The Sandbox has Laid the Foundation For an Equal-Opportunity Society: Ratan Tata
The Hubli Sandbox has created a foundation for merit-based progress, independent of people’s backgrounds or credentials, according to Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons Ltd, Ratan Tata. Lauding the Sandbox’s work as a good start for India to create an equal opportunity society, Ratan said that his dream was a country where meritocracy is recognized and regarded. “Many developing countries like India have not had a sense of equal opportunity and have not been so open on merit as countries like the US. I think what the Sandbox is doing is bridging that gap. My dream would be an India of the future where every citizen has an equal opportunity based on his merit; where meritocracy is recognized, regarded and pride is taken in achieving success. It is still a long way for a nation of 1 billion people to achieve.”
Ratan was addressing the keynote session of the Development Dialogue (DD) 2013, in Hubballi, Karnataka. “I think you have here, the foundation of that (a non-discriminative society) so that everyone would look to their own merit and get an opportunity to succeed equally well ,” he added.
Former Director, General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Raghunath Anant Mashelkar said that the Sandbox model needed to scale quickly to achieve larger impact. “The sandbox is a transformational concept which has been executed on a low-key. If we want to transform the world, we should virally spread it,” he said at the DD.
During the session, Co-founder of Infosys Technologies,N R Narayana Murthy said that the small-sized NGOs in India and in some parts of the world lacked adequate system support to manage their functions. “If the Deshpande Foundation can put together a set of platforms for project management for financial systems, for people management etc and provide it, it would be an extraordinary contribution,” he said. “I have not seen any other NGO in India which has had such a strategic view of a region, such an integrated view of the needs of a region,” he said, speaking about the work of the Foundation.