India Can: Ideate. Innovate. Transform

By Ravi Nawal

The book is a collection of 21 easy to read short stories. Each short story contains an idea that can create a favourable impact on the socio-economic growth of the country. The 21 fictionalized stories have narratives with relatable characters solving a key challenge using the idea. The subjects discussed are varied and touch every aspect and strata of life in our society.This is a book of ideas, albeit the story format is used to ensure that you have an enjoyable time working your way through each idea in this book. Several or all of the ideas in this book may have occurred to you at some point in time or you may have read, heard or seen them some-where. Facts and data that could have accompanied the ideas have deliberately been avoided to keep the book from becoming pedantic or too text-bookish. The artwork that accompanies each story is aimed at reinforcing the central idea of the story in a form that is easy for a visual reader to absorb and imbibe. You will observe that most of the stories, through their central characters, attempt to find ingenious solutions either to India's unemployment challenge or key issues involving the Indian economy. The employment challenge faced by India is a behemoth, given the country's huge population of employable age. The complexity of finding meaningful work for our young men and women is an onerous task. Our employable population lacks uniformity of skills, training and education. There is a marked difference in propensities and of resources available to young men and women on the basis of their socio-economic class and the regions that they come from. The demographic dividend that we keep priding ourselves on could also be our nemesis, if not engaged with and channelized in a meaningful way, the time for which is now. We have to place our young men and women in meaningful, productive and fulfilling work. This book attempts a few answers to such questions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Apr 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9789385936906

Book preview

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Story 1

Wheels of Life!

AS A TORRENT OF RAIN PELTED THE STREETS OF NEW DELHI, Rahiman Bi desperately sought shelter under the wide branches of a very sparse neem (Azadirachta indica) tree while she waited for the eight O’ clock bus. Every day for the past ten years, Rahiman took a bus from Kimayatpur, a dusty village on the outskirts of Delhi, to Dr. Sharma’s clinic in the leafy realms of Safdarjung Enclave in South Delhi. Every evening at seven, she waited near the clinic, not far from that neem tree for her hour-long bus ride back home. She worked as a cleaner, brooming stairs, mopping floors, washing towels and sterilizing instruments. Dr Sharma was a kind man and she liked working for him. Over the years, she had made friends with the receptionist, Dr Sharma’s driver, the maid who worked on the floors above the clinic in the doctor’s house, the doctor’s children and his wife and the two guards who kept duty at the gate of the house in two twelve-hour shifts. Rahiman Bi did not mind the fact that the doctor had hardly taken time off from work these past ten years and as a result, she too, had hardly ever taken a holiday. The clinic and its cleanliness provided a higher purpose to her mundane existence. Friends surrounded her for the ten odd hours she spent at work daily and provided her the comfort of family that she missed and longed for in this city that had now come to be her home.

Kimayatpur, where her husband Rafiq, a cycle repair shop owner, brought her some twelve years ago as a young woman of sixteen and where she became his only child’s mother at a tender seventeen, was a place where she went to sleep. She did not mind the emptiness of the house she came back to. It was a breather from the hectic and often loud day that she lived through at the clinic. She knew that she always had the television set to break the silent emptiness of her one-room house. Voices of all baritones and accents flooded and engulfed her at the push of a button. She was content.

Doctor Saheb had helped send her son Qiam to a reputed hostel for children from economically weaker sections, located in the hills near Shimla. In fact, in the past ten years that she had worked with the Sharmas, the couple ensured that there were all sorts of chances that were created for Rahiman and Qiam. The Sharmas believed in Qiam’s talents and showed personal interest in his growth. Rahiman was grateful that her son had able guardians to support him – much more able than Rafiq could have ever been, had he been alive.

The eleven years since his death, in that tragic road accident, leaving her in a big city of which she knew so little, with a one-year-old straddling her breast, had been a blur. She often wondered how she had picked up the many loose threads that connected and often disconnected her life at a tender seventeen and grew to be a mother of a ten-year-old, with a steady income and a roof over her head and now at twenty-seven -an age, when most girls still wonder what life has in store for them; Rahiman Bi already knew what life had in store for her.

After a hard day at work, this dusky twenty-seven-year-old woman, dressed in a conservative salwar kameez with a chiffon dupatta over her head, waited under the neem tree for her bus. It was already eight and four buses, all filled to capacity, had passed by her. Not even a toehold could be had. Rahiman was drenched from head to toe. She cursed herself for having forgotten to bring an umbrella with her, but then she remembered that it had been pleasant warm for most of the day when the weather gods suddenly turned for the evening. She took a deep breath and waited for the next bus. That night Rahiman Bi reached home at twelve.

She spent the next few days lying in her cot, waiting for the pneumonia to subside.

