Architects of Change

Note: This episode is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. Readers are encouraged to listen to the show to get the full experience. The audio version is the final version of the show. Ignore grammatical errors.

HOST

Welcome to Grassroots Nation, a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, a show in which we dive deep into the life, work, and guiding philosophies of some of our country’s greatest leaders of social change.

What prompts a person to devote their life to social change? A calling can be awakened by an encounter, or shaped by a mentor, be triggered by the witnessing of an event, or as a response to a deeper search for truth and justice. The paths to social change are many. 

This is the second of six episodes that present important themes that have arisen in the conversations with the guests of Grassroots Nation. These episodes showcase what shaped their thinking, their relationships, and how small acts form the basis of collective action. 

Today,  the importance of institution building. Leaders bring with themselves a passion, a determination that translates into action; institutions strengthen these foundations, building for resilience and scale. Many of India’s most significant leaders in the social sector have been architects of systems, instilling them with values and cultures that take isolated efforts and transform them movements capable of addressing complex social challenges over the long term. But it all starts with an idea, a vision, a mission. 

Dr Ashok Khosla, speaks about his dramatic return to India, setting up the Ministry of Environment, and the values that drove him and his partners to set up Development Alternatives — an organisation that was the first of its kind: a social enterprise. 

Ashok Khosla

So Professor Revelle, who was really more a family than a professor for me because we work together a great deal, wrote to Mrs. Gandhi, Indira Gandhi saying that I was insisting on coming home and that she should help me find a job.

So as soon as I got home I was given this letter from the Prime Minister’s office saying I should meet them and she was setting up a Ministry of Environment, which wasn’t quite a ministry at the time. It was an agency under the Ministry of Science and Technology. I basically was offered the job of setting it up and running it, which is really quite extraordinary. So I was only 31 years old at the time, but, and I was not IAS, I was, you know, an outsider and so on. But it sounded like a good thing. But my entry, my re entry into India after nearly 20 odd years wasn’t good. It was rather disastrous. I’d been brainwashed by the West and so to me, everything in Delhi seemed to be nonfunctional. And I basically packed up my bags again, my bag, one bag, and went off to Goa and became a hippie and I had a great time and then I got a call from the Prime Minister’s office saying, “I thought you were going to start this thing up”, so I decided to come back and we started it up.

[…]

I ran this Office of Environment, which is for five years, the most powerful job I can ever imagine. Everybody thought that I was reporting to the Prime Minister, so anything I said was seen as word from the top. And I went around stopping factories doing all kinds of outrageous stuff, which very quickly led me to an understanding of what environment meant for India? You know, everybody used to laugh at me and say what are you doing in India? This is a poor country. What are you talking about pollution? And why it was, it was a laughing matter actually for a long time that I was working on these issues. But in a way that experience in India, those five years led to the whole concept of sustainability. Because later on I was in a position to put that into the global jargon. And sustainability was a way of seeing the environmental issues as being tractable for a poor country. You don’t say no, you say yes, but you have to find ways in which you can get your cake and eat it. And so, you know, in those days I had to deal with projects like the Mathura refinery, Chilca Lake, like Kashmir’s environmental issues and so on. These are very high visibility issues and I got very deeply involved with the global environmental movements. Since I was the government delegate to all the conferences, including the Big Stockholm Conference which started the whole process.

[UNEP Gandhi Clip]

 This meant that I got invited to join the UN to help set up the headquarters in Nairobi of the UN program. Infoterra was the information program in the environment program UNEP. And basically that was the starting point of a global presence 

[Infoterra clip]

because I was all over the place. I went to 110 countries trying to get governments to set up agencies, but that also meant that I could get involved with the club of Rome, with IUCN, with the International Resource Panel, etcetera. So when I was in back in Delhi, at the end of it all, after the UN, I set up Development Alternatives, I was still one leg in the international system. And that leg was only possible because I had huge colleagues set of colleagues who could provide me with the intellectual support to be able to influence the global scene. I became president of the IUCN, and that’s a very big organization, scientific organization for conservation. Then I was also involved with the Club of Rome, which really in a sense started the whole environmental movement with this book called Limits to Growth, and I became president of that and varieties of other things.

