World Bank to provide 3-5 US bn funding to India

 PTI :New Delhi:13 April 2013

 World Bank today committed annual funding of $3-5 billion to India for next four years to push development projects and poverty eradication programmes.

“The World Bank Group would work towards continuing its level of annual assistance of $3 to $5 billion to India over the next four years,” president of multi-lateral funding agency Jim Yong Kim told reporters in New Delhi.

India’s dirty rivers. AFP

During the year ended June 2012, the World Bank Group gave loan of $3.2 billion for various projects including National Mission Clean Ganga.

Kim, who was on a three-day visit to India for the first time after taking over as the president last year, said the Bank will complement its enhanced financial lending with technical assistance and knowledge services to help India improve the implementation of its development programmes.

On whether World Bank is contemplating to close International Development Association (IDA), soft loans window, for India as it has become a middle-income country, he said: “We are in middle of discussions right now about our IDA strategy…we are going to be as creative as possible tomaintain our commitment to India at very high levels.”

The bank is concerned about the poor, and about 400 million people live in India, Kim said.

“We hope, especially working through IFC, $3-5 billion can leverage many more billions for investment in India. We believe that India is a good investment and we will deepen our engagement as much as we can, using every bit of flexibility and creativity to get there,” he said.

Kim said India has higher potential of growth than 6 per cent projected for the next fiscal. “We have seen signs of the economy having bottomed out. Six per cent is not a spectacular growth. India has many things going. The challenge is how to go back to the potential.”

On the ease of doing business, Kim said it is mostly a procedural issue and it can be tackled.

PTI

Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires - 2 :Chhotu Sharma

Chhotu Sharma equipped himself with computer know-how and discovered teaching skills. Photo: Anil Dayal

By Aditya Sharma :Reders Digest




“When you are determined, the odds are in your favour.”

Educate Yourself
When Chhotu Sharma graduated in 1998 with a BA degree from Government College, Dhaliara, near his village in Himachal Pradesh, he hadn’t ever used a computer. “My degree wouldn’t get me anywhere,” says the 37-year-old father of two, who moved to Chandigarh 15 years ago.

One of the biggest obstacles to making money is not having some professional education or special skills. “I was jittery about my future when a friend told me that a computer course would land me a Rs5000-a-month job,” says Chhotu, “and so I came to Chandigarh only to realize that my family couldn’t afford the fees.”

Chhotu, though, wasn’t going back empty-handed. He got a job as a peon at the local Aptech Computer Education Centre and managed to fund his one-year computer course as well. “To save money, I often skipped breakfast,” he recalls. Chhotu had to spend all day at the centre, which gave him a lot of free time to practise his computer lessons. He also started guiding other students with their programming lessons—and discovering his skills as a teacher.

After becoming a Microsoft certified software developer, Chhotu continued teaching, but he was now riding his bicycle by day to students’ homes for that. He was also taken on the Aptech faculty for their evening classes.

By 2000, Chhotu was earning enough to buy a motorbike and his first PC, with which he started his own computer institute in a rented two-room flat. In six months he had 80 students and more computers— all in a bigger place.

 Today, he teaches advanced software development to more than 1000 students in his own Chandigarh-based CS Infotech. About 125 employees work in CS Soft Solutions, his software development company in Mohali. In 2007, his home state honoured him a Himachal Gaurav Puraskar for his extraordinary contributions to information technology.

 Chhotu also helps those in need: he reaches out to deserving students, funds marriages and helps youngsters from his village get an education.

“Back in my village, I never thought I’d get this far,” says Chhotu. “But all it takes is a little extra education and effort to make it work.”

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Life 365, Page 5, 13th March 2013.

