Type: Article

IDR | The Limits of AI in Social Change

– Gautam John, CEO, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies

More actors—from grantmaking to service delivery—are exploring the use of AI. However, the excitement around scale and efficiency often overshadows a critical question: What does it mean to bring machine-generated abstraction into systems built on trust, context, and relationship?

In systems of social change, we grapple with an enduring tension: connection versus abstraction. Connection is slow, human, and relational. It thrives on trust, listening, and collaboration. Abstraction, on the other hand, simplifies complexity into patterns, insights, and models. It is fast, scalable, and efficient.

Both serve a purpose, but they pull in opposite directions. And now, with the rise of AI tools like large language models (LLMs), this tension has reached new heights. LLMs thrive on abstraction; they reduce human interaction into data points, surface patterns, and generate outputs.

While LLMs are not intelligent in the sense of reasoning or self-awareness, they can serve as tools that reframe, rephrase, and reorganise a person’s ideas in ways that feel expressive. This can enable creativity and reflection, but let’s be clear: It’s not agency. The tool reshapes inputs but does not make meaning.

In market-based systems, where efficiency is paramount, this might work. But in social systems, where relationships, context, and trust are everything, abstraction risks losing what makes systems real and resilient.

This essay is a case for vigilant embrace. It asks how we can keep tools in service to relationship, not the other way round. It draws from our country’s experience of the self-help group (SHG) movement and its microfinance offshoots, tests it against the new frontier of LLMs in the social sector, and distills a few design rules for keeping the work human in an age of speed.

Connection as infrastructure

Decades ago, India’s SHG movement reframed finance as a relationship first, and a product second. Groups formed through affinity; members saved together; rules emerged from context; repayment schedules matched rhythms of life and livelihood; and trust was the collateral. Over time, SHG–bank linkage became a way to bring formal finance into places where formal institutions had no legitimacy of their own. It only worked because process mattered.

As Aloysius Prakash Fernandez (long‑time leader in the SHG movement with MYRADA and a key architect of its practice) has argued, SHGs built economies of connection. The time it took to form an SHG was not friction to be eliminated, but rather the formation and cadence of months of meetings, savings discipline, conflict resolution, and learning to keep books and hold each other accountable. That slow work created legitimacy and resilience so that when crisis struck, the relationship fabric held.

Then came the turn. As microfinance commercialised, much of the field shifted from SHG thinking to microfinance (MFI) thinking—from affinity to acquisition, from place to product, from presence to process compliance. Loans became standardised, repayment cycles rigid, and growth a KPI. Speed, greed, and standardisation (to borrow Aloysius’s pithy phrasing) took what was relational and made it transactional.

The results were predictable. Repayment rates looked spectacular—until they didn’t. In many places, risks were accumulating: multiple lending without visibility on household cash flows, incentives that pushed volume over suitability, and the slow erosion of trust with lenders treating people as portfolios rather than participants. Products scaled, but belonging did not. The social infrastructure that had once underwritten financial inclusion was being displaced by numbers that looked like progress.

It is tempting to narrate this simply as a story of ‘bad actors’, but that misses the deeper point. Even well‑meaning institutions slide here because their structures privilege the measurable: gross loan portfolio, on‑time repayment, and cost to serve. The things that make SHGs work—mutuality, ownership, repair—resist instrumentation, and become, quite literally, less valuable.

If this sounds familiar to those working at the intersection of LLMs and social systems, it’s because we’re watching the same film again.

The question, then, is this: Where, if at all, do LLMs belong in the work of social change? And what can we learn from the SHG/MFI shift?

LLMs and the mechanistic view of wisdom

There are now many LLM-based tools designed to abstract and synthesise insights from human interactions, promising to amplify collective wisdom. In social change systems, where resources are stretched and problems are vast, this promise is tempting and does have some strengths.

  • It organises and systematises human insights into building blocks.
  • It surfaces diverse perspectives, tracing inputs back to their sources to ensure inclusion and accountability.
  • It accelerates decisions, offering actionable outputs at scale.

But these strengths are also its greatest weaknesses because they abstract the human process of turning messy, situated conversations into neat patterns. This comes at a cost.

  1. Loud voices and flattened complexity: They risk over-representing frequent or louder perspectives while erasing nuance, dissent, and marginal views.
  2. Loss of relational insight: Wisdom doesn’t arise from patterns alone. It comes from the trust, tension, and emotional connection born of human interaction.
  3. Hollow consensus: Outputs that bypass relational work may appear actionable, but they lack the trust and shared ownership that give decisions their power.

The result? Systems that look efficient but feel hollow because tools, frameworks, and processes sever the relational ties that make systems real.

Recent empirical evidence seems to confirm what we sense intuitively about these limits. When researchers systematically tested LLM reasoning capabilities through controlled puzzles, they discovered something profound: As problems grow more complex, these models don’t just struggle but collapse entirely. Even more telling, when complexity increases, they begin to reduce their effort, as if giving up. They find simple solutions but then overthink them, exploring wrong paths.

Perhaps this is a window into the fundamental nature of these systems. They excel at pattern matching within familiar territories but cannot genuinely reason through novel complexity. And social change? It lives entirely in that space of the new and the complex, where contexts shift, where culture matters, where every community brings unprecedented challenges. If these models collapse when moving discs between pegs, how can we trust them with the infinitely more complex work of moving hearts, minds, and systems?

Apply the narrow versus wide lens

To navigate this challenge, the tension between connection and abstraction must be examined through another dimension: narrow versus wide. While connection and abstraction often feel like irreconcilable opposites, the narrow–wide lens helps bridge this gap by revealing how different kinds of tools can play meaningful roles in social change.

  • Narrow tools are specific and targeted, solving well-bounded problems.
  • Wide tools are generalised and scalable, seeking to address large systems.

Combining this in a 2×2 framework gives us four distinct spaces where LLMs can, or cannot, play a meaningful role.

1. Narrow connection (Relational amplifiers)

  • What it is: Tools that deepen human relationships by enhancing context-specific, targeted work.
  • Example: A frontline caseworker uses an LLM to synthesise notes across multiple user visits in order to personalise their follow-ups. The LLM helps amplify memory and insight, but the relationship remains human.
  • Why it works: These tools augment human connection by surfacing insights without replacing relational work. They stay rooted in the specific, bounded context of their application.
  • Key use case: Tools for case management in social services. For instance, LLMs help social workers tailor interventions to individual users based on their unique needs and histories.
  • Key question: Does this tool augment connection, or does it replace it?

2. Wide connection (Relational ecosystems)

  • What it is: Tools that map and visualise relationships across broader ecosystems, enabling collaboration without eroding the human work of trust-building.
  • Example: Stakeholder mapping tools that reveal community networks and power dynamics.
  • Why it works: Wide connection tools respect the complexity of human systems, helping actors navigate and strengthen relationships without reducing them to transactions.
  • Key use case: Network mapping for advocacy coalitions. LLMs can surface insights about overlapping efforts, potential collaborators, or areas of conflict, but the work of building those connections remains human.
  • Key question: Does this tool illuminate relationships, or does it flatten them into transactions?

3. Narrow abstraction (Efficiency tools)

  • What it is: Tools that automate repetitive, bounded tasks, freeing up time for relational or contextual work.
  • Example: A grant officer uses an LLM to scan 100 applications for missing documentation or budget inconsistencies and flags files for review, but leaves decisions to humans.
  • Why it works: Narrow abstraction tools stay within well-defined parameters, ensuring that the abstraction doesn’t undermine human judgement or erode trust.
  • Key use case: Administrative automation in nonprofits. AI can handle routine data entry or flag missing information in grant proposals, allowing staff to focus on strategic decisions and relationships.
  • Key question: Has the process of abstraction removed necessary details that deserve human consideration?

