Lasting Support to Farmers in India

A 2018 report by Gallup published that only 3% of Indians think they are thriving while GDP increased year-on-year since 2007. The highest well-being score was 19% and a drop to 3% does need attention.

The key issues reported (as of 2017) are

• 70% of wealth earned went to richest 1% of Indians.
• 37% of Indians (41% rural & 26% urban) reported having issues paying for food
• 31% of Indians reported having difficulty paying for shelter

Majority of agricultural households are in debt. The question of lasting solution for Indian farmers trapped in debt remains unanswered.

This is no new news about farmers & the level of trouble (in US, 83.5% farmers makes less than $100k in gross sales per data from USDA).

What could be a solution to the farmer debt issue?

• Rural Internet access—This opens up the doors to tools and data but it is going to take time. Low flying satellite initiatives and eventually 5G will solve this problem.
• Farming efficiency — a lot of manual labor can be replaced by machinery but this is not realistic without first solving the debt issue. Machinery is expensive today and we may have a scale issue.
• Inefficiencies in business model — this is a change that holds a potential to increase the farmer Topline but this opens the door to a much larger challenges that are difficult to address.

It will probably take a decade to address the challenges above. In the meantime, STEM education accessible to children today holds a good potential for tomorrow. It will enable them to leverage the developments in infrastructure, tools and technologies and decision science at large.

STEM education today teaches fishing for our future generations.

A general theme to promote education when we think about sharing our success is philanthropic with a long term impact.

What are some of the small gestures we can start with? A few possibilities

• Spread awareness of education being a necessity
• Promote interest in STEM. The curious will catch on
• Direct contributions to institutions that support education