LAYING THE PATH TO EMPOWERMENT

The stark reality: Women in rural India are still suffering and empowerment is far away from them and here is Zubaida Bai fighting hard to alleviate this. In the interview she gave to us over mail as part of the "Getting to know the TED India Fellows better" series she speaks her mind on a number of issues surrounding rural women development and more.

Me: Hey Zubaida, could you tell us about yourself and your educational background?
Zubaida Bai (ZB): I am a mechanical engineer by profession. I went to Dalarna University, Sweden to study Product Development and design en-route to a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering. While working for three years in Chennai my hometown developing products for the rural poor, I realized there exists a big gap between the existence of appropriate technologies and their reach to this under-served section of the society. AYZH a venture I found with my husband Habib Anwar, a good friend and colleague Kellen McMartin and advisor Paul Hudnut, helps fill the gaps in the system and is the medium for helping and empowering women. I am currently pursuing the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise (GSSE) program at Colorado State University (CSU) and it was here the idea of venture became a reality.

Me: With this kind of academic profile, what were your inspiration(s) to take up initiatives to improve living standards of rural women?
ZB: I am not a desk person. It is essential for me to be out in the field, interact with people and learn from my experiences every day. This led to me taking up a position with the Lemelson Foundation’s initiative in collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology – Chennai, and Rural Innovations Network in India, I offered technological and business advice on product development and design to rural innovators and helped bring innovations to market. Being technically involved with grassroots innovations and innovators allowed me to help with the empowerment of people.

Me: How it feels to be a TED India fellow?
ZB: It is a great honor.

Me: From where do you derive all the more energy and passion to stride forward?
ZB: If it was not for the strong support, belief and constant encouragement from my husband and our little monster I would not have the energy to keep on keeping on. In addition to them, my family and friends who have always stood by me, the AYZH team, Amy Smith (MIT) who has this invisible energy which drives her passion and just the thought of it keeps me going. Finally, the GSSE family at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.


Me: What is AYZH all about?

ZB: AYZH is a social venture looking through the eyes of women to identify the tools they want and need to help improve their standard of living. AYZH serves the needs of impoverished women worldwide by bringing them affordable appropriate technologies that increase income and/or improve health.
AYZH is committed to two core sectors that serve as the backbone of the economy in developing communities: Health and Livelihood.

Me: Your observations on the state of rural women in India.
ZB: Rural women have very little voice and no knowledge or means of improving their social and economic status. Several initiatives have been taken by the government and welfare organizations but only a few have achieved their goal. It is difficult to talk about empowerment of women when the basic necessities of life are not approachable to them.
What would you say if you were offered a job putting in 12-hour days working in the field, coming in out of the hot sun only to care for your children home from school because they have fallen ill from the water they drink, fearing how you will make ends meet to feed your family, earning little pay and no respect? This is current occupation for more than 1.2 billion rural women living on less than $2/day.

Me: Were there any challenges while taking technology to alleviate physical labor and improve quality of life and economic power of rural women and how successfully was it overcome?
ZB: Having started very recently, we have been faced with immense challenges in terms of access to distribution networks that can reach our target market, competition from non profit and charitable institutions. We are working on putting in place key partnerships self-help groups and key manufacturing & logistics organizations and this will be our-strategy to overcome and address these seemingly grand challenges.

Me: How important it is to empower rural women?
ZB: Without a woman this world would not have existed. It is important and utmost necessary to make rural women empowered in taking decisions to enable them to be in the central part of any human development process. The empowerment of women also considered as an active process enabling women to realize their full identity and power in all spheres of life. The development of women and their active participation in the main stream of development process is not just important but essential need for the future.

AYZH serves the needs of impoverished women worldwide by selling them affordable appropriate technologies that improve health and increase income. AYZH is about a commitment beyond just identifying technologies and making them accessible to women; it is a commitment to opening women’s eyes to their own potential and giving them the tools to achieve it.

Me: When would you deem the goal of your mission successful?
ZB: I would deem the goal of my mission being successful when I reach at least half the women rural population in India and help them gain access to better health and livelihood. I say half because at AYZH, we believe our success will create positive competition to reach the other half.

Me: One best moment of your life that you want to relive.
ZB: The day I was blessed with a child.

Me: If blessed with a boon, what would you wish for?
ZB: Healthy women leading to a healthy world

Me: Any interests or hobbies that you escape to?
ZB:Family, Long drives and cooking.

