Ananthapadmanabhan G : Change is a complex beast

TRANSCRIPT

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.

Ananthapadmanabhan Guruswamy has been at the helm of many institutions in India. An IIT graduate, Ananth has a BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Madras. His early inspirations and explorations in education and truth led him to teach and be associated with the Krishnamurti Foundation India in Chennai, where he taught at the school for 11 years. He then led Teacher Education at the Azim Premji Foundation, was the CEO of Greenpeace India and then Greenpeace International’s International Program Director, and CEO of Amnesty International in India. He subsequently helped set up and grow the Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives as its CEO. In more recent years Ananth has worked with and mentored many next generation leaders in the social sector, resulting in newer organizations such as Socratus Foundation and WeLive Foundation.

All of Ananth’s work has been driven by a deep curiosity in understanding the world we live in, and in finding ways to better humanity by helping others, solving for problems and building communities. 

Ananth is in conversation with his longtime colleague and friend, Divya Raghunandan. This conversation was recorded in Bengaluru. 

DIVYA

Hi Ananth.

ANANTH

Hi Divya. Very lovely to see you. Thanks for doing this.

DIVYA
Most welcome. Looking forward to this chat. Okay, so maybe we’ll start a little bit like rewind to the beginning of, you know, when you came out of IIT you graduated and this IIT engineer turned teacher and warden. Can you tell us a little bit about that story and how you landed there? 

ANANTH
so I think around maybe 1985 or so, I mean it must have been 19,20 that I think what really was the beginning of that change was I would say a serendipitous encounter with Krishnamurti. It actually was a friend’s elder brother who was like bullying his younger brother to go listen to Krishnamurti. That guy didn’t want to go alone so he dragged a couple of us along. As these things go, he never got hooked to Krishnamurti. I did and the other friend did too. So then one read everything the man said the IIT library had quite a good collection. Around the same time One Straw Revolution came out. I don’t know if you know the book Masanobu Fukuoka… So that was, you know, kind of blew my mind, I think I should say, if that’s a good description. And I spent some time in the Friends rural centre in Rasulia in Hoshangabad, which was actually practising natural farming at that time, Masanobu Fukuoka style. And they also were the publishers of the book. So. And there I met Marjorie Sykes, one of Gandhi’s…So if such a thing as Gandhi’s direct disciples exist, I mean she was one of those British women who, you know, so she was still there. And so from that point on. And then there was a centre for rural development in IIT that kind of also had an influence. And it was quite clear to me that I wasn’t cut out for a corporate career, but coming from a sort of middle class home, you know, there’s no way in which I could immediately go off and do something or so I thought. So I came, I left IIT with this plan of buying a…of working for the highest bidder, the one who buy my services for the highest salary for three or four years, saving up Enough money, buying a piece of land and then living on it for the rest of my life, you know, sort of Fukuoka like, if you like, right.

So that’s, that’s how I came out of IIT. Then it was also the time my dad passed away somewhat suddenly. So I ended up working for the second highest bidder, if you like, so in Chennai. And I realised I couldn’t last three years. So I lasted three months and then, you know, I was restless and I was, you know, let’s say it seemed like this sort of path of do something, earn some money, do something and then eventually do what you want to do. Didn’t seem. Seem like it. And I had to be in Madras, I mean Chennai at that time. My mom was there and she was suddenly all alone and so on and so forth.

So Krishnamurti school seemed like a good option. I mean, and I always enjoyed teaching. I always, you know, so that’s how I ended up in The School.  

The School was very interesting in the sense that it’s located in the heart of Adyar in Chennai, in land that belongs to the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society itself had a very sort of strained relationship with the Krishnamurti foundation, goes back to Krishnamurti and Theosophy. And next door was a Theosophical society.

They had a school, a free school for which was established by Alcott for fishermen’s kids. And they also had a childcare institution within the campus that was sort of looking after some of the children in that school. So it was like just, you know, a couple of hundred metres from each other. And one of the, let’s say the bummers of the Krishnamurti School is that in the end, no matter how much fun it was teaching kids and how much fun it was thinking about Krishnamurti and all that, in the end it was a school for the fairly affluent. Right. And of course we did try to change that and so on. I mean, a whole long story. But that was something that, you know, something that I wanted to do something about.

So is there a way in which I could combine, you know, working with these kids, with the kids of Allcot School? I mean, that’s how the idea of, know, sort of looking after those kids in the. In the childcare institution came up. And so I said, I went up to, I think Radha B. Who was the president and said, Radhaji, can I become the warden? And they were having difficulties finding people these days to stay there. You know, it required staying in the hostel. And of course I was married at that time and we also had our daughter.

We just adopted our daughter. So. So be that as it may, I mean, my then wife was also up for it. And so we ended up living with, you know, sort of 30 boys of various ages and one girl who is my own. And I had a day job of, you know, teaching some environmental studies and math to some brats. It was all great fun. That’s how that happened. And so I quite like that sort of balance, if you like, of a place which is much more innovative and experimental when it came to education.

I was a teacher for 11 years from the age of, from the very ripe age of 21 to the age of 32 and from the age of 30 till the age of 34 or so, I was also the warden. So it was. And for generally personal reasons, I mean, my marriage was breaking up and my teacher was also. Sorry, my ex wife was also. My then wife was also a teacher in the same school. So, you know, trying to separate our lives a little bit. And so that’s what sent me out into the world.

And I, you know, I was looking for something and yeah, that, that’s, that, that’s what got me out of this Krishnamurti school. I continued to be the warden of that hostel for another couple of years. And then it all got too much and I just could not. My personal upheavals, two jobs, it just became too much. So I stopped being the warden. But that had, of course, as you well know, I had a very interesting connection. 

One of the things I discovered at that time was that in childcare institutions, when children turned 18, they’re not children anymore, so they can’t be in the child care institution and they really have nowhere to go.

