The large-scale migration of youth from villages to cities has worried not only the policymakers but also the villagers. The major cause of migration is undisputedly the drying employment and livelihood opportunities in villages, as educated youth finds no work there. But what if this trend is reversed? Shri Rajendra Misra of Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh has successfully done it. An IT entrepreneur by profession, he started a BPO in his native village, Sonari, as a social cause and provided employment to a good number of village youth. About 20 per cent of the youth joining his BPO are from nearby towns, who had left villages in search of jobs. Apart from providing employment he also increased their confidence level. This experiment is an eye opener for both the policymakers and the politicians, who are living in the misconception that granting unemployment allowance and distributing free laptops to youth will solve their problems.
Pramod Kumar
In 1951, the urban population of India was 62 million (17 per cent of the total population). By 2011, it rose to 377 million or 31 per cent and by 2025 it is expected to rise to 42.5 per cent. Majority of the youth are migrating because rural India cannot provide them employment now. But, instead of sincerely addressing the issue of employment generation in villages, the policymakers and politicians are busy in providing them unemployment allowance and free laptops.
Contrary to the prevailing atmosphere, Shri Rajendra Misra, a native of Sonari village under Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh, has done a marvelous work in his village by starting a BPO and providing equivalent salary to village youth as is paid by the BPOs in cities like Lucknow. The biggest achievement of the project is that it has generated confidence among the semi educated youth with no vocational education and their parents. Now the change has transformed the social psyche to an extent that the educated girls who are getting married to the village youth are also taking up jobs in BPO, with active encouragement from their in-laws.
Sonari is just about 50 km from Lucknow on Sitapur highway. Like many other villages of Uttar Pradesh, it is an underdeveloped village waiting for development since decades. As population grew, income from agriculture was not enough to support the livelihood. Since most farmers were small and marginal with an average landholding of less than one acre per family, they became very poor, indebted and some were even struggling for their survival.
In this situation this experiment has come as a blessing in disguise. After completing his B Tech from IIT Kanpur in 1989 and MS from Tokyo University, Shri Misra founded multinational IT companies and with operations in different countries including Japan, US etc. “But a feeling always nagged me that I should do something for my village. Therefore, I decided to help uplift the village youth,” Shri Misra told Organiser.
Before starting the work, he conducted a survey in the block to ascertain the actual problems of the people. Then he started some experiments for enhancing the income of farmers. Earlier, majority of the farmers grew only wheat and rice. But he encouraged them to grow cash crops including mint, vegetables, papaya, bananas, etc. The experiment proved to be a big hit.
At the same time he took 30 village youth from Sitapur to Bangalore and enrolled them for computer training programme in 2010. But results were not encouraging, as after training majority of them wanted to go back to UP and many did not get satisfactory jobs as they wanted jobs in their own district and state. This made him think, instead of taking people from village to cities for jobs, why not bring jobs to the villages itself.
Then he decided to start a Rural BPO in the village itself. Since, electricity is the biggest and permanent problem in Uttar Pradesh, he opted for solar energy and installed 10 KW plant with the help of Gram Urja. Though, he has an electricity connection, his project is entirely dependent on solar energy. To improve the communication skills of students he also taught them spoken English.
This is how the Rural BPO began in the village on August 15, 2011. It is an 80 seat BPO with installed strength 160 in two shifts. At present 80 youth are working.
However, some of his friends in the profession advised him to set up the project in metro city, but he strictly declined. “Initially, we took the help of NIIT Foundation to train the rural youth who find it hard to compete for the new economy jobs. They were provided six months training. Post this training they were employed in the village BPO with salary of up to Rs 6,500 per month,” he said.
The social impact of the project is that the girls who are normally not sent outside the village for higher education or jobs are performing well at Rural BPO. This also changed the mindset of the rural families who generally consider girls as a burden and ignore their education. Even the girls coming to the village after marriage are applying for and getting jobs in Rural BPO.
“The problem with our youth is that the political parties and governments are ready to provide them unemployment allowances or even laptops, but no one seems serious to ensure employment for them. If state’s industrial development happens and employment is generated, there will be no need for vote bank gimmicks like these. Unfortunately we hardly ever hear about industrial development and employment but only about the unemployment allowances and freebies. Their objective seems to keep the youth deliberately unemployed so that they continue to grab their votes,” added Shri Misra.
Buoyed with the experiment, Shri Misra is now planning to promote similar projects in at least 100 villages of Uttar Pradesh. “We had also approached UP Chief Minister Shri Akhilesh Yadav’s office to promote such initiatives in UP, but nothing concrete has come out so far. We hope that they look at these models. However, such initiatives are running successfully in Gujarat, Karnataka and the Bihar government is also keen,” he said adding that similar projects are soon going to come up in Bulandshahar and Raibareilly.
“Anybody who wants to start such projects in any village can avail our advice and support,’ he told Organiser. This experiment also shows that a distributed development model with a mix of urban and rural centres is the need of the hour and large companies should adopt it to avoid migration and overcrowding of urban India while providing employment to rural youth. Shri Misra has shown the way. Let us hope that others follow him. Shri Mishra is motivating people to start work in this regard.
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