founder’s message

Namaskar,
Some dreams are big, mine was a far simpler one and yet a mission of sorts. I quite simply wanted to reach out to rural India and contribute to its development. I set out on this mission 23 years ago.
I wanted to know the essence of the various cultures and traditions and soak in its ethos. This was a journey of some 49,000 villages, of which I had personally visited 5,800 across the country.
In the course of my journey, I along with village developersTM established direct contact with opinion makers in the villages and began recording obscure details of the local economy.
Information Technology has always been one key area of my interest. I began to install used computers in rural secondary schools, where the interest and curiosity of the students are very high. When I personally could not raise the money required for this initiative, I appealed to individuals, organizations, and corporates to gift used machines. As of the year 2009, we have been instrumental in installing 28,000 used computers directly or indirectly across 10 states in India.
The success of this initiative inspired me to embark on yet another movement, which I named the Non-Resident Villager (NRV) movement. Each one of us is an NRV within us because ultimately, our roots can be traced back to the villages. Therefore, as an NRV, we can always reach out, support and contribute something meaningful to the development of our rural India. With the help of NRV’s, till date we have installed Gyan-key libraries 5,170 (Maharashtra – 4,750, Karnataka – 67, Telangana – 148, Andhra Pradesh – 49, Madhya Pradesh – 21, Tamil nadu – 1, Jharkhand – 1 & Rajasthan – 139) in rural secondary schools in 1,840 working days (3 Gyan-key libraries every working day) benefitting more than 10,19,200 students (1 million +). Gyan-key initiative is the most effective way to keep regional languages alive. This is the world’s largest rural reading initiative. Target 94,000 Gyan-key libraries in rural secondary schools across tomorrow’s India.
Our game changer initiative is villagewiKY, an open information platform of key and feeder villages of India. Contribute, add & rectify information of YOUR village by Ecography, Sociaography, Geography, Demography, Professionals, and Institutes. We are adding information with the help of villagers, Non-Resident villagers (NRV) and village developers. villagewiKY presents some useful data (5% to 80%) of 85,000 villages on ruralrelations.com(in turn they cater to more than 4,90,000 adjoining villages)
Today, our organization is recognized by its identity, rural relations. We are driven by our mission to touch the hearts of tomorrow’s India through villagewiKY with the help of organizations, corporate & most importantly with the help of Non-Resident Villagers (NRV) and villagers.
We welcome you to an entirely new way of reaching out to tomorrow’s India.

Pradeep Lokhande

rural@ruralrelations.com

fb linkedin-icon