4. Wide abstraction (Context flatteners)

  • What it is: Broad, generalised tools that prioritise scale and efficiency, but risk erasing context and relationships.
  • Example: A philanthropic CRM tool employs LLMs to rank grantees on ‘impact potential’ using prior grant reports that reward well-written or funder-aligned language, not those doing contextually important work.
  • Why it fails: Wide abstraction tools produce outputs that are disconnected from the lived realities of the people and systems they aim to serve. They often impose generic solutions that lack local resonance or trust.
  • Key risk: Policy recommendations generated by LLMs that ignore cultural nuance, power dynamics, or local histories.
  • Key question: Does this tool flatten complexity, producing solutions no one truly owns?

Wide abstraction tools fail social systems because social systems are built on trust, context, and relationships. Change doesn’t emerge from patterns or averages; it emerges from the slow, messy, human work of showing up, listening, and building together.

This requires moral discernment, cultural fluency, and the ability to hold space for uncertainty. Even the most sophisticated tools are not capable of these things. A tool cannot sense the difference between a pause of resistance and a pause of reflection. It cannot understand silence or the weight behind a hesitant request.

LLMs can play a role in social change, but must stay narrow, supportive, and grounded in connection. They canamplify relationships (narrow connection), reveal patterns in systems (wide connection), or automate tasks that don’t require human judgement (narrow abstraction). But they cannot replace the relational processes that make systems real.

Designing for a human age

The promise of LLMs is seductive. It offers speed, efficiency, and a sense of control—qualities we crave in complex, uncertain systems. But if we think of connection as the foundational infrastructure and abstraction as a tool, how do we build (and fund) accordingly?

Four clusters of practice follow from the analysis:

1. Placement and scope

  • Keep it narrow (bounded contexts) when automating.
  • Hold it wide and human when mapping relationships.
  • Avoid wide abstraction in relational domains (welfare, justice, health, community development). If you must use it, treat outputs as hints, never decisions.
  • Assume drift; design for it.

2. Process and ownership

  • Process matters. If a ‘consensus’ tool removes dissent and dialogue, it is producing hollow agreement.
  • Ownership signals reality. If a decision is not of the group but about it, expect distance and eventual resistance.
  • Messiness test. Did we stay in the mess to listen, disagree, compromise? If not, the outcome may travel poorly. Consensus that bypasses repair will not hold.

3. Measurement and accountability

  • Measure what you can while protecting what you can’t. Build explicit guard rails so that unmeasurable goods (trust, belonging, repair) are not crowded out.
  • Use AI where failure is acceptable. Drafting, summarising, data hygiene: yes. Decisions about dignity, safety, or entitlements: no.
  • Allow override without justification. People closest to the context must be free to resist machine outputs.
  • Capture moments of failure. Document not just technical bugs, but also when people forget how to act without the tool.

4. Funding and institutional practice

  • Finance the foundational layers. Budget for convening, accompaniment, group formation, and follow‑through, and not just transactions.
  • Reward stewardship, not throughput. Celebrate organisations that prune, pause, and repair, not just those that scale.
  • Create collision spaces. Funders should host containers for connection—open‑ended gatherings where practitioners make meaning together, not just report up.
  • Reframe accountability. Shift from counting outputs to honouring conditions: psychological safety, trust density, and role clarity across the network.

The work we do in the sector is the work of belonging, and it does not scale by flattening. It scales like a forest: root by root, mycelium by mycelium, canopy by canopy, alive and adaptive, held together by relationships we cannot always see and must never forget.

India Development Review

Alliance Magazine | What if We Funded Justice Differently?

Justice has often been philanthropy’s stepchild. In numerous donor forums I’ve attended, we’ve eagerly rallied around education, health, and livelihoods. However—when the conversation turns to justice, ensuring people can access their rights, challenge injustice, or navigate the legal system—the energy shifts. Justice is perceived as peripheral, abstract, or difficult to measure. Many funders treat it as the government’s job or the lawyer’s domain. As a result, initiatives that empower people to seek justice or reform broken systems receive only a tiny sliver of philanthropic support.
Yet over the past few years, my perspective has been upended by the partners I’ve met working on access to justice across India. Through interviews and field visits, including those for a film on justice that we recently produced, I’ve seen that justice is not abstract at all. It’s deeply human, intensely local, and full of possibility.

Across our conversations, we heard this repeatedly: justice doesn’t always begin in a courtroom. It begins when someone feels safe enough to speak. A community paralegal helping a villager resolve a land dispute. A former inmate is mentoring others inside prison. A survivor navigating the police station without fear.

At organisations working on reintegration and rehabilitation, justice often means supporting people in rebuilding their lives after incarceration. With flexible support, some partners have been able to offer socio-legal counselling, vocational training, and basic necessities. Others have built trust-based leadership programs that help young people move from the margins into positions of voice and responsibility. These are concrete, person-centred acts of justice.

In other cases, early patient funding helped organisations survive and scale when few others were willing to take the risk. That support enabled them to formalise their teams, build institutional systems, and communicate the broader narrative of their work. Crucially, the flexibility to plan a few years ahead allowed them to take bigger bets by investing in people, tools, or platforms that wouldn’t have been feasible under restricted project grants.

So why hasn’t philanthropy embraced this space more fully? A few blind spots keep recurring. First, the “tangibility bias”: funders like measurable outputs like vaccines delivered and schools built. Justice work is relational. It may take years before a policy shifts, a case sets precedent, or an ecosystem changes. But that doesn’t mean impact isn’t happening.

Second, many funders worry that justice work is adversarial or political. But the reality is that most of our partners work with, and not against, state institutions. We’ve seen collaborations with NITI Aayog, state and national legal aid authorities, courts, and correctional institutions. These are solutions, not confrontations.

Lastly, most funding structures don’t fit justice work. Short-term, output-driven grants don’t support the long game of legal empowerment or systemic reform. The most effective partners spoke about how they often had to start by showing up, listening, and building trust. Change didn’t happen in quarters. It happened in relationships.

When funding aligned with the nature of the work, things changed. Many partners credited long-term, unrestricted funding with giving them breathing space, not only to operate effectively, but to think expansively. They used that space to invest in leadership, respond to community needs in real time, and take risks they otherwise couldn’t afford to take.

Flexible support also allowed organisations to do the unglamorous but vital work of capacity-building: from hiring experienced staff, to building internal systems, to developing learning tools. Instead of chasing compliance, they could focus on what mattered by deepening their fieldwork, building networks, and responding to unexpected opportunities.

Organisations that combined legal literacy with cultural and emotional work, such as storytelling, expressive arts, or peer-led theatre, often spoke about the importance of being able to integrate these elements without having to argue for their “impact” in narrow terms. Being trusted to pursue what worked, even when it looked unconventional, helped the work land more deeply and durably.

So what would it look like to fund justice differently?

  1. Commit for the long haul. Fund justice like you would fund a promising health system intervention. Offer multi-year, flexible support. Treat experimentation and adaptation as part of the process and not red flags.
  2. Trust, then track. Start from a place of belief, then co-create learning approaches that suit the work. Let partners define what success looks like. Don’t ask for outcomes the work isn’t built to deliver.
  3. Think systems, not silos. Justice isn’t a standalone sector. It intersects with gender, education, livelihoods, and governance. Fund the connective tissue: the organisations translating legal rights into lived realities.
  4. Celebrate stories, not just numbers. A woman starting her own paralegal network. A district officer shifting how bail is granted. A reintegration program reducing recidivism. These are real outcomes, even if they’re not on a logframe.
    The partners I’ve learned from are not naïve. They know change takes time. But they’ve also shown that with the right kind of support, it is absolutely possible. They’ve built models, passed policies, won cases, and healed lives.

What they seek is not charity. It’s a partnership. Not pity. But patience.

