Featured Articles

Prema Gopalan: A Tribute

Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 : Prema Gopalan, Executive Director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog received the Award of Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 from Prof. Klaus Martin Schwab, the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum at the SEOY 2019 Award Ceremony held at Delhi on October 3 2019, awarded by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and Jubilant Bhartia Foundation. She was also one of the 40 awardees who have received the award for Social Innovation Driving Change and Transforming Society at the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit (SDI) held in New York on Sept 23, 2019  https://www.sspindia.org/awardsandrecognition/ 

'Social Entrepreneur of the Year' India 2008, Finalist Prema Gopalan Nov 24, 2008 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H6ntLf-9X0 
Founded by Prema Gopalan in 1994, Swayam Shiskshan Prayog (SSP) is building networks of rural social businesses that are co-created by private corporations and women survivors of disasters such as the 2004 Asian Tsunami and the Latur and Gujarat earthquakes (of 1993 and 2001 respectively). With the facilitation of SSP, networks of rural women entrepreneurs have launched retail businesses in renewable home energy products, home groceries and health funds in partnership with BP (previously known as British Petroleum), LIC and others.

Rural Community Leaders Combatting Climate Change  https://vimeo.com/227254208 Swayam Shikshan Prayog, an Indian NGO, trains rural women in entrepreneurship and builds their capacities for marketing clean-energy projects in their communities. Currently, an active network of 1,100 women entrepreneurs is working across 8 districts in India. The women provide a complete ‘ecosystem’ approach as clean-technology users, educators, providers and supporters in their communities, which helps make it easier for people to adopt energy-efficient technologies and products that address climate change.

SSP functions as an “umbrella” organization, a consortium of four social enterprises to execute its activities on-ground. These social enterprises collaborate to form an enabling ecosystem for women entrepreneurs.

Through our entities, SSP builds women-led rural markets at three levels:
• We make women part of the rural economy through business-coaching.
• We extend monetary support to rural women foraying into entrepreneurship.
• We create a network of these women entrepreneurs to scale their operations through strategic partnerships between corporate and local women entrepreneurs.

Our entities function independently as sustainable enterprises, managed by CEOs at the helm of business development and operations.

 

 

 

Supporters of the Three Farm Laws? Statistics ?

'Silent Majority' Supported the Three Farm Laws: SC-Appointed Committee Report https://thewire.in/agriculture/farm-laws-supreme-court-committee-report-released Anil Ghanwant, one of the three members of the committee, made the report public on Monday.

Statiscally, an overwhelming 85.7% of the farmer organisations the committee directly interacted with lent support to the three controversial farm laws. 

Out of the 266 farmer organisations to whom invitations were sent, the committee could directly interact with only 73 organisations. The report claims that out of these 73 organisations, 61 organisations (85.7%) representing over 3.3 crore farmers fully supported the laws. Four farmers’ organisations, representing 51 lakh farmers (13.3%), did not support the Act. Another seven farmer organisations, representing 3.6 lakh farmers (1%) supported the Acts with some suggestions for modifications. Further, Ghanwat said the 40 unions, which had organised agitations against the laws under the banner of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), did not make any submission despite repeated requests.

Ghanwat said the 40 unions, which had organised agitations against the laws under the banner of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), did not make any submission despite repeated requests. However, their concerns, as ascertained from media reports and interactions with Government, have been kept in mind by the Committee, while formulating its recommendations,” the report reads, according to the Indian Express.

Comment: But their concerns where not included in the headline,  of the same story.. So going by Ghamwat's stat of 266 farmers who were contacted on 61 organisation came back with a support for the three laws..  means that more than two thirds of farmers organisations boycotted the questionnaire. The report then has an online opinion poll, which asks leading questions.. and of course they say that two third support the black laws. They ignore that fact that while the black laws may enable some thing, it disables and makes difficult hitherto beneficial provisions. It pretends that the only way to be more free and give more options to the farmers is to allow all kinds of elements, like corporates to have a role.. It ignores the responsibility of the State to facilitate good cooperative systems.....

 

 

'73 में से 61 किसान संगठन कानून के साथ', SC की बनाई Committee ने किया बड़ा दावा | 5 Ki Baat  Mar 22, 2022
एक साल तक देश की राजधानी की सीमाओं पर कृषि कानूनों के खिलाफ किसान आंदोलन चला. फिर ठीक चुनावों से पहले कानून रद्द कर दिए गए. एक साल तक इन कानूनों की समीक्षा के लिए सुप्रीम कोर्ट की बनाई कमेटी कि रिपोर्ट अदालत के पास रही. उसे ना तो सार्वजनिक किया गया, ना उस पर कोई कार्रवाई हुई.

'जब आंदोलनकारी संगठनों से बात नहीं की गई, तो ये संगठन कौन थे?': किसान नेता Yogendra Yadav 
Mar 22, 2022

सुप्रीम कोर्ट (Supreme Court) की कमेटी और उसके रिपोर्ट पर सवाल खड़े करते हुए किसान नेता योगेंद्र यादव (Yogendra Yadav) ने NDTV से कहा कि, 'सबसे बड़ा सवाल ये है कि आंदोलनकारी संगठनों से बात नहीं की गई. ऐसे में ये 73 संगठन कौन थे, जिनसे बात की गई? कम से कम इस बात से पर्दा तो उठा.'

Comments: AA.. Avik Saha's talk on the report of the committee, I listened to. (In English). He said the committee has gone beyond it's mandate from the Supreme court and made 2 recommendations. 1) Cut down procurement for MSP and 2) Dismantle the PDS and give DBT to ration card holders. If true, these two measures will seriously damage food security.

Merit v/s reservations SC judgement

Why the Supreme Court now thinks it was wrong to claim that reservations undermine the idea of merit  Umang Poddar Jan 27, 2022   https://scroll.in/article/1015729/why-the-supreme-court-now-thinks-it-was-wrong-to-claim-that-reservations-undermine-the-idea-of-merit 
The Supreme Court recently upheld 27% OBC reservations in the All India Quota seats of NEET UG and PG Exams.     the court said that although many want to draw a binary between merit and reservation to say that “reservation is antithetical to establishing meritocracy”, merit “cannot be separated” from existing inequalities in society. The court said that even the drafters of the Constitution recognised this and wanted the idea of social justice to be taken into account while promising equality of opportunity. Finally, it said that backwardness does not disappear merely because a candidate has graduated. While graduation may provide certain “social and economic mobility”, that does not create “parity between forward classes and backward classes”.

Full text of judgement available at:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/13PU9PuLGdk3mqrsBNeSoCvgZ5UDlno77/view ( courtesy the print.in )

Interrogating the false merit-reservation binary https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/interrogating-the-false-merit-reservation-binary/article38379295.ece Yogendra Yadav Prannv Dhawan February 05, 2022 00:02 IST
 February 05, 2022 
The Supreme Court’s recent order advances an interpretation that is consistent with the ideals of equality, social justice

The Supreme Court of India’s recent ruling on an all India quota deserves closer attention for a reason other than its impact on post graduate medical admissions.