Our country India is one of the fast growing nations in the globe. Since 1947 we have come a long way but sill one of the major issues we face is poverty.  Dr.Kalam begins his book “Ignited Minds” by stating “Our enemy is poverty”.  According to him “It is the root cause of all our problems and should be the object of our fight, not our own”

As we found who is our enemy, immediate question is how to destroy our enemy ?

“Cause of poverty is not lack of money, its absence of certain skill in a person that can be sold”

I am sharing some experience I had 2 years before.

I have a close friend named Sam Mathew (name changed). At that time he was the centre of his family who runs it and manages it (as his father was not able to work). He worked for some company X all day and he earned a salary of Rs.4k/- per month. With this money he was feeding a family of 4. Obviously its too difficult to run a family with that small amount. One day while we were talking, he told me “I would like to find some additional incomes.” He was not asking a help but he was just sharing. Later I went home and thought a little bit about his worries.  I had many options, I can help him with some money or I can help him some other ways but that will not solve his real problem. What he needed was some additional 5k/- every month. After little bit thinking, I decided to train him some skills in computer and internet. My plan was to train him some works on web so that he can be sold. The major hurdles I faced were, he didn’t know how to ON and OFF a computer then, his education had nothing to do with computers, and obviously he was not at all familiar with web. I started from basics and within a week I gave him the whole idea. Additional 2 more weeks of training (2hrs a day) and he got fit.  Next step is making his service meet all quality needs and time bound delivery. He acquired all those skills in one month and started selling himself. Well, this improved his life quality a lot. He bought a new computer, a new bike and modified his house. Later I suggested him to take a course on animation (as he’s a born artist) and he did so. Now he has a day job and manages to generate a decent income (may be more than his salary) by working online (part time). When I decided to train him, I didn’t even know things will turn around like this.

Another example:

This was when I decided to hire a new staff for our company. As our company focus Online Marketing stuffs like SEO, PPC etc, there’s no readymade skill available in Kerala. We need to train every one unless he/she is experienced.  In a normal case we need some IT professionals like Bsc(IT) or people who qualified some other courses like that. Avoiding those, I decided to give a shot @ ITI (Industrial Training Institute). I had a meeting with their placement officer and I asked him for computer related courses. They had 2, one is Data Entry training and other is Hardware course. I asked him to send his best people to my office. After meeting with some I selected one guy and he was from Hardware. At that time (even today) a Hardware guy may get only 1.5k to 2k per month (as starting pay). I offered him 2 times more than that amount during training period and promised to boost after training. It took about 3 or 4 months of training and he is one of our best guy now.

Point is:

I was trying to show 2 real life situations that improved life quality of 2 families.  Hence “poverty can be eliminated if all poor people can be trained with a particular skill (that is in demand)”

Who shall do this?

Everyone! You, me, the NGO’s, Organisations &  Government. It will work efficiently if a System is setup that reaches even the Panchayath levels. A panchayath can easily find who all are in BPL and it can train those people with additional skills and place them.

Donating money to poor never solves poverty bcz it trains poor people to become smart beggars! Instead make a system (donate money to this system) to train people with skills, so that it eliminates poverty and its root.

We shall always support NGO’s like Make A Difference who is working on a similar model.  There are many other organisations in India which works on a similar model. Some examples are “Kudumbasree” of Kerala govt, “Akshaya IT Mission” etc.  My intention of this post is, if you can also be a part of poverty elimination by training some people you know personally. At least you can suggest them which skill he/she should acquire so that they can get a better life. A collective effort will destroy our enemy, I am confident!

Get more Insight:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India