Project ViKaaS: Empowering the poor, upliftment of poverty in rural India

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Karl Marx stated that changes in the society are constant and one needs to keep evolving as humans too, in order to keep up with the changing society. But to bring about such changes we need to make sure that the rock bottom of the economy or the absolute poor are also given a chance to be a part of this evolution. Hence the main objective of Project ViKaaS is to empower the rural poor through various channels and help them become a part of the social change which is endeared acceptable at par with the urban dwellers. Firstly, targeting the agricultural regions where the farmers work towards self sustainability only. Here they lack the techniques to go forth with a profit making objective. We plan to introduce them to techniques of organic farming and allowing access to the benefits of using HYV seeds, irrigation etc, hence leading them from bare minimum sustenance towards to realms of a profitable living standard. Also, we intend to provide them a better mode of distribution of the agricultural produce, by giving them higher prices as compared to the governments methods for the same(viz. FCI, PDS, etc),thus raising the rural income. Next we intend to target the rural handicrafts industry where we can see a large income gap between the price which the artisans get and the retail price in the urban markets. The gap is huge and thus we aim to pass on the benefits of the middlemen largely to the artisans and consumers by creating an online portal to sell their goods for the price it commands in the market. We also make a profit here out of advertisements on the website as well as the minimum margin we would be keeping per item. This can be a large success due to the mutual benefits it is offering both the consumers and producers.

As an added benefit, we intend to set up learning hubs for the children in the villages. Here they would be provided basic primary education and then provided practical exposure about the functioning of the development programme in the village. This would be our long term investment in human capital, where these kids would be expected to someday work for us in the intricate manner in which we train them for the job since a young age. We aim towards helping them to become an integral part of the evolving society. We aim at societal partnership such that we involve the government, corporate and individuals from the society. Various economic tools have been used in this plan to mark out the social benefits of this plan in eradicating poverty and more importantly inequality, which is infact a larger problem to the society. Thus this plan tends to execute a fine balance between self sustenance and profit in areas which are not exposed to the modern thoughts of living. Project ViKaaS aims to modernize the rural sectors completely and hence command its evolution into the higher social level of living. Rural Transformation RE-Defined!