So the year I left the hostel as its warden there were four boys who had. Young men had just turned 18 who had finished their class 12 and they had kind of uncertain about what to do next, where to go and so on and so forth. They had really nowhere to go. And I, you know, I don’t have a clear memory of how it transpired but I said come and live with me. So they lived at home for the next many years and so that kind of gave me a sense of this particular challenge of young people who grew up in these institutions. And while it makes sense that after 18 they’re not children, they can’t be in those institutions, what happens to them afterwards?

So one of the things that I am very happily and proudly associated with at this point is an organisation that focuses on this space of aftercare. We have two centres here in Bangalore. It’s an organisation called the We Live Foundation. We’ve got two centres, we have one for young men and one for young women. We are in a position to be a bridge between childcare institution and the world of adults for about 50 or 60 young people. 

DIVYA
Exactly, yeah. I remember I think seeing meeting Rajendran – one of the boys when I came for an interview for Greenpeace at your house in Besant Nagar.

ANANTH
That’s right, that’s right. So in fact, in fact there’s a, you know one learned my first business so to speak was something I set up for these young people, right. We were living on the beach in those whole bunch of people selling sundal, I mean chickpea savoury thingy on the beach, you know, so they all had, they used to use Petromax lanterns in those areas. So we said we will rent out solar lanterns to them. And that was a business, it ran very well actually put three or four young men through college including Rajendran and whom we met.

DIVYA
Yeah, yeah. So I mean so from all of that, so that fairly, you know, multi cultural life in Chennai to Delhi and Greenpeace. Right. So how did Greenpeace happen?

ANANTH
And yeah, so I, so this as I said from, you know, I like many of India’s environmentalists, at least of my vintage, right. Ashish Kothari, many people, you know, Karthik Shankar, although he would, I think not like the fact that I’m calling him my vintage but so the, you know, this. We all came out of the World Wildlife Fund’s nature club movement, you know, and I was studying (teaching) in a kindergarten and kind of did everything by diktat. So someone from the centre wrote a letter saying every school must have a nature club. And so we had one, right? And so we ended up in these wildlife sanctuaries. My first exposure to nature in that sense, I was 12 or 13 in Mundant, it’s a national park in the south of Tamil Nadu. So since then this, and then of course, Fukuoka, so this whole thing of, you know, man’s relation or human being’s relationship with nature, you know, and the challenges that were, you know, emerging there has been something that.

And Chennai, of course, there was these olive ridley turtles and the turtle walks. Among the people who organised the turtle walks in the early days, in fact, the first hatchery, you know, for hatching the eggs. The first hatchery was. Came out of my school teacher’s pay-check. The first non government hatchery in Chennai came out of school teacher. So that was the sort of background. So I had a lot of links with the environmental community in Chennai, activists and community educators, that whole. And.

And one of them happened to be the chairperson of the newly formed Greenpeace Trust in India. And out of the blue one day he asked me if I’d be sort of interested in the role of what is called the executive director of Greenpeace. And so I said yeah, I would be. And sort of, I would say it kind of serendipitously happened. I mean, in the sense that my interest in the environment has been up and a deep interest in those issues. For example, while I was at the school, I was the one who set up the first syllabus for an A. I mean the 12 standard ISC exam in environmental science. The board, we used to keep bugging them, saying, why don’t you introduce this?

And they said, okay, you write the syllabus. So I did write it and they approved it. I think now often in several schools. And when I was at the school, we also ran a campaign to sort of make dissection optional for 12 standard colleges. It seemed to make no sense. I mean, you’re not really teaching anything to kids that they can’t learn otherwise. And you are teaching them it’s okay to cut up some living thing, right? So I mean, that kind of activism, environment, animal rights, and that was always part of what I was doing.

DIVYA

Greenpeace itself had, you know, had a couple of years, several years of existence and its own personality, if you like. And they did things a particular way and they needed to start and figure out what they were going to do in India. And in some ways, that’s the time you come along and try and give it some shape or give it, you know, give. Give it an imagination to what Greenpeace should look like in India. Right. So I was just trying to understand what are the influences or what did you think about or how did you get that going? You know, I know there was always that teacher in you that, you know, was kind of like a continuous thread, but then there was so much more that had to be done.

I remember the initial years. I mean, I think a year or two after you joined, you recruited some of us. And, you know, while it was all very exciting, I remember thinking Greenpeace was like a bunch of cowboys with guns. And I remember you telling me, I wish those guns could shoot straight, because that was the problem. We were doing crazy things in all directions. So, I mean, that’s. That’s how I remember it, say, 2002, and then, you know, cut to around a couple of years later. I mean, when you were still the executive director, I think, you know, Greenpeace was turning back a toxic ship, a warship from the France that was coming to be broken down in Alang, which was huge.

So Greenpeace was able to sit down with the government and actually, you know, negotiate something like that. So what was that journey? And how does one conceive something like that?

ANANTH
Yeah, I think, you know, even on hindsight, it would be wrong to suggest that I had a sense of how it will all unfold. I mean, I think unfold is the correct word. What I think I brought to the table then, and what I think I still bring to the table most of the time is a, let’s say, a freshness and, you know, and the sort of very great curiosity and interest in looking at what is, you know, what is the puzzle, if you like. Right. I mean, as you correctly pointed out, Greenpeace or any organisation for that matter, I mean, the Krishnamurti School, if you. Whichever, whatever, or the Alcott Hostel, whichever one you took, everything has a personality.