Later on, I set up and chaired the International Resource Panel, which does what IPCC does for climate, it does for resources, and I headed that for 10 years. So that was a very active time during which I was in airplanes most of the time. But it brought in lots of ideas and information and support for the work of DA.

[…]

Most of the partners that I worked with in conceiving Development Alternatives were driven by a sense of outrage, an individual specific outrage, that the world should be so unfair, so unjust, and, and I think that was the most important driving force, the desire to see a better world for everyone and for the long term.

The issues were so big and so complex and so urgent that we thought that the existing institutions of governance of government, international agencies of big business and even NGO’s were not adequate to deal with them. And we came to the conclusion that we needed to have a hybrid type of institution that would bring the strengths of all these existing institutions and not many of the weaknesses, together into a new kind of enterprise, which we call the social enterprise.

HOST

Darshan Shankar is the founder and vice chancellor of the The University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology in Bengaluru. But when he was a 22 year old student at Bombay University, he had an idea that eventually would turn into a Commonwealth award winning program. He was keen on starting an experiential learning program for young Indians, and he approached Bombay University’s Vice Chancellor with the idea. But an idea will only go so far, as he found out. He shares with us what unfolded next: 

Darshan Shankar

This person, Ali Yavar Jung, must have been very exceptional, I mean, I saw him in his capacity as a Chancellor, but he must have been a very exceptional person to encourage the way he did, for me, a young person of 22. So when I met him, I again gave him that small half piece of paper that I had written. He read it carefully, he said, “It’s a very good idea, this business of experiential learning program. To connect universities to nature, to connect university students to society.” But he said “Look, you can’t execute it on the basis of an idea like this, you need to convert this into an implementable proposal.” That’s the language he used. And I looked at him and I said, “Sir, I don’t know what is the meaning of a proposal”, because I had not written any proposals. So I said, “I don’t even know what a proposal means. And while I’m very serious about wanting to do this, I need some help to understand what does it mean to actually write a proposal.” So he smiled and he said, “Alright, I will connect you to two people who are great educationists.” So one of them was a person by the name of V.M. Dandekar, those who may have a background in economics or something like that, the history of Indian economics might have heard of a person named V.M. Dandeker. He was at that time the Director of a School of Economics and Politics that was based in Pune. He was the first author of a book on poverty in India, and the first book on measuring poverty in India was written by V. M. Dandekar. So he was very well known in social science circles. He said, “Go and see V.M. Dandekar.” And he said, “After you have met him perhaps you should also meet another person,” whose name was J.P. Naik.

Now J.P. Naik, those who know the history of education in India and not perhaps very many people would know it, J.P. Naik is the person who founded institutions that still work today like the NCERT – the National Council for Education Research, the Indian Council of Social Science Research, the Council for Historical Research. And so he laid the foundations, J.P. Naik, for both school and university education in India. Ali Yavar Jung advised me to meet both these people. So I said “Fine, I’ll meet them.” And he said, “I will write to both of them, you know, just to introduce you and then you follow up,” and so on.

And he did so. So I wrote to J.P. Naik and Dandekar.

[…]

 So again, to cut a story short, I did develop a proposal under his guidance in three weeks time. He was a very strict person and I had help from the faculty of that particular Institute of Economics and Politics.

[…]

Maybe a week later – all these things moved very fast because all this happened between the age of 22 and 23… Yes, a little before that, he said to me, “How do you know that with this proposal, there will be students interested?” Because the proposal was essentially to give fellowships to students to spend two years living in rural areas in different contexts, depending on their backgrounds, their disciplinary backgrounds, get exposed to the reality there and do something in response to the problems that they saw on the ground with guidance from university faculty. That was the sort of proposal in a nutshell, fellowships for this kind of student, that is what the experiential learning program was about.

