Type: Article

IDR | The power of building a community

This article is written by Gautam John, CEO – Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. First published in IDR.

How does one create infinite good with finite time and resources? This is the challenge that many nonprofits face. The traditional approach to this question of scale has been to build a larger organisation. However, there is an alternative—one that enables the organisation to scale through external resources by building communities, engaging networks, and creating platforms.

To help illustrate this point, I often use the metaphor of a 300-pound gorilla versus a herd of 300 deer. The gorilla represents a central entity that is slow to move and expensive to feed, whereas the deer are agile, responsive, and independent, both as individuals and as a group. While it may be easier to manage the gorilla, there are ways to manage the herd of deer–by creating a watering hole where they can gather. This watering hole represents a safe place of trust and resources where the community can share knowledge, ideas, and solutions. By building such a watering hole (a platform), nonprofits can create value throughout the ecosystem.

Platforms are the best way to engage what Seth Godin calls ‘tribes’—a group of people or a community that has a shared interest. The platform then becomes a way for people to communicate and organise. 

However, when platforms focus only on their scale, or the number of users they have, they can inadvertently fracture communities. This is because the sheer size can make it difficult for users to connect in meaningful ways, leading to a fragmentation of the community. It is, therefore, crucial for platforms to prioritise building depth and trust within communities.

Depth refers to the quality of connections and interactions among community members, while trust is the sense of safety and reliability people feel within the community. Fostering deeper connections and trust could mean offering features, services, or content that cater to the specific needs and interests of the community members. Doing this can help a platform create value for their users, and foster loyalty and retention—both of which are key to long-term success.

To achieve any of this, however, it is important to first nurture a community around shared values—essentially beliefs, goals, and principles that unite a group of people and guide their interactions. This is the foundation on which platforms can then build a thriving community that can grow and evolve over time.

Building a community

I worked at Pratham Books from 2007 to 2014 when it chose the Creative Commons model and gave up its position as a content gatekeeper in the children’s publishing space—a bold move at that time. They openly licensed their content to spur discussion, and had regular interactions with the community. This enabled entrepreneurs to experiment with creating new formats for content, enabled organisations to make this content accessible for differently abled people, and encouraged everyone to localise the material in ways relevant to their contexts.

This approach allowed Pratham Books to harness the power of this vibrant community and the breadth of these external resources to achieve its larger goal of helping all children discover the joy of reading.

While Pratham Books is one of the first ones I know of that adopted this agile, community-centric platform model, I now see others in the nonprofit ecosystem such as Agami, Civis, Reap Benefit, and EdelGive Foundation’s GROW Fund that have developed innovative models to expand their impact using technology, capacity building, and social engagement.

Creating community-centric platform models

Agami seeks to elevate other innovators in the space to create a network of problem solvers rather than doing it alone. Civis is a platform that works under their umbrella. It creates a participatory structure for citizens to engage with draft policies and laws. Its open-source technology interface makes room for citizens to be active participants through public consultations on urban development, environment, social justice, information technology, and health. Civis then collates this data and shares it with the government to build accountability.

A similar initiative is Reap Benefit, dedicated to collective action around civic and environmental problems at a hyperlocal level in cities. Through a platform called Solve Ninjas, Reap Benefit gives agency to communities to solve the issues and propose solutions at the local level, whether it is designing better dustbins, waterless urinals, or community waste and garbage disposal methods. The information collected on the platform is then shared with stakeholders and governance to push for impact. Reap Benefit’s community-driven approach has allowed it to build a platform that empowers young people to become changemakers within their communities.

An important realisation is that platforms that serve communities can look very different while serving similar purposes. EdelGive Foundation’s GROW Fund, which supports 100 nonprofits, is an example of a platform that goes beyond mere collaboration. It has effectively evolved into a transformative platform, fostering knowledge sharing, capacity building, and continuous improvement for its partner organisations. By implementing a platform model based on trust and community engagement, the GROW Fund has demonstrated the potential for such platforms to create sustainable social impact.

