Manipal: Dr. H Harish Hande who runs SELCO India that brings solar lamps to poor families and cottages in rural areas in South India by thousands is a Magsaysay award Winner ( a parallel Nobel Prize in Peaceful Development) and delivered a lecture on decentralized approach to sustainable energy through solar resources.
He spoke on Wednesday at Manipal of social entrepreneurship in a developing political economy, led by the poor and the hungry, through sustainable energy and a dedicated youth effort at TAPM, in Manipal on Wednesday for students of engineering and management courses.
Dr. Hande in his youthful looks brings a refreshing approach to economy in India, asking people to do some innovative business, which other developing countries in Africa(S.America/S.Asia as well) could follow.
There was no point, he averred, in following brazen American models of MC Donalds and Walmart (Big Bazaars and Drinks).
Our business models should take into account the geographic realities(of cultural vicissitudes and Varieties) that had differed from state to state, in a single country in modern global outlook, dominating a housing colony.
Dr. Hande has informed us that poor people by regular sacrificing of their food and labour have subsidised the comforts of richer classes in millions of rupees in India, who pay them less and take away more.
To cite a case, a construction worker builds 20 flats in a complex all of which go to some richer families that had financed the project, while he himself has no house to own, nor is he is paid in full, daily wages, while the builder corners everything and some flats too( free of cost that too on someone else’s land or plot).
The national economy is “not inclusive” of all its citizens but exclusive of a majority(60%) that is kept poorer than the burgeoning middle classes.
In the new political economy, just as all the poor have loans and solar lamps or resources to keep a welfare state also must count on the poorest and the poor masses.
There is a hidden market among them, if they are also included in a democratic economy as voters. But neither the Federal (UPA)/Central government nor the state government takes care of them, and the Welfare schemes fail half way through by misappropriation, to reach the poorer strata.
Dr. Hande certainly has shown and example in micro-economic challenge and achievement.