I mean, it’s not like, you know, they’re blank slates. Right. And so one of the things I always enjoyed doing was understanding that personality, or one of the things that excited me, I think I should say, is understand that personality. Accept the rules of that come with it, right? For example, if you’re going to run a professional organisation like Greenpeace, then you have to accept the realities of fundraising. And it’s, you know, it is not a people’s movement in that sense. I mean, it is not an organisation that’s going to be run by volunteers. I mean, it’s going to be paid professionals or paid staff 

So I think, you know, we all brought a certain freshness to it and a certain desire to understand what it was and see how we can shape it, as you said. Right. So. So I realised, you know, I learned a few important things.

And one important thing was that for if you have to be strong organisation in India with your own mind and with your own, you know, I mean, one of the things I would say about Greenpeace is that Greenpeace can do a lot of, you know, things that can appear stupid, right? But it would be stupidity that is driven by its own limitations rather than. I mean, it is not, you know, somebody pulling the strings and, you know, it’s not that kind of thing, largely because it is, you know, funded in the way it was, which is individuals, you know, funding Greenpeace, right? So, you know, one of the things I recognised quite early was that that model of, you know, the whole organisation being funded by small contributions from a very large number of Indians, right, was a critical component for any civil society organisation in India, for any activists organisation. People’s movements are another thing. But any activist organisation in India and Greenpeace is a great place to learn that because they’ve done it in various places in the world. So we learned that we did that quite successfully. The other thing that, you know, we learned, I mean, I learned in Greenpeace and I’M sure you learned too, is that campaigning is different from things like awareness, education, etc.

Because very often, you know, people in positions of power or authority to make the change that you are seeking, be it a law or whatever it is, the reason they are not acting is not because they don’t understand what the problem is or they don’t understand why this must be done. But the reason they don’t is that the compulsions of their position, the pushes and pulls, the power relationships, the trade offs that they are making are not allowing them to do this. I mean, they would not do this because it just does not work for them. So that’s what one has to change. I mean, so that business of campaigning as being able to change the dynamics of power around the decision maker, you know, and advocacy was part of it, research was part of it, awareness was part of it, educating the right people was part of it, public mobilisation was part of it. I mean, all these are means to achieving that change.

MUSIC

So this is another thing that I learned, and of course I also learned quite a lot about what does it mean to build an organisation. I’ve never done anything like that before. Right. You know, in a school, you don’t actually manage people. I mean, you may be a coordinator and stuff, but you don’t actually manage. So, yeah, so it was, you know, so building an organisation. So in some ways, I would say accepting the challenge of building such an organisation and then trying to understand what that challenge implied and then going about it in a. In a sort of systematic and if I may use the word, professional way.

And you’re right, it was quite an exciting journey from being a very small organisation to being a fairly large organisation, to having almost at one time maybe half a million Indians donating regularly to Greenpeace, having 10, 12 cities where we had teams that were actually standing on the street and soliciting support for Greenpeace. And I used to quite enjoy standing on the street and know, sort of soliciting support for Greenpeace and making. And I thought it was quite a fascinating thing because, you know, I think to this day, one of the challenges we have with our civil society is that the people in civil society very often do not really have good ways of talking about what they do and why they do and what is the need for what they do, etc. With the person on the street, if you like. Right.

So that, I think was very, very valuable that, you know, you basically sustained yourself by appealing to the goodwill and understanding of ordinary people. And of course, every now and then one would have, you know, just as you were mentioning the Clemenceau, which was quite a inspiring story, we also have inspiring stories of how an auto rickshaw driver on the street stopped, talked to our fundraisers and then became a Greenpeace donor, you know, on the strength of, you know, what was being said. So that was, you know, for me, that was like, you know, let’s say, as inspiring a moment of my time in Greenpeace as the more political or more advocacy related or more campaign related victories. And I think the other part of what I enjoyed quite a lot in Greenpeace, DIVYA, is that is the somewhat important principle of kind of trying to do what it takes rather than trying to do what you can. 

How can we do what it takes? I mean, within, of course, value boundaries and so on. But that is again, something that I think has stayed with me, with me since those days of building Greenpeace. I mean, I learned quite a lot from it. And it was, it’s a good, good ride. And I think, I think we, we built quite A good organisation. Yeah.

DIVYA
And one of the big things about Greenpeace was also the fact that to kind of shift this power balance that you were talking about, there was a lot of confrontative action.

ANANTH
That’s right.

DIVYA
Which required individuals to take sometimes inordinate amount of risk. So, I mean, I’m always curious as to how this group of individuals came together. How did you bring a group of people who actually ended up being fairly fearless for themselves, but completely driven by that larger purpose and, you know, came together to do what it took. And almost all the battles were like, we were talking earlier, like a David and Goliath kind of thing, where you were small, insignificant, with hardly any money and you were taking on something that was mammoth. Right. So to get people to feel that they could do it, that they had the courage that it, you know, it can be done. So that’s the other element that was fairly unique. And so if you can talk a little bit about how did that psyche come about?

ANANTH
To be fair, we are, as a country and society, not short in that kind of courage to stand up. Right. And if you remember, some of our early colleagues, including yourself, came very much from the environmental movement, including Narmadaba, Jawandhal and the Bhopal groups and so on and so forth. So in some sense, our society was, I mean, activism in our society was fairly well established and we had a,  you know, and you must remember some of the challenges that Greenpeace had as a sort of activist organisation and establishing itself in various parts of the world was. Some parts of the world was not very amenable to this kind of activism. It wasn’t in the culture.

India was certainly not one of them. What I think we accomplished at that time quite successfully is those activists working within the confines or within the constraints of a formal registered organisation which had laws to abide by, which had, you know, I mean, it had. It had a bunch of, you know. Right. I mean, it’s a very. It’s a very different thing from, let’s say, somebody from the community standing up for their.

For their own rights, which actually also is different and simpler. So I think. I think the real part of Greenpeace was we could actually do very, very high quality, say, technical research on solar energy. We could communicate in a very sophisticated way.

DIVYA
So, but so in terms of leadership and in terms of, you know, what was your approach to it? Like, who did. How did you see yourself in this entire role?