The reasons for the importance of these platforms are many:

  • They provide a way to scale without scaling the organisation proportionally.
  • They provide a way to bind and engage communities even without continuous engagement.
  • They help build sustainability and reliability by creating many community audiences and voices.
  • They are a force multiplier, offering the possibility of leveraging the power of networks. As the web grows, its value increases exponentially.
  • They offer some protection against failure. Once stable, a platform needs far less overhead to function than an organisation.

While existing platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram are good, they cannot be the primary platforms since their agenda is their own. They are beachheads in the digital world, but these companies hold the development, messaging, and purpose and seek to build their own communities on their platforms.

Investing in the community and nurturing it

Communities provide us with a sense of identity and belonging and can offer support during difficult times. However, communities don’t just happen; they need to be built and maintained through the investment of care. This can take many forms, from simply being friendly and welcoming to new members to organising shared events and forums. But whatever form it takes, the care we invest in our community helps to create a stronger, more resilient place for all of us.

J P Rangaswami, in his blog titled ‘The Plural of Personal Is Social,’ writes: “You need to start thinking of the customer as someone to have a relationship with, to get to know, to invest in, to trust, to respect. And you need to get everyone in the company to think that way, to act that way, in everything they do. And you need to do this everywhere, not just with your customers. Not just with your supply web or your trading partners. Not just with your staff and your consultants. Everyone. Everywhere.”

What organisations need then is an internal culture that enables this. They need to learn how to work with crowds and govern through the network rather than controlling the network itself, understanding the community by working with insights from learning and feedback loops. This can only be done if the tone is set at the top of the organisation and demonstrated in practice. 

My time at Pratham Books taught me valuable lessons about communities and platforms and their role in creating positive social impact. Witnessing the power of building and nurturing a community to create value throughout an ecosystem has impacted my work—it has instilled in me the desire to cultivate care, trust, and value for users in any community-building endeavour. I have understood that nonprofits can achieve scale and catalyse infinite good with finite time and resources through engaging networks, creating platforms, and fostering communities.

I now approach platform and community building with a focus on deepening connections and building trust, and understanding that scale only happens at the speed of trust. Because only when we view the community as an investment are we more likely to work together towards common goals and create a stronger sense of connection. This is the mindset I now carry with me in all my work.

IDR

LiveMint | Why India’s forests need new stewards?

This article was first published in LiveMint

BENGALURU : The Oscar for the documentary The Elephant Whisperers has happily turned the nation’s focus towards our wildlife and our forests. After all, the 35,000 or so elephants in the country depend greatly on forests for their nourishment, even as they, in turn, nourish the forest. These magnificent creatures are now often in conflict with human beings, as forests merge into agricultural lands where sugarcane, banana, and grasses lure elephants towards human settlements.

If we want to conserve our spectacular wildlife, from these largest of mammals to the smallest of forest rodents like the tree shrew, we need to protect the old growth forests that we already have. But if we also want to safeguard human well-being, and meet our international commitments on carbon sequestration, we urgently need to grow our forests by at least 12% more just in this decade. A daunting task indeed.

In the past two decades, I have been fortunate enough to visit several of India’s amazing, biodiverse forests and reserves. Some were field trips to see the work of environmental civil society organizations (CSOs) we have been proud to support, and some trips were because of a romance with the wild. It has been a learning journey among erudite forest officers, passionate wildlife experts and forest dwelling communities, all grappling with complex and swift change. And I have begun to wonder, who will be the future stewards of India’s forests?

Forests are too important to be left only to the forest department, too fragile to be entrusted only to corporates, too complex to be left to communities alone and too precious to be preserved only by the philanthropy of the rich.

Maybe we must reimagine the role of samaaj (society), sarkaar (the state) and bazaar (markets), if we are to truly conserve what we have and rejuvenate what we had.

Samaaj

Let’s take samaaj first, which includes all of civil society – citizens, communities, civic organizations of all kinds and also their leadership.

Tribal communities, whose ancestors knew the jungle like the palm of their hands, have lived in our forests for millennia. Even today, more than 500 tribal groups, like the Bhils and the Bodos, the Mizos and the Meenas, the Gonds and the Garos comprise 8.9% of our population.