A FIGHTER FOR ALL HUMANITY!!

Here is the excerpt of the interview I had over mail with Tahir Amin, Co-founder of I-MAK,which is an organization that is trying to fill up a void in the existing landscape by consolidating legal and scientific expertise, usually housed in the pharmaceutical industry, to act in the public interest



Me: Tahir Amin in 140 characters….
Tahir Amin (TA): Perseverance, determined, rigorous, creative, artful, passionate, honest, sporty, spiritual, philosophical, with a thirst for knowledge.

Me: Could you tell us about your childhood and educational background?
TA: My parents left Pakistan in 1962 and arrived in England as economic migrants. The youngest of 3 children, I was born and raised in a small working class coal mining town called Doncaster in the county of Yorkshire, England.

My father worked in the same factory in Doncaster doing manual labour work for 35 years, my mother a homemaker. Neither had more than a basic education, with little knowledge of the English language.

Doncaster was pre-dominantly a white working class town. Racism and skirmishes at school were par for the course. From a young age I had a love for football (soccer) and would spend all my spare time and more playing the game. At school I was academically in the top part of my year and excelled in all sports, including captaining the school football team. However, as I began to focus more on football and seeking an apprenticeship with a professional football club, my grades started to suffer. The drop-out rate at my comprehensive school was high and many of my classmates spent time in prison at one time or other after school.

I decided after completing my GCSE’s (at the age of 16) to leave school and go to a local college to do my A-levels (entrance exams for University). I still harboured ambitions to play football professionally, but started to get interested in legal studies. Eventually getting to University became my priority, where I got my law degree and post-graduate degree. I still managed to play football semi-professionally during University.

Me: What is I-MAK all about?
TA: I-MAK is a team of lawyers and scientists increasing access to affordable medicines by making sure the patent system works.
We believe:
•The patent system was designed to balance innovation in medicines and the dissemination of new treatments to society.
•The current patent system disproportionately represents and upholds private interests over the public good. This can and must change.
•Such change should be informed by patients' needs.
•Armed with the best evidence, our lawyers and scientists are giving the public a voice in a system that impacts their health and lives.

Me: Can you tell us about the experiences that have led you to start I-MAK and what’s innovative about it?
TA: For me it started when I was working as a corporate intellectual property lawyer. I began to see how companies were using their financial muscle and influence to privatise goods, information and even language that should be in the public domain in order to control the knowledge economy and gain profit.

I then left the corporate world to see how intellectual property rights (IPRs) were affecting the developing world. I went to India and worked with a local NGO researching IPRs and the public interest. Whilst I was there between 2004-2006, the Indian Government was pushing through a new patent law that would give companies monopolies on drugs. Knowing how this could affect prices of medicines (having seen prices skyrocket in other developing countries that had implemented new patent laws) I worked with HIV/AIDS patients, local NGOs to ensure the new law took into consideration patient needs. Seeing HIV/AIDS and cancer patients not being able to afford medicines because of IPRs, or some even passing away, made my Co-Founder (now my wife who I met in India working on these issues) and I realise we needed to do more.

So we started an intervention to file legal challenges at the Indian Patent Office to prevent patents being granted for drugs that were not merited on legal and scientific grounds. For the first time we had created a group of actors who were intervening in the patent system with respect to pharmaceutical products.

Although we continue these patent challenges and have been successful, we knew we needed to reach more countries and people. So we have decided to use the biggest public space to do this, the internet. We are building an open source database that will make transparent patent information on drugs (something which is a huge problem as companies like to keep this information as secret as possible, even though it should be public). The database will also provide anyone who wants to know (e.g. patient groups government health ministers or government patent offices in under-resourced developing countries) with evidence and information which can be used to challenge a patent on a drug which is not merited. As part of the project we intend to make available scientific literature relating to drug patents that is usually only available through expensive subscriptions to publishing houses – which many people in the developing world can’t access. By doing so, we want to make knowledge and information on pharmaceutical patents freely available while at the same time make access to medicines affordable.

Me: When does a patent become an impediment to access essential medicines?
TA: A person/company, who is granted a patent for an invention e.g. a compound for a medicine, gets 20 years exclusivity to be the only one to produce and market the invention. As patent rights are territorial, companies usually file patents in each country of interest to prevent imports/exports from one market to the other.