ANANTH
I think this business of doing what it takes. So, for example, you know, if it means, you know, to get a half a million people to give you money, you must probably talk to 5 million, or rather your organisation and your colleagues must talk to 5 million. And you recognise that to talk to 5 million is a lot of work, not to mention time and a lot of heartache, because people on the street are not polite. They don’t have time for. They have their own lives. Right. I mean, they’re mostly saying to you, we’re not buying whatever. Right?

I mean, I enjoyed, you know, the challenge of talking to ordinary fellow countrymen of mine I’m seeing with the support or whatever. Right. But it was very important that, that for the organisation it was very important that this happened both from a sort of organisational point of view but also strategically. I mean, in the sense that it created legitimacy, it kept the organisation. I think if you look at Greenpeace, if you were to think about it, two things kept its spirit alive, right? One was this basically standing on the street and literally, you know, through very hard conversations or very persistent conversations, raising the resources you need to do your work. The other was the willingness to risk arrest and to go to jail and stuff like that. So that kind of kept the spirit alive.

So in a way I’ve always seen that it’s important to be able to, to be willing to and able to do the most difficult jobs in the organisation. I mean, it’s not quite the same as leading from the front. I mean, it’s not, it’s not like I’m saying I can do it better than you. It’s not like I’m saying, follow me. It’s not like I’m saying I’m a model, but I’m saying, I mean, it’s an act of solidarity, if you like. And that’s, you know. Right. 

I’m saying the willingness to do those things, I mean, it helped that I enjoyed it, but I think willingness is very essentially part of the, of the leadership. And that also translates into the ability to give every one of those perspectives the perspective of the person on the street, the perspective of the person trying to get your story into the media, the perspective of the campaigner who has thought a lot about the issue, the perspective of the activist who’s willing to go to jail and the perspective of the board which is sort of trying to keep things clean. So all these perspectives were mine, I mean, in some sense, right? 

Different people different perspectives, right? I mean, they all had their perspective, they all had their validity and you had to find a hole. And I think I would say that that has been something that I have both enjoyed doing and I’ve had fair success in doing. And I think recognising that, it’s that khichdi, if you like, that’s the unique thing, not any one of these things.

DIVYA
So then you had a stint at the Greenpeace International world, so you went there and created a bit of havoc and did what you had to do.

ANANTH
The high point of that, I think you mentioned in your previous question, or the most disruptive part of that, was I was the international programme director of Greenpeace and we had the climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009. And, you know, basically, I mean, it’s become fashionable to say it’s do or die, do or die for the planet on climate. But at that time it did. It seemed like the first big post Kyoto sort of do or die moment in the entire climate campaign. Obama was the new President of the United States. There was also some hope, right? I mean, after eight years of George W Bush, so there’s a whiff there. And Greenpeace is really struggling to find a new way of putting pressure.

So came up with this idea that we would, Greenpeace would organise, you know, several hundred people strong hunger fast through the two weeks of the conference. And I mean, I ended up fasting with some 10 others, not none of only one other Greenpeace person, but the climate justice fast, where I made some very nice young friends, but that’s a whole different story. But that actually, you know, brought this big almost a clash of cultures and values within Greenpeace. You know, there are a whole bunch of people in Greenpeace, especially within the community of activists within Greenpeace, who thought hunger fast is actually fundamentally violent. So it’s quite interesting navigating that, I mean, on hindsight was interesting and that when it was, I was of course furious and, you know, but to Greenpeace’s credit, and I would say, to my credit, I mean, I didn’t use my authority to say Greenpeace will do it. And Greenpeace did not like the dominant opinion in Greenpeace. The public opinion in Greenpeace kind of prevailed. And they didn’t do the Greenpeace  officially, never did the hunger. Well, that was fantastic. I mean, it was like two weeks of hunger fasting. And one of my favourite Memories of that time was I went. I was the official Greenpeace representative at a dinner in Copenhagen with, hosted by the CEO of Coca Cola, if you please. I’m not making this. They were actually celebrating the fact that they had gone ozone depleting, substance free on their, you know, on their refrigeration, whatever it was. So I ended up as a representative of Greenpeace within this thing.

So I didn’t eat, of course, so I drank water. And the other thing that I, you know, I’ve never put on a suit in my life. So that’s, I mean, the putting on the suit always had to be somebody else. So I was wearing my kurta and pyjama in Copenhagen in the winter and sipping water and sparkling water in the dinner. It was quite a. It’s actually quite interesting, that conversation. As a result of it, I think the power of. I mean, I keep coming back to the power of fasting.

I mean, both as personal and of course now it’s a fad to fast for health reason, but also as a tool for change.

DIVYA
So, I mean, and then, you know, life took you to Amnesty, which was the whole world of human rights. But I think more interesting for me was the fact that by then, I think at least two or three times Amnesty had tried to set up in India and failed. You know, it hadn’t happened. I mean, everything seemed to stand against an organisation that wanted to. Needed money to set up. But then where was that money going to come from? And so they just couldn’t quite find a way. And then you came along and it actually got set up and you started using again, retail, fundraising driven.

But how did that even get started? So where’s the money coming from and how did you get that set up? What was different?

ANANTH
I mean, I didn’t think that was true for Greenpeace. I didn’t think it was true for Amnesty. I would not think it’s true for any organisation today which is trying to do that kind of work that the government of the day, and it doesn’t matter who the, what the political dispensation of the government is, no state is really going to take kindly to these kinds of organisations. And in the case of Greenpeace, I would say it’s more not so much the state as much as the, say, corporate interests that Greenpeace went after that why other state would care about. And in the case of Amnesty, of course, you know, it’s very straight away, the state itself has the sort of thing that you come up against, right? And this is not a unique feature to India. I mean, even in the United States States or in the UK, it is not like Amnesty is well liked. 