Yet today, most of them do not live inside the forest anymore. A report released in 2018 by the union ministry of health and family welfare shows that there are fewer and fewer eyes on the forest, so to speak. More than half the country’s 104 million tribal population now resides outside India’s 809 tribal majority blocks.

As more migration inevitably happens away from forests, as young people take up opportunities in more modern, urban settings, how much knowledge will be forever lost as the primary stakeholders of the forest become deracinated and uprooted from it? We can’t know the answer.

Clearly, tribal youngsters see little hope in and reason to remain in deep association with the lands of their ancestors. The Forest Rights Act and the Community Forest Rights Act have been painfully slow on delivering on the promise of rights to the land and to its produce.

But surely there is enough scope to do more. Some states are trying. There have been many partnerships between the forest department and local communities and CSOs, to increase livelihood opportunities for tribal people. Many have been absorbed in the forest department itself. Some small-scale efforts have succeeded in including them in ecotourism. Yet, none of this response is at the level of the problem, and none of these innovations are sufficient to incentivize the next generations to stay back.

So, if tribal communities can no longer be the primary stewards of the forest, can we imagine other positive scenarios?

First, we can support more CSOs and research institutions to generate new knowledge and practice around conservation. We have a rich history of people’s struggles like the Chipko movement. But of late, the trust between CSOs and the government has broken a little bit. It is time to restore that trust and showcase hundreds of examples from around the country where CSOs have helped in eco-restoration.

For instance, Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF)’s work in Valparai, a small town in the Annamalai Hills of Tamil Nadu, is a remarkable example of how states, markets, and civil societies can collaborate to restore degraded ecosystems. Once a pristine forest ecosystem, Valparai became a monoculture tea plantation. Together with the local government and communities, NCF persevered for years to convince tea plantations owners to set aside a portion of their land for ecological restoration. Today, Valparai has successfully witnessed the return of several endemic species and measurably improved carbon storage in the area.

Second, we can do much more to include urban residents in the stewardship of our biodiversity. After all, we all depend indirectly on forest resources, no matter how far from the jungles we may live. For energy and food, for water and medicines, and for so much more. Never before has there been a stronger need to tell this story better.

The good news is that cities are being reimagined the world over. They no longer need be so separate from the idea of rural or green. There is a massive public demand for more open, green spaces, for more tree cover, for cleaner air, for better mobility. Politicians always respond to such public pressure. This can result in better public transport, more electric vehicles, more parks, more trees and so on. Alongside this development, we may see urbanites getting reacquainted with the pleasure of being with trees and birds and of being nurtured in nature. That, in turn, can nudge them closer to a new form of environmental stewardship.

Last but not the least, there is great hope that young people will step up to the challenge. India has the largest cohort of people under 35 years. Slowly but surely, they are sensing the deep connections between their survival and that of our forests. World over, youngsters are leading the movements against a particular version of modernity and materialism. India’s youth will ask bold new questions, and many will take a new bend in the road towards more sustainability.

Sarkaar

Hopefully, the sarkaar will aid and abet them.

This is the UN Decade on Ecosystem Regeneration. This is the year for COP 28. This is the time to move forward on our commitments to sequester 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030 through enhanced tree cover and restore five million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030.

India is somewhat unique in both its challenges and opportunities for this.

The challenge before us is to continue to develop economically as well as ecologically. No country has had to do that with such an agonizingly sharp understanding of the required tradeoffs. Not even China.

The last state of the forest report released by the ministry of environment, forests and climate change in 2021 shows that the growth of India’s forest cover has slowed to an eight-year low, with only a 0.22% increase in the two prior years. The next report will tell us whether that trend has continued. We also know that the report is produced through satellite imaging, has included plantations and urban tree cover and, unlike our tiger census, is not really verified on the ground. In addition, the report reminds us that by the end of this decade, 45-64% of our forests may be impacted by climate change.

Nobody understands all this better than the forest departments at the centre and in the various states. They have had to be a voice for voiceless flora and fauna.

