Social challenge awards of Rs20 crore: A Gandhian legacy

The fact that there is not a single challenge award at the national level illustrates the logic of inertia and indifference that the state has towards the unsolved problems of the common people. Not to speak about the problems that has been emerging as a consequence of development.

The country has not learned to say, “enough, no more”, to the problems that we have been living with.

Way back in 1929, Gandhiji was faced with a similar problem. He realised that if khadi had to become an alternative to the mill-made clothes from England, then charkha had to become more efficient. He offered an award of Rs1 lakh (7,700 pounds, more than Rs20 crore today) to anyone who could come out with a new design of charkha.

The conditions that the future design should meet were specified. Isn’t it a time that hundreds of crore that government intends to spend on Dandi memorial or thousands of crore other such extravaganza are utilised for developing solutions to the problems that poor people face, be it the manhole workers, paddy trans-planters or other problems that I will enumerate next.

There is no dearth of millionaires and billionaires in the country. How is it that the conscience of no one pricks them to offer crore or even lakh as an award to solve problems with which we have been living with for millennia, centuries or even decades.  NIF may not be able to afford such attractive prizes but will soon announce challenge awards for some of the problems.

Let me illustrate some of these problems. All of us eat rice without thinking about the drudgery that the women have to go through while transplanting paddy. We must develop already developed manual trans-planters, for example by Photo Singh, Baghpat, UP and battery or motor driven trans-planters, which women workers could afford to own and provide services. In Bastar, women use stones to crush mahuah seeds to extract kernel and press it using wooden logs to extract oil.

Large variety of forest products today go out of forests as unprocessed raw material ensuring thereby, continued poverty of tribals. We have to develop low cost, low energy requiring grinder, pulverising unit, dryer, fractional distillation apparatus, human powered UV treatment unit (such as developed by Dr Jain in Bilaspur) for ensuring in-situ value addition. There is no way naxalite problem can be solved in the long term without providing them viable and affordable opportunities.

The norms of FDA requiring 1,000 sq mtrs of a space with five separate rooms may not be required for making many of the high quality ayurvedic medicines. Increase in the growth of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) has to go hand-in-hand with high-quality manufacturing units.

In many of the high poverty regions, numerous crops and their local varieties are grown, each one of which may have unique food processing potential, already known to local women in many cases. Neither national nor state level gene banks have characterised the germ-plasm for their nutraceutical or food processing potential.

I could add dozens of more challenges but the message is simple. We need public spirited, entrepreneurs, politicians and officials to come forward and say, “enough, no more” to the problems. I look forward to hear from such people soon.     anilgb@gmail.com