Have you ever thought of Social Investment?

For starters Social Investment is an investment not charity but for social purposes. You get the satisfaction of helping the needy and also get your money back with a modest interest.

On one side we have this huge poverty challenge and many of the rural poor trying to make a living and looking for some capital to give them a break (as low as Rs 5000). On the other hand there are quite a few busy urban people who want do something socially relevant but do not know how. This is where Social Investment comes in. Internationally there are organizations like kiva. The one I would like highlight here is our own desi organization Rangde which started off 2006 and has grown quite impressively with about 3,350 investors making investments to the tune of over 6 crore impacting the lives of close to 12,000 borrowers as of Jan 2012 .

They have an impressive website which links the investors and the borrowers backed up by a professional and dedicated team. I have been an investor since 2008 and have always had a pleasant experience in interacting with the team.

So what are you waiting for? You can start with as low an investment as Rs100. Start Today!

Sensitivity

My last post referred to water leakages and BWSSB call center. You might wonder why I mentioned only about water leakages. Now there is a reason and that is the topic of this one! I find that people are sensitive to different things and react differently. For eg: I am very sensitive to water leakages. Invariably on my way to office or while returning home I notice them. Earlier I would suffer with this sticking in my conscience and not knowing what to do about them (but no longer thanks to the BWSSB call center). However I am not so sensitive about overflowing drainages/manholes. It is primarily due to the fact that the solution that exists today - of collecting alll sewage and then dumping it (with whatever treatment) on neighborhood villages is not the right approach in the first place. So any leakage is only making the problem visible to us the people who are actually the root cause of the same and hence does not incite me into action ( My dream is that we should get to a stage of locally handling the problems for which we are responsible - could be sewage, could be garbage). Similarly littering while it makes a place look ugly is no big problem in my view since the current solution is just to truck it all away and dump it on some poor village to deal with the consequences. Water on the other hand being a resource for which we do not pay the "right cost" being transported from 100s of kms to reach the city is far more precious in my mind. However my wife who is a doctor is highly sensitive about the sewage given her professional background and a heightened urge for cleanliness!
Similarly on electricity I feel very uncomfortable to see a room without people but with lights on. I have to barge in and switch them off!
This reminds me of an incident from Ramakrishna Paramahamsa where he says he cannot stand the touch of money. Vivekananda tries to test by placing some coins underneath his bed when he is not around. When Ramakrishna comes and tries to sit, he gets up as if hit by an electric shock. Long back when I had read this I would wonder if this is possible but now with my own experiences I can relate to it better.