BHARATPUR: Corporate social responsibility is becoming more than a buzz word. A pharma company’s CSR initiative is aiming to make Bharatpur in Rajasthan, India’s first poverty free district in the next few years.
Lupin Foundation, the pharma company, is helping employ thousands of villagers.
Shyam Kishore, 30, is a poultry farmer. In five years, his life has changed, and all for the better. Starting with 300 chicks in a small shade, the 30-year-old is now the proud owner of five poultry farms.
“I used to work in the farm. We could only earn twice a year from our cultivation. Now my family earns a monthly income,” he says.
Lokesh, another 30-year-old, is a bee-keeper. For him too, the story is the same. With a little help from Lupin Foundation, Lokesh started his bee farm with just 10 boxes of bee six years back. Today, he is as busy as his bees, thanks to the corporate unit’s rural upliftment programmes.
“I started bee-keeping in 2001 with 10 boxes of bees. I now look after 180 boxes of bees,” he says with pride.
Sixty-year-old Sohan Singh is a dairy farmer. He too has reaped the benefits of Lupin’s Corporate Social Responsibility. From being a small-time farmer, he and his family now earn Rs 25 thousand per month. And other villagers are following his integrated dairy farming method.
“Lupin adopted this village and provided me with seed money and provided training to start this farm,” he says.
Different faces, but the same story. The initiative taken by the Lupin Foundation is bringing about a gradual transformation in the villages of Bharatpur in Rajasthan.
A part of 1.3 billion dollar pharma company, under the leadership of Dr Deshbandhu Gupta, Lupin Foundation acts a catalyst by providing sustainable linkages between the government, the rural households and the market.
Sita Ram Gupta, Executive Director, Lupin Foundation, says, “If we can provide some skills to villagers, if we can provide value addition as far as agriculture produce is concerned… If we can produce market to milk products, if we can provide processing facilities then the income of villagers increases manifold.”
With self-help groups for women in order, Lupin hopes to make Bharatpur India’s first poverty-free district by 2015.
Many corporates pay lip service to CSR, but often it takes more than lip service to really make it happen.
This is one of the examples of how India Inc can help in making India a really inclusive growth story.
(IBNLIVE.IN.COM)
