Spiti, a tranquil valley in Himachal Pradesh at an average altitude of 3600 meters is home to around 10,000 Buddhists. Spiti Ecosphere is a social enterprise formed by the collaborative effort of the local community and professionals from diverse backgrounds with the aim of creating sustainable livelihoods linked to nature and culture conservation.

Spiti Ecosphere is focussing on the economic empowerment, development and conservation of the region through their range of products and services. These include the following:

• Eco Travel which takes us close and personal with the mighty Himalayas and the nature & culture of Spiti. It is an initiative to promote eco-tourism in the region. Eco Travel offers various options to the discerning traveler ranging from a Spiritual Sojourn of the monasteries to the Pugmarks where one gets to track the elusive snow leopard and the Himalayan wolf in the midst of this treasure trove of biological diversity.
• Organics – Spiti’s unique ecosystem is richly endowed with various indigenous species. Ecosphere has streamlined the process for extracting and sourcing these rare Himalayan herbs including SeaBuckthorn popularly known as the “Wonder Berry”
• Conservation – Mountain ecosystem and economics share a symbiotic relationship, and maintaining the balance with the environment is critical to the sustainability of livelihoods. Muse, Spiti SeaBuckthorn Society and Spiti Trans-Himalyan Action Group have been working in the region on the issues of climate change, promoting renewable energy, waste management and the Dhangkar initiative. Dhangkar, originally called Dhakkar meaning ‘citadel on a cliff’, was the erstwhile capital of Spiti . The Dhangkar Monastery is one of the five major monastic centres in Spiti and belongs to the Gelug–pa sect of Vajrayana Buddhism. It is a heritage conservation site in a state of despair listed in the ‘World’s Hundred Most Endangered Sites’ by the World Monuments Watch Program. Check out www.dhangkar.com to know more about Dhangkar

In the near future, Ecosphere plans to come up with some very innovative projects. One of them includes “Environment education in schools”, the belief being that awareness about the environment should start early by educating children in schools. They are also planning to come up with a short documentary showcasing the Spiti way of living and at the same time sensitising travelers and communities on how to ensure that it remains preserved.

To know more about Spiti Ecosphere and the wonderful work they are carrying out in this beautiful valley of the Himalayas, visit their website at http://www.spitiecosphere.com/

You can also connect with them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55566667952

For volunteering and other opportunities, mail them at info[at]spitiecosphere[dot]com

Introducing SourcePilani, a company that is bringing the concept of BPO to rural India, starting off from the small town of Pilani in Rajasthan.

SourcePilani provides high quality and low cost BPO services by leveraging the hitherto untapped talent that rural India has to offer to the growing Indian economy. In addition to providing employment to the local people, SourcePilani is also providing the rural youth an exposure to the paths of progress being witnessed in the bigger Indian cities.

The basic model followed by SourcePilani includes identifying youth from various schools/colleges who are interested in taking up a BPO career. Since most applicants are from Hindi medium of instruction, they are put through an English training course for a period of 3 months. Post this, the recruits are put on the job under the supervision of team leaders who groom the new comers and make them able to handle the tough requirements of a BPO career. As an outcome of all of this, the youth of Pilani have been able to increase their income levels and over a period of time the economic spectrum of the town will also be enhanced. This is a wonderful way of executing inclusive growth and progress. Here is a sample of a couple of recruits who have joined SourcePilani and how their lives has been transformed:

Rajendar Singh (Raju). Qualification: 10+2 (Hindi Medium) Raju like many of the youth in this part of the country was aspiring to get into the Indian army, unfortunately after several trials he couldn’t get through. His father is a Technician in the workshop in BITS Pilani and he was the only source of Income for a family of 4. Before joining SourcePilani, Raju lived the life of an unemployed for more than 3 years and SourcePilani gave him a chance to build his career in the BPO space. One year back he used to struggle to talk in English and his keyboard skills and computer skills were minimal. After undergoing a 3 month training Raju was put into on-the-job training where he honed his skills and improved upon his language capability. He started off with a petty salary which was <100 rupees a day a year ago and today with his hard work and sincerity he has been promoted to the level of Team Leader, for SourcePilani’s Internet Marketing Team. He manages complex jobs like Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing and he heads a team of 5 members. Currently he draws a Salary of 5000 rupees which is a significant financial support for his family.

Pooja. Qualification: BSc. (Hindi Medium)
Pooja has been working with SourcePilani for over a year now. There are very few girls in the organization today and this is mostly because of the cultural aspects in Rajasthan. Pooja and her parents made the right decision to send her to work, by neglecting all the peer pressure from the society. Like Raju, even Pooja started off with a petty salary and today she earns a salary of over 5000 and she is able to fund the education of her two younger sisters.

Check out the following table to get an idea of the impact that SourcePilani is having on the economic progress of the town’s inhabitants:

To get a visual idea of what SourcePilani is doing and their impact on the society, please check out the video embed below:

If you are unable to see the embed above, please click here to view the video.

You can know more about SourcePilani and contact them at their website: www.sourcepilani.com

Here comes the latest in the wonderful series of profiles from our guest writer, Utkarsh Joshi. This is the story of Padmashree Dr. Anil Joshi, who learnt early in life that in order to develop the hill community where he worked as a lecturer, he would have to focus on rural advancement and making the best use of local resources. Read on to know how he brought about this revolution.

To the people of the hills in the upper reaches of India he is no less than a messiah and what he has achieved is no less than a miracle. Padmashree Dr. Anil Joshi, or “Sir” as the local populace refers to him, has made it his life’s mission to make the villagers in the hills more self reliant – by promoting the local economy through local means and by upgrading generational hand-me-down wisdom.

