Service for Non Resident Villagers

For urban Indians and NRIs who want a slice of their rural past, Pradeep Lokhade brings their villages to them.

As a young boy, Pradeep Lokhande had been sent 500 km away from his village to finish his education. The years went by and he accumulated degrees and experience, even started on a marketing career. But rural India seemed to be ingrained in him.

Fifteen years ago, he decided that instead of taking the beaten path, he would do something to bridge the gap between the two Indias, one living in villages and the other in burgeoning cities. He started what was then an unusual concept, a rural consultancy of sorts. It was called Rural Relations.

One of the first things he did was ‘postcard connectivity’. He sent postcards to people he knew in villages and informed them of important decisions of the government. Since the cost of a postcard was about 15 paise back then, it was not an expensive venture. Many replied with queries of their own. With the links thus established, a rural databank came into being.

It was not just altruism, there was also business involved. Corporate entities started using the database for their own marketing. To date, Lokhande says he has written over 2.5 million letters to people in about 5,000 villages across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

“As I got involved with the villages, I started concentrating on the schools there. I got in touch with people to donate second-hand computers to these schools so that the children would be able to learn their use through touch and feel. Otherwise, if people donated new computers, the schools would not allow students to handle it,” says Lokhande.

His latest initiative is also unusual. It’s called Non-Resident Villager (NRV) Movement and is targeted at those who are keen on touching base with their roots in their native villages. For Rs 3,800 and the name of your village, Lokhande will locate school friends, teachers and family who reside there.
“My team visits the village and we shoot every change the village has seen over the years, be it the roads, schools, buildings, etcetera. If the interested party wants to see these changes and talk to people via the web, we organise that. I have been approached by many NRIs for pictures of their villages. Some have followed it up with visits,” says Lokhande.

He needs a minimum time of 20 working days to translate a person’s wish to visit his/her village into reality. Specific projects pertaining to village infrastructure, healthcare, education or anything else are also undertaken by Lokhande. The audio-visual representation of this is then sent to the interested party.  He even organises their visit there.

About The Author

Haima Deshpande