Welcome to the November 2009 edition of ‘REEDS NEWS’. Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic and social development of any country. It is interesting to note that inspite of India is registering economic growth rate around 8% even during global economic crises, 98% of Indian workforce does not have skill training; unorganized sector contributing close to 60% of the GDP and constitutes about 93% of the workforces is not supported by any structured system of acquiring or upgrading skills, and for 13 million new entrants to workforce annually there are hardly one-fourth of skill training capacity existing! Whatever is this situation termed, but certainly an opportunity to unleash rural human resources of the country where two-thirds of population live, for their empowerment and equitable growth?

What is unfortunate is much of the dialogue is focused only on one side of the skills gap issue – what the problem is, where it is, and who’s affected. Missing from the discussion is what the stake holders should do to address the challenge. Don’t you think it is time to move the discussion from simply talking about the problem to take action on skills gaps by meeting this challenge head-on to realize future growth and well being of common people, especially in rural areas and equal opportunity to participate in the economy?

Ravi K Reddy, December 1, 2009

November 19, the founding day of World Toilet Organization (WTO) a global non-profit organization, has been celebrated as World Toilet Day to increase awareness and generate local action for better sanitation. Founded in 2001 with 15 members, WTO presently has 215 member organizations in 57 countries working towards eliminating the toilet taboo and delivering sustainable sanitation. WTO is also one of the few organizations to focus on toilets under the common subject of sanitation. WTO, in 2005 started the world’s first World Toilet College (WTC) providing training in toilet design, maintenance, School Sanitation and Disaster Sanitation and implementation of Sustainable Sanitation systems.

To help raise awareness for the 2.5 billion people who don't have access to sanitation, WTO has given a call to people across the world to squat for one minute on November 19th, in a highly visible location and then explain to anyone who notices squatting as a symbol of the open defecation problem in the developing world, where a lack of sanitation forces people to squat in fields, on train tracks, or in other open places.

REEDS welcome support and participation in any manner that suit one’s convenience. All the monitory contributions to REEDS qualify for deduction under section 80 G of the Indian Income Tax Act, 1961.
We would like to acknowledge our sincere thanks to M/s. Associated Business Counselling Services Private Limited, Ms. Sravya Reddy, and Mr. Ravi Kumar Reddy, Hyderabad who had extended financial support to REEDS in the month November 2009 responding to REEDS NEWS.
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Some of the complex problems of health have simple solutions. The origin of a large number of diseases can easily be traced to lack of clean drinking water, absence of sanitation facilities and lack of a sense of hygiene. We are vey easily attracted by the capital intensive schemes of large infrastructure, roads, ports et al . The Government is willing to spend on an expensive Arogyasri when it fails to deliver what it is supposed deliver. We have separate pediatric cardiac disease assistance programmes. It is well known that a large number of people die of water borne diseases, like diarrhea, typhoid and eve malaria. But the glamour in these diseases is just not there. Consequently, there is no attention to simple remedies, which will vastly reduce the incidence of these diseases. Pressure on hospitals will substantially come down if there is a little understanding of how these diseases are carried and what can be done to mitigate.

The costs of intervention in providing safe drinking water and clean sanitation is much lower than the direct subsidy schemes, which the government seems to enjoy doing. The trouble seems to be that these solutions do not appear to be direct to the problem. In India, we have been always enthusiastic to "problem-solve" but not to establish a system, which helps in reducing problem generation. This is the job of the government and let us hope that they have the wisdom and sufficient long term view to find simple solutions to these apparently complex issues.

December 1 , 2009