So here’s the question again: What if we funded justice differently?

We would move it from the margins to the centre. We would fund what matters, not just what’s easy to measure. And we would finally stand beside the people who are already doing the quiet, necessary work of building a more just India.

…

Gautam John is CEO of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies.

The author is part of a philanthropy that supports access to justice initiatives. The views expressed here are based on learning reports (2021–2025) and interviews with partners working on Access to Justice in India)

…
Alliance Magazine

AARP International | Rohini Nilekani writes: A Commentary on Aging in India

In 2025, India had the largest population of young people of any country in the world. Within a couple of decades, it will have the largest cohort of people age 60+. This will not be just a demographic transition; it will also mark a seismic cultural shift — and India will need to find ways to manage the coming change.

My mother-in-law, Durga Nilekani, turned 100 years old this January. She is a peaceful centenarian, living in the moment, never complaining, ever smiling despite any physical discomfort she may be experiencing. As someone who turned 65 not long ago, I often wonder if I will be so equanimous if I live as long as her. Will I be at peace with my life at that age, or will I expect more as I get older?

Calm or restless, we are both part of India’s developing story. In 2025, India had the largest population of young people of any country in the world. Within a couple of decades, it will have the largest cohort of people age 60+. This will not be just a demographic transition; it will also mark a seismic cultural shift — and India will need to find ways to manage the coming change.

There is no mystery about how this has come about. India has experienced the same trends as many growing economies, with a decline in fertility rates and infant mortality, and better access to nutrition and health care. Those factors have contributed to a doubling of India’s life expectancy since Independence in 1947. The average lifespan is now 67.2 years.

Nor is India alone in anticipating the coming shift. In the coming decades, humanity will have to deal with issues of an aging global population for the first time. The United Nations estimates that there are more than 700,000 centenarians in the world today. Many countries are already facing the challenges of a greying citizenry, notably Japan, Germany, Italy, and even tiny countries like Monaco and Latvia. Their leaders are taking steps to support older adults, ensure their countries have the proper infrastructure and services, and prepare for the economic impacts that come with aging workforces.

The marketplace and scientific spaces have also begun to focus on prolonging health spans. Research on longevity has accelerated, especially in the West, where one Silicon Valley firm reportedly declared death to be a bug, not a feature of life! The Methuselah Foundation in the United States, a “biomedical charity,” wants 90 to become the new 50 by 2030. If these and other fanciful projects fail, many hope they will at least yield advances on dementia and other age-related disorders.

All that said, India’s approach to its aging population will necessarily be unique. First and foremost, because of the scale of the oncoming shift. Its older adult population will double by 2047 and overtake that of China a couple of decades after.

There are other factors at work as well: Unlike more prosperous countries, India’s older adults are poorer than the general population. Only 14 percent can use the Internet, and less than 5 percent reported being part of a social organization.1 They are more likely to be female, have much less education and live more in rural areas. More than one in three seniors in India still do not have the luxury of retiring, and many continue to do unpaid work, often in agriculture and allied activities. India is also experiencing a rapid shift away from multi-generational households and toward nuclear families, and an estimated 80 million older people will have to live alone or with an older spouse in just 20 years.2

Yet, data do not tell the whole story, or the only story.

In one survey, younger generations associated aging with grey hair, nursing homes, and wheelchairs, while older adults added freedom from responsibility, travel, and the joy of grandchildren.3 Clearly, how old you feel can be quite different from how old you are.

There are also strong socio-cultural traditions about aging that could determine how older adults cope with their advancing years. In India, age has long been associated with wisdom, enough that most families still consult seniors on big decisions like new jobs or marriages. Cultural messaging strongly cultivates a reverence towards older people, and millions of Indians touch the feet of family seniors at festivals and rituals, a sign of respect that can also symbolize conferring the blessings from the old to the young.

Equally, aging is widely accepted as a natural phenomenon with a spiritual opportunity. Among Hindus, for example, Vanprastha is a stage of life after the householder phase, when one is expected to gradually and gently withdraw from the material world. Vanprastha literally means “the way of the forest.” It is a time for prayer and meditation, for practicing detachment and oneness with the natural world, and I have personally witnessed dozens of relatives cheerfully adopt such a lifestyle change. When the time came to leave this world, they seemed to have been the more at peace, thanks to their practice.

My own paternal grandmother, whom everyone called Atya, chose to live the last 20 years of her life in a single room in the small temple town of Alandi. Even though her sons were doing very well in life, she cheerfully chose frugality. Visiting her to sit in an open courtyard, enjoying her delicious cooking, and hearing her spellbinding stories of her saint-Gods was always the highlight of my young life. She remains an enduring inspiration on how to “go gentle into that good night” despite what the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote.

But times are changing fast, as are attitudes. Today’s elders want to feel young, to have social engagement, and give freely of their time and talent. They want to have fun, but they also want to be useful in society. One of India’s many non-profits working on longevity, Grey Shades, showcases intrepid seniors who are giving back gracefully — like army veteran and psychiatrist Colonel Dr. Rajinder Singh, who at the age of 91 is setting up a third Mental Wellbeing Centre to address addiction in young people in Punjab.

Not all seniors get the same opportunities to be productive and socially relevant. Nor should they feel pressured to be. There is a real danger that emerging societal norms will create a new anxious generation of elders, who not only feel pressure to look and feel young at any age, but face financial challenges as governments push up their retirement age and pension plans.

How can we reimagine a future in which older adults are respected, cared for, and given opportunities to contribute?

Here’s where society, the state, and markets need to do much more. While India does have several good non-profits working with older citizens, there is room for many more to support the 300 million — and counting — older adults. While the state has many initiatives to assist senior citizens in health care and pensions, there are too many delivery gaps. While the markets have begun to offer some services targeted at seniors, $50 billion in potential economic activity remains largely untapped.4

As a start, we need much more private philanthropic capital to come into the sector, to underwrite innovation, to provide patient funding, and to create the new narrative on aging that India and the world needs. At RNP, we always try to peek into the future, to see where new societal issues will need the risk capital that philanthropy uniquely provides. For example, my team helped set up India’s first domestic endowment for water and sanitation. Similarly, we started our work with young men and boys long before it became the global talking point it is today. In climate, RNP has focused on adaptation, for which communities at the first mile must innovate to build their resilience in the face of so much uncertainty. Post-pandemic, we realized the urgency of working on mental health. Now, we are keenly exploring opportunities in longevity and aging in India.

Whatever we decide, it is clear that this area needs much more attention from philanthropists the world over. After all, many philanthropists themselves are elder adults. Time should not empty out before the pocket does.

India matters in the world. How it shapes its policies, its public infrastructure, and its society to give more agency, dignity, and choice to senior citizens can become a beacon for other nations as the entire globe adapts to a rapidly aging population.

 

1 Dalberg meta-analysis of available India data from following sources: (1) LASI India Report, 2020; (2) Government of India, Population Census, 2011; (3) Asian Development Bank, Aging Well in Asia, 2024 (4) Oxfam, Digital Divide: India Inequality Report, 2022; (5) Agewell Foundation Survey, 2019 (5) National Sample Survey Office, Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, 2022-23; (6) Ideas for India, Determining how many Indians are poor today, 2024.

2 IBID

3 Internal research by Silver Talkies, https://silvertalkies.com/

4 Senior Care Reforms in India, NITI Aayog, 2024

The Times of India | Rohini Nilekani Writes: Silver Can Be The New Swag

In 25 years, India will have 300mn elders. It’s time for a mental reset – from making second careers possible, to recognising hours of caregiving they provide, to finding ways to keep them socially active. 

Recently, a parliamentary committee proposed that the age criteria for Ayushman Bharat Vay Vandana Card, the health insurance scheme for elders, be reduced from 70 to 60 years of age, and coverage doubled from 5L to 10L. Whether or not that suggestion is implemented, it points to the importance of the demographic transition in India.