He said, “How do you know there will be anyone interested in these programs? What if there is no one interested?” So I said, “Just give me a little time.” And I had a network with NGOs in the state. Through someone I knew, I widened that network and I literally went to every single town in Maharashtra where there were universities and people going to graduate from different disciplines – be they art, science, engineering, medicine, agriculture, so on, so forth. And I must have spent the next three months in 15-20-30 meetings that were organized with the network. And I would go there and speak to people and say, “Look, what are you people planning to do post graduation? There’s a scheme that we are trying to develop in the University of Bombay which will give you scholarships if you have the courage to go out and live for two years in a rural area and address challenges which will be different in these different locations.” And I had created posters and so on and so forth explaining this scheme saying, “Take two years off and learn,” that was the poster. I put it up everywhere, in all these places. And so when I came back three months later to the Chancellor, I had 500 applications which I informed him about. So he said, “This guy is serious about it.” So he was now very pleased. He said, “Now the ball is in my court and we’ll see what can be done.”

And a few days later, he called me – he was like that, he would personally call. And he said, “Look, I want you in Raj Bhavan at 8 o’clock in the morning.” No further information. I landed up at 8 o’clock on the said date. He met me. He said, “Look, there’s a car going to the airport to pick up the Union Education Minister. His name is Nurul Hasan.” This was Indira Gandhi’s time, Nurul Hasan was her Education Minister, also a historian, a scholar and an educationist. So I said, “Fine.” He said, “He’s going to be very busy the moment he touches the city. The reason I’m putting you in this car is this car will go right up to the tarmac of the aircraft and this guy will get down. He will have no option but to talk to you on the way back and you’ve got 45 minutes time. That’s it. The moment he touches Raj Bhavan, he is tied up in a whole lot of meetings. So you have 45 minutes to convince him about your idea. I am not going to come, I am not going to tell him anything. That’s up to you. All I can do, which I have done, is I have given you the opportunity to talk to him by putting you in this car.” So I said, “Fine.”

We had a very heated discussion but I managed to convince Nurul Hasan. And he said, “Fine, you know, I’ll call you to Delhi to meet the education secretary.” And thus that program got funded by the Union Government as an innovative program in university education – an experiential learning program in Bombay University mooted by a student because I was only 22, turning 23 and with scholarships and all this sort of a thing, whatever the scheme envisaged. And that’s how that particular program began. So that is the way I was able to make the first step in my dissatisfaction, about university education not exposing people to society, to the natural environment through this sort of a program. And in that program we had students from agriculture, from medicine, from social sciences, even from the performing arts. So that was stage one.

And then I executed that program for about seven years or so. It won an international award from the Commonwealth as being the best program in the entire Commonwealth for linking university education to community needs and so on and so forth.

HOST

A fundamental tenet of community building is that decisions should be taken collectively, in a participatory manner. But what does this mean in reality? How do you build for community ownership? Stan Thekaekara – a co-founder of ACCORD in the Nilgiris–  speaks of the challenges and the importance of trusting the process.

Stan Thekaekara

So one of the things we had stated in ACCORD right in the beginning when we wrote the first formal proposal for ActionAid, they asked us to define what our vision statement is. So we said that, “Adivasis should be able to participate in mainstream society on equal terms, with their own dignity on their own terms, to participate in society with dignity and pride on their own terms.” And now that is what is happening, that they are participating. 

Yeah, so this whole ecosystem has been set up. Proud to say that it is 90% managed and run by Adivasis themselves, they are in the driver’s seat. Because of that you can find fault with their decision making – they are much slower, their processes are through consensus, not through a vote. So many donor agencies find that very difficult. They send us an email and say, “EoD, can you give us a decision on this?” And first I had to find out what EoD was and then I realized by the end of day, they want a decision. I said, “How is it possible? We have to bring together people from different villages and they have to talk. End of day?!” So I started sending EoW. Somebody asked me, “what is EoW? Is it the end of the week?” I said, “No, end of whenever.” It’ll happen when it happens, I don’t know when it will happen, because there’s a process that has to take place, and the process is far more important than the outcome. You want an outcome, and so you shortcut a process and that shortcutting is what refuses or prevents ownership of the community. 

You can’t, there’s no shortcut to it. You have to honor it, respect it, and steadfastly hang on to those processes. And so when people ask me about, “How do you know this will be sustainable?” In our sector, every few years, there is a buzzword. Sometimes it’s gender, sometimes… At one point, it was sustainability. So every person came and asked us, “How do you know this will be sustainable?” 

