Magazine supplement 6

WOMEN THE WEEKLY OBSERVER ENTREPRENEURS The World in a Thali SUPPLEMENT

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2016

A young woman entrepreneur discovers a thriving market forMaharashtrian food Bhakti Tambe

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ayanti Kathale had a hunch. The Infosys programming head, who’d started out as an intern with the company in 2000, suspected her home-style Maharashtrian cookingwould appeal to a lot of people who had never tasted the cuisine. After getting married in 2004, Jayantimade an initial foray into the food business selling Maharashtrian sweets like modakand puranpolionthe (now defunct) social-networking site Orkut and later from her own small setup in Koramangala, all the whileholding down a fulltime job.

By 2012, Jayanti knew she was onto something big. She quit Infosys and launchedHotel Purnabramha with an initial investment of around Rs. 90 lakhs. “I came across the Central Guarantee Fund Trust for micro and small enterprise loans and I received a collateral-free working capital loan worth Rs. 72 lakhs,” she recollects. “I set up my main branch at HSR Layoutand it cost me around 1.75 crores to complete the whole project.”

“My customers are not just Maharashtrians, but people from all over, north and south, everyone who wishes to eat healthy food served with love,” says Jayanti. Her aim was to provide a place where families wouldbe comfortable eating out. In just four years, Purnabramha has expanded to four branches in Bangalore and one in Pune. It operates as a franchise and Purnabramha franchises only women, also ensuringthat half of all employees in each outlet are women. Franchisees undergo an initial 6-months orientation course and start paying a fixed share of revenue after

three months.

Purnabramha provides an immersive experience of Maharashtrian food and culture, featuringvegetarian cuisinesdrawn from every region of the state. Jayanti has designed the menu to reflect the state’s eight regions, servinga different thali each day of the week. Each one is named for a famous temple in the region, for example the Mahalaxmi thali showcasesKolhapurifood.

Jayanti personally trains all her chefs and most of them are from north India and Nepal. “Cooking cannot simply be taught. Once you understand the qualities of your employees, they’ll start understanding you. And, if you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of your customers,”

Jayanti adds.She has a system for everything, starting with the order of serving customers: children are served first, followed by the elderly and then the others.

The success of Purnabramha lies as much in the authenticity of the taste as the welcoming ambience Jayanti has created.

Children are given blank paper and crayons to draw till the order arrives and as you enter, you can see the walls covered with their creative efforts.She also gives children an incentive to finish their food.Not only does she serve special ‘Balgopal thalis’ (mini thalis) for children with smaller portions but provides a cash incentive to avoid wasting food. “If you finish the thali, you’ll get 5% discount on your bill. If you don’t, you’ll have to pay 2% extra. People have welcomed this rule and gladly pay more if they can’t finish the food,” saysthe 38-year-old hotelier, herself a mother of two.

Each branch of Purnabramha generates a revenue of around Rs. 2 crores a year. But over and above profitability, Jayanti has a vision to develop women’s commercial skills.

She believes cooking is more than a skill and it should be respected and valued as such. Purnabramha will soon open one more branch in Bangalore, two more in Pune and soon expand overseas. Jayanti hopes one day to grow the franchise to 5,000 outlets around the world. “I have struggled from a small experimental setup to a few branches. One day I’ll make Purnabramha a global brand,” she promises.

Stay-at-Home Working Moms Cathline Chen

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Vocational training helps mothers with young children work from home and forge

angita, 25, is proud to be the second earning member in her family. A mother of two, Sangita attendsthe Hope Foundation Vocational Training Centre in Goregaon, Mumbai. “I decided to learn tailoring so I could help my husband.

He works as a private chauffeur and earns Rs.10,000 a month, but his income is still not enough to cover all our expenses. My children are also now old enough to start school,” she explains. Sangita’s son is two and her daughter just turned four.

Sangita felt her self-confidence grow with the new skill she was learning. “I married when I was just 19. I’d never worked and I did not finish school, so I never really had a sense of personal accomplishment.

But this course helped me realisewhat I am capable of,” she adds.

Where the pressure on young mothers to earn is the greatest, they don’t always h a v e older family members available to look after their children.

This is where vocational training centres play an important role. They enable young mothers to gain skills that they can use to work from home and provide for their families.

