Video | On creating ProtoVillages in every district of India so “poverty would have no space to exist”: A Search for Resilience | Kalyan Akkipeddi | TEDxGurugram

On a quest to understand the failure of existing mechanisms to measure and address poverty, Kalyan Akkipeddi researched and developed an organic solution to the economic troubles of the weakest, least developed sections of the nation. Creating a model for resilient and sustainable rural communities that serve to alleviate resource problems at a grassroots level, Kalyan Akkipeddi hopes to inspire change at a wider level and provide security to millions.

After quitting his corporate job in early 2008, Kalyan Akkipeddi traveled through rural India for about 2 and ½ years. Having lived with scores of bottom-of-the-pyramid families that were below the conventionally defined poverty line, he gained better insight on the link between development and poverty. Instead of creating a strategy based on reacting or responding to the symptoms of poverty, he wanted to create a new possibility in which poverty would have no space to exist.

Kalyan found the idea of “creating resilience” more empowering than that of “eradicating poverty”. Living and working in a remote drought-prone village called Tekulodu in the second driest and one of the poorest districts in India- Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh- since August 2010, Kalyan has been focusing his energies on building and leveraging local social leadership capacities to co-create a ProtoVillage – the prototype of an Resilient village. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.