So this S-word was thrown to a group of Adivasis and we decided we’ll only be translators. We won’t answer any of the questions because it was meant to be a consultation with the community. Pin drop silence because first we had a problem translating sustainability. Finally, when we succeeded in translating it and everybody understood it, pin drop silence because nobody had ever thought about it. And then somebody gave me what I felt was the final word on sustainability. And he said, one of our tribal leaders said, “If enough people believe in it, it will be sustainable.” 

HOST

Maja Daruwala, former Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), recounts how she stepped in to lead a fledgling organization with a bold mission – promoting human rights across the Commonwealth. 

Maja Daruwala

MAJA

 I keep saying this to you, Gautam, its happenstance, its luck.

GAUTAM

Serendipity.

MAJA

Serendipity. Thank you, I needed a new word – serendipity. And just being in a place where some opportunity hits you. I was quite happy to go back to litigation, but I think I decided I wouldn’t do litigation, but I would do counseling, table work. And I would have been quite happy doing that, provided that it had something to do with public interest. At that time, Mr. George Verghis and Soli Sorabjee had brought from England, where it was first conceived, to India, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

And why did they bring it? It was because there was a realization among the people who had started CHRI that the Commonwealth lives in the south. 8/10ths of the Commonwealth lives in the south. I mean, there are just hardly very few developed or northern countries in the Commonwealth, and so the headquarters should be here, and so they brought it here and they tried to set it up. 

And the first three years of it, when I was not part of it, was very difficult for them to set up. They got all their licenses and trust and all the formalities done, but there was really no one to begin running it. And just as I left Ford, Soli, who had been sort of guiding this ship in a one man sort of way, said, would I take it up? And I said, “Yes, I would, provided that I could have my head in running it and bringing it up to scratch.” I had no idea whether I would be able to or not. 

It was practically non-existent, there was, I think there was a little bit of money, very little bit of money. There was certainly not enough to pay the salaries of, say, six people or four people, not at all. There was one room in somebody else’s organization, one broken down computer from his office, and an old gentleman who had been in the government, but who was now old and could not work anymore, who was a sort of all-purpose secretary. That’s it. There wasn’t even an intern. And then there was one intern who is now a Vice Chancellor, let me tell you.

GAUTAM

What was the remit CHRI had?

MAJA

Remit was to promote human rights and human rights awareness across the commonwealth. It was a big remit. 

ARCHIVAL AUDIO 

[Audio about the CHRI’s journey – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQGvZP9AbSQ&t=148s]

MAJA

What they used to do till then, because it had been started with tremendously eminent people, including the Foreign Minister of Canada, basically all generals and no soldiers, but they did a good job, in the sense that every two years, they would bring out a report on the status of human rights in the Commonwealth. But as time went on, and these people also got older, they really needed a secretariat to bring all the good counsel of these people together to write these reports. 

So in the first year that I was there, we brought out a very slim report on, I think, freedom of speech and expression. But after that, every two years, we would bring out a report called the CHOGM report. CHOGM is a horrible word, but it means the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. So in time for that, to advocate for something, one or the other issue that was topical at the time, we did that. 

It was not enough to do that, but the important thing was to find something that was common to all Commonwealth countries, which you could validly say required repair. And the issue of, say, a minority in Rwanda and a minority in India was so far apart, the circumstances were so far apart that you couldn’t bring it together. So one had to think of systems, what were the systems that actually could be impacted, but had both common roots in the colonial system of law, the common law system of law and structures that were similar, and at the same time had dysfunctions which were preventing development, good governance, progress, and were actually vehicles for discrimination. So that’s how we decided or honed in on access to justice, on the one hand which was about violation, and access to information, which was about empowerment, transparency, participation, accountability. What would bring this about, what would make governments accountable, at the same time, empower people to participate in governance, in their own governance. And that’s how one chose or came to a consensus on access to justice and right to information, access to information.