S.Ramadorai on the skilling challenges India faces

S. Ramadorai Photo: Rachit Goswami/www.indiatodayimages.com

B T : Chaitanya Kalbag and Shamni Pande       Edition: March 31, 2013


After a life spent powering TCS to its current position as the country's pre-eminent technology company, S. Ramadorai took over as Advisor to the Prime Minister in the National Council for Skill Development in February 2011. He spoke to Chaitanya Kalbag and Shamni Pande on the gigantic skilling challenge the country faces. Edited excerpts:

Q. It is two years snce you took charge. How are you tackling the skilling challenge?
A. The scale of the problem is huge. A combination of things has made it more complex. The notion that everybody should have a paper degree, whether it gets them a job or not, has sunk in so deeply that changing mindsets, making people realise that doing something with their hands is as important and can fetch a livelihood, (is difficult). This is what I call the whole advocacy issue. We are focusing a lot on advocacy.

After advocacy, you look at mobilisation. Mobilisation should be through discovering people's aptitudes rather than simply rounding up a bunch of kids and saying that from tomorrow you are doing vocational training whether you like it or not. 

Q. Are you saying there is an aspiration gap? People need something, but want something else?
A. Yes. It can only be changed with advocacy.

Q. Who is carrying out the advocacy?
A. All of us . All of you have to do so too.

Q. I think there is a feeling among young people that a proper job provides security such as provident fund, health insurance, etc, which jobs like welding do not.
A. Long-term benefits such as PF have to come into the vocational area as well. But to bring about a miracle where everything happens overnight (is not possible). We are trying to operate at the mindset level, we are trying to operate at a level where we introduce vocational skills in schools...all of these will take time.

Q. There seems to be a turf war over skilling. Could the effort get bogged down because of the different things different stakeholders and ministries want?
A. I think there are enough opportunities without getting into turf wars. And that is why I don't spend my time in Delhi. You have to be where the action is. Implementation is the only focus all of us must have. There are enough policies, enough opportunities, but implementation on ground is most difficult because it's like washing your own clothes. People hesitate to get into it, because it calls for rolling up your sleeves.

Q. What targets do you have?
A. The numbers are huge. Whether it is 300 or 500 million doesn't matter. The number during the 12th Plan and the 13th Plan - a 10-year period from 2012 to 2022 - is going to be critical. The number is based on the demographic profile of the country.

Q. But numbers show this skilling year's targets are not being met.
A. Yes. This year we will fall short of the target. But my worry would be more to ensure that people who go for vocational education and come out with training, get a job. It cannot be training for the sake of training. It has to be training with employment. 

Q. What has been done to formalise vocational education?
A. Pilot projects are running in Haryana, Assam.The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (in Mumbai is doing English language training in association with British Council…

Q. Any successes you can share?
A. You can go to the TCS office in Kolkata, where you can see the Udaan programme for Jammu & Kashmir. Youth from Kashmir have been trained and placed in BPO operations in the Kolkata office of TCS.

Q. How would you assess NSDC's performance?
A. NSDC has multiple responsibilities. One is to identify private sector partners. Then it takes a position by way of debt funding, or equity and debt funding. We assess how the partners are doing. It is not like funding is committed for the entire duration. It is based on performance. It has done a good job of selecting partners.

Q. But there are reports that NSDC will not be given further funding. Does this not jeopardise ongoing projects?
A. It is well funded enough for committing to the private partners it has identified. With the current credit situation squeeze in the country, there have been some cuts. It is a slight shift in the allocation probably, but it is not coming in the way of their performance.

Q. The prime minister has announced the setting up of a National Skill Development Authority. Will it not add to the complexity, with so many bodies already involved in skilling?
A. No. Once the NDSA is formed, the coordination of 17 ministries will come under this single authority. The NSDC will continue to work with the private sector. So these will be the only two agencies and the NSDA will also oversee the NSDC's functioning.

Q. What will your role be in the NSDA?
A. I have no idea, let the Authority get formed. I am focusing on my work.

The Village Voices of Tamil Nadu

Venus Upadhyaya

Venus Upadhyaya, right, in Pondicherry.

By Shanoor Seervai - a freelance writer based in Bombay.