Those five days, as she rested herself, eating pills that the doctor had sent with his driver, Rahiman set herself to think. Interestingly, she was not ruminating over her life or that of other lives that she knew of. Nor did she indulge in mindless thought over what she saw on the television. Rahiman set herself to think about the nightmare on four wheels that confronted low-income people like her every day on the roads of Delhi. She set before herself a paper and a pen on the rickety brown table discarded from the clinic, for her to take if she wanted to. On top of the paper she wrote in chaste Urdu the name of Allah. The rest of the paper she divided into three blocks. In the first block she wrote what she felt about the roads in Delhi. She made small points, just like the doctor made on the paper he handed to his patients. Qiam had explained to her that the doctor wrote précis, small, to the point writing, very unlike the longish notes that the Maulvi spoke from during the Friday prayers. In this block, Rahiman wrote in précis: A) Too many cars. B) Too little road to walk on. C) Very time consuming to go from home to clinic. D) Auto rickshaws very expensive. E) No option but the bus. F) Bus often overcrowded. G) Very long wait. H) To and fro travel – often travel standing. I) Metro too far from home. J) Again very crowded. K) Getting to metro through auto rickshaw very expensive. L) Cycling on roads, unsafe for women.

In the next block, Rahiman wrote the names of all things which she thought could be used for transportation: A) Car. B) Moped. C) Bike. D) Metro. E) Cycle F) Bus. She then meticulously reasoned with herself on the feasibility of each mode of transportation for herself. She struck off all options except for two – moped and bike. She believed that the solution to her everyday travails lay in these two options. She sat still and brooded. After two days, in the very last block, Rahiman Bi drew a circle. She wrote a fourteen-letter compound word and smiled smugly. Contentment shone through on her face. She quickly drew six smaller circles with arrows pointing into the bigger circle. Here she wrote words such as sarkaar (government), prakriti (environment), rozgaar (jobs), qeemat (cost and price), sahuliyat (ease) and surakshit (safe). After some thought, she placed a small check mark against each of these smaller circles.

That day, Rahiman Bi’s lost strength came back to her. Though still weak in the bones, her heart and head had suddenly gained strength. She was determined to take her idea to fruition. For most of the day, as she lay in bed, Rahiman wove a plan.

The following morning, Rahiman smiled as she boarded the bus to Safdarjung Enclave. She got off, feeling tired from the hour-long journey. Yet, she quickly got started with her day at the clinic. As the day unfolded, so did Rahiman Bi’s plan.

Dr. Sharma kept a roster of the names of his key clients from the Government on a piece of paper below the glass top of his wooden office table. Rahiman Bi, with her little ability in reading the English alphabet made out the name of Professor Jha. Professor Jha was the dean of Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was recognized as India’s leading economist. His demeanour was personable. It helped that Professor Jha was a schoolmate of Dr Sharma’s. He visited often. In fact, Professor Saheb had provided one of the two references for Qiam’s application to the hostel near Shimla, the other reference coming from Doctor Saheb himself. He appeared to be just the man for Rahiman to go to with her paper, folded neatly and stowed away in her batua (small purse), which she held close to her bosom.

Professor Saheb was a little intrigued with the call he received that morning. It was not rare to have people call on him at odd hours of the day. Most asked for meetings for guiding their wards with study choices, several called to invite him to speak at symposiums and conferences and then there were those who called asking for money or financial help. Rahiman, he was sure, had not requested for a meeting for any of these purposes. Professor Saheb wondered whether it was something to do with the Sharma household or little Qiam.

A little after eight-thirty in the evening, the doorbell rang and the guard ushered in Rahiman. After cursory salutations and Professor Saheb’s enquiry after the Sharmas and little Qiam, silence reigned for a few minutes. Breaking the uneasy calm, Rahiman handed over the neatly folded paper to Professor Saheb. The Professor studied the paper for over forty minutes, his eyes moving back and forth between the three blocks. After a while, a smile broke through his studious stupor. Rahiman felt a little more at ease. At least the Professor had not dismissed her within five minutes of the start of the meeting. The Professor looked up and asked her what made her think through the solution that he now held in his hand. Rahiman took him through the happenings of the past six days, detailing how she went about negotiating one hurdle after another in her thought process to arrive at her idea. She also elaborated the reason as to why she had decided on sharing this with the Professor. For it was the Professor who could apply himself and his vast network of academics and society intellectuals to think the idea over, debate it, challenge it, hone it, refine it and finally implement or trash it. The Professor smiled. Rahiman’s nerves and clarity of mind impressed him. He took a plain paper and wrote the date 18.09.2020 on it.

He gave it to Rahiman, who noticed that the date he wrote was six years hence. Rahiman appeared baffled. Understanding that the meeting was over, she bade good-bye to the Professor and quietly rode a bus back home. That night she was happy to have closed the circle of thought that had possessed her all this while.

That night Professor Jha slept restlessly. A new circle of thought engulfed him with a tempestuous fervor. After every hour he would get up, scribble on the note pad next to his bed, and prance back and forth.

A year later, as India awoke to celebrate its Independence Day on a bright August morning, Rahiman Bi adjusted her neatly draped pistachio green saree, as she slowly walked up the rally deck. The Prime Minister