Ramesh Ramanathan, the former Citibank executive who founded the NGO Janaagraha in Bangalore, has an excellent column in Mint, the business paper of the Hindustan Times group, today, on the “inspirational lamp” that the Tata Nano lights up.
There are, he says, hundreds of challenges in India where the lessons of the Nano can be applied—design innovation, scale efficiency, vendor networking and so on.
# “Imagine if we could get a CT scan cost down to Rs500, offer a heart surgery for a few thousand rupees or a gall bladder surgery for under a thousand. This requires a fundamental redesign of all the parts of the health-care delivery system—from re-engineering individual components such as the CT scan, to embedding these into scaled health “cities” that can get a critical mass of 10,000 outpatients a day.
#”The second example is in housing. In urban India alone, we need to build more than 26 million homes to meet projected demand until 2012, and more than 95% of this is for the poor. If we ignore government subsidized programmes, and focus on market-driven solutions, we need to build homes with an all-in cost of Rs2-2.5 lakh for land and building, so that the EMI is around Rs2,500. Given current land costs and FSI/FAR (floor space index/floor area ratio) ratios in urban India, this translates to a construction cost of about Rs300-400 per sq. ft for a 400 sq. ft dwelling. Imagine the kind of demand that can open up if we can change the engineering specifications, reduce the cost-per-unit by scale economies, improve the construction process, and deliver a product that might not have marble floors, but doesn’t compromise on quality.”
Read the full article: The Nano inspiration
Everything can be done, just that license permit raj is abolished, which favours the entrenched class. We did the same in Telecom, can be done in any other sectors as mentioned also.
All this is possible, but all the politicians and middlemen with their vested interests won’t be able to get as much money on the side so it will never happen.
A great thought by ramanathan. But ourBIG CATS of Industry in FICCI<CII<ASSOCHAM has to think in terms of MAKING PROFIT BY SERVING the MASSES. Mukesh ambani has made billions and entered the forbes list but he is spending 4500 crores and builiding a palace in Mumbai called the ANTILLA for 6 of his family members served by 600 servants and 167 cars in 27 storey building . Mumbai is getting loan from Japan to construct 225 sq feet of living space for 10 lakh families who live in dharavi!!!
Mallaya is designing bikiniclad calendars but he cannot think of a school or college as his father thought while he made money also built hospitals.
mind set of BIG CATS .has to change
Captain!
There’s no point in blaming mallya or ambani or anybody for that matter. If we want to see a change in the society, we should change first instead of pointing finger at others!
O Kuthuhala, your wisdom is beyond your years, young man! That is well said. Captain, Ambani can do what he wishes with his wealth. When your net worth is similar to Ambani’s, you build schools and colleges and set an example.
>> “Imagine if we could get a CT scan cost down to Rs500, offer a heart surgery for a few thousand rupees or a gall bladder surgery for under a thousand. This requires a fundamental redesign of all the parts of the health-care delivery system—from re-engineering individual components such as the CT scan, to embedding these into scaled health “cities” that can get a critical mass of 10,000 outpatients a day. <<
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Oh great! If we can get a CT scan for Rs 500, why don’t we subscribe to weekly scans? If we can get a gall bladder surgery done for Rs 700, why don’t we get it done (who cares if our gall bladder is already in great condition)?
Oil is not a usual commodity any more. It’s becoming very scarce. Do you know that if no new sites get opened, and the oil demand doesn’t fall, we can continue digging oil out for just 40 more years?
Oil is worth much more than the price we pay for it. Misusing it is almost like abusing slaves … once upon a time, it was accepted, but it never was good.