INDIA UNBOUND

What is India Unbound?

India has lots of talented people, lots of infrastructural support, a good community of NRIs(Non-Resident Indians) a good majority of who feel strongly about a whole lot of things/issues regarding India, a great foundation as goes being the largest democracy on this planet etc. A whole lot of dispersed effort has been taking shape in the form of NGOs (both in and outside India), privately channelled individual efforts, a vibrant blogging community, support by student groups at various schools across the globe. A common input from many such sources seems to be pointing to the fact that often, when it comes to translating any of the india-development thoughts into actions, we arrive at a juncture where the whole momentum seems to lose direction, primarily due to meeting a sort of a dead-end when the people concerned do not know who to contact, who else is working on similar things, lack of co-ordination, lack of information (not everyone is a very efficient googler surely). So many parallel efforts end up being directed at the same goal - which is fine - but what could be worrisome is that these efforts often seem to be on the same path and sometimes all of them fizzle out simultaneously.


Discussions with my friend often stopped at this: that from the point of view of NRIs (or for that matter for any working professional somewhere in India), we need a common platform to voice opinions, not be tied down by any organizational bondages, learn to have a say in matters concerning India that we strongly feel about or have an opinion about - and attempt to do something about issues in mainstream India that way. How does one, as a working professional resident in North America or anywhere do anything about issues in India? Almost every NRI seems to be very eloquent, very discerning, very educated about matters related to Indian politics, sports, education, careers etc. - but when it comes to translating these opinions (which BTW seem to be forever limited to coffee discussions or an after-dinner prove-my-point or ah-I-told-you-so surge of eloquence sprinkled with that classically disguised burp reeking of a good upbringing) into anything remotely concrete, things simply die away. They seem to fade away into nothing, just as the weekends fade away into the oncoming week.


We started India Unbound simply as a platform to collect ideas and opinions from any Indian, anyone who feels connected to India in any manner whatsoever; to translate his/her non-formed and unsure thoughts into a collective something which hopefully would translate into a thought, an approach, an action-item and hence a solution in its final shape - hence into an entity that many people can actively contribue to. So India Unbound simply speaking, should help provide a platform for voicing the thoughts/opinions of the "want to contribute but really do not know how...am kinda lost on this...I have the energy but you know...the process is too tedious - will it ever see the light of the day" types. There is a lot of energy and talent out there folks and we thought, hey, we have to start binding all this together. Somehow.

Intentions
India Unbound by itself should probably turn out to be an umbrella of projects. We can only clarify as we proceed on things. But the initial inspiration seems to be that there are lots of people with specific, channelized thoughts in specific areas. Thus we should be able to group many projects/ideas into areas under India Unbound, tying them up with relevant organizations anywhere in the world.

Specifically......

Q.What do you want to tackle?
A: You tell us. What do you want to do?
Is there anything at all about India that you want to see corrected? We can certainly start with that. Need to discuss that of course.

Things that we can do something about:
The Law and Order situation: well, not directly, when sitting in the US. But you can help build a web page that has a sort of google maps interface where crime incidents can be reported by stamping a little pin. When you click on that you will get the details of the incident that took place. Assuming that people in say, Bangalore have access to the Internet for the majority of the day and that many workers in the city have to face problems(surely innocent IT workers are troubled by a corrupt cop for a bribe even today), all we can expect is that the victim (if he does not want to take it up with the local police station) will use our interface to at least report such an incident. When you see a whole lot of such pins on the city map, you know there have been a spurt of such unwanted incidents. The matter can then be taken up by other organizations present in the locale, or the forum can even take up the matter directly with the state government. The bottomline is: you either think you can't do anything about such things, or you can choose to do something about it.

Think about solutions to the traffic mess in Indian metros - of course implementable ones
Find out about other organizations working on similar goals and see how we can help them as individuals (be it NRIs or resident Indians).

Rural Development: Almost every single Indian I have met over the last six years (you know - the Indian who is educated, very streetsmart, seemingly knowledgeable about Indian politics, history, geography, world issues, and who has an active say on any topic you raise about India) seems to think that rural development in India is a must, that most of the villages in India are in bad shape. If the guy is city-bred and you ask him to name ten villages around his city or in his state, chances are that he won't be able to. Even if he does, ask him about the problem each of these villages is faced with. I have not seen any NRI tell me the answer directly. There are so many villages we don't even know the names of. We tend to react with much surprise when told that this so-and-so village is a few kilometres outside Mumbai or Kolkata. We really should not talk of rural development till we educate ourselves on the basics - at least being aquainted with the problems a few of the villages (we care to learn the names of)are facing. Somehow, I tend to feel it starts there. I know a lot of good work is going on. There are many organizations and people outside India who are contributing to rural development, but I hope you get the drift - I am talking of the general Indian out there. Why can't we have a website listing the names of the villages in India, their locations, their problems to begin with. Many visitors to India come across villages not even listed on the map anywhere. I visited Bodh Gaya and Nalanda in January 2006 to find a multitude of villages en route, which not even natives of Patna seem to be aware of! I could certainly list the names of some of these villages and the problems there. Any information counts.

Copyright 2006, India Unbound Contact: indiaunbound *AT* gmail.com