So I’ve always seen it as, you know, the challenge of building an organisation like Amnesty in India is to build it in such a way that it can have a spine and speak its mind, set up the organisational and the legal infrastructure and the funding in such a way that it can. And that was the attempt. And I think the special thing is, of course, I had the experience of setting up Greenpeace and then recognising this as critical. So setting up Amnesty in a manner that will work was what was very interesting. And of course, human rights, unlike the environment, is a much more politically sensitive subject. The environment ought to be a lot more politically sensitive. One wishes it was. But in the case of human rights, you only have to sneeze and, you know, everybody is, like, really upset with you.

DIVYA
So maybe you should tell us a little bit about, you know, one interesting impact that you had. I mean, Sri Lanka comes to mind to work theres.

ANANTH
Okay, we can pick that.

DIVYA
Yeah.

ANANTH
So India, in the case of Amnesty, you know, I was very interested in working on some issues, right, with international ramifications where, you know, India could actually be a interesting player, Right. I mean, you know, one issue was that of migrant workers. Workers. All of South Asia, there were migrant workers in the Gulf and their rights were a massive black hole, if you like. Right.

I mean, the World cup in Qatar brought it to light, but it was fairly obvious and it was quite interesting to see how the home government, the Indian government, the Nepali government, the Pakistani government, the Bangladeshi government dealt with the sort of rights of their people. I mean, how did they, what did they do to protect those rights? It was quite interesting. The strongest government in that regard was the Nepali one. It had the most proactive policies, had a will to implement them and so on and so forth. So it seemed like that’s an interesting kind of mirror to hold up to ourselves. The mirror is not that look at what Norway is doing for its expats. Norway probably has very few people leave alone expats, but it is not like that.

But you are saying our own neighbours are able to do better by their own people. So trying to find those kinds of interesting examples. Another interesting example was that of Sri Lanka and justice for the war victims. I mean, the Tamil war victims. I mean, I think, you know, having studied that issue quite closely, especially the end of that civil war in Sri Lanka, I think it was horrific human rights violations and it appeared that the regime then was going to get away with it. Right. And so there was an international campaign to hold the regime accountable in the UN human rights system, which by the way is much stronger than the environmental multilateral system on human rights. Much stronger than.

And the interesting thing is, and there the. For amnesty, what we brought unique was a certain ability to do a Campaign in a very sharp way, in a politically smart way. Right. I mean, for example, at that time, every political party in Tamil Nadu was in favour of accountability for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. And, you know, it was a coalition government, so they had a very strong, you know, hold. And so we could push the.

We could basically supply information, material, do standard advocacy, you know, with the MPs to, you know, to sort of raise them. I mean, to supply them with material to do research, all that kind of stuff. Signature campaigns. We run a very hugely successful thing. Almost three and a half million people signed our signature campaign and so on and so forth. And this is an interesting opportunity to do that. And in the process, you know, we restart a very large number of people. We also were able to get a very large number of people to donate to amnesty, etc. So building that whole thing was what I think was exciting and maybe special in the case of Amnesty. Yes.

DIVYA
So one of the things that has been fairly unique about your journey is that, you know, you. You didn’t choose to build your own organisation. You know, you entered an institution, something that, like we talked about, with its own personality and kind of came in and gave it something, created some level of impact, and at some point you decided, you know, now I can move on and do something else. So, you know, so what was driving you? Like what, you know, you’re not, I don’t know if you’re a serial CEO. What. What was it like? Who was Ananth and, you know, what did you want?

DIVYA
If somebody had asked you, you know, how did you chart that course? What would have been.

ANANTH
In some way, I think there are two things that have been the same through my life, right? One is a sort of a. If you like, an inner quest to be a good human being. And what does that mean? We live in a very complicated world. I mean, world has always been complicated, I say, I guess, but I certainly experienced myself as living in a very complex world. And what does it mean to be a good human being in that world? And that includes the way you treat people, the way you build relationships, your values, your lifestyle, you know, the consistency between what you believe and walking the talk.

All that is part of, you know, this sort of good human being thing. And that’s like an important sort of, let’s say, for want of a better word, an inner gen, right? Maybe it has some spiritual dimensions to it, to meditate and stuff like that. And the other is this thing of accepting that every situation is an opportunity and there are no situations that are blank slates. I mean, like, you know, I mean, in the last five, four, five years, I have actually started or have been part of the team that has founded organisations. That doesn’t mean there are no constraints. I mean, that doesn’t mean that there are no boundaries, right? I mean, it’s.

There is no. You can’t just create something out of thin air, right? I mean, it has come from histories. I mean, certainly the people have histories. I mean, supposing you, you know, you and I right now work together in an organisation called RootBridge that, you know, provides fundraising, retail fundraising services to NGOs, right? I mean, it’s that connection to what we learned at Greenpeace and so on. It doesn’t mean. I mean, you have a history, our colleagues have histories.

So it’s not coming out of nowhere. I mean, so there are law. I mean, you get what I’m trying to say, right? So in some sense, if, say, Mr. Premji says, you know, set up the Azim Premji philanthropic initiatives, as I had the good fortune of him saying to me, right then it’s exciting, but it’s not an invitation, it’s not a blank slate.