 WSJ : Wednesday, March 13, 2013 9:17:18 GMT

A local newspaper project in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu empowers villagers to tell their own stories and report on news that matters to them.

‘Gramam Pudiya Udiyam’ (Village New Dawn) was inspired by Venus Upadhyaya, a journalist who grew up far away in Jammu and Kashmir.

 She spoke to The Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time about the project and how communities can use media to express themselves.

Edited excerpts:

The Wall Street Journal: Why did you want to become a journalist who works with communities?

Venus Upadhyaya: I come from a small city with few opportunities but lots of questions, particularly on how to use media for community development. I wanted to experience a form of journalism that mobilizes and inspires people to think independently.

In 2006, I quit my job with The New Indian Express, a national English daily, to assess a post-tsunami rehabilitation program in and around Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. The program worked with 30 scattered villages, and the people needed a way to connect with each other.

I was already interacting with children from the villages and helped them start a monthly newspaper. From then on, the project belonged to the children—they made the decisions. I only encouraged them to express their views and made sure the stories that were important to them were published on the front page. They even chose the name: “Minmini Poochi,” which means firefly, a small but powerful source of light.

WSJ: How did the adults respond to a children’s newspaper?

Ms. Upadhyaya: In most rural communities, parents don’t think that children can be wise, but I saw a group of children who needed a platform to voice their thoughts. When the first edition was circulated, something changed in the way these traditional fisher folk perceived their own children—with pride.

I learned that a community project couldn’t be successful if the people don’t feel a sense of ownership and involvement. People need to relate to the news they read. I wanted to follow this dream of experimenting with community media and facilitate a project that engaged not only children, but the community as a whole. I sent a copy of Minmini Poochi to the Sri Aurobindo Society Village Action and Movement in Pondicherry, and they asked me to facilitate the creation of a similar newspaper for seven nearby villages.

WSJ: What was different in your approach to this project?

Ms. Upadhyaya: I was only enabling a process of participation in these villages, watching it unfold without imposing my thoughts or ideas. I don’t speak the local language, Tamil, but this wasn’t a limitation. When I first arrived, I realized that the villages were divided along caste lines. The upper castes and scheduled castes hadn’t interacted with each other for centuries. SARVAM’s hope was that a community newspaper could dismantle notions of difference and make each caste aware of the problems the others face.

WSJ: How did SARVAM spark interest among people in the idea of a village newspaper?

Ms. Upadhyaya: We met with groups of people from each village and gave them clippings from local papers to demonstrate what mainstream media thinks is newsworthy. We asked them to create their own newspaper, using a simple layout and focusing on what they thought was important for the community. Then we established that a team of 10 coordinators and two photographers would gather news and contributions from each village. Initially, they had to go door-to-door and requested people to submit. Now they receive between 20 and 30 letters a month, and people get angry if their letters aren’t published.

WSJ: What are some of the challenges in sustaining ‘Gramam Pudiya Udiyam?’

Ms. Upadhyaya: The community coordinators constantly have to prevent interest groups from treating Gramam Pudiya Udiyam as a political mouthpiece. They have tried to address the problem by using neutral words and phrases in editorials, and not publishing news that promotes one vested interest over another.

WSJ: Has the newspaper empowered people in the village who can’t read and write?

Ms. Upadhyaya: People can perceive and analyze what is important to them even if they are not literate. The older women in the villages often ask their children or husbands to read to them. For example, take Lakshmi’s story: She is a 39-year-old woman who owns two cows and earns a decent income of around 6,000 rupees ($110) a month, but was illiterate. She told me that she felt left out amidst her family and friends when they talked about what they read in Gramam Pudiya Udiyam, but consoled herself by looking at the photos. One afternoon, her daughter, Kalpana, saw Lakshmi gazing at the paper and offered to teach her to read and write. With Kalpana’s help, she gradually gained basic literacy, and no longer feels left out.