Rural Development
Public Private Partnerships
Dr. SADHANA K. MALHOTRA
PPP Definition
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These are partnerships between the public and
private sectors for the purpose of delivering a
project or service traditionally provided for by
the public sector
The Public Sector
The strengths of the public sector include:
 Works on a very large scale; can utilize
economies of scale.
 A lot of technical and professional expertise
exists in the system
 Presence in the rural and inaccessible areas
 More equitable
The Private Sector
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The private sector also has some distinct strengths:
Viable enterprises with good business models
Many of them have good market presence, with plenty of
clients
Good management systems with greater efficiency
Flexibility to act independently at a short notice
The synergy of public and private sector for agreed upon
objectives in PPP achieves more than what each can
accomplish alone. The intent behind the initiative is to utilize
the strengths of the government system and the private sector.
Govt. and Private sector in partnership
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The Govt. has its own programmes for the
development and upliftment of rural India
Some of the leading corporates have also been
instrumental in bringing a positive change in
the rural sector through their Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) Initiatives
The ITC initiative
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ITC launched `Choupal Sagar’ a rural mall
ITC has also started E choupal to link directly
with the rural farmers for procurement of
agricultural /aquaculture produce like wheat,
coffee, soyabean and prawns.
The objective was to tackle the challenges of
fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and
numerous intermediaries
What is Choupal Sagar
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The size of Choupal Sagar is smaller than other malls in the cities. The
ground area of the mall is only 7000 square feet, but the height of the ceiling
is very high, as the mall serves the dual purpose of warehouse-cum-shopping
mall.
Choupal Sagar is self-service mall and serves multi-purpose activities like
warehouse, trading and information center, i.e., “all under single roof”.
For sustainability of this rural mall, ITC has a tie-up with players of different
industries like banks, insurance companies, petroleum, and agri-input
industries. A separate building has been constucted nearby for them. There
the agri-input companies of farm machinery, seed and pesticide can also
demonstrate their products.
ITC has also tied-up with agro-institutes for training farmers.
It organizes various activities and events like melas, training programs, and
demonstrations to increase the number of footfalls during the off-season.
What is e Choupal
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Kiosks have been set up with computers and internet
connectivity at the house of the sanchalak, a trained farmer
The principle is to inform, empower and compete. Farmer’s
can obtain information in regional languages on prices, good
farming practices, weather forecast, crop insurance and buy
agricultural inputs
The farmers’ directly negotiate the sale of their produce with
ITC
The sanchalak earns a service fee for the e transactions done
through his e choupal
Each kiosk serves 600 farmers from the surrounding 10
villages in the radius of 5 km.4m farmers benefited from the
service.
Impact of e Choupal
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Farmer’s incomes have increased
Farmer’s get real time information about the prices
of agricultural produce despite physical distance
from mandis.
The procurement cost by ITC has fallen
The quality of produce has improved with better
information
Small farmers have also benefited
Facilitates two way exchange of goods and services
between rural India and the world
The Macro impact of e choupal
Such a market business model can enhance
the global competitiveness of Indian
agriculture and trigger a cycle of higher
productivity→ higher income→ higher farmer
risk management→ larger investments→
higher quality and productivity
Higher rural incomes triggers demand for
industrial goods and that leads to growth of
Indian economy
The Present and Future
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E Choupal is one of the largest initiatives in
rural India with 7,000 kiosks in 10 states (UP,
Haryana, MP, Uttrakhand, Kerala,AP,
Karnataka,Tamil Nadu, and Maharastra)
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ITC will establish 20,000 e choupals by 2012
in 1,00,000 villages in 15 states and service
15 million farmers
The pitfalls of the ITC model
Indian Tobacco Company (ITC), has weighing
technology in which they weigh the entire truck full
of grain and then the empty truck. If a farmer does
not have one truck full of grain he can't sell. Farmers
can't even do it collectively, because the variety of
the grain differs. The small farmer may be left out of
the procurement process. And even big farmers often
have to suffer losses in transport expenses if the
company rejects their grain under some criteria of
their own.
