Best HR practices bear astounding fruits

By Jagdish Rout

Human Resource Management Initiatives (HRMI) in any organisation endeavor to change, redefine, revisit, renew, reinvent, revitalise and restructure the organization architecture. This is effectively done with the help of alignment and integration of HR policies and strategies with business goal and objectives. Our HR practices are as follows:

The World Conference on Human Rights held at Vienna on 1993, considers human rights education, training and public information essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace. General Assembly of United Nations proclaimed Decade for Human Rights Education from January 1, 1995 to December 31. 2004. World Programme for Human Rights Education proclaimed by the General Assembly on December 10, 2004 for adoption of the 1st phase revised draft plan of action and then it is extended till date.

Provisions of Human Rights Education have been incorporated in various international declarations, conventions and instruments, including Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 1948, International Convention on Economical, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, International Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women, United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child. In accordance with these instruments, which provide elements of a definition of human rights education as agreed upon by the international community. It can be defined as education, training and information aiming at building a universal culture of human rights through sharing of knowledge, imparting of skills and attitudes.

HRE is not only for the primary or secondary school system, but also for different stake holders in the society like doctors, teachers, advocates, administrators, judicial officers, police department officials, political leaders, teachers, social activists and marginalized.

The violation Human Rights of tribals is stealing their language. They lack language to communicate with the so called democratic polity. The wings government has no language to talk to them. The alien language or languages in which the tribal students are being taught are in a way taking them away from their parents and community. As result, they can not communicate comfortably with parents and grand parents as they should.

Studding in a foreign language they can not compete with the mainstream language users. The marginalized section particularly Tribal community those who constitute 8 - 9 per cent of National population and 23 - 24 per cent of Oirssa population are not aware of their rights and livelihood.

Tribal people constitute more than 40 per cent in Malkanagiri, Nowarangapur, Koraput, Kandhamal, Kalahandi, Rayagada, Sundargarh and Mayurbhanja districts. Maximum of them are voice less, exploited, suppressed and illiterate.

Apathetic attitude of the policy makers, bureaucrats, implementers and dominant classes forced them to stay behind from the development. They are not able to think up their rights in the society because of improper education. Superstition and blind beliefs have become barriers of change. Some miscreants and Naxals are taking advantage from their simplicity and using them in undemocratic ways. Unavailability of schools and teachers, adequate teaching learning materials and lack appropriate teaching environment do not attract tribal children towards education. The syllabi system, its language and curriculum, - do not educate them to raise their voice, demand for their basic needs and about their human rights in general.

The school curriculum needs to be humanised, contextualized with appropriate tribal centered curriculum. The facilities enshrined in Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 should be provided to all tribal children. From a pilot programm conducted by Institute of Human Rights Education (IHRE) in the residential schools under ST/SC development department of Orissa, it is established that the students are able to understand necessity of education and their rights. Vocal in school and in community, they oppose malpractices in the schools and corruption in the society. Looking after the experience, awareness programme and training needs to be implemented for community people.

The success story of Bharat Masala

‘God rewards those who regard work as worship’

Life can be started at any age and at any moment. What one is required to do is to dream and make sincere effort to realise his dream. And this is what exactly Surendra Nath Panda, proprietor of Jay Bharat Spices Ltd, did to reach the pinnacle of success in his career.

Not so long ago, Mr Panda was finding it hard to meet both ends. He had no money to meet the study expenses of his children, but today he has everything – buildings, cars etc. The man, who was just longing for Rs 100 a day in 1996, is now running a business having an annual turnover of over Rs 100 crore.

A resident of Matagajpur in Cuttack district, Mr Panda had a roller-coaster journey to success. It all started on a fine sunny day when his college-going son asked him Rs 11 to pay his bus fare to Choudwar. He could not oblige him as he did not have any money with him. He cursed himself and vowed to fight out poverty. He borrowed Rs 500 from his neighbours and went to Cuttack Malgodown, Orissa’s busiest commercial centre, and bought turmeric. He crushed them and made haldi powder with a hand-propelled stone grinder (chakki). Mr Panda, who was 61 then, went to Cuttack and sold them.