So it’s always that coming together and trying to find that kind of whole. I mean, by trying to create that Elephant out of the different sensory perceptions of the people around it. That’s always the challenge. And I think it is wrong to think that if you are, let’s say, the actual founder, you could basically do whatever you wanted. It’s not true. So I have always enjoyed that puzzle, if you like. And I mean, it’s a… it’s, and I’ve always seen it as that, I mean, deadly serious. Because you do want to have impact when you care about the outcomes and you care quite a lot about the outcomes. You care about doing good, you care about having an impact. But nevertheless, it is a puzzle. Nevertheless, it’s a system. It’s a very complex system in which you are trying to create a space, in which you’re trying to create an energy, a direction. And, you know, as Krishnamurti used to say, what can you do alone? I mean, that was always quite clear to me. There’s nothing much you can do alone. You can write a book maybe, but you know, some of us who, I mean, I can write a book, but who will read it, right? So that’s always the challenge. So what, what can you do with the cards you have been dealt with within the rules of the card game? I mean, it has always been the interesting question and I must say I have enjoyed that and I brought a lot of energy to those games. Pick up those deck of cards and pretend that they are the best deck of cards.

Not pretend, I mean, feel like they are the best deck of cards that you have. The only deck of cards you have anyway. So then do what you. What you will with it. And people are also fun. I mean, you learn how to work with people, how to give people, I think, how to give people space. I think one of the things that have happened in the last 20 years in civil society is that it is no more a place where the people who are coming into are coming in with the sense of I will apprentice and learn.

They’re very much coming in as people who want to make an impact from development who know or who have studied or who are qualified in some sense, who see themselves as movers and shakers, like. Right. I mean, and so it is. They are not the older, more traditional organisation where the leader or the founder or so and so mentored a bunch of people and everybody followed that line is not the status of our, you know, this. Right. People want to make a contribution. So how to create space for that? How to create space for all that energy. And it’s good energy, right? 

DIVYA
So walking away from an organisation and walking away from everything that you built, Right. I mean, that seems to be like the biggest pain point for most organisations when someone who’s been around, you know, leaves both for that person as well as for their entire environment. Right. And. And, you know, so you’ve had several ins and outs and, you know, starts and finishes. So how, you know, what. What would be some of the thinking around that?

ANANTH
I mean, it’s that old African probe, isn’t it? I mean, the almost cliched one, right. If you want to go far, walk together. If you want to walk fast, walk alone. Right. So, you know, it’s that and of course, walking alone, you know, if you’re very strong and very powerful, you can drag a whole lot of people along as well. But going together is something else. And at least I recognise that one has to go together. But I also recognise that going together is not a matter of consensus. Going together doesn’t mean that there are no leaders. Going together doesn’t mean that at different phases in that journey, different people will lead. Human beings need leadership. That’s not what I’m taught. So it’s always been this play.

How do you get a bunch of people and point them in a direction and walk along? And how do you not shy away from having to lead when you need to, or allowing others to lead when it’s needed? Sometimes you start to have this feeling and then, you know, you know, it’s time to kind of. I mean, that setup is not working for you anymore. So that’s happened a couple of times. Sometimes it’s also happened that, you know, the whatever is coming your way is quite interesting and attractive, so you kind of go in that direction. But through it all, I would say that I’ve always. I’ve never defined myself as. By my professional role of that time. I’ve always seen myself as someone who wants to be or who’s doing his damn best to both be good and do good.

And I had my definitions of good, of course, but that’s what it was. And I was using whatever was at my disposal to do so. And these are all means to that end, be it Greenpeace or the Azim, trendy philanthropic initiatives or the school or whatever else.

DIVYA
So around the time, let’s say you were at Amnesty, I just wanted to draw everyone’s attention to the world outside and how the political context was changing fairly drastically. And then having one organisation that you are part of setting up and driving, which is Greenpeace, being confronted, you know, with the kind of political activity that wasn’t very accepted. And then slowly that also moving to the kind of work Amnesty was doing and the repercussions that had both on the organisations, not just these, but a whole lot of other organisations as well as you personally. So if you can just talk about how, you know, there’s this huge shift, which may have been something happening in slow motion, but something that caught up with a lot of us.

ANANTH
It wasn’t even happening in slow motion, it was always happening. I mean, who likes being told that what they’re doing is not up to the mark? And who likes being told in, let’s say, black and white terms, in somewhat harsh terms, in somewhat pompous terms, if you like. I mean, I’m trying to understand the other side. So that has always been the case, Right. And this is. Right.

However, I think the. Let’s say. I think what is other big thing that’s happened in the world is the. In the last 20 years, that Liberal consensus, so to speak, or the sense that the whole of the world, after the end of the Cold War, that the whole of the world was going to end up as a liberal democracy with the possible exception of China.

So that has broken down. I mean, you can clearly see that. I mean, it may never have been true, but certainly that sense is that it has sense is broken down. And now there’s a sense that there may be other ways for nations to flourish or other ways for nations to assert themselves, to find their place in the sun, whatever you want to say. And I think, therefore, the kind of things that, let’s say I grew up taking for granted as or as uncontested goods, things that were uncontestedly good, freedom of expression or the right to say anything you want, or the freedom of association, so to speak. And I can associate with anybody, I mean, and money being a form of association, right? So the idea that why should I be restricted from taking resources from anywhere, Those kinds of thought processes have certainly got shrunk in their legitimacy. There are other competing ideas that have, that have come to the fore. 

Ordinary people have also internalised that. And I think, you know, it would be unfair or it would be not very honest if we in civil society did not also acknowledge our, let’s say, part in the. The loss of space. Right. I think, I think to Me, it seems it’s come from two or three places. One place where it’s come, come from is our own increasing disconnect with our own societies. I mean, our inability to talk to the ordinary concerns of people around us. We could talk to the concerns of people like us, but we could not talk to the concerns of the ordinary people.

I mean, the humorous accounts, the numerous humorous episodes in the street fundraising illustrates this, right? So Greenpeace is working on toxic waste and preventing toxic waste from being dumped in India via these ships in Alang. So in every one of the standard questions of street fundraisers, they ask is, so, what are you doing in Alang? Are you building hospitals? Right, oh, you’re Greenpeace. Say environment, do you plant trees? Right? And then you say, no, and will you at least clean the garbage on my street?

