People made homeless by north Karnataka?s devastating flood last September have a helping hand in technological firms now. These firms plan to roll out new colonies that will give a new lease of life to the flood-affected. The tragedy hit 16 districts and destroyed over five lakh houses.
The colonies have been built under a unique public private partnership (PPP) model christened Asare. Apart from the monetary help, the state government provided the land and roped in private companies to rebuild houses. A year down the line, companies such as Cisco and Infosys have designed model villages that go beyond just housing ? primary health centres (PHC), education, and even financial inclusion are being addressed.
Cisco is building 3,570 houses in five villages in Raichur district. It has also created a PHC and a remote education centre at an investment of Rs 47 crore. Infosys is building 2,218 houses in five districts?Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, Dharwad and Belgaum?an investment of Rs 30 crore. The new villages are cleaner, have wide roads, trees and in the future, could even have concrete drainage. The firm is linking the villages to banks to guarantee financial inclusion. In Gulbarga, SBI has promised to open zero balance accounts for all the beneficiaries.
Not far from Raichur town, business software firm SAP, along with Hope Foundation, has handed over 90 houses in Jagir Venkatapura village; the two-room houses are 290 square feet in size. With support from KPMG, Sonata-Software, Accenture, Novell, Adobe, Wal-Mart, and Amicorp, the Foundation has also built two multi-purpose community halls that include a computer lab and a health unit.
About 17,000 houses built under the PPP model are projected to be handed over by September 15 this year, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP, and coordinator of Asare, says. ?If we can do all this for every village being built, we can create many modern villages,? he adds. His foundation is building 1,000 houses in Raichur.
What looks like CSR initiatives now, can have business implications later ? at least Cisco believes building modern, smart communities could in the future boost its sales of switches, routers, TelePresence and security systems among others. As Cisco handed over the keys of 500 ready houses to Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa last week, it also demonstrated how its technology can aid remote education for Rs 46 student per month and how remote diagnostics can be done for Rs 92 per consultation.
?If these concepts work, villages can become sustainable. We hope that this can become a model that can scale. We call it ?Village in a Box?. We are in the proof of concept now,? says chief globalisation officer of Cisco Wim Elfrink. The executive adds that Rs 47,00,000 crore needs to be invested in smart urbanisation intiatives over the next decade. About 2.5% of that pie will go to technology.