Chetan's Musings

The recently completed Shaheed Path in Lucknow - an elevated 6-lane expressway that allows quick access from the airport to eastern UP - is a driver's delight. If you're travelling to Faizabad, for example, the road can get you speeding towards your destination, bypassing Lucknow city almost completely, in a matter of minutes. If your visit is during the waning winter season, you will be enthralled by the miles of mustard fields on the way - the enchanting yellow atop green stretching for as far as the eyes can see. You can do your business in Faizabad and be back at the Lucknow airport to catch an evening flight, carrying with you an idyllic portrait of rural India, and feeling smug about improved infrastructure in the state of UP. Venture a little within the state, and you will quickly realize how deceiving this idyllic portrait can be. Barely 40 kms from Lucknow, within the Lucknow district itself, is the Mal block. On 19 Feb 2014, I made a visit to Mal to understand th...

Nearly 20% of India's population forms the base of the socio-economic pyramid, earning less than Rs. 100 per day By the time Mr. C.K. Prahalad published his most famous and cited work in August 2004, I had spent two years in Pratham, the largest primary education NGO in India. Till then, I had seen the innards of our metros - particularly Delhi and Mumbai - and had seen enough to know that the reverend management Guru had a point, but was not convinced in entirety. The book spoke of the BoP as the 4 billion poor of the world, living on an annual income of less than $1500 (which translated to just over Rs. 5000 per month then). In the Indian context, this Bottom of the Pyramid had a population of 400 million, around 40% of the country's people. But it was clearly visible, even then, that this BoP has several layers, and the bottom-most of these layers (often called the poorest of the poor) did not qualify for any of Prahalad's theorizations.  Thousands of young me...

I love my job! Especially on days when it takes me to some far-away, less-traveled destination. Over the past year-and-a-half, thanks to a project on evaluating the work of NGOs working on migrant workers, I've had the chance to visit several such locations across the country. Each visit has given me the chance to look at our land closely, to see nature at its most pristine. Here's a glimpse of some of these visits... This stretch of desert land comes to your left on the road from Jodhpur to Barmer in western Rajasthan. It's not the whole desert - just a small slice of it - as if nature decided to give you a sneak preview of the real thing that starts beyond Barmer. Needless to say, this came as a huge surprise as the rest of the land around is barren, but not really a desert. Sunrise near a hamlet called Devli in Mirzapur district, U.P. The Arthik Anusandhan Kendra runs a training centre at Devli, which springs at you in the middle of nowhere. I'd spent a n...