So this is something that, you know, we have done to ourselves, right? There’s a certain esoteric vocabulary inside our vocabulary. We’ve certainly done this process. I would say we should take some of this. The other thing is, I think with the professionalisation of our sector, the perceived, at least the perceived, if not the real, right, at least the perceived gap between us and our talk has widened, right?

So, I mean, you know, this idea that we are latte sipping, you know, or avocado eating, you know, whatever, right? Young people sitting in cafes or restaurants or whatever, or going to international conference, well paid. So, yeah, so as a result, you know, let’s say it led to a credibility erosion. 

I think there’s also growing, let’s say myth that the sector is about service delivery or myth is not a good word, canard if you like. It’s willfully cultivated. And the corporates also perpetuate this. I mean the government is not able to deliver services well, or at cost,

Although if you look at the very successful social welfare infrastructure that has been built in this country, every one of them has originated in civil society. I mean, every one of those ideas is organising in fact, to give another kind of an example, you know, when I met Dr. Manmohan Singh when he was the Prime Minister of India with as Greenpeace Executive Director, we had something called the Energy Revolution energy scenario for India, right?

And at that time it must have been 2004 or something. It had numbers for 2020 and 2030. 2020. It had some numbers, right? And both Dr Manmohan Singh and Prithviraj Chauhan who was the PMO minister who was there, they thought the numbers are outrageous. They were laughable, right? But India exceeded those targets in 2020, right?

They said this is all pipe dream. What are you talking. So the point I’m trying to make is that the civil society has been visionary. Of that there’s no doubt.

I mean, who could have conceived of NREGA…it’s something that we should be, you know, very proud of and something that we should be recognised for. I mean, I, you know, I would say in the 20 years that I have been in civil society, I’m not including the 10 years as a school teacher, I’ve gone from, say, all my classmates perceiving what I’m doing as fantastic and good to a bunch of them thinking I’m India’s enemy. Right? This has happened to our society and that’s quite unfortunate.


And this is despite the fact that I think really big and positive changes to our society, to the environment, have come from the do gooders, so to speak, from the activists, from people like us.

DIVYA
So, I mean, just to bring you back to the now, right, to where we are today. So, I mean, in the last, you know, after your stint at the Azim Premji philanthropy, I mean, I know that you delivered Swiggy pizzas for a while, but, you know, trying to, you know, see what that side was like. And maybe you have a story there, but they were like three or four kinds of organisations that you help put together and all linked to some story. At the back, we talked about the warden at the school. And then there was, you know, We Live coming out of that, with the individual fundraising and Rootbridge coming out of that. And then what we were just talking about right now, the need for that multicultural dialogue and to think in a particular way about the future with Socrates coming there and then. Yet, you know, very quickly you created those and, you know, stayed a little bit far away from them as well, or gave it its space to grow fairly quickly. So, you know, maybe you want to tell us about that?

ANANTH
Yeah. So I think around 2018, I had reached a point where I was like, when that, you know, mix between fast and going together was kind of coming apart for both myself and the Azim Premji ecosystem at that point. I mean, and so I was saying, okay, I mean, I’ve done five years, I’ve Done my bit. So let me. And I was full of ideas as well.

The aftercare having rooted itself in my own experience of looking after or being or living along with those young men then. And I think the other thing that, especially my time in Greenpeace and my time at Greenpeace International, one of the other things that brought home to me is that the complexity of the world was like, growing dramatically. The problems that we were encountering were getting more and more wicked in the design sense. They were getting wicked problems and. But the minds that we were bringing to the problem, especially the minds in civil society, were just not keeping pace. You know, we were not getting really sophisticated.

Right. And it also seemed like it’s not a matter of cultivating individual brilliance, but it’s a matter of cultivating a collective, bringing the people so the elephant can be sensed, bringing all the perspectives together. So that was the origin of what is now the Socrates foundation for Collective Wisdom, then, the fundraising thing. We know that in India. I think I always take this challenge to say, raise your money in this country as a good one. We have a large middle class, we have a large number of people who care about these things. We have a very large number of people who care about even the most, let’s say, contentious issues in our country. So why can’t we build organisations that are rooted and are supported by this community?

Right. So, like, you know, BPOs have sort of been like organised companies, have been able to outsource certain things to BPOs. Can we create an organisation that can be a turnkey service provider for retail fundraising services? I mean, that’s the idea of Rootbridge and then Socrates. I mean, I just mentioned this idea of bringing people together and having multiple dialogues and convenings and so on. So these are three or four organisations that, you know, I was part of the founding team, but I think this time around, you know, I was not a serial entrepreneur. But a parallel one, whatever that means. So I each, each one of these had a colleague in the long journey of my professional life with whom I have thought about this for many years and they became my co founders and in fact they became the chief executive, if you like, and I was more the advisor. So what accelerated that last bit was, you know, as it happened, you know, I discovered two years ago that I had cancer and so some of my attention was, I think, legitimately diverted to looking after my health. So that accelerated the process. But I think that’s not a bad, that’s no bad thing.

I think it’s been wonderful to see these organisations sort of flourish, do their own good, find support. You know, I’m now on These sort of WhatsApp groups of these organisations. There’s a lot of chatter and it’s been fascinating to watch it and not do anything about it. And I think the big shift has been, I think the people I’ve co founded these things with and other leaders of these organisations are still kind enough to want to, you know, at least pretend every now and then to want my advice. Right. So it’s, it still keeps the old man feeling like he’s relevant. But I think the big challenge for me has been to learn to give advice when asked only. Right.

And then accept if the advice is not taken up, accept that it’s not. Right. I mean, that. That’s what it means, right? It means to be an advisor, that’s what it means. And you, you know, to choose that position and then to sort of have the inner discipline to stay there. And you know, as a, as a kind of health thing as well as fun thing, I’ve spent an enormous amount of time and energy walking in the last couple of years.

