Bikash
Choudhury
Raghuram Rajan, RBI Governor in one of his lecture said “if
you down load a movie and enjoy at home; it does not make any economic
activity. However, if you go to a theater to watch movies, it does” simple
logic is if you go out you have to spend cash on transport, buy a movie ticket
on the counter and buy food in the cafeteria; all these make you relax and
happy and at the same time it create jobs for many others and therefore add to
our Gross Domestic Product (GDP ). So thumb
rule remains every rupee that is spent if creates a job or fractions of a job, then
it is advantage to economy as it goes on adding a virtuous cycle of prosperity
depending on the nature & quantum of expenditure.
Simple cooking skills for
interested unemployed youth/school drop outs could add a million jobs in our
economy. The story is about the challenges of Double income families living in
the six metro cities of our country; both of whom drive at least one and half
hour for work and find it very difficult to cook at home; mostly live on bought
out foods delivered at home which is very expensive and not very healthy. They
can afford a good, properly trained cook at home for one break fast, lunch/dinner
a day at Rs 5000 a month. If we assume the population of six metro cities of
India: Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkatta, Hyderabad and Bangaluru at 6 crore and
number of families at 1.5 crore and further assume that only 30% families would
need & have ability to pay Rs. 5000 a month then approximately we are
looking at 5 million families. If one
well trained cook could serve 5 families in a 8 hours roaster then we are
looking at 1 million jobs that could earn a person about Rs. 10,000-Rs. 15,000
a month enough for a good living for the starters; as they get more experience
then they could probably branch out in the food business as entrepreneur or add
specialized skills in cooking to become a Chef in Hospitality Industry or could
migrate to middle east/western countries and earn a fortune to repatriate to
their families back home. Further, we will need a retinue of professional Skill
Development Institute for cooking; if one institute can produce 1000 well
trained cooks a year then we may require one thousand such Skill Training
Institute in the country. And, we shall need at least 10 business organization
as Service Providers—Home Cooking, in each metro city that makes it 60 for all
six metro cities. This exercise not only reveals the potential of Job Creation
in the economy by finding a simple solution to mundane problem of Home Cooked
Food for Double Income Families in metro cities; it also indicate the capacity
of further growth of economy as series of multiplier effects could happen at
different nodes at different life cycles in the Industry. The externalities
that comes to mind immediately is the comfort of working house wives with the
service of a cook at home; further, they get little more free time for
recreation & rejuvenation that aids creativity at work resulting in
innovation & enterprise. In the mirror image one million cooks on the job
would enhance their personal consumption fueling demand for goods &
services worth Rs.10, 000 crore per annum while Rs. 2000 crore could be added
to our savings. Again, there are scopes for earning foreign currency for the
country with growing numbers of old age people in developed countries, who may
need the services of home cook food or a cook at home. All of these could lead
to a huge economic activity that benefits a large section of our people at the
bottom of the pyramid.
If you have bought a fifty gram
pack of Haladiram salted pea nuts @ Rs. 10 recently from your neighborhood
corner shop; then, you would have actually paid
Rs. 200 for one kilogram of just
salted pea nuts hygienically packed with a brand name—no rocket science
involved. Do you know how much a farmer is paid for the same 1 Kilogram of raw
pea nuts? That varies between Rs.50-80 a Kilogram. The spread remain between
Rs.120-Rs.150 for kilogram which is a huge amount for the kind of value
addition in terms of food processing. This problem can be turned in its head to
create substantial amount of jobs in rural areas in food processing. Rural
areas are short in basic technology for food processing, awareness & need
of hygiene for food items, packaging and marketing muscle. All of these can be
provided for by an entrepreneur from bigger cities at a price to make processed
food like salted pea nuts and other items at the “pit head” in
rural areas at a fraction of cost in collaboration with “Farmer Collectives”;
if they share the spread equally then they both pick up Rs.60-Rs.75 a kilogram
which would be huge jump in farmers income with additional opportunity of
creating non-farm jobs in the rural areas and at the same time it would be a
hugely profitable venture for the business men in bigger cities. It may so
happen in future Global Retailers would source processed food from Indian Rural
Areas directly making a huge economic activity with creation of new trades of
employment. If we could revamp the “SUPW—socially useful productive work”
curriculum in the schools of rural areas and train school children on food
processing then we could simultaneously create rural job ready work force in
food processing. This case study if successfully executed could eliminate about
40% of food waste between “farms to plate” adding its own
contribution to our economic growth.
Authors Bio: Socio-Economic-Political Activist and
Freelance Writer on Socio-economic and Political Issues. Contact:
streben.market@gmail.com
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