She is Dengirma, the 57 years old housemaid. She has been working in our house in the village for ages. My grandma says, "she has been working for our family since she got married and came to our village some four decades ago."
In the age of retirement she also works in couple of more houses, cooks for mid-day meal program in the village school and manages to get old age pension of Rs.200 (~ $5) per month under national widow’s pension scheme. All these combined fetch her roughly 8500 rupees annually which is equivalent to half a dollar a day.
Dengirma is not alone in her family. She has a family of 6 to support. She has a son (who occasionally works), daughter-in-law and 3 grandchildren. A life seems to be a curse.
My village is one of the many villages in the Kalahandi district in the state Orissa. The government reports say that Orissa is the poorest state in India and Kalahandi is one of the most poorest and backward districts in the state. That really does not matter. Dengirma represents 300 million people who live below poverty line, the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ in India.
Few months back, in one of my postings in this blog I boosted about the internet penetration in India. But how does that make any difference to Dengirma; the educated youth accessing internet in mobiles, emergence of social networking and many more? Her life revolves around arranging daily meals and fighting with diseases and debts.
We as a nation have made enormous progress in last 60 years and we indeed are proud of it. But how has the life of Dengirma changed over the period? Has it changed really?
Let me not sound like a hopeless communist. What we have failed as a socialist nation can be achieved by emerging technologies and the open market.
Recent Mckinsey report says by 2025 India would be 5th biggest consumer market in the world. It also argues, ‘as Indian incomes rise, the shape of the country's income pyramid will also change dramatically. Over 291 million people will move from desperate poverty to a more sustainable life, and India's middle class will swell by more than ten times from its current size of 50 million to 583 million people’.
Yesterday I had news in the Economics Times which literally threw me out of my seat and made me to dance. It implicates that the wireless broadband is going to be revolutionized in this country and some have started speculating that the wireless broadband connection is going to reach 100 million in next 5 years where the current net claimed internet users are 71 million and only 1.3 million wireless broadband connections.
Well, again all these do not matter to Dengirma. What it does matter is that the day she uses internet for her use directly or indirectly would see the real internet penetration in India. That’s the benchmark. I would call it internet penetration in India 2.0.
The good thing is that the process has begun.
Hi!!!! Dreaming is one of the thing that could be done anywhere anytime but dreaming and then trying fulfilling it, is little tough n u r the one who believes in fulfilling them.
ReplyDeleteKeep writing and encouraging people like us....