A good friend of mine came up with this unique idea of connecting people and went on to start a new venture called Mentorpolis. A blog dedicated solely to applaud months of his hard work. His venture only reiterates that efforts do pay off....
Observation:
Most of the time, we are unable to get into good institutions both in India/abroad because of "Lack of Information" or "Guidance". Preparation for entrance exams of all levels can also turn directionless, if we don't know how to go about preparing for that particular exam. Mentorpolis is an effort in that direction to help plug that gap on an individual basis.
Suggestion:
Mentorpolis is an effort to establish a new communication channel that connects mentees who seek academic / professional advice, with accomplished and suitable mentors, via one-to-one interaction. It provides mentees with personal guidance and direct access to mentors, who can help them make informed decisions.
Mentees could be high school students, undergraduates, young professionals, whereas mentors are students and professionals who once were in the same situation, but have now made it big : and thus precisely understand problems faced by mentees and want to share their wisdom in a nurturing manner.
I am sure all aspiring students would greatly benefit from this venture, since this is not just an online portal where one can post their queries, but it also provides a great opportunity for aspiring students to connect to a mentor of one's choice on a one-to-one basis.
The vocational training is predominantly the responsibility of the Government. However, the growth in training facilities is far behind the actual requirement and this has resulted in huge shortage of trained, certified artisans. This is primarily because of a mismatch between the vocational training needs and training facilities. The training facilities are mainly located in cities and big towns whereas the requirement is at the ‘Kasba’ or ‘Moufissil’ town levels or even at village level.
Suggestion:
Individually, the requirement of training artisans at these places is small and the training requirement gets saturated in a short period. Creation of fixed training facilities will be costly and will not be fully utilized. To meet this special requirement it is important that a flexible approach in delivery of training is adopted using “Mobile Training Units”.
This will facilitate imparting of vocational training to a very large number of artisans who are not able to join mainstream education through Industrial Training Institutes. There is a huge untapped market which is available for training and certification of artisans. There is also space for large number of players in this market because of the special demographic condition in India and South East Asia.
The outcome can be measured by the unemployment rate of the area where the project has been launched after a few months of providing the vocational training to artisans along with the increase in the average earnings of these men after training.
The “Mobile Vocational Training Unit” model is proposed to be implemented in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India, which has a large youth population, and severe shortage of training / higher education facilities. This can subsequently be replicated in other states of India/Countries after necessary fine-tuning.
Business Model:
Engage retired railway and defense personnel who are master craftsman as Instructors and provide them with “Mobile Training Units” on partnership basis.
The training software and hardware to be centrally procured and disbursed.
The training curriculum to be kept uniform with large component of multimedia modules.
Get Government registration for Certification.
Local personnel to be given preference for such assignments as they are familiar with the geography of the region.
The above model will keep the cost of operation minimum.
Infrastructure: Mobile training vans (e.g. Eicher LCVs converted to accommodate two related trades.)
Partnerships: With local Primary/Secondary schools, Panchayats.
Customers: Youth in the age group of 16-30 years.
Revenue model: Fees from the students (artisans), government aid, certification fees and sponsorship from Corporate.
Cost of Capital: (Assumptions)
Capital cost of one “Mobile training unit” will be approximately Rs. 6 lakhs.
Depreciated over 5 years : Rs. 6 lakhs/5 =Rs. 1.2 Lakhs per annum
Interest burden @ 10% p.a. = Rs. 0.6 Lakhs per annum
Total cost : Rs. 1.8 Lakhs per annum
Cost of Operation: (Assumptions)
Cost of instructor: Rs. 10,000 per month
Cost of helper : Rs. 4000 per month
Running cost of unit: Rs 10,000 per month
Total : Rs 24,000 per month
Overhead: 50% of the above = 0.5 * Rs. 24,000 = Rs. 12,000
Total cost of Operation per MU p.a.= (Rs. 24000+Rs 12000) * 12 = Rs 36000*12 = Rs 4,32,000
Revenue generated: (Assumption)
Training per unit per day in hours= 8 hours
No of days per month = 25 days
Batch Size = 15
Total no. of trainee hours per unit = 25*8*15 = 3000 trainee hours per unit per month
Fees per trainee hour = Rs. 20
Total fees per unit per month = 3000 * 20 = Rs. 60000
Total Revenue per annum = 12 * 60000 = Rs. 7,20,000
SURPLUS = Revenue – (Cost of Capital + Cost of Operation)
An idea that my sister came up with while shopping for vegetables in a weekly market :
Observation:
The only reason why I use plastic:
When I buy vegetables like okra, beans, green chilies etc., plastic bags come in very handy ensuring an ease of putting things away without first having to go through the painstaking task of separating each type. I recall the time when I newly returned from Germany, and after seeing their care with reusing plastic, I made my mother go to the market with just a cloth bag. We came back with a week’s worth of green veggies and to my mortification the greens were so well mixed together that it looked as if they were meant to be that way. My sister couldn't help chuckling at my musings and commented that it is the law of physics, entropy of the universe…dodging the potato that I threw at her. It took me larger part of an hour to separate and stock our refrigerator.