Yes, people talk of a colonial hangover, of too much concentration of power, of a perceived lack of trust between the department and forest dwellers or farmers, etc. And yet, when we understand the complex challenges forest department officials face nowadays, we can sympathize deeply. They have to guard against invasives like lantana camara, and prosopis juniflora, to name just two. Many ornamental plants were brought in by the British in the 19th century. But these exotics have no natural pests in the subcontinent, and they have taken over vast tracts of the forest. They have to continuously deal with the pressures of encroachment, poaching, increasing human-animal conflict, low budgets, lack of sufficient biologists and veterinarians and so on, while still fulfilling the demand for more trees and tigers, more rhinos and now cheetahs, too.

Plus, their responsibilities are now leaking out into farms and habitations outside their jurisdiction. They have had to innovate so that more constituencies become vested in forest ecosystems.

I have personally witnessed many such efforts. Recently, in Madhya Pradesh’s Pench Tiger Reserve, deputy director Rajneesh Singh took me to see the elevated corridor created by NHAI across 29km of the core forest area. This has kept the forest intact, reduced conflicts and accidents and has left a viable corridor for animal crossings, which are abundantly proven through camera traps.

The sarkaar’s role in forest stewardship cannot be exaggerated. There is much scope to re-imagine this responsibility, overhaul the structure of forest departments, and co-create something more suited to the needs of this critical human century. Governments need to integrate environment issues better across ministries. They need better data science to monitor and protect the forests we already have, and more bold policies on new, private conservation.

While trying to lift the remaining millions out of poverty, and to increase per capita GDP, India has pushed for a scorching pace of economic development. For that, we have had to make some difficult tradeoffs and dismantle some environment protection laws. Yet, we all know that India cannot cut off the very branch it is perched on. The Union government has often voiced this concern and tried to better balance growth of the economy and growth of the ecology. To succeed, it will need a deep partnership with market forces.

Bazaar

Finally, then, let us come to bazaar. How can markets and companies become better trustees of the environment?

Is it time to amend our laws and policies and allow private citizens and companies to use their lands for afforestation and renewal? Prima facie, no prior legal permission is required by the landowner to grow forests. However, there are legal consequences once a forest is grown on non-forest land. Forests are protected under complex regulations and court orders, impossible to fathom.

There is a clear opportunity for more enabling policies, as in many other countries, to allow private entities to use their lands for conservation, without attracting penal provisions or the threat of a takeover by the forest department. There will also be cascading livelihood benefits for landowners and, especially, local communities from ecotourism.

Similarly, corporations can play a big role in conservation. Many are trying for more sustainability inside their fence and across the entire supply chain. In addition, they are greening their campuses to mimic ultra-dense mini forests. With the right policy frameworks, this trend will only grow.

Very little of the approximately ₹25,000 crore of annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds goes into carbon sequestration or environmental research. There is a huge opportunity to change this.

It is estimated that a fifth of the population depends directly on the ecosystem services that forests provide. And there is much potential to raise the standard of dignified living for millions through conservation itself. For example, we export about $100 million of honey every year, which helps the livelihoods of thousands of small farmers and beekeepers while improving the prospects of pollination. These are investible opportunities.

Indian remains one of the rare countries where, despite such population pressure, we have retained so much biodiversity all around us. But we cannot pretend that our cultural traditions and reverence for nature will protect us while we chase a western development model. We must now create new practices that enable each one of us, whether in samaaj, bazaar or sarkaar, to become a steward of the forests that will heal us as we heal them.

(Rohini Nilekani is the chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies)

LiveMint
Republished in IDR

Financial Express | The fundamentals of Giving

Op-ed co-authored by Rohini Nilekani & Vidya Shah in the Financial Express

Like the market in India boomed once tight controls were lifted, NGOs and CSOs in the country can thrive, and have more sustainable impact, if donor capital is flexible and NGOs can invest in their own growth.

The number of wealthy Indians has grown by 62% over the last five years, with 1,103 individuals having a net worth of Rs 1,000 crore and more. Thus, a great deal of media attention has been on the growing number of unicorns and billionaires in our country. But there has been little conversation on whether and how some of that wealth is being given away.