On the very first day, he made a profit of Rs 100. The first day’s experience inspired him a lot and he decided to concentrate on the new job. He crushed more and more turmeric and took the powder in his bicycle for selling in Cuttack. Everything was going on well until he met with an accident just a few days after he started his business. One day, the fingers of his right hand came under the chakki and got crushed. Four of his fingers were badly damaged.

This accident, though physically made him partially incapable of doing hard work, could not suppress his spirit and enthusiasm. He engaged his wife, four sons and daughters-in-law in making turmeric powder. The business flourished. An eleventh class pass-out, Mr Panda bought a machine from his savings. Today, he has the world’s latest state-of-the-art machines and equipments to produce quality spices.

Mr Panda’s four sons – Susanta Panda, Srimant Panda, Diganta Panda and Sumanta Panda; daughters-in-law Nandita Panda and Pragnya Paramita Panda – have been helping him in running his business. In the beginning, as expected, he had to face harassments from various circles – both government and private. But he overcame them with élan.

“I’m a spiritual person. I believe in God. He only helped me to become a successful person today by removing all obstacles,” says Mr Panda.

Surendra has employed more than 2,000 employees. What is quite heartening is that most of his employees are having humble backgrounds.

“I give priority to employ people in distress, especially widows, orphans, divorced women and poor students. I have passed through acute financial hardship and I do not want to see others suffer from such distress,” he observes.

Though in plenty now, Mr Panda runs his organization with his own ethics and sense of economics. He does not allow any of his family members to claim as the owner of his empire. He has registered Jay Bharat Spices Limited as a company and made his sons and daughters-in-law as its board of directors. Each of them gets a monthly package of Rs 20,000. They all have been provided with a four-wheeler and a driver. Each member of the family is asked to contribute to Rs 4,000 to the family fund every month.

Jay Bharat is now producing more than 50 varieties of spices including turmeric powder, chhatua, chilli powder, papad, vermicelli, etc. The products--which are popularly known as Bharat Masala--are exported to all major Indian cities such as Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderbad, Kolkata and foreign countries like Malaysia, Nepal, Kuwait, Mauritius, Singapore, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

“The demand is so high for our products that very often we find it difficult to produce spices as per the market requirement,” Mr Panda informs.

Is Mr Panda’s growth just a miracle? “No miracles happen if you do not strive to achieve anything. If you do hard work and make sincere and planned efforts, God will shower His blessings on you. God rewards those who regard work as a form of worship,” he remarks.

The veteran industrialist, who is now associated with the state’s Spice Board and many other government organizations, has received many accolades for his outstanding achievement.

For the new age entrepreneurs, Mr Panda has one advice. “Give quality products, people will accept you and you can have a long successful journey. There is no substitute to quality products and standard service.”