Till her children start school, Sangita is

“Training centres have contributed to skilling women workers. More such training centres which also break gender stereotypes should be available.”

happy to take small orders to complete at homefrom which she earns about Rs 3,000 a month. “This money is a big help in covering our daily expenses. I plan to take on more orders and increase my earning soon. My dream, like every mother, is for my children to have a better life and I want to give them that,” she says.

Like Sangita,33-year-old Reshma has been training at a municipalvocational tailoring centre in Mathikere in north west Bangalore that provides free tailoring courses to women of any age. It’s a one-year diploma course that enrolls about 40 students in each batch, most of them housewives come to learn a skill. “This programme really helps me overcome my boredom at home. I can still keep a

watch on my kids as it is just a few steps away from home,”Reshma says.

Many students have earned a livelihood from this training, says S. Ambika, the centre’steacher. “Two years ago we had this student called Sundari and after she graduated the tailoring school, she opened her own small tailoring shop in Mathikere, stitching clothes and embroidering for people. Now she has a tailoring shop in Peenya and can provide a better living for herself and her family.

The vocational training programs open new doors of opportunity for the unemployed, even if one dreamat a time. To an extent, the usefulness of the training depends on the educational status of the trainees. But there’s little doubt of its overall benefit as it increases skilling, raises the confidence of the participants and improves their employability.

Juhi Jain, a senior program manager at the Centre for Advocacy and Research, New Delhi believes that, “Vocational training coupled with access to opportunities can be a motivating factor for women to access their rights, enable them to become self-reliant and catalyse an equality consciousness in society.”

Adds Dr. Bijayalaxmi Nanda, associate professor in Delhi University, “Women and girls in India are aspirational about their lives now. The enhancement of skills and making them capable in the job market is the need of the hour.

Training centres have contributed to skilling women workers andmore such training centres which also break gender stereotypes should be available. Women and girls should have access to high quality and affordable education in all fields of their choice.”

ENVIRONMENT

THE WEEKLY OBSERVER

SUPPLEMENT

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2016

Learning the Value of Water Aishwarya Iyer

Rainwater harvesting and recycling can help mitigate the greatest threat to our lives

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xperts have long warned that the wars of the future will be fought not over land but over water – and they were not making the case for enhanced naval power. The year 2016 gave us an early warning of things to come with threats to abrogate international river-sharing treaties, states fighting for their shares of river water, water disputes leading to rioting and arson and a scarcity so severe that water had to be transported by train to drought-affected areas in Maharashtra.

In response, people are learning to use water more intelligently, to conserve what’s available by catching and storing rainwater where it falls, by recycling and reusing water and thus reducing the growing pressure on scarce supplies.

Vishwanath S, who calls himself a ‘zen rainmaker’, is founder of a group called Rainwater Club which helps people save water by using techniques like rooftop- rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling. He says that around 15,000 to 18,000 litres of water can be saved on an average day per household during the monsoons through rainwater harvesting.

“We are heading towards development at the cost of water. Projects like metro railway construction deplete huge amounts of ground water recharges. And now they are coming up with the steel flyover project which will again consume gallons of water. In such scenarios, the aim of rainwater harvesting is to mimic nature,” says Vishwanath.

He believes that practising rainwater harvesting at an individual level will make a household independent of the water supply the government provides. About 12-13 people approach Rainwater Club every week for guidance in

setting up the equipment required, whether barrels or rain water sumps, and learning the technique.

Meenakshi N, resident of Indiranagar is a recent convert. “My friend suggested I try water harvesting but I had difficulty understanding how to set it up. Fortunately, I came across Shubha, an engineer activist at the Rainwater Club who helped me out with the quotations and process.

Apparently, there are five levels involved and when you are a first-timer, you start with a 5,000 litre barrel and then, over a period of time, increase your water-saving capacity,” she says.

At the other end of the spectrum, campuses like the Bangalore GPO and St. Joseph College have their created their own water supply for the entire campus through the harvesting method.

“During the rainy days, we use the BWSSB water so that the rainwater recharges barrels set up for harvesting. And on normal, non-rainy days, we use the harvested water,” says Amar Narayan, a retired IAS officer whose house in Indiranagar, Bengaluru runs on harvested rainwater.