The problem with pharmaceutical patenting is that companies deliberately file several patents on one drug (known as patent clusters), to deter other companies (i.e. generic companies who could make a more affordable version) from entering the market. Many of these patents are trivial changes to existing inventions, which if examined properly would never be granted. But because patent offices around the world from the U.S. to countries in Africa are understaffed and under-resourced, many patents are granted when they shouldn’t be. As a result, many affordable versions of drugs never come to the market and the patent holder is able set prices that the market will bear.

Me: Your comments on the need for an electronic patent database in India. How does the lack of it hinder the opposition mechanism?
TA: When we started filing oppositions in India, there was no electronic database provided by the Indian Patent Office (IPO). We basically had to trawl through thousands and thousands of PDF pages. This made our work immensely difficult.

The IPO now provides a form of an electronic database, but it is far from complete and useful. For example, you still cannot access the full patent document, the status of an application or the examiner comments relating to a patent via the IPO database. We, and others, are still pushing the IPO to do a more complete job of the database. In the meantime, we try and make as much of the information we get public.

Me: Adding to the previous question, how different is the Indian patent system from the American and European patent systems on a surface level basis?
TA: From an access to information perspective, the U.S/E.U patent systems are far ahead. One can access full patent documents, carry out complex searches and review examiners comments.

However, from legal perspective, India has better provisions in its laws to protect against patent abuse – but only if used correctly and with vigilance from civil society and generic competitors.

Me: Social entrepreneurship according to you is……
TA: Doing something that no one has done or thought possible to do.

Me: Tell us about your achievements in life that you look back with pride.
TA: Looking at my parents background, where I came from and where I am today in terms of my personal health, life, education, knowledge and opportunities – I feel a huge sense of pride.

Me: The one biggest mistake of your life and the lessons you learnt from it…
TA: Not believing in myself – something that changed about 8 years ago. Lesson learned – you can do anything you put your mind to.



Me: You have been fighting hard to achieve access to affordable medicines and you have succeeded too. What were the challenges that you had to face in this exciting journey?
TA: A lot of politics and naysayers, both in the community we work in and outside. Not earning a salary for the first two years. Sleeping on floors/couches as we set I-MAK up. Not knowing where we would live or set I-MAK up. All this whilst my partner and I were convincing our respective Hindu/Muslim parents that we were going to get married!

Me: What is that, that keeps you move ahead?
TA: That there are those who do not have a voice and we must be their eyes/ears to ensure they do not suffer injustices. That gives me the belief to persevere.

Me: Granted a boon, what would you wish for?
TA: A victory in a case we are currently involved in which could help save the lives of millions.

Me: What drew you to TED and how has it shaped your thoughts?
TA: The eclectic nature of the people that make up TED - their energy and ideas. It is inspiring to be a part of a community that is trying to improve the lot of humans and it reminds me that we all have our little bit to do. By coming together with our individual parts, the sum is something special. It also helps to know you are not alone.

Me: Your words of wisdom to youngsters dreaming to be social change creators.
TA: Always believe and do not listen to people who say it can’t be done. Always stay humble, treat everyone fairly and remember that social change starts with you first.

RIDING THE HIGH TIDE

Svati Bhogle, of TIDE, won the Energy Champion Ashden Award in 2008 for TIDE's work with biomass stoves and this year she has been nominated as TED India fellow.

In this interview she speaks her mind on how technology can be taken forward to develop rural areas, the hurdles she has crossed in taking them to the end users and so on.


Me: Svati, Could you give us an idea about yourself?

Svati Bhogle(SB): I think I am temperamentally an academic. I have ventured into socially sensitive science and now into social businesses as an academic exercise to create and share knowledge of how institutions for social transformation are created and nurtured.

Me: A Masters in Chemical engineering from IIT-Bombay and work experience at Hindustan Lever Research Center for about a year what was the inspiration that shifted your interest to research in technology for development?

SB: This is also an extension of the research experience. I think I had great mentors during my formative professional years who gently nudged me to think differently such as Dr. S S Kalbag at the Hindustan Lever Research Centre, and then Prof Amulya Reddy at the Indian Institute of Science. Their vision of a socially engaged scientist and their commitment to their conviction was highly motivating and inspiring.



Me: Many congratulations on being awarded the Green Oscar (i.e.) the Ashden award for the year 2008 and being nominated as a TED India fellow. Could you give us a brief background about TIDE and on the work for which you received the award?