In 2020, almost 90% of the country’s population was below the age of 60 years. Young, vibrant India was able to reap an economic dividend for the past 30 years or so. However, with the birth rate rapidly declining, the proportion of young people is expected to decrease significantly. Longer lifespans compound this effect. By 2047, we will have 300mn older adults, roughly equal to US’s population, with almost 50mn aged above 80. By 2067, we’ll surpass China to have the world’s largest cohort of older adults.

Politics already reflects the anxiety around the reduced productive workforce. Will we become old before we become rich? In south India that has already fallen below replacement rates, politicians have begun to speak up about encouraging couples to have more children. Although, in other rapidly ageing countries like South Korea and Japan, such a strategy has not worked.
It is critical, then, to focus on what’s possible. How can we shift our mental models? Do we understand the needs and aspirations of elder adults? How can we focus on the opportunity for an older population rather than be weighed down by the threat?

Older adults can be significant contributors to their families and to society. One in three is working well into their 60s, though mostly in the informal and agricultural sectors. They contributed 3.3% of the estimated real GDP in 2023-24. Businesses run by older adults Calvin & Hobbes employ 63mn individuals countrywide. Even after retirement from the formal sector, urban seniors especially are using digitech innovations to pursue second careers or new hobbies. Society thinks of the aged as needy. Yet, they spend about 14bn hours a year providing care to their grandchildren or other family members. One of three wants to actively volunteer and contribute to their communities.

It’s time to change the story of old age. In a study on longevity, elder adults across the board expressed their need for freedom, for economic and physical security, and for well-being, including social connectedness. This is an opportune moment to invest in these areas to be prepared for the seismic demographic shift to come. The state can focus on appropriate physical and digital infra, improved access to social protections (only 8.6% of older adults receive any form of work- related pension now), better healthcare and structured capacity building for willing and able elders. Business can tap into the potential of the silver economy, which in US is estimated to be $8.7bn and gro- wing. Today, there are about 100 Indian startups focusing on the 60-plus. With the right venture capital, there could easily be 1,000 such endeavours, with the potential to integrate over 25mn more people into the economy.

Lastly, civil society can greatly help. The Niti Aayog Darpan portal lists over 39,000 CSOs focusing on- older adults. Several organisations with support from philanthropies have done exemplary work to provide support and help change the narrative on ageing. More philanthropists are paying attention to the needs of an ageing demographic. For example, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Ashok Soota support neuroscience research to unlock better understanding of the ageing brain and mental health, critical in a country where the population of seniors with depression may cross 16% in 20 years.

Yet, the journey into later years is very individual and can be very difficult. In India, 40% of older adults live close to the poverty line, and are more likely to be female, with 70% of older women dependent on others for their basic needs. In this digital age, only 14% can use the Internet. Isolation may rise, with fewer than 5% being part of any formal social network or organisa- tion – 38mn seniors already live either alone or with their spouse in increasingly nuclear families. Lastly, India’s healthy life expectancy is 58 years, far below its life expectancy of 73 years.

There’s much catching up to do before the lived reality of the majority of older adults meets their rising aspirations. Can India take the lead in positively redefining what it means to be an older adult? Can it be done in time for what’s coming, ready or not? As we celebrate our youth and rising prosperity, we can be future smart-welcome the oncoming longevity to unlock a different but stronger idea of a mature developed society. One that is mentally and physicall sound, economically secure, and an exemplar for a ageing world.

Silver can become the new black.

The writer is chairperson, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and co-founder/director of EkStep Foundation.

The Times of India

IDR | A question for all of us who care about change

How do we resist the pull towards control and instead lean into the messiness of connection?

– Gautam John (CEO, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropries)

In an earlier piece on IDR, I explored connection and abstraction as two distinct approaches to systems change. That framing was meant to start a conversation, to ask what it takes to build what I call a rainforest of change in a world so often drawn to the efficiency of plantations. A rainforest conjures images of abundance, resilience, and diversity—a thriving ecosystem in which each element plays a role in sustaining the whole. A plantation, by contrast, symbolises uniformity, control, and extraction, where the goal is not thriving but harvesting.

Since writing that piece, I’ve been reflecting on the ways connection and abstraction interact, not as binaries but as polarities. They’re not opposites; they’re interdependent. The tension between them doesn’t have to pull us apart. It can hold us in balance, like the dance between the roots and branches of a tree.

This follow-up piece builds on that idea. It draws on recent conversations and experiences to look more deeply at the relationship between connection and abstraction, the role of trust and language, and what it means to lead in a way that honours both.

In a recent conversation with Rajesh Kasturirangan at Socratus, I spoke about the concept of terroir. It wasn’t his framing, but it became a starting point for our dialogue about connection, abstraction, and systems change. I used terroir to describe how deeply place matters—how the soil, history, relationships, power dynamics, and culture of a community create a unique context that resists replication, and how this context must be understood and respected. Just as wine reflects the terroir of the vineyard, change reflects the terroir of the community—and in systems change, we cannot treat every community as a blank slate.

Rajesh pushed back not to dismiss the value of connection or terroir, but to emphasise that abstraction matters too. His point was that we shouldn’t think of them as oppositional. Rather, they are part of the same ecosystem, each enriching the other.

This brought me back to a widely used metaphor when comparing systems work with project-based approaches: the rainforest versus the plantation.

Systems work as rainforests

The rainforest is the model we often hold up as an ideal—diverse, resilient, and alive with connection. But saying we want to create rainforests of change means little unless we understand what it actually takes to nurture one. Rainforests are the result of countless unseen relationships of roots, fungi, and microbes all working together in ways we cannot always observe or control.

Contrast that with a plantation. It’s certainly efficient, but only in a narrow sense. It replaces diversity with monoculture, relationships with extraction, and adaptability with rigidity.

The more I think about it, the more I see how much of our work risks becoming plantation-like when we lean too heavily on abstraction. Frameworks can flatten the complexity of the systems we’re working in, turning vibrant ecosystems into neatly pruned rows—useful, but also brittle.

Rajesh offered an important clarification here: patterns, he said, are not the frameworks themselves, nor are they abstract blueprints. Instead, they are regular, repeated forms that emerge from the underlying structures, whether in nature or communities. They arise when the conditions of connection, trust, and collaboration allow something meaningful to grow.

This idea of patterns as a bridge between connection and abstraction is powerful. It suggests that while abstraction helps us recognise patterns, it is connection that makes those patterns meaningful and rooted.

How we lead

Two podcast conversations I listened to recently, one with Jim Dethmer and another with Karen Kimsey-House, offered language that deepened the idea of leadership for me. They discussed different ways of showing up: ‘to me’, ‘by me’, ‘through me’, and ‘as me’. It struck me how closely these ideas map onto the tension between connection and abstraction.

‘To me’ is an approach of helplessness where life is something that happens to us. There’s little agency here, only reaction. ‘By me’ is where most of us spend our time as leaders. It’s about taking charge, creating outcomes, and owning our role in the process. It is empowering, but it can also lead to overcontrol and trying too hard to shape the world to our will.

The shift to ‘through me’ feels like the key here. It’s a practice of letting go, not of responsibility but of attachment. Karen expresses this well: when we lead ‘through me’, we allow the frameworks to recede into the background. They don’t disappear; they’re still there, but they no longer dictate the moment. Instead, we make room for what’s emerging. This requires trust, not in the sense of blind faith, but in a kind of grounded confidence that the system knows what it needs, that the connections will hold.