HOST

Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, founded by Bunker Roy, with its culture of transparency, trust, and grassroots leadership transformed a rural community into a network of empowered changemakers. He speaks of the philosophy and ethos that shaped Tillonia into the unique organisation it is today.

Bunker Roy

RAJNI

But Bunker, is it, when you say that you have become stronger as a result, could it be that the second and third tier of your organisation were also involved in overcoming and addressing these crises? You are in a leadership role and yet there’s a very palpable sense that I get when I observe the people around you, your team. Of everyone feeling very much an authority in their own right. So how did this whole dynamic come about? 

BUNKER

You are jumping twenty years, Rajini, because at that time in 1979 when we went through this crisis, we were a very small organisation, but the selection of the people who worked with us was deliberate. We only choose schedule caste, schedule tribes, OBCs and they were not powerful enough to buck the higher castes and the Rajputs and the Brahmins and Jats. So when it came to a crisis that we were facing, they were in the background. They would help us quietly, but they wouldn’t come out in front and shout and scream against them, because that was a completely different situation there. And as a result of us investing in such people, it’s been a great leveller for us because those people stood by us even after the crisis all along.

RAJNI

What was that value frame which you applied when you selected such people or, you know, build this team? What were some of the key values that you looked for?

BUNKER

Definitely anyone working with us in Tilonia would have to work on minimum wage. And the highest and the lowest ratio would be 1:2 – the highest and the lowest. And we would self evaluate that time – not anymore – but that time when we were growing, we would self evaluate ourselves about our performance and about our contribution to the organisation and we would give each other points – honesty, integrity, cooperation, innovation. Out of hundred points, three was given to your educational qualification. It didn’t matter whether you are illiterate or not, but this is your contribution to the organisation. 

That made a big difference because I lost all my points because my community contact was zero, so my salary was somewhere in between. So this, they all felt that I had also to be judged. Can’t be only the staff because I was a part of them. So that made a big difference –  that the salary I was getting is much less than lots of people in the organisation.

I mean, Gandhi was almost dead in many parts of India. So we said simplicity, austerity, honesty – all very important for us and we have to abide by that. We have to have a code of conduct for that. And that we laid down very early in life. 

RAJNI

But laid down in a participative manner?

BUNKER

Very participative, very participative. Very open, very transparent, very accountable. 

RAJNI

I mean the organisation consisted of people with very diverse levels of understanding, cognitive skills, abilities, temperaments. What kept it all together? What were some of the mechanisms of operation or of work culture – let’s call it work culture.

BUNKER

I think the key to the success of Tilonia is the fact that we had regular meetings right across the board and you couldn’t keep anything hidden and everyone had to participate.

So if you ask someone who has been for five years in Tilonia, “How do you spend your life in Tilonia?” He said, “I started as a cook and then I went into the account section and then I became a puppeteer and now I’m becoming, I am now I’m a solar engineer.” So the mobility within the organisation was encouraged.

RAJNI

How did you, because see, this is quite a big breakthrough, especially in a rural setting, I mean even in an urban setting. How did this come about? Was it a combination of your taking a stand? And a buy in from the community of activists that took shape? Because this was not, it’s not an idea that was natural to the geographical context.

BUNKER

I think it was important for the founder to have enough confidence in the people who worked with him. And the founder had to give the space for people to make mistakes and learn. That was a very important part of it. So when someone made a mistake and said I’m sorry, I said, “Doesn’t matter, you try again because it doesn’t matter if you fail. There is no such thing as failures, just that it didn’t work out.” So I think that was very important to put into the people’s head that don’t think of anything called failure. There is no such thing as failure. It’s just that it didn’t work out and you try again. So we gave them the space and we gave them the wherewithals to be able to try again.

We would, in fact, push them out of Tilonia to start new organisations. Now there are twenty-three organisations in thirteen states of India who are on their own. Registered themselves. They have their own organisation and their own board raising their own money. And I said you cannot use Bunker Roy as the name because our job is to make you feel the confidence to be able to start a new organisation and we will support you for the first two years and then you’re on your own. And that happened.

HOST

Grassroots Nation is a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. For more information go to rohininilekaniphilanthropies.org or join the conversation on social media at rnp_foundation. 

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