Atanu Dey-Vinod Khosla Marshall Plan – Addendum

In Atanu Dey’s RISC model, he suggests a move to a micro-city model, as follows:

::

India’s economic growth depends critically on the development of its 700-million strong rural population living in 600,000 villages. The challenge is to manage their transition from a village-centric agricultural-based economy to a city-centric non-agricultural economy urgently.

The total rural population of India can be covered by about 6,000 RISCs each servicing the needs of approximately 100,000 people. By providing a full complement of services, RISC creates a ‘micro-city’ which seeds the formation of a city by drawing to it the population from the surrounding areas. RISC focuses on the development of the rural population, and not on the development of villages which are destined to be extinct anyway.

::

I like the model. My suggestion, however, is to align each of these 6000 RISCs with a major employer, that can employ at least 5,000 people. There is a good trend of manufacturing coming back to India, with car companies, auto parts makers, even semiconductor companies starting to think about setting up factories. The steel sector is booming. Power, Textile, many others are poised for strong growth.

It’s an ideal time, dear Atanu, to set up RISCs in collaboration with large companies.