What stood out most to me was this idea of invisible networks. In a rainforest, the mycelial web is what connects everything, shuttling nutrients and information between species. In systems change, those networks are the relationships, trust, and shared purpose that hold a system together. The networks are not always visible, but they’re essential. And they can’t simply be transplanted from one place to another. They have to be cultivated, nurtured over time. Trust plays a key role in this—it is not a soft variable, but the primary infrastructure of flourishing, resilient systems, as relational theorists suggest. However, for trust to thrive, belonging alone is insufficient; action is necessary too. Belonging is foundational, but it cannot substitute for action. Trust deepens when it is made visible through showing up, following through, and co-creating the future together.

Donella Meadows touches on this in her reference to Wendell Berry’s concept of ‘tyrannese’—language that abstracts so much it loses its grounding in lived experience. Meadows, echoing Berry, warned that our words, if we’re not careful, can become tools of control rather than connection.

But language can also be expansive. It can help us make the invisible visible and give shape to the networks we sense but can’t always see. This ties back to Rajesh’s emphasis on trust as a foundational virtue, one that not only connects people but also allows the emergence of empathy, justice, insight, and complexity.

The idea of trust

The podcasts also touched on something else that feels relevant here: the idea of trust. To lead ‘through me’ is to trust not just the system, but ourselves. Jim talked about the work it takes to get there, the inner stability we need to stop outsourcing our sense of ‘okayness’ to external markers of approval or control. That’s not easy. It means letting go of certainty, of the need to be right, of the urge to cling to frameworks as a safety net. But it’s also freeing. When we trust, we make space for something new to emerge.

This is where connection and abstraction can meet—not as opposites, but as complements. Abstraction helps us see patterns, while connection reminds us that those patterns are rooted in place, in relationships, in the invisible networks that sustain life. The art lies in holding both, in knowing when to let the framework guide us and when to let it go.

This isn’t just a question for leaders; it’s a question for all of us who care about change. How do we resist the pull towards control and instead lean into the messiness of connection? How do we create systems that honour the terroir of each place while still learning from one another? How do we trust in the mycelial web of the rainforest, even when we can’t see it?

These aren’t easy questions, but they’re the ones I want to sit with. Maybe it begins with simply noticing when we reach for control, and when we might lean into trust instead. And today, as large-scale technologies increasingly abstract people’s lived realities, the need to restore connective language and practice feels even more urgent.

Because the more I think about it, the more I believe that the work we’re trying to do—whether it’s in leadership, systems change, or simply in being human—can’t be done without them. Connection and abstraction, roots and branches—what grows between them is what we call change, and like any living thing, it needs care, attention, and time.

India Development Review

The Indian Express | Jan Vishwas 2.0 and 3.0 will find the ‘madhyam marg’ between trusting and punishing citizens

The current system also blurs the lines between minor infractions and serious crimes. It can award lesser punishment for serious offences and severe punishment for lesser offences…

 

Good laws make for good societies. The recently announced Jan Vishwas Bill 2.0 at the Union government level, soon to be followed by Jan Vishwas 3.0 bills by various state governments, is critical to enabling this maxim.

 

A new database by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy shines a bright light on 174 years of legislative enactment across 882 central laws. Of these, 370 have criminal provisions for 7,305 crimes. Of these crimes, 5,333 attract jail terms, 982 attract mandatory minimum jail terms, 433 attract life imprisonment, and 301 attract the death penalty. Criminal justice laws like the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, National Security Act, etc, only account for about 25 per cent of crimes. The rest are laws governing many aspects of ordinary life, such as parent and child care, gathering in assembly and mobility. India has steadily moved up in international rankings in improving the ease of doing business and is working on employer decriminalisation. The next phase of change involves raising the ease of living for our 1.4 billion nagariks by making humane laws that are easy to follow and enforce.

 

Currently, our plethora of criminal provisions for citizens is undoubtedly excessive; you can be arrested for milking a cow or buffalo on the street, failing to report the death of an animal within three hours, removing corpses by unprescribed routes, neglecting to provide proper exercise to a pet dog, distributing feeding bottles even to a mother who cannot breastfeed, and for simply storing e-cigarettes. These are just some inexplicably harsh punishments for common human failings that do not cause grave public harm. Cases using these provisions are rarely filed, and don’t often reach courts. Yet, having such provisions on the books increases the potential for the arbitrary exercise of power.

 

The current system also blurs the lines between minor infractions and serious crimes. It can award lesser punishment for serious offences and severe punishment for lesser offences. For example, the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 prescribes six months of jail for failing to maintain records and fulfil reporting obligations. It also recommends the same jail time for performing brain surgery for mental illness without the consent of the patient and the Board. Similarly, running a red light while driving can incarcerate you for as long as if you forced a person to labour against his will. This disproportionality between crime and punishment can severely distort incentives across society.

 

Often, citizens simply do not know that these jail provisions and fines even exist across all these laws. That gives corrupt public officials a convenient handle to make them disappear. As the Vishnu Sahasranamam anticipated: Saha-srarchi sapta-jihvah sapta-dha sapta-vahanah, Amoorti ranagho chintyo bhaya-krudbhaya-nashanah (amateur translation: Fear was created so it could be taken away). No wonder citizens fall for digital arrest scams, as we saw recently, where petrified citizens paid up to prevent arrest for crimes they had not committed.

 

A multi-stakeholder consultation recently organised by Vidhi made it apparent how hard the road to decriminalisation may be. Participants gave examples of how harsh provisions affect poor people the most. Conviction rates are low; the process is the punishment. Courts are hesitant to pass sentences that does not pass a common sense test. Most importantly, it was recognised that the over-reliance on criminalisation in governance reflects the frustrations of trying to impose a modern state on an ancient civilisation. This is only a sarkaar or state-sanctioned system, not a samaaj or society-sanctioned process, and therefore likely to fail.

 

The proposed Jan Vishwas 2.0 bill can be a powerful gift to the nation. It must go beyond the framework used for version 1.0, where asking civil servants to give up jail provisions led to meagre outcomes. They say nobody surrenders a stick; it must be taken away. If we are serious about writing clear, concise, consistent, comprehensible, and implementable laws, and if we want to decriminalise existing laws with disproportionate punishments, we need a public consensus around an updated framework of values and guardrails.

 

The Vidhi report proposes four principles, including some that already direct criminal law. First, the protection of value (criminalisation must protect a specific value vital for the existence of society and the larger public interest). Second, protection against clear, identifiable and substantial harm (criminalisation must be justified only by a direct and reasonable apprehension of harm) Third, an effective and efficient solution (criminalisation must be deployed as the sole means to achieve the legitimate purpose of the law). Lastly, proportionate response (criminalisation must be a proportionate response based on the gravity of the harm).

 

After Jan Vishwas 2.0 adopts these four principles, every criminal provision must also be assessed for its impact on human rights, society, fiscal impact, and justice system capacity. Criminal law has a profound impact on the lives of citizens, whether they recognise it or not. Poor laws affect poor people the most, as they are most vulnerable to the power of the police and small courts. Sure, there will always be crimes that require putting people in jail. Yet a justice system must aim to be restorative and rehabilitative rather than retributive. As Paracelsus, one of the founders of modern medicine, said, “The dose makes the poison.” Anything powerful enough to help has the power to hurt. In India, 75 per cent of prison inmates are undertrials; they have not been convicted of the alleged crime that sent them to jail. We have 3.5 crore pending criminal cases arising from the 5,333 crimes identified in our myriad laws.

 

As we look ahead to Viksit Bharat by India@100, it is the right time to focus on the ease of living for our citizens. We have faith that Jan Vishwas 2.0 and Jan Vishwas 3.0 will find the madhyam marg between trusting and punishing citizens.

 

Rohini Nilekani is a philanthropist and Manish Sabharwal is an entrepreneur.