I wanted to apply methods that have worked somewhere else, without realizing that each problem has to be tackled individually. What worked for me in Germany did not work in India. My brain working in overdrive, I wanted to prove it to my mother that there had to be a better way of doing this. She had laughingly handed me the bag after getting home to organize the mess that I had inadvertently created.
Suggestion:
Necessity is the mother of all invention. I hit upon the idea that we could at least reuse the plastic bags. No sooner than I had said it , the idea seemed like a halfway attempt. It was then suddenly seeing my mom sitting at the sewing machine that I hit upon a better solution. We see plastic everywhere and reusing them also is not going to reverse a trend. What needs to be done is designing specific shopping bags with various compartments ( made out of cloth !! eureka!!) that can handle all the veggies but still make sure that nothing gets mixed up. The vendors can be given these free or at nominal costs to promote the use of such "Multi compartment Bags". Over a period of time, plastic needs to be completely banned. I wish it happens soon because I crave a country without plastic bags littered over its landscape.
Well, this post is totally inspired by my new work profile : that of a lecturer. Venturing into a new line of work has made me think about the education system and the number of people who are fortunate enough to make use of it. The remaining, especially those who in no manner can afford it, remain illiterate.
Observation: First and foremost, the problem arises as people don't have enough money to buy their way to even Primary schools. Though the government has started a number of municipal schools, the system suffers from lack of teachers as well as students willing to study when they can probably earn by begging/adhoc jobs.
Well, obviously, everyone does not have a socialistic approach to life, and truthfully, it is quite difficult to devote one's life to the upliftment of the society.
Suggestion: I feel that Primary/Basic education is really not that difficult to impart. Students enrolled in all types of undergraduate and graduate programme (Be it Arts, Science, Engineering Medicine or Law) can be used to impart basic knowledge of different spectrum to children. Even a voluntary contribution of 1 hr per person per week to educate a child is a good amount. In an engineering college with a 4 yr degree programme and an intake of 500 could mean 2000 hrs per week, which is a HUGE amount if all are willing for this. (But that is being too optimistic)To add, if the students are taught during the college hours, it would give college students too some incentive to be part of a revolutionizing process.
What I am proposing is groups of say 5 universities/colleges to get together depending on the their location, identify and adopt a group of 50 students amongst them, and then proceed to teach them the basics of education, using the help of their own students. 50 students divided amongst 5 colleges can even be given enough old clothing, and perhaps a one time meal as well, which could be incentive enough for the children to come to study.
I am not saying this would be easy. Identifying potential students, connecting to them, managing the whole process, is definitely going to be very difficult. But basic education can definitely be imparted to all those who don't know how to read/write. This would surely go a long way in improving the literacy level of our country and making people more aware on a variety of issues.
This idea again is not new. A lot of work is being done by Volunteers of National Service Scheme (NSS). IIT Madras is doing quite a commendable work on this. However, it is just a few individuals who are trying to help the poor in this regard. Most of us are not even aware of schemes such as NSS, and even if we are, have no guidance how to go about helping. Making something like this available at college /university level would really help students connect to needy people via these Universities and partner NGOs. The Government's 'Education for all' (Sarv Siksha Abhiyaan) is a similar step wherein a number of schools have been set up with Governmental aid. Also, a similar programme called Teach India has also been launched (on the lines of Teach America). However, in all these, the participation of already established educational institutions is quite negligible and the involvement of college students is negligible. They definitely can contribute and make a huge difference, not only by teaching others, but in the way they perceive the society after experiencing the difficulties while teaching a child.
To conclude, I strongly feel that each one of us, who has had the privilege of receiving education, should help someone else too get it.
The earth is covered only with 1/4 th of land, while the remaining 3/4th is purely water. Arable land is an even smaller percentage of the total land available. There is indeed scarcity of land for both habitation, and cultivation. With population growing by leaps and bounds, there are bound to be issues arising from using agricultural land for habitation purpose. Consequently, the agricultural produce is hardly sufficient for all in this world.
Suggestion:
Oceans receive ample amount of rainfall (fresh water) which largely goes untapped. Also, the sunlight received in may parts of the ocean is in abundance and also suitable for growth of plants. The problem: there is no land there to tap the rainfall and sunlight
The idea here is to make small floating platforms, about 2 feet deep (since most vegetables do not really require depth more than that) appropriate material. These farms can be self sufficient making use of the solar/wind energy for power requirements. These small blocks can be then joined together to make a large farm / garden which can be positioned in the oceans that receive good rainfall and sunlight. During some change of weather, these platforms can be relocated to a different part of the world. These can even be brought to the shores from time to time, the produce harvested, and a new crop planted again.