To understand philanthropy trends in India, Hurun India, with support from EdelGive Foundation, has been publishing the annual EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List (EHIPL), highlighting remarkable givers and their role in the philanthropic landscape and nation-building. This year’s report reinforces some key trends we have witnessed over the last four years. The number of Indians giving—and giving larger amounts—has risen significantly. Total philanthropic donations have more than doubled to Rs 5,666 crore over the last four years. Moreover, in 2018, just two Indians gave over Rs 100 crore. Four years later, that number is 15. The composition of givers has shifted from the traditional base of established, industrial families to first-generation entrepreneurs, many of whom are in the tech industry; 51 in this year’s report are self-made philanthropists.

This changing profile of givers has also been accompanied by a shift away from charitable acts alone—that of giving food, clothes, and scholarships—to funding new and marginalised areas such as environment and sustainability, arts and culture, academic institutions, social reform, and so on. It is extremely heartening to see this upward trend in philanthropy. More support for such causes will help meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

As India outperforms other countries in GDP growth, it will be asked how well it is treating its citizens. What are we doing at home to ensure that all people have access to food, education, healthcare, sanitation, and employment? How are we ensuring that they can exercise their rights and fulfil their obligations? What are we doing to address the violence that is inflicted on all those marginalised by gender, caste, class, and religion?

These are not intractable problems, but they are definitely inter-generational ones, and require persistence, patience, and empathy. India has the most diverse and widespread network of civil society organisations that embody these attributes, working in the largest of metros as well as in the smallest of villages. Yet, many of them are struggling to survive in a rapidly changing reality where old funders have receded, and government regulations are tighter.

Can wealthier Indians blessed by the ovarian lottery step up to support good organisations, big and small, so that they can focus on the goals of justice, inclusion, and opportunity for all?

At EdelGive Foundation and Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies—the foundations that we head—we have seen the outsized impact of funding issues that are underserved or neglected. Support to organisations doing work on gender, young men and boys, climate change, social justice, governance, and citizen engagement, and other less ‘popular’ areas, has transformed the capacity and capabilities of both the organisations as well as the communities they work with. Non-profit partners have often told us that this kind of support has made their organisations more robust and the people they work with more resilient.

Thus, the importance of trusting the partners philanthropists work with is evident, as is recognising the difficulties of the field and giving them more room for experimentation and failure. Much like the Indian market—which flourished after tight controls were removed—NGOs and civil society organisations do best when capital is flexible, and NGOs invest in their own growth and development.

More research and data are often needed as well to understand the root cause of different problems, or the efficacy of solutions, but research projects/institutions and think tanks need more backers in India. To strengthen NGOs and community-based organisations, and to build up the intellectual infrastructure of India, we need more wealthy Indians to give deeply and boldly. The EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List is one attempt to encourage this behaviour among the wealthy. It was put together drawing upon published sources of information as well as outreach undertaken by the Hurun team with high-net-worth individuals. There exist many more philanthropists than this report captured. Still, it is hoped that by providing annual data on high-value giving, more people might be motivated to emulate their peers and give more of their wealth as a joyful responsibility towards a good society.

Financial Express

सेवा ही है एक बेहतर समाज का रहस्य

कुछ महीने पहले, मेरी टीम और मैं हमारे कार्यालय के ठीक बाहर सफाई करने के लिए एक त्वरित स्वैच्छिक अभियान में शामिल हुए। अग्ली इंडियन (Ugly Indian), एक गैर-लाभकारी संस्था जो आम लोगों को नागरिक गौरव विकसित करने के लिए प्रेरित करती है, के उत्साही स्वयंसेवी अरुण पई ने हमें दिखाया कि कैसे हम अपनी आस्तीन मोड़कर कोई भी उपकरण उठाएं, जो हमें मिल जाए, और मलबे से भरे स्थान को नागरिक गौरव की चीज़ में बदल दें।