Integrated socio-economic developments of tribals need high priority

Padmashree Prof. Dr. P. K. Jena

India since independence, has achieved considerably in elevating socio economic standard of its people in general. However, these developments are not in commensurate with vast and varied natural resources of the county. Even there are countries in the world with much less amount of natural resources, but have been able to achieve much more developments than India. Further, besides slow rate of socio economic advancement in India, there is a growing disparity between rich and poor. The overall productivity of the country is very much hampered because of lack of awareness regarding advanced science and technology and dearth of enough technical skill amongst a large section of the people particularly in the rural India which constitutes about 70 per cent of the population.
Further, it is felt that, due to faulty planning and delay in plan implementation and also for want of proper monitoring and accountability, mechanism, the socio economic developments are not only slow but also becoming imbalanced. The rural India compared to the urban population, is becoming more and more vulnerable to poverty, unhygienic living conditions and illiteracy. Amongst the rural population; the tribals are the most affected ones.
Indian tribes constitute around 8 to 10 per cent of nation’s total population and most of them live Below Poverty Line (BPL) category. In the North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland, about 90 per cent of the people are tribal. In the remaining northern states of Assam, Manipur, Sikim and Tripura, nearly 20 to 30 per cent of the populations are tribals. However, the largest numbers of tribals live in states like Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. These tribals live in areas which are rich in natural resources like minerals, forest and water. But the faulty planning and its unsatisfactory implementation are the main retarding factors to bring upliftment of the tribals of India.
While the world, is marching ahead at a faster rate for industrial and socio economic developments, unfortunately in India, a large section of rural mass particularly the schedule tribes, are leading a very poor life.
In the state of Orissa, nearly 23 per cent of the people are schedule tribes (ST) and most of them are BPL. Recently, the author and some scientists of the Institute of Advance Technology & Environmental Studies (IATES) made a detail survey of some eight typical ST villages in the Ghatagaon block of Keonjhar district. It was found that, in these villages, most of the ST people are living below the poverty line with no electricity and scanty food and lack of essential commodities. They have practically no regular means of sustainable livelihood. Some of them with meagre production of only one crop that is rice during the kharif season are unable to feed their family properly. In general, except paddy cultivation and growing some seasonal vegetables in their backyard; rest of the year, these people mostly remain idle and thus are deprived of even two square meals a day for their family members. A quality living and any luxury in life are beyond their imagination. In these villages, the water scarcity particularly for drinking and agricultural purposes is very acute. In summer, they undergo a lot of hardship to get some drinking water from very distance places. These people live in darkness at night, sometimes with oil lamps occasionally with a kerosene lantern with no hope to get electricity in their lifetime. Though most of the villages have got primary schools, hardly one or two have the high schools and quite a number of the children even do not go to school. The parents give very little importance to send their children to school as they are busy in fighting poverty and try to utilize their children to do some manual work for their living. The ignorance about the value of education is also another retarding factor for poor literacy in those areas.
In these villages, the sanitation is very poor. They live with no latrine system, with little hygienic conditions in their houses as well as the surroundings. In most cases, people live and sleep in the same room where they cook their food. Cooking is done by burning fuel wood, straw and twigs as and when available through random collection mainly by their children and female folks. The villagers have limited opportunity to receive proper medical care when they need. The infants are fed only the mother’s milk and afterwards they seldom find a chance in their life to get a glass of milk. In these villages, most of the families have no cows and a few people have a pair of bullocks for cultivation purpose. In this way, these villagers lead a very poor life with no hope for a better future. Most of the men and women in the region have practically no idea about the ways and means to be productive in order to have a comfortable living may be through self employment. This is also the state of affairs for most of the tribals of Orissa and also those in other parts of India.
It is therefore essential to make a beginning as early as possible to elevate the socio economic conditions of these villagers. At first, it is required to bring awareness amongst these villagers regarding the scope and means for better living and thus imparting suitable training to implement some socio economic programmes by creating necessary infrastructural facilities. For these villagers, the following facilities are needed on priority basis for starting a comfortable living.

1) Harvesting rain water to meet their needs for drinking, cooking, bathing etc. (particularly during summer and winter days) and for irrigation purposes.

2) Utilization of rejected organic matters in their surroundings for producing bio-gas (for cooking and lighting the houses) and the residual solids for using as good manure for their agricultural fields.

3) Supplying electricity to each house with minimum infrastructure and expenditure (may be by providing solar cells) and also for lighting streets and other public places in these villages.

4) Sanitation facility including the latrines with safety tanks and regular health check up of all particularly the children, pregnant women and old people.

5) Imparting training in post harvest technology in order to provide self employment to local youths, based on the agricultural produce.

6) Development of social forestry particularly keeping in view for producing oil seeds organic pesticides etc. and

7) Providing facilities for vocational training to generate employment opportunities in the urban and industrial sectors.