The Emami Initiative
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Emami has devised a project of self
employment in the rural areas with the
objective of providing employment to the
rural youth, empowerment of women, poverty
eradication and contribute to economic and
social development
The Emami schemes
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Emami Mobile Traders (EMT)
Emami Small Village Shops (ESVS)
The project started in 2004 in N. Bengal. Now
it is operational in WB, AP,MP, Orissa ,
Chattisgarh, Maharastra and Karnataka. The
unemployed rural youth and women earn
regular and sustainable income through direct
marketing
Reliance and Social responsibility
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Social welfare and community development is
the crux of Reliance CSR
They recognize that business has a purposeto serve human needs
RIL keeps close contact with the communities
around its manufacturing facilities to bring
about qualitative changes
Reliance areas of support
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Health care
Education
Infrastructure Development
Environment
Disaster Management
Support to other social development
organizations
The Reliance Initiative
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RIL’s Jamnagar Complex serves the rural
community in the area of health, education,
cultural support, creating/ augmenting village
infrastructure, fodder to cowsheds and supply
of drinking water
At Hazira, RIL provides health care,
educational infrastructural facilities and extra
curricular activities to a cluster of 7 villages
Some examples of RIL’s support
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RIL provides assistance to the students by providing books,
uniforms, shoes, stationery
Health and hygiene awareness programs for students, medical
camps organised
The Company has implemented HIV / AIDS and DOTS
programme at Hazira and Jamnagar, and is in the process of
replicating the same at the other manufacturing divisions.
This initiative is a PPP between the Government, NGOs and
Reliance
Reliance also operates the Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital,
Lodhivali and renders quality medical services to the rural
population and highway accident victims.
More instances of RIL’s support
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Reliance also operates free medical diagnostic and therapeutic services at
neighbouring villages of several of its manufacturing locations.
A community medical centre was established in Moti Khavdi, a village near
Jamnagar Manufacturing Division, in Nov 1995. It provides comprehensive
medical services free of cost and round the clock. About 1.2 lakh villagers of
nearby areas benefit from the same.
The Company’s CSR cell took the initiative to propagate the concept of solid
waste (dry and wet waste) management in the neighbouring villages to help
villagers in keeping their environment clean and garbage-free.
Reliance runs special training programs to equip the young people of neighboring
villages with life and work skills necessary for sustaining livelihood.
Reliance organised extensive awareness programmes on improved packaging
solutions for potato and other vegetables for farmers all over India through use of
Leno bags, which are more durable and cheaper than traditional materials. This
programme helped the farmers reduce the cost of packaging of potato and also
reduce wastage while keeping in cold storage.
The IFFCO Initiative
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IT enabled services for Farmers and Cooperatives
has been provided with multi lingual content. Touch
screen based Information Kiosks have been setup to
disseminate information on agricultural practices and
nutrient related issues, prevailing prices and arrivals
in mandies, spot and futures trading information,
weather, plant disease and appropriate rural
technologies
IFFCO’s advice to farmers
In mid-2007, IFFCO began IKSL(IFFCO Kisan
Sanchar Ltd.) with Airtel offering a voice message
service to its members, which provided agricultural
advice in the form of minute-long voice messages in
local languages. Airtel has designed green SIM cards
and service is operational in 18 states.Farmers
receive 5 messages everyday. Today, the program is
one of the rare mobile projects that has successfully
scaled and continues to grow.
A helpline puts the farmer in touch with experts on
farming and veterinary medicine.
The ONGC Initiative
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ONGC has been extending full support in the overall
development of the areas around its operations all
over the country.
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Projects are identified by ONGC at the plant level by
involving the district administration, local
representatives and recognized voluntary
organisations. Major emphasis has been given for
promotion of education, health and community
development and calamity relief
ONGC’s Helping hand
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Supplementing the efforts of existing health centers in rural
areas
Construction and renovation of schools and assistance to the
pupils from weaker sections
Providing civic amenities: sanitation, clean drinking water
facilities to panchayats, Gram Sabhas
Development of agriculture and other cottage industries
Animal husbandry
Development of infrastructure facilities
PPP initiatives in forestry
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Forest based industries (ITC, Wimco) joined hands with
farmers for production of raw material
Wimco provided the poplar seedlings, technical assistance,
arranged fertilizer input and buyback at an agreed price. ITC
Bhadrachalam did the same with eucalyptus seedlings
The clone plantations of Eucalyptus and Poplar registered an
increase in production and bridged the gap between supply
and demand. The income of the farmers also consequently
increased.
However the scheme was not a success as farmers reneged on
the loans and sold the plantations to third parties
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The PPP initiatives have largely been
successful
More corporate need to step in and work for
rural development. They also need to
synergize their efforts with the ultimate aim of
reaching out to all at the grassroots level
The development of the country has to be all
inclusive and the corporate sector can make it
happen through their CSR initiatives