Transcript-Harish Hande

It is an honor to speak here. I know it’s a dangerous territory for me whenever, if you heard me speak elsewhere, I’ve always made jokes on MBAs. And this is a dangerous territory always. And I kept looking for jokes on Engineers to speak to this audience, but unfortunately, I had a bias, I could not find any jokes on Engineers. Just kidding.

The topic being Social Entrepreneurship, Sustainability and the youth, just to give you a background, we are in a very pampered cocoon, called Manipal. Many of you here have come from privileged backgrounds. We enjoy the benefits of life and take it for granted in many ways. We are happy that India is growing at 8 to 9%. We are very clear that it is the second largest growing economy in the world.

Well, is that reality? Is that the truth of what we are? After 65 years of independence, a small statistic says that 45% of fellow Indians do not have electricity. This is 2011, after 135 years that Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb, 45- 47% of Indians do not have electricity, that’s reality. And 60% of Indians still use one technology that has survived the iron age, that is the three stone cooker. Put three stones and cook. One million citizens in the world die because of indoor air pollution and out of that three fourths are Indians. On one hand we say that we are growing at 8 to 9%, on one hand we say we are the second largest growing economy in the world and on the other hand we have this stark difference of the other Indian. This is an equal responsibility of you and me. So to start little more controversially I would say, the ego of graduating from IIT, I mean IITians tend to be egoistic in many manners and just to give you an example, When I went to IIT I paid 60Rs a semester, that is 480Rs for my four years of education. We are very thrilled, we go to the bay area, we make lots of money and say that we are from IIT. But who subsidises our education? There are 600 million Indians who buy salt and