A Hundred Handshakes

Well before the news of having won the “Social Entrepreneur Award of the Year” by the Schwab Foundation and Jubilant Bharitya Foundation had fully sunk in, I found myself thrown right in the midst of totally unfamiliar yet exciting settings. As the winner of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award I was invited as a panellist in the opening plenary of the India Economic Summit in New Delhi to share talk time with imposing names in global and Indian business, economy and development. Vivian Gee‘s (Associate Director of the Schwab Foundation and Global Leadership Fellow) counselling before the event had been excellent but the sheer visual impact of a large hall full of well-known business leaders, bureaucrats, academicians and media persons made me swallow hard a couple of times as my name was called out to join the stage. Among the others on the plenary podium, I was clearly the least-known and the worst-dressed, but as I heard the others speak my mind quickly put together ideas on the most urgent inclusion imperative in our country today. In the loud celebration of growth, foreign investment and a globalized economic culture, the voice of the vast informal and casual workforce – migrant workers exceed several millions – had to be expressed. And, I am glad that I was able to do so in a forum of such visibility and significance. I spoke about the need for ensuring labour services, entitlements and identity, and investing in skills if India’s economy has to become sustainable. I also pressed the urgent need for fairer returns and protection measures for the informal workforce without which the inclusion agenda will never be served.

As I stepped down from the stage of the opening plenary at the India Economic Summit, quite to my surprise I got swamped by the audience. Many people gave me their business cards, several of the press quickly arranged interviews and several people came up to congratulate me on the award and on what I had said. Another small group circled me and said that they enjoyed hearing someone from a “small place like Udaipur” which made me laugh as it confirmed my notion that I was from another, lesser known world in this high-profile one. But, it was excellent to be able to communicate across these superficial borders and I must have shaken a hundred hands within those few minutes after the plenary.

I spent two full days at the Summit getting to know several business representatives who expressed keen interest in our work, many media persons who interviewed me for TV and newspapers, and of course fellow Social Entrepreneurs and the excellent team of the Schwab Foundation including Vivian and Mirjam Schöning (Head of the Schwab Foundation) who served as my best anchors in the busy, sometimes bewildering world of the India Economic Summit. I look forward to going to Davos some time, which by all accounts promises to be several times more busy and bewildering. But it would definitely be a suitable venue to assert the agenda for migrant workers and the informal workforce of India and the world.

Rajiv Khandelwal

                                    Award Winners – Krishnavatar Sharma & Rajiv Khandelwal, Aajeevika
 

 

Editors Note
Rajiv Khandelwal, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Aajeevika Bureau, India                                Social Entrepreneurs of the Year, India, 2010

Ajeevika Bureau is a specialized non-profit, public service organization set up to provide solutions, services and security to seasonal migrants who leave their villages to find work in cities, factories and farms across India.