Make a Social Investment Today – An Entry for ISB iDiya Contest

In 1999, in an unknown school in Gujarat, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam asked his audience of students a very difficult question – What is the biggest issue faced by our country? There were, obviously, a lot of answers. Amidst the multitude of answers, one answer attracted his attention. It appeared to be very superficial at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he agreed with the relevance and depth of the little girl’s view. Eventually, the answer inspired his famous book Ignited Minds, which he dedicated to that girl. The answer also forms the basis of my monologue here. The answer was ‘Poverty’.

At first glance, poverty doesn’t even seem to be social cause. Indeed, it seems to be more of an effect of a plethora of other problems. But when you crack the surface and probe deeper, you realize that poverty forms a part of a vicious circle leading to several other problems like illiteracy, unemployment, increased crime rate and terrorism.

The poor man struggles to just barely feed the stomachs of his family. In his desparation, he seeks to have more children so that they all work and bring some money in, thus aggravating the problem of population explosion on one hand, and child labour on the other. In addition, with his limited resources, he can barely think of educating all of kids. He then chooses, for the sake of his future benefit, to educate his sons and put an end to the ambitions of his daughters. By doing this, he adds his bit to the national statistics of illiteracy. At the same time, he also creates for his daughters a life of low social status, abuse and deprivation. I often wonder what these young boys would think of the women in their life. Would they grow up learning to discriminate, as they have seen it in their family, or would they give them the equal status women deserve? I leave the conclusion to you.

But what if he is so poor that he cannot even afford to educate his sons? That further leads to unemployment, and he is trapped a vicious circle with no way out. What do his sons do then? Resort to crime? Theft, robbery, arson? These disillusioned boys fall easy prey to the machinations of anti social elements. At the price of food and shelter for their families, they can be so easily brainwashed! What do we have in front of our eyes now – a fundamentalist? A terrorist?

But a poor man doesn’t just create problems in his wake. He is more often at the receiving end, very much susceptible to every sort of calamity – ranging from natural disasters like floods and earthquake to economic ones like inflation. He has no money to spare for medical emergencies, leading to additional misery. He is also more vulnerable to being cheated and being deprived of his fundamental rights. And all of these things fix him firm in a state of perpetual poverty from which, seemingly, there is no escape.

And what has the Government done to alleviate this problem? They have provided highly subsidised grains and fuel for those below the poverty line. But the definition of the poverty line is a joke in itself, especially in the current times of inflation. They have provided free food for school going children and several employment schemes for the jobless, but the schemes are rampant with corruption, and the benefits do not reach a lot of the needy poor. Even with a ridiculously low poverty line, a significantly high portion of our population falls below it – and that is a shameful situation for our shining India.

So then, is there a way out? Can you and I in some way help break this vicious circle? I believe we can. I have tried doing so and succeeded too, to some extent, by introducing microcredit to break the circle at one point,. Microcredits are small amounts of loans which can enable a poor family to start a small business or expand an existing one. We can lend an amount which isn’t so substantial for us, and this small amount can go a long way in solving the problem of low income. With the help of organizations like Rang De, people like us can empower a family to emerge out of its problems.

Deriving its motivation from the Grameen Bank, Rang De was launched in January 2008, with the belief that the peer to peer lending model could be leveraged to lower the cost of microcredit. Through a network of committed field partners and social investors, they reach out to needy communities through microcredit. The microcredit is collected through several investors, i.e. us, through their web interface at rangde.org.

Rangde believes in a vision of making poverty a history in India. Do you?

This entry was a winner for the ISB iDiya for IndiChange contenst. As a part of contest rules, the prize money was donated directly to Rangde.