This same technique can be used for creating huge gardens of flowers, vegetables, pulses, corn , poultry farms to rear chickens and pigs etc. This methodology would specially be useful for countries that are suffering from serious shortage of food, or those which do not have enough land for cultivation.
Similar projects have been implemented by countries such as Japan for making "Floating Airports". Although, the platforms here are not quite floating in this case, and cannot be relocated, but these definitely solve the problem of not having enough land.
An elementary research shows that people have already come up with this kind of an idea, there are even books on this , and if I am not wrong, there are a few places where "Floating Fish Farms" have been implemented as well. However, I still feel that not many people are aware of this and this methodology to increase agricultural produce is still largely untapped. If implemented, millions of people would benefit from it!!
Almost all vehicles manufactured these days come with a built in Air Conditioner and a Heater. This is quite essential, given the excessive heat/cold outside, especially during certain times of the year.
However, as soon as the Air conditioner is switched on, the load on fuel consumption increases drastically. The main reason being: the car shell itself becomes quite hot when it absorbs the radiations from the sun. The AC goes into an overdrive, not only trying to cool the air inside, but also the metallic shell. Also, since darker colours absorb more heat, the fuel consumption for them is much higher as well. Hence, a Black BMW, though may look sleeker than a White BMW, consumes much more fuel than its white counterpart.
Suggestion:
By law, all the vehicles should be made to have their rooftops as a "Reflective Surface" that would reflect the Sun's radiations instead of absorbing them. Also, the colours permitted for the external shell of these vehicles should only be light colours. People might argue that few cars are hardly going to make much of a difference in the level of fuel consumption. However, we are not talking of few cars, but of millions. A simple reflective paint on these vehicles can do wonders!!
Extrapolating this very idea, even office buildings, institutions for education, health care etc, where Air conditioning is extensively used, should go for Reflective Rooftops, so that the load on the AC can be brought down. Roofs should include high reflective surfaces which reduce the cooling load on the buildings and therefore reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
This would esspecially be of great economic importance in countries that are generally warm throughout the year and require lot of Air conditioning due to the weather conditions there. Also some form of economic incentives can be provided to people such as lower taxation, import duties etc. to get them to follow such energy saving methods.
After all, fuel such as Petrol/Diesel is a Non-Renewable form of energy. We have limited resources, and it is the duty of each one of us to use it judiciously. However, to expect each individual in the world to be concerned about the environment, is probably being too optimistic. Thus, in my opinion, it is imperative that laws must be passed that ensure use of such reflective surfaces.
How many of us like to be praised? I think, ALL. It is human tendency to want to listen to few good words about themselves. The simplest of praises, like, a good dress, nice pair of shoes, a lovely smile, a beautiful hairstyle, good work etc. all boost our confidence levels, and makes our day beautiful. But then why are people so frugal in praising others? Each individual on the face of this earth has certain qualities, and no one is perfect in this world. Then what makes us hold back in the act of praising and appreciating people?
People over a period of time tend to take others for granted. In short, they become ungracious, without realising. How many of us thank the waiters for getting us food? Or the cab driver ferrying us around. Not many, I would say....Agreed, it is their job. But a bit of appreciation makes it much more enjoyable.
Suggestion:
A cheerful person would spread cheer and happiness to others in turn, and people would be happier and better mannered, not to mention more productive. I am not talking about incessant praise, but few words of genuine appreciation that one might feel meeting someone during the course of the day.
I came across a cheeky video that demonstrates how few words of praise changes the life of so many people. The 'change' here may not be drastic, but the person in question is definitely a happier human being. To be able to make someone smile, not by a comic act or some joke, but by making them feel GOOD about themselves is not so difficult, and is , in my opinion, definitely a very simple and cost free method to make the world a much happier place to be in.
An interesting use of old tyre that my sister came across while touring Switzerland.
Observation: Punctured, eroded tyres are of little use on the road. The material that they are generally made of is difficult to re-cycle and re-mould, and burning then produces a horrible smell. The best way to use them is either cut it and make some contraptions, or to use it as it is, for different purposes.
Suggestion: The old tyres can be filled with concrete, with an upright signpost in the center. This type of contraption can be really useful where mobility of signpost is required. The signposts can be picked up and put in different locations in no time. These can be quite useful in fairs and exhibitions as well.
I did a casual search on the net, and came across quite a lot of other useful suggestions on the uses of old tyres. The links are as follows :
There was also an article that mentioned the Government of Spain thinking of passing a law to use old tyres while building roads. If other governments could also pass such laws, it would really help in preserving the environment by re-cycling products that have once served its purpose.