During his tenure as rural district officer, he had introduced rainwater harvesting in four different districts of Karnataka.

Equally important, the concept of greywater recycling is gaining popularity amongst conservation enthusiasts. Greywater recycling is the reuse of water used for washing, bathing, cooking and doing laundry to flush toilets, wash the car, for gardening and other non-potable uses.

Says Rajeswari Subramanian, 44, who practises the method, “I was brought up in a house where my granny and parents used to treat food and water as wealth. When my siblings or I wasted water, my granny would scold us saying you are shooing away goddess Lakshmi.”

“This kind of upbringing encourages prudent usage of nature’s resources and that made me think about recycling,” she says. “So I started reusing the water used for washing vegetables, rice to water the plants; minimal use of washing machine; filling water in buckets and vessels and avoiding washing/cleaning under running taps.

Through these measures, I was able to sail smoothly through the days of extreme water scarcity this summer.”

Deadly Indifference India is endangering public health by neglecting safe biomedical-waste disposal Siddharth Chakraborty

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n 2008, the Karnataka Lok Adalat ordered 47 hospitals in the state, 17 government and 30 private ones, to set up effluenttreatment plants immediately.

Headedby Justice KL Manjunath, the court also directed the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) to ensure that hospitals that failed to implement the order within a stipulated time were closed down.

Although biomedical waste constitutes a small portion of total municipal waste generated, it needs special handling, treatment and disposal as it’s highly toxic and infectious. Sadly, prescribed norms for effluent treatment and biomedical waste disposal are routinely flouted, causing severe environmental and public-health hazards.

According to KSPCB chairman Lakshman, hospitals not segregating and safely disposing waste pose a particularly grave hazard topersonnel working on waste-management sites. According to the Bangalore municipal corporation, only a third of the 14 tonnes of biomedical waste churned out by hospitals everyday is treated scientifically while the rest gets mixed with municipal solid waste. Karnataka hasthe highest ratio of waste generated to waste disposed in the country.

A recent study by the civic authorities confirm the Lok Adalat’s order is yet to be fully complied with. Most private hospitals that were listed in the 2008 order have set up effluent treatment plants but not government hospitals, who point to the lack of funds and available land. They also claim they have ‘technical’ difficulties in directing multiple discharge lines to a single treatment plant on their premises!

Surveys carried out by the media have shown that healthcare establishments in India do not pay due attention to waste management. The need to treat biomedical waste was not taken seriously until the late 1990s. The framing of the Biomedical Waste (Handling and Management) Rules 1998, subsequently amended in 2000, was a turning point.

Since the rules were notified, many hospitals have streamlined the process of waste segregation, collection, treatment and disposal. Many of the private hospitals have set up treatment facilities. Private contractors have also helped a few hospitals in setting of central waste-treatment facilities.

Waste water from hospitals can contain traces of anything from viruses and drug-resistant bacteria to medical contrast agents and chemicals for cancer treatment. Small amounts of hormone-disrupting substances and other

medicine residues are also a part of the mix that passes from patients through hospitals toilets into public-sewerage systems.

Problem chemicals present in hospital waste water belong to different groups. Many of these chemical compounds resist normal waste water treatment. They end up in surface waters where they contaminate the aquatic ecosystem and enter the food chain. The principle of insulating hospital sewage lines from public sewers is thus an absolute necessity.

Hospitals are required to have their own treatment plants as the municipal wastewater-treatment plants are not designed to remove long-lived or persistent pharmaceuticals. They have been identified as a key source of pharmaceuticals that can act as potent micro-pollutants.

Painkillers such as diclofenac and hormones, for example can have fatal impacts on fish, crustaceans and algae at a very low doses. Moreover, hazardous wastewater may spread during flooding and combine with sewer overflows.

Internationally there is increasing focus on the potential environmental effects of pharmaceuticals in water environments.

Civic activist Sandya Narayan expresses serious concerns about medical waste finding its way into public sewerage lines. “This is very dangerous as it has the potential to mix with theunderground water lines,” she warns.

But there’s also a need to reduce the expense involved in the treatment of medical wastes. Regardless, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board needs to act more strictly to ensure compliance and closehospitals that do not install effluent-treatment plants.