SB: Thank you. TIDE was conceived as a link organization between technology generating institutions and end users of technology who are usually the neediest people. We developed a social enterprise model where we transferred fuel efficient technology to small town entrepreneurs completely and helped them to set up small businesses in fuel efficient stove dissemination for artisanal industries. We also supported them to build markets and enabling mechanisms for adaptation and acceptance of innovative technology. These small enterprises have sold over 10,000 stoves, dryers and kilns to informal industries like areca boiling, silk reeling, herbal medicine preparation, textile dyeing etc. which has helped save more than 30,000 tons of firewood every year because of which the rural industries have been able to increase their productivity and profitability.

Me: With the city limits fast expanding what do you think would be the best option to meet the dynamically changing water demand?

SB: We need a more equitable distribution of water. We must reduce the water wastage by the rich and also increase access and availability of water to the water starved people. We need to tackle this both on the demand side and the supply side, through policy, technology, information and effective implementation.

Me: Any bottlenecks that you see while taking forward technology to bring about transformation in rural areas. Is there a project which initially showed poor user participation but was a huge hit later?

SB: Yes of course there are bottlenecks all the way and all the time. They choke and slow down the development process, very similar to traffic jams. The development jargon says identify barriers, develop barrier removal strategies and implement them effectively. We normally classify them into information, technology, finance barriers etc. But the bottlenecks are evolving and dynamic and by now we are able to visualize and anticipate bottlenecks and plan for them.

We were struggling with a fuel efficient jaggery making stove so that use of very polluting automobile tyres as fuel could be eliminated and surplus biomass could be created for over a decade. The field trials were successful but encountered bad roads and speed breakers all the way. We are not yet at a huge hit situation but local masons are building 5 stoves every month in the Belgaum region. The worst is over I guess.

Me: When would you deem the goal of a rural technology mission successful?

SB: This again has been a dynamic definition for us. We first believed that a successful prototype demonstration defined success, then went on to say, commercial exploitation of a technology or a product. Our current definition is rapid adoption of technology and the search and research continues.

Me: How best do you think the concept of entrepreneurship can be taken to the rural women?

SB: Women’s entrepreneurship in the rural context is more complex. It requires, changing of conventional gender roles as the first step. This means that women must first free themselves from their routine tasks and create time and space for them to learn and to change. The family also has to accept the process of empowerment. We need to first create a level playing field for them. Family consent and support is extremely vital because women’s entrepreneurship is also about managing domestic and professional complexities. Beyond this the challenges are similar but rural women tend to prefer conventional enterprises like food processing etc. They need to venture into less crowded options.

Me: “Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.” said William Ruckelshaus. As responsible world citizens what should be done by each one of us to make the earth a good place to live?

SB: May be just concentrate on the need and give the greed a good bye.

Me: Any other interests you are passionate about.

SB: Yes of course but one at a time.

A MASTER OF ALL TRADES

This is the first in the series of interviews to know more about the TED India fellows,their views, thoughts and interests. This post would feature the interview I had over mail with Sanjukta Basu.

“There is nothing extra-ordinary about me except that I refuse to be ordinary at every turn of the road.”

Her interests: Anything under the sun.
Her mission: Empower women.

Here is the excerpt of the interview:

Me: Sanjukta, could you give us a brief background about yourself?

Sanjukta Basu(SB):I am a lawyer turned social media enthusiast, women and LGBT rights activist and more. I presently work for a non profit organization Breakthrough.


Me: Many congratulations on being nominated as a TED India Fellow. Below are the words that you wrote on your blog on being nominated:

“As I looked through the list of my fellow TED fellows I felt how insignificant my academic achievements are in comparison to them. I don’t have no foreign degrees or Phds, I didn’t go to Harvard, I am no IITian, IIMite or ISBite, I am no school topper, I never won a medal or a trophy for academics. I graduated out of ordinary school and college with medium grades.”

What do you think has brought you this far?

SB: Well I think it’s my unique individuality that has got me this far, I often say, “There is nothing extra-ordinary about me except that I refuse to be ordinary at every turn of the road.” I try to think out of the box in everything I do, I dare to do things no one else have done, though it may not be something too big.


Me: Goes a saying “Anything that refuses to change ceases to exist”. Is this the reason for “Change” being your much preferred hobby?

SB: Well for me change is the only way forward otherwise I get bored in this journey called life. Life wouldn’t be worth while if we all just did the same things, have same dreams, follow same pursuits etc all our lives. Some of us do that, and I wonder how? My father for example, he did the same job for 40 years, I can’t do that. I need to change myself constantly more than anything else.