 

The Indian Express

The Times of India | Rohini Nilekani writes: Our children have told us a wonderful story

Aser 2024 shows govts succeeded in minimising Covid impact on learning gaps. Rural kids are doing better & govt schools are teaching better than low-fee private schools.

 

A moment comes, not too often, when a society can sense joyful satisfaction. Not elation but a quiet happiness. I believe we should savour such a moment now.

The recently released Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024, spearheaded for 20 years by Pratham, with the participation of tens of thousands of volunteers across more than 605 districts calls for celebration. After years of disappointment that the country’s children were not learning as well as they should despite serious efforts of sarkaar and samaaj, results show there’s a clear uptick in both language and arithmetic skills. This is especially clear in the lower grades up to Class 5. We’re nowhere near where we want to be, with 100% of children at grade level efficiency. But we seem to be at a tipping point, where reversal looks unlikely. Most children seem to have bridged the pandemic deficit, and states like UP have done particularly well.


A lot of credit must go to both Centre and state govts. Focus on foundational learning and numeracy (FLN) is yielding results — 80% of schools reported they had received both training and materials for basic learning. Interestingly, gains in competence were consistently higher in govt schools across the country, than in rural budget schools.


The focus on little ones is critical. Brain development science tells us more than a million new neural connections are formed every second in the first few years of life. Connections that form early provide either a weak or a strong foundation for connections that form later. Early experiences shape brain architecture, which then determines future learning, behaviour and health too. What happens to 0-to 8-year-olds matters greatly. The National Education Policy has set a goal of universal coverage for all 3- to 6-year-olds to be in high-quality learning environments by 2030. We’re well on the way. Aser tells us that of all rural children, 77.4% of 3-year-olds and 83.3% of 4-year-olds are enrolled in pre-school or Aanganwadis.


It is hard to attribute this shift to any one cause. But the pandemic created a nationwide jolt to the system. The school system had to go digital. Govt’s ‘Diksha’ platform swung into action. Teachers were trained overnight with new skills. Virtual classrooms and processes were set up. There was a country wide consensus that children were in danger of falling behind. Everything that could be done would be done to prevent this.

 

Suddenly, families became bigger stakeholders in the process. Especially young mothers, who’re themselves more educated than their mothers, with tremendous hopes pinned on their children. They taught themselves to teach. They learned to go online. They saw how play itself became an opportunity for exploration. How the home could be a laboratory for learning. Across the country, people shared notes about their frustrations and their discoveries. Not all the loss could be prevented. The inherent disadvantage of spending two years without formal teaching is showing up in middle school. The learning levels of children in grades 6,7 and 8 seem to have remained flat across the previous Aser reports. We will need to pay very special attention to these students to bring them up to speed. These are already difficult puberty years and children, if not sensitively engaged with, can fall prey to low self-esteem. There is much work ahead.

 

But there is other good news. Less than 3% of 14- to 16-year-olds were found to be out of school. The majority, 89%, of school-goers have a smartphone at home, of whom 82% know its use reasonably well.
Perhaps the native digital citizens now in middle school can leapfrog through new digital tech powered by AI that allows for better self-learning journeys, in language and math. This is already being tried at some scale and success in Tamil Nadu.


Meanwhile, younger children need to learn less through screens and more through play. Albert Einstein believed that ‘Play is the highest form of research. If all of samaaj participated in this process of celebrating childhood learning through free play, maybe we could soon achieve what most countries only dream of —enabling every child to learn how to learn, with joy, agency and dignity.

Recently, a nationwide ‘Bachpan Manao’ campaign has been launched. Together with several civil society organisations, including our Ekstep Foundation, it will aim to enthuse communities, schools and families to encourage free play, and get a broader understanding of how it cements future learning skills. GOI has a popular kit for schools called ‘Jadui Pitara’ to unleash imaginative play-based learning. We hope this will become a strong societal mission, just as Aser has become a citizen’s movement to take public stock of children’s learning.

 

Current 3-year-olds, almost all already enrolled in preschool, will be the nation builders of 2047. We have a unique opportunity to nurture this generation of 0–to 8-year-olds, to make them strong lifelong learners, adapted to a fast-changing environment. With big leaps accomplished, this is the quiet happiness moment society can relish and be rejuvenated for the task ahead.


The writer is Chairperson, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies.

 

The Times of India

IDR | Do finance and compliance in the social sector need a makeover?

Complex and changing financial rules often make it difficult for nonprofits to sustain their work. To turn finance into a strength rather than a burden, organisations need better training, peer support, and accessible tools.

– By Suresh Ponnappa (Chief Financial Officer, RNP) & Shruti Sundaresan (Comms & Community Engagement Lead, RNP)

 

In August 2024, Dasra convened a workshop for chief financial officers (CFOs) from philanthropic foundations, nonprofits, and various intermediaries for a CFO Community of Practice (CoP) in Guwahati. This initiative was supported by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies (RNP).

Recognising that finance and governance are the pillars of organisational resilience, the workshop focused on themes such as compliance, risk management, process excellence, and regulatory adaptation to enhance the sector’s sustainability. The event also offered cross-learning opportunities and expert-led sessions on topics such as social finance, the Social Stock Exchange, and impact bonds.

The prevailing consensus at the convening was that financial matters are not solely the responsibility of the finance team, but of the organisation as a whole. This indicated the need for a fundamental shift in how the nonprofit sector views financial management—to recognise it not merely as a support function but also as a strategic driver of organisational sustainability.

While programmatic successes often take centre stage, sound financial management is the backbone of a nonprofit’s credibility and operational resilience. Integrating financial insights into organisational development leads to better use of resources and adaptation to changing conditions. Ultimately, this builds trust and attracts donors and partners.

Navigating complex regulations

In the social sector, organisations are driven by the urgency to address critical societal challenges, yet their ability to create impact is often hindered by the weight of financial scrutiny and regulatory demands.

Behind every initiative lies a complex web of audits, compliance requirements, and funding regulations.

The Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society’s Doing Good Index 2020 suggests that 43 percent of nonprofits in India are struggling with fundraising due to new foreign contribution restrictions, which have affected their operations. Moreover, between 2013 and 2023, Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013—which determines what activities can qualify as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives—was amended several times. These changes have been accompanied by numerous clarifications and FAQs that have often altered the law’s application. Nonprofits incur significant costs in complying with multiple regulations, reporting to various authorities, fulfilling donor requirements, and adhering to social security laws.

These financial and regulatory constraints not only put a strain on daily operations but also limits the limits the longevity and growth of nonprofits.

In this context, it’s time to rethink how financial systems interact with the goals of the social sector. As compliance systems grow more complex, these might often feel disconnected from the sector’s mission.

This prompts certain important questions: Can we reimagine finance and compliance as tools for empowerment? What are some practical ways to strengthen financial capacity, build a peer-driven network of practitioners, and reinforce foundational systems that can ensure stability and meaningful impact over time?

Our experience shows that even minor lapses in compliance, financial management, or documentation can have significant consequences, often undermining years of work and creating fiduciary challenges in fund disbursement.

Registrations under Section 12A and 80G of the Income Tax Act are essential for nonprofits to maintain their charitable and tax-exempt status. Non-compliance with requirements can lead to cancellation of registration, exposing the organisation to taxation at the maximum marginal rate, and affecting its financial viability. For Section 80G, which enables tax deductions for donors, stricter compliance rules require nonprofits to file Form 10BD by May 31 each year. Failure to do so prevents donors from claiming deductions, risking donor confidence and relationship with the organisation.

With respect to nonprofits registered under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, or FCRA, one of the key reasons that could result in cancellation of registration, penalties, or even prosecution is delayed or neglected annual return filings. As of February 2025, more than 20,000 FCRA licenses in India have been cancelled, while approximately 15,000 are deemed expired.

