Poverty Alleviation Through Goal Setting

Fire or food in the belly?

Principles

“Base of the pyramid”, Prahalad said, “Fours” Chetan Bhagat characterized, we understand 90% of Indians form the bottom rung of our economy. Why has this continued for 60 years after independence? Many attempts have been made to reduce poverty but success has been elusive.

Our solution to the problem is removal of poverty in an organic way – use the large number to advantage. Instead of a minority of population trying to help a larger fraction of population, we would try to address the majority. We try to seed them with very high aspiration. Biggest problem in the poorer neighborhoods is a lack of role models. Solution we are depending on is to take some poor boys and girls to achieve the most desired career in today's India and provide a local model to their community. This would set a goal that others in the neighborhood to achieve.

One interesting sense of charity that the Tatas have is instead of helping the needy, they would help the capable in the hope of that person bringing in massive change. Our approach is similar but addresses the lack of dreams in poor neighborhoods. If we changed that, many people would benefit. Incidentally, the same disease affects the well off as well.

The Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime “ captures another essential point, that of providing a long term solution in relation to instantaneous gratification. An aspect of the idea is captured in our program.

Also charity implies superior inferior relation: we prefer long term equality based on not asking for money when the student has none, but insisting on getting paid when they are earning.

Present : NStar Engineers

Karnataka Microelectronic Training and Research Centre Pvt Ltd (KTRC) has since 2008 been recruiting rural poor SSLC pass out students through three “guru”s in Belgaum, Bagalkot, Bijapur, Dharwad and Haveri districts. Definition of poverty is defined by inability to continue PUC education due to lack of tuition fees. The goal was to teach these students to be equivalent of any engineer graduate in the country after three years of training. The learning has to be deep and the graduates enabled to continue learn new topics on their own and as a team.

The Future: Shri Siddarameshwar Microelectronic Composite School

Starting from July 2013 KTRC will join hands with a rural school in Mallapur, a suburb of Nesargi, a TIER-?? town itself, 35 km from Belgaum to start State's (May be the world's) first high school that during the period of 9^th standard to 12^th standard (PUC) simultaneously teach integrated circuit design and embedded software. These are usually topics at the B Tech/M Tech level. The graduates will be 18 years of age.

They will also learn how to learn in a team.

What we hope will happen is

• Push the limit of what is possible to learn at any given age
• Raise the “dream” level in poorer locales in villages
• Have India be able to compete as a semiconductor IP source irrespective of new nations entering the market.