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08
magis
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may 2014
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spotlight
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“Sometimes wisdom is in
walking backwards. Find-
ing our way back into ancient
wisdom... We are at the crossroads
today. We have a choice to make; at one hand we
have unsustainable growth and on the other we have
sustainable abundance — which is a steady state,
there is no growth in it, because we don’t need growth
we need interdependence between every individual.”
KalyanAkkipedi
Founder, Proto-Village
“Today if we challenge the
youth then nothing is grassroots
because we are in the information
age. Google, Yahoo!, Amazon – they
were all youngsters, unemployed and suddenly
they are all billionaires now. Entrepreneurship is a
paradox in the context that whether an entrepreneur
can be at the grassroots level or not. I would like
to encourage people who want to do business; that
we do not depend upon capital for doing business.
If you want to be an entrepreneur no one can stop
you. We don’t need the ecosystem we need an idea
and a try, the will to succeed. So from the streets
where I have sold newspapers, pens, cups and oth-
ers I have come to learn that street skills are very
important although it cannot be taught in Harvard
and XLRI.”
Neichute Duolo
Founder & CEO, Entrepreneurs Associates
“Thirty percent of our country is semi-arid
and 7-8 percent arid. What would a large part
of our population do in case of a drought? But
with participatory watershed development
there are solutions. But to make that hap-
pen we need nature, people and institutional
framework that can make it happen. It is the
rejuvenative ecosystem even in the semi-arid
areas that provide
cities in these areas with its water source and
with its food. We have many opportunities in
these areas which have water coming from
watersheds that are well-treated and protected
so that the urbanites get the
water — if not there will be a chaos in
the political sphere. This comes from a group
of villages and communities who
are protecting water source on the
other side. It is those people in the
community their culture and the
technology that helps save water.
Merging modern technology with the
ecospace, working together with the
community is what we need; It
is the human and social capital that is re-
quired.”
Dr MarcellaD’Souza
Executive Director, Watershed
Organisation Trust (WOTR)
Quoting
Ideas
An impressive set of speakers at the 6th NCSE, the
oldest running social entrepreneurship conference
among B-schools, uses its platform to propound ways
of strengthening grassroots under different themes.
Leveraging
Indigenous
Resources
Promoting
Entrepreneurship at
Grassroots
Leveraging local
resources for
sustainable
development in semi-arid
regions of rural india
