Alternative Perspective
on Sustainable Options and Local Solutions
 Issue 35, June 4, 2003
Compiled by Madhukar Shukla

 Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media. Please feel free to share/ forward/ distribute this newsletter to others who may be interested.



Note: The URLs of sources used in the text are numbered and given at the end of the Newsletter.

In This Issue:
  • The Lijjat Papad Story
    Four decades back, eight illiterate Indian women borrowed Rs80 to start making Papad. Today, Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad[1] employs 40,000 women, has a turnover of Rs300 crores (i.e., Rs3,000,000,000!!), operates through a network of more than 60 autonomous branches across the country, and has diversified into a number of products (spice, detergent, chapatis, etc.). Lijjat is both a benchmark of social entrepreneurship which is based on combining profitable business with community and family values - and a question-mark about the assumption that development can occur only through private (read MNC) investments.
    http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/feb/eco-lijpapad.htm

  • Bioplanet@: A Glocal Solution for Social/Community Development
    Bioplanet@[2] is a unique network of around 55 small rural Mexican producers, whose businesses are as diverse as cosmetics, agriculture, coffee and eco-tourism. In addition, this network also has around 10 equally diverse NGOs, who help the producers with finding domestic and export markets for their produce, ensuring fare trade and environmental conservation, providing consultancy, and in leveraging the synergy of the network. The network thrives, because members support it: by building internal supply chains, investing in new ventures of other members, and sharing expertise and resources with each other... It is a Utopian solution, but it works!!!
    http://www.changemakers.net/journal/02june/nauman.cfm

  • Curitiba: A City Sustained by Beggars
    In 1970s, like all cities (specially in developing countries), Curitiba, a Brazilian city, also had its own quota of problem: swelling population, multiplying waste to be disposed, breakdown of essential services, and an increasing segment of orphaned, dispossessed street children. Today, it is one of the best managed cities in the world[3]. What transformed the city was more than just a balanced town-plan and efficient systems; rather, it was its innovative deployment of the human capital of the community[4] - of those, who are normally marginalised by external-aid driven development projects (the beggars, street children, slum-dwellers, small farmers, etc.). In today's world, where roughly half the population lives in cities (and cities, while occuping just 2% of planet's surface, consume 75% of resources taken out from the earth), Curitiba provides a sustainable alternative to living...
    http://www.vision-nest.com/cbw/Principles.html#1

  • Orangi Pilot Project: Transforming a Slum
    Orangi[5] was to Karachi, what Dharavi is to Mumbai - a slum, a squatter community of more than 1mn people, full of poverty, filth and hopelessness. Orangi Pilot Project[6], an initiative launched in 1980 by a local NGO, mobilised the local community resources and transformed the slum through street committees, voluntary labour and contributed cash[7]. Not only they installed 1.3mn feet of sewer lines to connect 72,000 houses, but also the entire cost of $1.5mn was met through the community resources. Today, what had started as a sanitation programme, now supports low cost housing, loans for family enterprises, and employment generation.
    http://www.tve.org/ho/doc.cfm?aid=575

  • Local Alternatives in a Global (read "Corporatized") World
    The examples in this feature, just serve to reinforce the theme of this issue of the newsletter: viz., There are practical working models of development which combine economic activity with strengthening of the community, and conservation of the environment. In fact, those who have been with the Newsletter since its earlier days, will recall many similar successful social experiments, which were covered in some of the earlier issues - e.g., Mondragon Cooperatives of Basque[8], Ithaca Hours[9], Grameen Bank[10], etc... So even if the world may not change overnight, at least possibilities exist... and there is an answer to that skeptical/resigned question: "Fine! but is there an alternative?"...
    http://www.newint.org/issue232/success.htm


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.lijjat.com/index1.asp
    [2]: http://www.bioplaneta.com/bioing/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1
    [3]: http://www.newhorizons.org/trans/international/pierce.htm
    [4]: http://www.globalideasbank.org/BI/BI-262.HTML
    [5]: http://t062.cpla.cf.ac.uk/wbimages/iecedm/Resources/conference/ex_pk_5_opp.htm
    [6]: http://www.urckarachi.org/orangi.htm
    [7]: http://www.globalideasbank.org/BI/BI-263.HTML
    [8]: http://www.justpeace.org/mondragon.htm
    [9]: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/Glover.htm
    [10]: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95dec/grameen/grameen.htm


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