Several nonprofits often face difficulties in staying up to date with their compliance duties, including the need to continuously update financial policies and to provide timely training to their staff to manage compliance independently. Maintaining proper documentation and ensuring regular internal financial reporting are persistent challenges, leading to gaps in transparency and internal controls. Additionally, issues in expenditure controls, procurement policies, and segregation of financial responsibilities further hinder effective financial management.

It is vital that nonprofits undertake periodic and structured desk reviews of their compliance towards governance, finance, and administrative practices. Here’s how organisations, and the sector at large, can assist in better financial management.

1. Building capacity at multiple levels

Capacity-building initiatives for finance teams play a pivotal role in strengthening individual capabilities and, by extension, the sector.

Last year, RNP partnered with Saathi Development Services to conduct a 10-week course on statutory compliance and financial management, benefitting 120 participants from 60 nonprofits within its grantee network. Recently, VANI’s regional capacity-building workshop in Bangalore featured a session on accounts and financial management, and ISDM’s Dialogues on Development Management organised a masterclass on governance and compliance.

These examples highlight the increasing prioritisation of finance and compliance themes in sectoral discussions and events. There seems to be growing recognition of the fact that empowering finance teams with the right skills and knowledge is not just an operational necessity but also a strategic investment.

Capacity-building programmes have strengthened financial management systems within organisations while simultaneously enhancing individual management skills. Key focus areas in financial capacity building include strategic planning and budgeting; consolidating financial systems and processes; improving fundraising capabilities; ensuring accountability and compliance; and implementing robust monitoring, evaluation, and risk management practices. These initiatives enable finance teams to adopt best practices, identify gaps in existing processes, and implement continuous improvements. Additionally, participation in learning programmes fosters peer networks, facilitating ongoing knowledge exchange and professional support.

2. Creating a resilient community of practitioners

Finance roles can often feel isolating, as they focus heavily on regulations, audits, and reporting, with limited opportunities for peer engagement and knowledge exchange. Without dedicated spaces for collaboration, finance professionals may find it difficult to stay updated on latest regulations, address complex issues, and build a strong support network.

While programme leads and senior leadership may find opportunities to collaborate and learn from one another through their work or via social forums, this level of interaction and cross-learning is rarely extended to finance teams. Stand-alone webinars, events, or workshops certainly offer value, but they often fall short of addressing the complexities of an evolving finance and compliance landscape. Sustained engagement and credible, practitioner-oriented information in a simple and accessible form are essential.

Based on this need, we imagined a community-driven platform tailored to finance, developed by professionals within the sector. This led to the creation of the People’s Alliance for Trust & Transparency in Civil Society Organisations (PATTIC)—a collaborative, practitioner-driven platform anchored by Saathi Development Services and Aikyam Fellows and supported by RNP.

PATTIC is envisioned as a resource hub offering a multilingual knowledge base for financial and legal compliance for nonprofits. The platform includes a library, a forum for expert interactions, FAQ and audio repositories, real-time sectoral and compliance-related updates and reminders, and a dedicated WhatsApp channel to cultivate a community of practitioners. The discussion forum also shares resources such as lists of key government portals useful for nonprofits and other organisations.

In essence, it serves as a space for professionals to ask questions, seek clarifications, and stay updated on the latest compliance regulations relevant to the social sector. In fact, many of the questions raised by community members have resonated with finance professionals across the sector, highlighting shared concerns and information needs. PATTIC is accessible in 15 Indian languages, ensuring that reach and engagement extend beyond English-speaking audiences.

Becoming strategic partners

With strong financial and compliance frameworks becoming increasingly important, how can we ensure that our finance teams move from being compliance enforcers to strategic partners in social impact?

For this, nonprofits must prioritise learning and development and allocate funds to strengthen financial capacity. This could include investment in human resources through upskilling initiatives for finance teams to acquire new skills, enabling collaborations at the ecosystem level for sharing best practices, and encouraging periodic reviews of regulations by both finance and non-finance teams through internal meetings and refresher sessions.

Funders can facilitate this process by investing in finance and compliance training, just as they do in programme-related initiatives. Finance professionals could also join peer-learning networks like PATTIC to stay updated and have support.

Making a conscious shift from working in silos to collective action can help ensure that nonprofits not only navigate regulations but also thrive in their mission.

India Development Review

Mongabay India | Centring local communities in digital climate technologies

By Tanya Kak (Climate & Environment Portfolio Lead, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies) and Maya Chandrasekaran (Co-Founder, Green Artha)

Key Ideas:

  • Digital technologies hold promise for climate action, but their deployment often raises questions of equity, inclusivity, and sustainability.
  • Climate tech must be built from the ground up, integrating local knowledge and social networks to ensure long-term adoption and meaningful impact.
  • Reimagining technology as an enabler, not a standalone solution, is essential to create need-based, contextually relevant innovations for a sustainable future.

Have you ever wondered why the cyclone days predicted by artificial intelligence (AI) is different from those predicted by the fisherfolk who’ve read the tides for generations? Precision agriculture promises to optimise water and fertiliser use with drones and sensors, yet smallholder farmers are burdened with high financial costs to use these technologies and partake in ‘tech-driven sustainable farming’. And, while algorithms analyse biodiversity loss, mining for rare earth metals that power these systems can sometimes threaten the ecosystems they aim to protect.

The promise of digital tech is dazzling, but behind every climate dashboard is a set of hard questions about equity, sustainability, and who gets to steer this digital revolution. How do we make sense of the challenge and the opportunity that comes with developing and deploying digital innovations for climate action?

There is a sense of disconnect and even dissonance between what was considered climate technology and what is experienced and needed by communities. At its core lies a critical tension: the interplay between innovation and inclusivity, efficiency and equity, and progress and preservation.

As governments, civil society, and markets navigate this space, there are questions around ethics and equity when shaping the use of digital technologies for climate action. Many of these ideas emerged in a discussion hosted by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, examining the impact of co-developing digital technologies with communities and asking: Whose digital future is it anyway?

In the race to innovate, the persistent digital divide looms large, raising urgent questions about accessibility and fairness. Are we building bridges or inadvertently deepening chasms, particularly for those on the frontlines of climate change and systemic inequities?

Equity isn’t just a checklist — it’s a compass, constantly demanding recalibration.

Governance, ownership and community

Donors and technologists often try to find the most cost-effective and impactful innovation to test on the ground. However, what happens to the communities and the ecosystems much after the projects and funding run out? Communicating how the data was used, what has worked and what hasn’t, back to the communities to facilitate stewardship becomes important. Equally, can the role of communities be reimagined from passive recipients of digital technologies for climate action to co-owners of these technologies and data from the get-go?

Technology is never neutral — it carries the imprints of its creators, and sometimes, their blind spots. How do digital tools honour the depth of local knowledge and traditions, rather than flattening them into uniform algorithms? There’s a delicate dance taking place between fostering collective action and unintentionally isolating individuals behind screens.

Can the digital age keep its sustainability promises?

Sustainability isn’t just about longevity, it’s about adaptability, resilience, and the ability to grow with shifting environmental, social, and technological landscapes. Given the speed and scale of the climate challenge, we are quick to measure success for digital technologies with narrow and tangible metrics. Are we just counting downloads and clicks, or are we also able to pause and measure meaningful, lasting change?

Today, a distinction can be made between non-digital innovations (such as solar-powered dryers and cold storages), deep-tech (such as direct air carbon capture), and digital innovations (such as platforms and Digital Public Infrastructure or DPI), and the role and opportunities for each to support and enable community resilience in the context of climate change. DPIs in particular can help in creating the building blocks or infrastructure on top of which other innovations could be built and value created both exponentially and by the ecosystem.

By centring the community lens, a very different imagination is possible of what this infrastructure could encompass and who could build it.