I discovered on my sort of Pacer app that in 2021, 2022, this 2023, 2022, I had walked 6950 kilometres so all in Bangalore, by the way. I mean, it’s not like I went off somewhere, so. And Covid happened. And during COVID I realised that you could actually do a lot of meetings online. But still walking – Cubbon Park is a favourite haunt. Signals are very good. It’s quiet, so you’re not disturbing the other people on the call. And then I also started taking to doing meetings, walking.


DIVYA
So, yeah, so one question is the. What I was trying, you know, wanted to ask you was that what were or who or what were some of the influences, you know, through this entire journey. You’ve talked a little bit about Krishnamurti, but I know that, you know, there’ve been several.

ANANTH
Yeah. So it’s been quite an interesting set. Right. So Gandhi was a very big influence growing up. My father was somewhat Gandhian and so through him one at least picked up reverence for the old man. I don’t mean my father usually harder to have reverence for one’s own parents. But yeah, so Gandhi was a very big influence. And in IIT in the library, like complete works of Gandhi was there.

Something I took away stayed with me and the sense of simplicity or whatever else. I mean, so Gandhi was a big figure, non violence. And I think Gandhi’s questioning of technology, like especially in, as a student in IIT having someone like Gandhi asking these questions, you know. You know you kind of took technology, the answer to everything. Right. I mean you don’t, don’t bother what the question is. For every question, technology is the answer. Right. That was sort of almost the Reason for existence of place like IIT.

So Gandhi’s questioning of technology as a force for the emancipation of society, if you like, especially the weakest in society was something that. Was something that I took, you know, quite a lot of heart from. And then of course, the Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti himself and The Krishnamurti School, 11 years in the school, and therefore Krishnamurti himself, that willingness to question, not take anything for granted, not follow, not take kindly to authority. So that was something I took away, the Buddha. And I think of late I’ve been. Buddha has been a very strong influence. And off late I’ve also appreciate, begin to appreciate much more, say Ambedkar’s connection to Buddha and to Buddhism and his very conscious choice. I mean, he did say that I’m born a Hindu, but I will not die one.

And, you know, Medha Patkar has been someone that I really admired quite a lot. Courage, the ability to really stand with the poor and the marginalised. And some of the people of the founders of Greenpeace, people not very well known in this country, but, you know, the international executive director in Greenpeace, when I joined, a man called Gerd Leipold, who sort of flew on a gas balloon across the Berlin Wall from the west to the east. And the funny story was, as they were flying from the west to the east, most people thought there were people escaping the east to the west and were accidentally going the wrong way.

And they kept shooing them saying, you know, that way to freedom and so on. So the kind of, let’s say, somewhat the willingness to play at the edge, I mean, Gerd was, I must say, quite an important inspiration. 

DIVYA
Okay, so the other question I had for you is that the next decade of civil society, I mean, what is. How do you see that unfolding? You know, what would be, you know, something that you would say to young leaders emerging who are there to kind of take that forward.

ANANTH
Let’s say the game, or let’s say the situation might appear different, but there are. But there are some continuities, right? I mean, the change that you need to have has to be built on a continuity. I mean, you know, you have to understand what is constant and what is changing and adapt to the change while knowing what to do with the constant. So one of the constants, I would say, is that what brings about change has not changed. And it’s some combination of seva, sangharsh, nirman, Chintan, you know, some combination of these things, some combination of actually providing service and helping people. Some combination of standing, you know, combining that with some standing up and saying, we will not accept this, right?

Resistance, if you like, to some new thought and, you know, some institution building. And I think. I would say that people trying to make change today and in the next 10 years must recognise those and must also recognise that change is a complex beast, right? It takes all these things acting in some synergy, and I think they should recognise that they will never be able to do it all, that somehow they’ll have to build connections, networks, they’ll dance with the others and the others, I think increasingly this is a big change, think will increasingly include what looks like the other side, you know, the world, I think, is too porous to not require that, or the problems are too wicked for it not to require that. So to recognise that you have to collaborate from the beginning and to recognise that it is not about your idea, but about the collective, in some sense, it’s about everybody bringing their bit and creating a kind of synthesis, right?

I mean, that’s really something that you’ll have to recognise and I think, and to watch out, I would say, for the limits of professionalism as well. Yes, it is a profession. Yes, you can make a career out of it. All that is true and maybe even good things. But to recognise that that is not what they came to the sector for. It is necessary, but not sufficient.

These are some of the things I would say to younger generations. And I think other important thing is there’s so much data out there that actually you can test a lot more. You don’t have to imagine so much. You can combine a vision with testing. I think these are some of the things that I would say.

DIVYA
And yeah, one other thing, which is that as someone who’s on this continuously dancing with the wolves, right, it’s tiring. And at the end of it, like, how do you hold yourself, right? Like, how do you keep that core alive and not get tired and disillusioned and. And, you know, all the rest of it? I mean, you. You’re going.

ANANTH
The fire is warm. You know, hanging around in a corner is not right. You know, you could. I mean, so it’s actually quite exciting. I mean, and I think recognising that they are recognising that the other side exists, that all other points of view exist sometimes, and very often the other points of view are dominant. They have a lot of power in their hands. So recognising, I mean, so enjoying the fact that one is a David, right. And will always be right ? And I think it’s fun. I mean, at least I’ve had fun. And. And I think it can be fun, but one must accept that that’s the nature of this.

So I really think that increasingly in our world, black and white don’t exist anymore.

DIVYA
Thank you. Oh, thank you. Anand. This has been like a fascinating conversation.

ANANTH
Thank you, DIVYA. It’s been, you know, as I get older, I get more and more gatherers. Opportunity to, you know, to have a long conversation and to reflect on one’s life. I enjoyed it as much as you say you did.

DIVYA
Thank you very much.

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