Target 3 Billion (PURA: Innovative Solutions towards Sustainable Development) by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam & Srijan Pal Singh is a document that propounds a course of action which, if adopted and implemented, will see a major positive change in the economy of the country, and of the world at large.
What we see in the world today are large scale migrations of rural populations from small hamlets, villages and towns in the countryside to major cities, after the meager resources available in those places are expended or run out. People flee to the metropolis to escape certain death by starvation. Most are driven by desperation and also the fact that a developed city provides assured chances of some basic employment whereby even the most indigent can eke out an existence. Otherwise there is always the begging that many resort to, at least in the initial days after they arrive in the big city.
The figure 3 billion is the number of people living reportedly below the poverty line on this planet, and this translates into half the world’s population. Another revelation is that 70 per cent or thereabouts of these poor people are currently living in rural areas. Dr. Kalam recommends a unique system called PURA – Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas – that could reverse the hopeless situation by uplifting the rural poor, not by subsidies but through entrepreneurship with community participation.
India, with 750 million people living in villages, has the largest rural population in the world, and projections made here could easily lend themselves to global application. Dr. Kalam has cited the examples of various individuals and institutions in India and elsewhere on the globe that have successfully generated and tapped into the potential of the rural masses, and have made a difference through the sheer strength of their entrepreneurial spirit and a burning desire to alleviate their lot.
After visiting Bhadariya, a remote village in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, and seeing the concept of self-sustaining economy operating very successfully, Kalam was urged to write: I believe real service to religion is to serve the villages on remote hills and in distant deserts. Bhadariya is an example of how the integrated development of communication, dissemination of knowledge, medicare, cattle-rearing, fodder management are transforming land, resources and human life using local and traditional knowledge coupled with modern science and technology.
Target 3 Billion
by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam & Srijan Pal Singh
Penguin Books India
Rs.299