Dr. Anil Joshi was born in 1955 in Kotdwara – a small town on the edge of Uttrakhand, at the foothills of the Shivalik range of the Himalayas. A bright student, he did well through school and college and after completing his PhD. in environmental science he eventually joined the Kotdwara government college as a lecturer. But being a man of the hills, he wanted to do more for the mountain community than just research. With inaccessibility, a lack of infrastructure, and most of the men folk either working in urban centers or foot soldiers in the army – these communities were getting increasingly dependent on urban centers and products for their livelihood. The answer as per the young Dr. Joshi was rural development and one which needed to employ local resources and make the villagers self reliant.

That was the initial thought with which he tried to break ice with the locals, telling them that he was a social worker. But most of the villagers he first approached shunned him, telling him that since he was not staying with them, he would not know enough to help! When he remarked he was a social worker – they asked why he didn’t think of roads or schools. But he remained patient and slowly worked on building his relationship with the hill community. It’s a relationship which has prospered in the intervening 29 years and brought about a silent revolution in the way these communities exist today.

He began alone, but decided to give a more formal name and face to his approach, and thus Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization or HESCO was formed in 1981. Some of his students and colleagues joined him as well. Based on their fundamental principles of participatory research and with a combination of science and tradition, they have gone to villages and enlisted local people to help them with their research. Doing this, they have developed new things while at the same time upgrading their hand-me-down knowledge to make them more relevant in today’s age. For instance, the hills were overrun with ‘Kurri’ a wild shrub which was identified by the HESCO team as a weed. They identified uses for the shrub in order to control its growth. The sticks were strong enough to be used for furniture, the flowers and leaves could be used for incense sticks and the leftovers as fodder for goats! This has provided employment as well as monetization. HESCO has also worked on upgrading the local water mill used to grind grain or the ‘gharat’ – to make it an effective tool for power generation and provided indigenous electricity to these villages. According to Dr. Joshi, if all the traditional ‘gharats’ are modernized in the same way, local employment can mushroom while at the same time the hills can produce up to 2500MW of power for the country at practically no cost!

Stopping landslides and soil erosion using biological methods; creating a social platform for women to generate employment and marketing opportunities; advocating forest fire prevention and disaster management methods; circulating a local children’s newspaper; using local development as a tool to wean away youth from anti social activities in border states – these are just some of the activities that HESCO and Dr. Joshi have been tirelessly working on to bring about a change. His highly educated team gets paid between Rs 2000 and Rs 6000 per month but their motivation keeps them going.

The government and the international community have also taken note of the stellar work that is being done by Dr. Joshi and team. Dr. Joshi was awarded the Padamshree in 2006 and HESCO works closely with government organizations like the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Bio-Technology, BSF, ITBP, CRPF, the Social Security Board – to name a few.

Dr Joshi’s role model is Mahatma Gandhi, and he believes that to help the common people, one needs to stay with them and stay like them. Thus he leads a simple and austere life with the villagers and knows that his work is far from done. But he can sit back and be satisfied as an agent of change for his first love – the hills. It is not everyone who has the satisfaction of doing something which impacts close to 5 lakh villagers, in more than 10,000 villages, spread across 9 mountain states of the Himalayas.

The mountain man has truly lived up to his name.

To learn more about HESCO and their work, visit their website.

For a while our focus has been largely on the social, environmental and other developments happening across India. There has been little, if any, cheer to be found on the economic front with the world as a whole looking at bleak days ahead. However, it is evident that Indians still have a reason for optimism. Compared to the global economy, the Indian financial system is definitely more firmly rooted and toiling along quite impressively. Despite the horror of recession looming large over most other nations, the finance ministry still predicts a growth rate of 7%, and it does not seem unachievable at this point of time.

Another happy news is for the Indian universities and B-schools. In these times of turmoil, foreign grads of reputed business schools like Harvard and INSEAD to name a few have looked towards India for respite and survival. This not only ratifies the strong fundamentals of the Indian economy, but also gives deserved credit to our educational institutions.

Kamayani Singh reports in Hindustan Times about the amazing brain drain that we had not imagined would happen.

Alumni of top B-schools in the US and Europe, especially those focusing on entrepreneurship, strategy and information technology, are stepping up efforts to explore India’s job market.

And why shouldn’t they: When investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, heads rolled at its trading offices across the world, except in Mumbai, where operations were profitable and bought over by Japan’s brokerage giant Nomura Securities. In fact, the India unit is reportedly hiring now.

Several B-schools are trying to re-habilitate alumni who have lost their jobs in the recent upheaval at places like Lehman Brothers and find suitable jobs for them. India has emerged as a favourite destination for this activity as well, besides being at the top of the list for current MBA students.

“IESE has started a programme called ‘Inside India’ for alumni and executives who want to get an insight into doing business in India. The programme gives opportunities to interact with both major industry players and consumers,” said Anjaney Borwankar, a Mumbai-based associate director for MBA admissions at the Spanish school.

Some more surprises:

“In the last few weeks I have received numerous emails from Harvard alumni looking for jobs in India,” said Surat Singh, who has served as the president of Harvard club of India and Asia in the past.

“Surprisingly, more Americans than Indians have e-mailed me. I have been trying to get them in touch with Indian alumni who are in key positions now,” Singh added.

It has been an interesting turning of tables in the global scenario. And it has been fascinating to watch India’s journey up the value chain from an outsourcing destination for lowering costs of manufacturing and services, to a destination of choice for high profile management careers.

Read the complete article here.
Image Courtesy: EYP DEsigns