CoRe stack (Commoning for Resilience and Equality), is a digital public good with participatory tech platforms. It takes a similar ecosystem view to community-based DPI. It views innovations as a network of co-creation, or a collaboration between researchers, product developers, community, and eventually policymakers/government programmes. Starting with the questions about the community’s use-case and how it can build genuine empowerment, the CoRE stack uses an equity lens to understand ecosystem vulnerability and build participatory tools and processes. It envisions distributed problem-solving and a more democratic access and use of data to generate ready-to-use outputs for many common use-cases. Central to this co-creation is the tenet that end goals are articulated first-hand by the community, not the market or state.

A key point behind the philosophy of CoRE stack is that of empowering rather than merely creating additional efficiencies. The Open Agriculture Network for example, is an interconnected and future-ready agricultural supply chain network (Unified Krishi Interface 2024). Envisioned as a platform to enable more efficient transactions across stakeholders, reduce acquisition costs, increase access to services, and increase trust and credibility, the OAN intends to reshape agriculture with the farmer’s lived experience at the centre of all features.

Collaboration between climate technologies and communities is of critical importance. Climate digital technologies need to build from the ground up, with community needs at the forefront, and communities need to leverage emerging technologies and platforms to innovate on top of existing infrastructure, strengthen their impact, resilience, and ultimately create value for each other.

But there is concern about the guard rails provided for the use of emerging and often cutting-edge innovations and the unintended consequences they can have. There is a need for combining scientific rigour, best efforts, and the importance of post-intervention validation, quantification, and scientific data to inform the application of any climate technology.

While technology is crucial for accelerating climate action, technical robustness alone doesn’t guarantee adoption or impact. Even the most well-tested technologies can falter when influenced by human behaviour and social networks, which shape their co-development and deployment within specific ecosystems. Therefore, incremental, localised solutions are essential to form a foundational layer on which climate tech innovations can rest.

In that sense, creating a web of carefully planned inter-operable solutions that are need-based and contextually relevant becomes crucial. Instead of everyone rushing to think digital-first, can we re-imagine a world where technology can serve as an enabler for local knowledge and human connection to drive climate innovation rather than a solution in search of a problem?

CITATION:

Vijendra Kumar, Vaibhav Sharma, Naresh Kedam, Anant Patel, Tanmay Ram Kate, Upaka Rathnayake. (2024, August). A comprehensive review on smart and sustainable agriculture using IoT technologies. Science Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772375524000923

Thompson, T., & Nature magazine. (2023, October 31). How AI can help save endangered species. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-ai-can-help-save-endangered-species/

De Domenico, M., & Baronchelli, A. (2019). The fragility of decentralised trustless socio-technical systems. a https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04192

First published in Mongaybay India

LiveMint | How to create an ADHD accessible workspace

As awareness of ADHD among adults increases, diagnosed individuals need greater understanding and support from those around them

– By Natasha Joshi, Associate Director, RNP

In the last five years, google searches for “ADHD” in India have increased 614%. The rates of diagnosis in both children and adults have also increased in the same period. What was virtually unknown as a condition in India 20 years ago is now on many lips, with many people wondering if they have ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—or diagnosing themselves with it. Social media has played an important role in putting ADHD on the map, but credible information is still hard to come by.

Understanding ADHD

At Mannotsava, a national mental health festival co-hosted by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, NIMHANS (National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences) and NCBS (National Centre for Biological Sciences), late last year, Dr Eesha Sharma of NIMHANS helpfully outlined what ADHD is.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a developmental delay that typically reveals itself in early childhood, and relates to a child’s diminished ability for focus, self-regulation and impulse control in a way that is considered appropriate for their age.

The key aspect here is “age appropriateness”. Expecting three-year-olds to sit still or focus on any task for more than a few minutes is unrealistic. Asking that of seven-year-olds is understandable. According to Dr Sharma, “developmental abilities, if they become problematic, become problematic in a context.” Unlike mental illnesses where the difficulty is the same no matter what the environment, ADHD being a developmental disorder, turns into dysfunction when the developmental ability doesn’t match what one is expected to do.

Similarly, the converse is also true. Parents can be permissive in a way that fails to identify areas where the child is developing more slowly. An example given by Dr Divya Nallur, consultant psychiatrist, Amaha Health, illuminates this point. As someone working on adult ADHD, she cites instances of parents being unable to recall any issues when the person was a child. On probing, they might confirm that their child did display some behaviours linked with ADHD, but they thought those behaviours were normal. In those instances, it is often the children who, as young adults, approach clinicians for an evaluation; a trend that is growing as more people are coming across online posts on ADHD.

Most people exhibit some degree of behaviours typical to ADHD—we all forget things, we can be impulsive or procrastinate endlessly. What distinguishes these from a clinically diagnosed disorder is the level of severity. That and the context within which a behaviour is manifesting are incredibly important. Shuffling feet, jerking one’s arms and moving around rapidly is okay at a dance party but might be a symptom of ADHD if it happens at say, a funeral or a more sober occasion.

A thorough clinical evaluation is the gold standard when it comes to diagnosing a psychiatric disorder. Such evaluations do not just take into account the exhibited behaviour of an adult, they include the testimony of families, deep observations, household histories and many other contextual variables, which when put together, gives a better idea of the level and nature of dysfunctionality.

Time to evaluate

A crucial thing to note is that ADHD emerges before the age of 12. It can remain undiagnosed, but one cannot develop ADHD suddenly as an adult. For children, parents and educators are the primary observers, so schools can play a vital role in building awareness among teachers and parents. ADHD doesn’t always show up in the form of learning delays. Children with ADHD often struggle socially and it’s helpful to understand those aspects from their point of view.

Any kind of truancy should not be automatically termed “ADHD”. For adults, approaching qualified clinicians is an option. Educating oneself is also a good idea, provided one resists oversimplified or bite-sized content on social media. Modifying one’s environment, using time management apps or other tools can be useful too. In terms of “treatment”, ADHD is not something to be cured. As a developmental condition, ADHD can be managed well with guidance from an experienced clinician. When it comes to pharmacological interventions for mental disorders, ADHD medication appears to show good results in terms of reducing symptoms, and the benefits seem to outweigh the risks of taking medicines.
In the presence of substance use, behaviours can become harder to parse. Dr. Nallur explained that even if someone has mild ADHD, the struggles they have might be a result of other things and not a result of ADHD. “I have young people come to me convinced they have ADHD, and after three-four sittings it comes out they have been using cannabis for 18 months,” Dr. Nallur said. Again, proper diagnosis is key.
Labels can be freeing. To finally have a word or an explanation for a behaviour can feel deeply relieving. Yet, labelling oneself incorrectly can re-direct attention away from the real cause or issue that needs to be addressed.

A supportive environment

Dr Vidita Vaidya, a neurobiologist at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, talked about the importance of sleep and exercise for mental well-being, as borne out in her research with rodents. Keeping to the circadian rhythm can be a powerful intervention for the brain and it may be time for schools to evaluate whether classes can start a bit later, something research has found to be particularly beneficial for teenagers. The key finding from the research on the benefits of exercise is that benefits accrue when the exercise is done voluntarily or is enjoyed. Access to sunlight and green spaces is another low hanging fruit.

Similarly, incremental changes at the workplace can go a long way in improving employee well-being. Offices can allow people to switch off after a certain hour in the evening, which will allow them room to incorporate voluntary movement and better sleep routines into the second half of their day. Given the link between nutrition and mental well-being, even smaller interventions like stocking the office pantry with seeds and nuts, instead of sodas and chips, can help.

Whether one is clinically diagnosed with a mental disorder or not, caring and flexible environments benefit everyone. Given that the mental health paradigm has shifted away from mental illness being the primary lens, more dialogue is needed to arrive at practical ways in which neurodiversity and overall well-being can be accommodated.

First Published in LiveMint