It is felt that, demonstration of the above activities towards the socio-economic developments of schedule tribes and imparting suitable training are essential. During the visit of IATES team to Ghatagaon, it was found that most of the youths are unemployed and frustrated. However, they were anxious to have some advice and the ways and means for doing something for their better living. A large number of them showed the desire to have some vocational training in different trades for self employment.
If the above facilities are to be made available to each and every village in the area at different places, it would be very expensive and also would require a large number of technical experts. In view of this, it is suggested to have a Project Demonstration and Training Center (PDTC) at a central place near to those villages. In this way, the people in all the concerned villages can conveniently come to that place to see the demonstration units and get trained to install the facilities at their respective houses/villages. The awareness programme through audiovisual system at the center should be highly beneficial to the villagers and also to the school children. The local government, officials are to be persuaded to make cost benefit analysis with the help of the experts available at the Center to finance and assist the villagers to set up similar facilities in their houses / villages as the case may be.
It is suggested that, by implementing the above programmes, generating awareness and imparting vocational training, the socio economic conditions of the villagers will improve significantly and they will learn the art of living in a clean surroundings. For example, a simple sanitation practice will save a lot of lives. The WHO recently reported, “At least 1.8 million people in the world die every year from diarrhoea diseases, ninety per cent of these are children under five years. In fact, the death of these children can be easily avoided by almost 45 per cent simply by hand washing and hygiene education.
In India, though the ST villagers are mostly illiterate, they are very simple with least ambition and highly anxious to be helped for better living. They are completely in darkness about socio-economic developments being enjoyed by the people in some urban areas of India and also other parts of the world. It is therefore essential to use appropriate science and technology in different programmes befitting to their culture, resources and attitude to improve their living standards.
It is strongly felt that, if above mentioned socio economic developmental programmes are taken up at different areas of tribal populated India, it would go a long way to improve rapidly their socio economic conditions. It is hoped that, the central and state governments should take necessary actions in the way mentioned above with the cooperation of various voluntary organizations and the technical experts with regular monitoring to see that the tribals get all the benefits of the projects at the earliest.
(The author is Ex–Director General, CSIR & Chairman Institute of Advance Technology & Environmental Studies (IATES), Bhubaneswar. He can be contacted at iates_bbsr@yahoo.co.in.)

In this regard, let me take the example of the district of Keonjhar, which is the richest district in India, if not in the world, with respect to its minerals, forest and water resource. Today, a large number of mining activities and mineral based industries have come up in the district.

The mineral resources and the forests are being depleted very fast. The wastes and the highly polluted environment are causing a lot of suffering to the people in the region. In this process of so called industrialisation, only the lease holders of the mines, the owners of the industries and a few others who were associated for trading the raw materials and the products are  deriving the maximum benefits living behind very little for the affected people in the region. The green and dense forests, the fresh and pure water and air of Keonjhar are no more to be seen or enjoyed. The district presents a barren, dusty and devastated look and the local people are silently suffering from various types of diseases which were totally unknown in the past. All this are due to lack of proper management and use of outdated technology in mining, mineral processing and running other mineral based industries. The need of the hour is to utilise environment friendly and energy efficient technologies for running these industries and also keeping the air, water and soil in these region free from the pollutants. But where are the experts who could through advanced research and development activity produce the environment friendly processes for all these industries in order to take care of the environment and to look after the sanitation and health problems of the people in the region and good water to drink and fresh air to breathe in.

India has developed considerable amount of infrastructures and laboratories to undertake research and developmental activities in various disciplines like conservation and development of minerals, forests, soil, water, ocean resources, advancement in agricultural and health sector, developmental of new and alternate sources of energy. These research and development organisations have started facing problems for getting suitable personnel with good science and engineer background. Most of the brilliant students in recent years, after completion of their school education, are pursuing study in areas like information technology, computer application, business management, electronics and getting easy employment and fat salaries in the concerned industries. Those who are going into other engineering disciplines, after completion of their bachelor degree, are getting employments in the concerned industries for undertaking only routine jobs. As a result, only the left-out mediocre graduates plan to get into post graduate studies in science and technology and ultimately some of them after their post graduate study enter into the research line. Because of this, the younger generation in research and development are found to be less productive. This is a very dangerous trend for the country and it is very likely that this younger generation will not be able to make any breakthrough and substantial contribution to high science and technology.

It is high time that the state and central governments of our country should examine this trend and undertake programmes to allure brilliant students to undertake postgraduate studies in various discipline of science and technology .Nowadays, most of the colleges and universities are also facing acute dearth of experienced and knowledgeable teaching staff to teach and give proper guidance to the postgraduate students and researchers. Under the circumstances, the retired and capable professors and scientists have got a big role to play in assisting and advising the governments to upgrade the postgraduate teaching and research before the country becomes bankrupts in the area of high science and technology. Let this important message reach the policy makers of the central and state governments of India.

(The writer is Ex- director general, CSIR & chairman Institute of Advance Technology &Environment Studies, Bhubaneswar)