i4donline: July - August 2003 issue: Insight: Men machines and Morena!

It’s a concept people have been talking about for a long time now. Articles have been written and presentations made. Cash-rich companies have funded pilots. People have earned their doctorates studying and analyzing these efforts. Consultants have earned a fortune offering advice.

I am referring to the concept of building business ventures in low-income economies. In other words, I am talking about using the concept of capitalism to deliver the desired results of socialism.

Many such ventures have been brought into limelight by the media. They are spread across the globe and claim to have achieved impressive results.

The promoters have the data to prove their point. Micro-finance initiatives have reported impressive repayment rates and they claim to have devised a universally replicable, banking system for the poor. Stealing the limelight, for whatever reasons, are ICT -based business ventures or efforts. Everybody has read about the buffalo that got sold off through the Internet.

My company had decided to open a new location at Morena in Madhya Pradesh. I landed there with great zeal and enthusiasm. But, the place has hardly anything to talk about. No tourist attraction, no political bigwig. Life here is all about struggle and the ensuring frustration. How can people forget a place were 15 lac (1.5m) Indians live! Guess there are Morenas waiting to be discovered.

This note is not the outcome of any high-end research effort. It also does not claim to have discovered the “right” way of doing things. All my assumptions might turn out to be biased and would be of no use to others working at different locations, on other initiatives.

I dedicate this note to the fighting spirit of the Chambal valley and to the enterprising people of Morena.

It is my first day at the Collector’s Campus in Morena. Armed with a b-school degree, I am confident that I can establish a network of rural franchisees, which would offer e- governance services through the Drishtee network.

Promoting entrepreneurship in rural areas isn’t that tough. If it could work in Bangladesh, Morena should be easy!

The local administration is supportive. I also have, in my arsenal, a weapon called ICT. My predecessors were not that lucky.

I am still behaving as a tourist- an outsider. I learn my first lesson. My attempt to click a group of elderly women attracted a lot of negative attention. Women, asking interrogatingly about my business there, surrounded me. “ Tum kahe ke inspector ho?” “Sarkar ne kya koi aadesh nikala hain?” ‘Photo kyon khincha?” “Hamne koi galat kaam nahin kiya!” (“Which department do you represent?” “Has the government issued any notice?” “Why did you click our photograph” “We have not done anything wrong?”)

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