Me: A woman, a world citizen, prolific writer, activist, blogger, lawyer, photographer and so on. If I may ask, what is the next facet that you want to add to your bag of talents and why?

SB: To be honest I don’t know what is next. I didn’t add any of the above things in my bag consciously, it’s not like I woke one morning and decided I wanna be a blogger now, or photographer, those things just happened. But there’s one that that’s sure, I would keep doing exciting projects related to women’s empowerment, travel, writing, social media etc. And I would continue to share my life through my writings. Sometimes you learn just by witnessing someone’s life.


Me: You have set your marks on a variety of fields. What drives you to move ahead with all the more energy and passion?

SB: One thing that drives me always is a constant effort to bridge gaps. Every where I look I see people living in their own little worlds oblivious to the pain and sorrow of other’s. There is just too much gap between various classes and communities, the rich-poor, straight-gay. We need to know about other people to understand them. With social media and the power of web publication we can now bring communities together, something that I try to achieve. The other thing that keeps me going is love for travel, meeting new people. If one pays for my travel, stay and food I would jump into any assignment. All I need is my laptop, camera, broadband and I am sorted :)


Me: Can you share with us about the people who have shaped or touched your lives?

SB: My family to begin with - Mom, dad, sister. My sister and I grew up in different times; She’s almost a decade younger than me. Yet I never went too far, instead I waited for her to catch up with me. So it’s like I had a ‘growing up’ twice. I learnt and unlearned a lot of things with her as she grew up. She is also my greatest critic so we fight a lot, fights are learning process too.

And then some of the men I dated, some of them were nice, but some were horrible mistakes, we learn from our mistakes specially me. And may be Aamir Khan too for a bit.

Me: Most of your poems seem to be the reflections of your search for true love. According to you, true love means………

SB: I think true love is a momentous ecstatic feeling which transcends all materialistic pleasures, desires, logic etc. It’s a moment when you want to give your everything to someone, you want to lose yourself and be one with the person you love. It is not necessarily a union of bodies but of minds. It might not have anything to do with worldly arrangements like marriage and procreation. I would say what Meera Bai felt for lord Krishna was true love.


Me: Where do you think you are now, in your efforts to use blogging extensively to reach out to the less privileged? How successful has it proved to be?

SB: I think I have only just started; it’s a long way to go. I want to see myself opening up social media centers in every village in India putting them on world map. I am far from achieving that as of now. But there are other things I am proud of. I inspire people to think differently, I inspire them to think, communicate, question. I am particularly proud of my efforts to bringing many people together as bloggers community. There are small things that matter a lot, for eg I am aware that there are people who found love, friends via these communities, people who rediscovered their own potential. These are achievements albeit insignificant.


Me: Do you see enough provisions in the Indian Penal Code to try the increasing crimes against women and children? What are the changes (if any) that you would like to be amended in the legislature as a lawyer and as a woman?

SB: I think yes. Though there is always space for more laws on marital rape, rape within intimate same sex relationships etc. But the laws we already have is considerably a lot, if not enough, to tackle crimes against women provided, and that’s an all caps ‘PROVIDED’ laws are followed, proper action are taken when they are broken, police and judiciary act honestly. As of now, none of these conditions are achieved. Half of the people don’t care about law they break it and then get away with it because of corrupt systems. System will change only when we introduce gender sensitization in the very patriarchal structure of police and judiciary.


Me: What would be your words of guidance to people wanting to be like you?

SB: He he, that’s quite a question. I am not sure how many people want to be like me; I mean am not a star. But I have a few tips – Always dare to be different, find an excuse for a change. Be honest to your heart always; remember truth is the greatest safety net. And finally, it’s ok to talk about something we do; it’s ok to talk about sex - because it really is something we do. Believe me babies don’t grow on trees neither are they gift wrapped and delivered by Angels.

I am back!!

After a long hiatus from the blogosphere I am back into doing what I like. Speaking my mind is what I have tried to on all my previous posts on a number of social issues. Joining work made the thought of sitting before the computer again at home a task which I did not want to do until next day at office. So what has made me to start blogging again? Well it was an opportunity to interact with and interview some of the best minds in the world through a project started by Kiruba. What is that that links all of them?

1. They dared to be different,
2. They have unlimited zeal and passion,
3. They think out of the box,
4. Their ideas can transform the world, and
5. They all are TED India fellows.

Watch this space to know more about them and their thoughts.