Plush luxury juxtaposed with abject poverty, rich elegance surrounded by a need for bare human necessity.
That is contradiction of India today. Poised to become a global superpower, with a 7 % annual growth rate (one of the highest in the world), it has a rapidly expanding economy that will create a projected 200 million jobs in the next 20 yrs.
Yet the lack of basic facilities facing millions of the nation’s people can hardly be ignored. Rural India is home to some of the poorest people in the globe.
Swamped by myriad complex problems, the government has used unique strategies to find solutions. The private-public partnership (PPP) which the government encourages is one such solution.
In this partnership state governments of the country work with private, non-profit organizations such as Akshaya Patra, to implement their various schemes. For the Government this means a change in emphasis from directly delivering services to management and co-ordination, a shift that allows them to reduce their load, while at the same time ensuring that the guidelines of their schemes are met.
This shift also works in favour of the beneficiaries. A private-public partnership combines the best of both worlds in brining together the unique skills and expertise of the private sector to the advantage and larger good of the public.
One of the most successful examples of a PPP can be found in The Akshaya Patra Foundation. Akshaya Patra works in collaboration with various State Governments of India to provide nearly 1.2 million school going children across the country with freshly cooked nutritious meals.
State of the art technology combined with new and exciting innovations from the private sector have helped the Foundation achieve remarkabale results. From making 40 000 rotis an hour to cooking 6 tonnes of rice in just 30 minutes, Akshaya Patra’s centralized kitchens are so well known that they are now a case study at Harvard Business School.
All this could only have been possible with the combined efforts of society at large. The Foundation believes that change is only effective when every citizen of this country accepts their social responsibility.
In a country that is home to nearly 44% of the world’s malnourished children, the mid-day meal scheme has proved very effective in not only increasing the health of children, but also in encouraging them to return to school. It has been shown that in some places where Akshaya Patra is conducting the program, attendance and enrolment of students has increased by as much as 40%.
This private-public partnership is particularly successful because it acts as an interface between the private and public sector to bring about lasting change. In the 10 years of its existence, Akshaya Patra has managed to leverage the technology and resources of the private sector to help children in need.
The government’s strategy in encouraging these partnerships has proved very effective. Today, Cooked Mid-day Meal (CMDM) scheme is the largest of its kind in the world, with nearly 120 million children across India who benefit from the program.
In what is known as one of the greatest success stories of India, this unique strategy stands as testimony to what can be done with the collaboration of society at large.
