practice. Diversify the skills of people in rural areas so that they can take up non-farming professions.
3) Welfare schemes should focus on building infrastructure like roads and rural electrification rather than providing subsidies and compensations.
4) Cut down excess workforce in government ventures like Air India and compensate jobs lost by exploring virgin areas like green technology. This may appear to some as loss of loyal vote bank but in the long run will improve quality of life for all.
Enlightening India(Goal-2)
1) India may have succeeded in taking its primary school attendance to 87% but fails to provide quality education. Check high student to teacher ratio and high dropout rate as enrolment in higher education is a meagre 12%.
2) There should be a uniform medium of instruction. Those educated in regional languages fail to pursue medicine and engineering as these are taught in English.
3) Education is meaningful only with socio-economic progress so NCC and NSS should be given more weightage.
4) Set up schools in remote areas. In states like Uttarakhand children have to walk upto 3 Kms for primary schooling and upto 10 Kms for secondary education.
With a Healing Touch (Goal-4 & 6)
1) India has little more than 0.7 hospitals per 1000 people. Set up more hospitals, dispensaries and medical colleges by allocating more funds to healthcare sector.
2) Provide clean drinking water to all. Ban tobacco & cigarettes.
3) Fight AIDS by providing sex education in schools. Mobilize NGOs and celebrities to promote the use of contraceptives.
4) Mobilize student groups under NSS to clean social places with co-operation from the community. This will serve the dual purpose of keeping diseases like malaria and typhoid under check and instilling virtues of cleanliness in youth.
For Consent of Mother Nature (Goal-7 & 8)
1) Give tax concessions to builders and industries using green technology.
2) Classify cars as “small” on the basis of engine size rather than “length” to give tax incentives to fuel efficient models.
3) Arrest falling groundwater levels and soil erosion by rain water harvesting, watershed management, building check dams and ponds. Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh) has increased its ground water level by nearly a metre by building 500 check dams with community involvement.
Ensuring Better lives for our “Better Halves” (Goal-3 & 5)
1) Women empowerment is the most effective way to “combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development which is truly sustainable. Doctors should take a firm stand against pre-natal sex determination which has resulted in 80 million “missing girls” till date. NGOs, civil societies, schools and doctors can help in fostering respect for women.
2) Every 93 minutes a woman is burnt for dowry, every hour a woman is raped yet atrocities against them go unreported due to social pressure. Education can empower her to stand up for her rights.
3) To ensure their better representation 33% seats in legislative assemblies should be reserved for women.
4) According to a survey only 39% deliveries take place in institutions and 47% under supervision of skilled attendants which calls for expansion of healthcare services.
5) To provide emergency obstetric care and referral facility better roads and interdisciplinary collaboration between doctors, nurses and midwives is needed.
6) Reduce adolescent pregnancies by organizing counselling sessions by doctors.
The above mentioned measures will produce desired results only when common man, local governing bodies, civil societies, NGOs, bureaucracy and the government act in unison. Focus should shift from fund allocation to producing desired results by improving accountability. So let us unite and pledge to make India a “Gandhi’s India” by 2015.
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Third Prize
Bharat Bhatti
In India the main gaps and challenges in achieving MDGs lie in:
- Low level of youth participation in the nation building process
The youth population of a country is economically most productive and spatially most mobile. But unfortunately, the youth in India are disillusioned in the mad race of survival. There is widespread illiteracy and high rate of unemployment among the youth. Surveys show that only 8% of the total youth population is able to get into higher education. In such a situation we cannot expect the youth force to take the plunge and work for alleviating national problems.
- Low level of commitment of the elected members
The politicians in India have always been more interested in their own vested interests rather than the nation’s interests. A large number of them have criminal records. Anything substantial cannot be expected from them sans adequate pressure.
- Corruption and inefficiency in the bureaucracy
The bureaucracy in India has not yet shed its colonial framework of functioning. The Mai-Baap culture of working has bred apathy and corruption. There is a strong nexus between the politicians and the civil servants which has led to inefficiency making true what Rajiv Gandhi once said that only about 15% of the money spent by the government reaches the actual beneficiary.
-Infant Civil Society
The Civil Society in India is yet to realise its full potential. The latent calibre of this sector can be efficiently utilised for the attainment of MDGs. Apart from some dozen perseverant NGOs in different sectors a lot of advancement is pertinent in the country.
-Paucity of Funds
There is relatively low level of capital formation in India and the government in constraint of increasing defence spending has never been able to spend adequate amounts of fund for the social sector.
The most important thing that needs to be done, if Millennium Development Goals have to be attained in due time, is:
Galvanise the youth and provide them opportunities so that they can have a say in the nation building process. More than 60 years of democratic rule has made it clear that the government alone is incompetent of delivering to the social sector development targets. Now there is a tilt towards the private sector in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility. But the retrospection of the private sector seriously doubts their capability as well as willingness to be a medium to serve these goals. In such conditions, the youth should be entrusted this noble task of nation building.
