My name is Suresh Subbarao and I am one of the co-founders of Gramonnati. Environment, wildlife, philosophy and photography are some of my passions. Our Gramonnati has a vision of transforming India’s villages into vibrant and sustainable communities and reducing the urban-rural chasm. One very important element of our plan is to develop 10,000 rural entrepreneurs in the next five years. Many of our villages are slowly dying out with the exodus of youth to urban areas – only women, older people and the infirm tend to stay back. There is a crying need to move from a urban centric growth model to one which is centered around sustainable local growth and development across the 700,000 villages of India. A first step is to transform village youth into job and opportunity creators rather than job seekers. Unless we tap into the talent amongst the youth in rural areas and develop them as grass-root leaders, sustainable change will not happen. If migration from rural to urban areas is to be slowed (and maybe even reversed!) , it is imperative that we create entrepreneurs locally within rural communities. Nothing democratizes wealth better than micro-entrepreneurship. This is the belief with which we have started our journey to develop 10,000 rural entrepreneurs in next five years. We have a strong program to develop rural entrepreneurs and we are investing around INR 100,000 on each individual to transform her/him into an entrepreneur. This, in my opinion, is a very fruitful and smart investment. Each rural entrepreneur so developed becomes a role model to many others. Over a period of time, through their micro-enterprises, they will become job-creators in their communities and hopefully will help develop many more entrepreneurs locally. Our villages are the bedrock of our nation and stronger rural communities will make us a nation to contend with over the next few decades. I strongly believe that we can nurture young rural boys and girls to be engines of hope and transformation in their communities. Please support my campaign.