Today the BBC news said that India's 49% children are undernourished. This makes India top the list of countries with maximum number of malnourished children. Yes, it is the same India whose economy has been booming like anything, the same India which resisted the economic recession and the same India that has some of the richest people and corporations of the world. So why has the gap between the rich and the poor not reduced but only widened? Why have we not been able to achieve a more inclusive growth? Why have we neglected our poor and only let the fittest survive? I don't have answers to these questions but what I want to find out is not the answers but the solution to this shameful problem.

I believe the problem stems from not the scarcity of the resources but their uneven distribution. Ample in the hands of a few - be it money, power or intellectual capital. I don't have the money and nor do I have the power (u see I am neither an Industrialist's nor a politician's daughter ;)). So my point is, what I do have is the intellect - the ability to think and decide what I want to do with my life, which sector I want to work with and the willingness to walk the path that may be difficult to tread but is rewarding as it gives meaning and a purpose to my life.

I may not be able to do it alone, but I have a vision. I think we should take a different route in developing the un- or under-developed regions of India than what was taken for the development in the cities - in the long run this route has turned out to be clearly unsustainable. We should take the un-electrified villages (btw there are some 1 lac villages that have no electricity) for example and incorporate green energy projects for electricity, buildings, roads and the rest of the infrastructure. This may be very capital intensive in the beginning (believe u me the private top notch sector and our government has loads of bucks :)) but in the long run it will surely be rewarding. The green energy deployment will not only uplift the socio-economic status of the people living in these villages and provide them with ample job opportunities but will also set examples of co-existence of development and low carbon economy. I think this is an opportunity that India can leverage to its benefit because of the fact that dismantling of a system and putting another in its place is much costlier than creating a new one.

So lets move out of our comfort zones and be a resource not to the already wealthy corporate sector of India but to the sectors that need us the most. Our efforts then will have far reaching results - results that will bring a change and help somewhere in closing this GAP!!

Cheers!!
Tanu