Before delving into the heart of the topic, I must cite an example where the participation of the youth has been able to bring a difference in the life of the poor rural folk. The famous development economist- Jean Drèze, who is a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, calls upon university students to come and work with him for the better implementation of NREGA. These students in teams of four carry out sample surveys, social audits, awareness generation and even mass Jan Sunvais in the backward districts of the country. In one such programme in June 2009, the teams stationed at Sarguja (Chhattisgarh) and Khunti and Palamu (Jharkhand) opened up Sahayta Kendras in their respective Janpad Panchayats (Block Offices) to provide a grievance redressal mechanism to the poor illiterate NREGA workers. This innovative scheme was quite a success as the students were able to clear delayed payments worth thousands of rupees by mounting pressure on the block administration. Also, in Khunti, as a result of the persistent efforts of the
students, 5.3 lakh rupees worth compensation for delayed payments was paid to
265 NREGA workers. The teams unearthed a number of corruption cases like the one in Kharsura village (Sarguja) where 3.5 lakh rupees were siphoned off in the
name of a ‘Naveen Talaab’ which in fact, was never dug. The teams submitted
their reports to the District Collectors as well as the Secretary, Rural
Development for further action.
Apart from such action-oriented works, there are many other instances which illustrate how the potential of the youth could be effectively harnessed to reap desired benefits. The voluntary works and shram-daan at Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathan [MKSS], Rajasthan is also a good example.
The responsibility that the youth of this country can take on their shoulders can be summarised subject wise as:
1. Poverty and Hunger
To eradicate poverty and hunger, we need to first eradicate unemployment. We have to strengthen the Rural Employment Act by infusing youth participation through methods cited above. Simultaneously we have to press for an Urban Employment Act as well. NGOs can play a considerable role by giving the youth opportunities to labour in the backward rural areas, affecting these schemes to work properly. They can create a platform for the youth to arrange social audits; unannounced visits to PDS shops and anganwadis (under ICDS) and then file complaints against the culprits after taking stock of the situation.
To eradicate extreme hunger there is an urgent need for a Right to Food Bill. The present government is trying to propose one such bill under the name ‘National Food Security Mission’ (NFSM), but in reality this is going to make people more vulnerable to hunger as it reduces the amount of food (from 35 Kg rice to 25 Kg) and increases the price (from Rs 2 to Rs 3) for BPL card holders. The civil society with the assistance of the youth must resist any such move and force the government to enact an appropriate bill as was done by the Peoples Action for Employment Guarantee in the case of NREGA.
2. Education and Gender Equality.
Throughout the planned development, creation of physical infrastructure has always been a thrust area in all the literacy programmes. But side by side schemes which do not need much infrastructure like - mobile schools, home schools and panchayat schools should be launched with the active participation of the local educated youth. This would specifically be beneficial for the goal of women empowerment. Innovative schemes should be chalked out to increase the reach of our education programmes to the hitherto untouched folk - like, a girl student should be given additional weightage in exams or a scholarship if she teaches her mother.
When a local educated youth is appointed teacher in his/her own village, he/ she becomes more accountable which increases the quality of education imparted. Also, it checks migration. Apart from this, moral education and basic law should form a part of the school curricula. It will turn children into law abiding citizens.
3. Health and Environment.
It should be compulsory for all the medical undergraduates studying in the state-funded institutions to practice at least one year in vulnerable rural areas as part of their degree programmes. This should be increased to two years if the student wants to work abroad after getting his degree. There are two reasons for such strictness in this case:
Firstly, in a country like India which is so rearward in the health sector, the prospective doctors studying in state-funded institutions cannot enjoy the luxury of working abroad without giving anything in return to this poor country.
Secondly, doctors and engineers in India remain so engrossed in their professional studies that most of them are totally detached of the social and economic conditions prevalent in this country.
In this scheme of attainment of Millennium Development Goals, the youth are the principal agents of change. The youth today, need a platform to deliver.
Apart from this, it should be obligatory for every public institution in the country to suffuse the youth in their working ethos. This could be done by giving internships to college students as being introduced by the Reserve Bank of India in the name of ‘RBI Young Scholars’ which is a part of its financial literacy drive.
Click here to see an exhibition of prize-winning ideas
The workshhop - Transforming Ideas into Action: The Building of a Healthy and a Prosperous India - was held at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi on December 12, 2009, as the second phase of the nation-wide campaign Mera India, Bridge the Gap.
Students active in National Social Service NSS, Social Service Leagues and socially active youth from St. Stephen’s College, Kamla Nehru College, Jesus and Mary College, Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology, Kirori Mal College, Dayal Singh College, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Jamia Millia Islamia attended the workshop. Journalism students from the Times Centre for Media Studies and the Indian Institute of Mass Communications also participated.
In the opening address, Pamela Philipose, Director, Women's Feature Service, gave an overview of India’s performance on MDGs and emphasized the existing gaps. This was followed by an introduction on the campaign and workshop by Shree Venkatram, Director, Unnati Features. The contest and the campaign was hosted by the two media organisations.
Following this, two young men, Raghav Pal and Varun Kapoor shared how they had formed a Youth Welfare Association in Lajpat Nagar and their experience of engaging local youth and elected representatives in improving the living conditions in the area.
Pooja Parvathi from the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability gave a presentation on how citizens can track public expenditure with examples from the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and the Mid-day Meal Scheme. 
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