हमारे पड़ोसी मदद करने के लिए आए। राहगीरों में एक सुरक्षा गार्ड और एक घरेलू कामगारिन, जो काम पर जा रही थी, भी शामिल हुए। जब हमने काम खत्म किया और चटक रंग व रंगोली आकृतियों से सुसज्जित अपने कृत्य की प्रशंसा करने के लिए ज़रा पीछे हटकर खड़े हुए, हम में एक खुशी-भरा कॉमरेडाना भाव पैदा हुआ, जिसका वर्णन करना मुश्किल है। हम एक फोटो के लिए साथ खड़े हुए, हमने उस जगह को साफ रखने का वादा किया और फिर अरुण, जिन्होंने इस स्वैच्छिक कार्रवाई को शुरू किया था, को धन्यवाद दिया।

मेरे लिए, यह पिछले वर्ष का एक प्रमुख आकर्षण था, क्योंकि यह महामारी-प्रेरित स्वयं सेवा के उभार की बहुत ही महत्वपूर्ण कहानी को जारी रखता है। दसियों लाख लोग पूरी तरह अजनबियों के प्रति नेकी के कार्य करने निकल पड़े थे। मेरा मानना है कि इस अनुभव ने हमारे भीतर बुनियादी रूप से कुछ बदल दिया है, हमें यह शिद्दत से याद दिलाता है कि मानव होने का मतलब क्या है। अब चुनौती यह है कि अधिक सामान्य समय में भी महामारी के बाद की लौ को कैसे जीवित रखा जाए।

मेरे परिवार में स्वयंसेवा को हमेशा सर्वोच्च व्यक्तिगत नैतिकता (personal ethic) के रूप में स्थान दिया गया है। मेरे दादा, बाबासाहेब सोमन ने वकील के रूप में अपनी आजीविका छोड़ दी थी ताकि वे 1917 के चंपारण सत्याग्रह में गांधीजी के स्वयंसेवकों के लिए आह्वान के सबसे प्रथम उत्तरदाता बन सकें। उनके लिए, यह एक आनंददायक कर्तव्य था। हमारे लिए, यह एक अनुस्मारक है कि हम सभी के पास अपना समय, और खुद अपने को उपहार स्वरूप प्रस्तुत करने की क्षमता है। “स्वयंसेवी ” के लिए भारतीय भाषाओं में कोई सटीक पर्याय नहीं है, जो फ्रांसीसी “वोलंटेयर” (“volontaire”) से आया है, जिसका अर्थ ‘स्वेच्छा से’ है, हालांकि अक्सर “स्वयंसेवक” शब्द का प्रयोग किया जाता है। एक सामान्य जीवंत भावना की खोज करने के लिए जो दोनों के बीच पुल का काम करे, शायद हम ” यूबांटू” शब्द का उपयोग कर सकते हैं, न्गुनी बांटू शब्द जो संक्षेप में एक सार्वभौमिक सत्य को प्रकाशित करता है – “मैं हूं क्योंकि आप हैं”। इसलिए यदि मैं आपके लिए अपने आप को देता हूं, तो मैं सार्वजनिक भलाई को भी बढ़ा रहा होता हूं, और मुझे भी एक नागरिक के रूप में इसका लाभ मिलता है।

सेवा, उबांटु, स्वेच्छावादिता (volunteerism) उतनी ही पुरानी है जितना कि मनुष्य। चर्चित तौर पर मार्गरेट मीड ने  घोषित किया कि मानव सभ्यता का पहला संकेत एक प्राचीन कंकाल में स्वस्थ हुआ फीमर था, क्योंकि इसका मतलब था कि कुछ प्राचीन मनुष्यों ने वास्तव में स्वेच्छा से एक अन्य आदिवासी की देखभाल की थी, और उसे मरने के लिए नहीं छोड़ा था, जैसा कि जानवरों की दुनिया में एक सामान्य घटना हुआ करती थी। यह भाव अभी भी हम सभी में प्रज्वलित है। संयुक्त राष्ट्र के स्वयंसेवकों का दावा है कि हर साल विश्व स्तर पर 1 अरब लोग स्वयंसेवा करते हैं।

मुझे ठीक से नहीं पता कि वे स्वयं सेवा को कैसे परिभाषित करते हैं, लेकिन यह अभी भी पूरी मानव आबादी का 1/8वां हिस्सा है। सोचिए अगर हर एक ने दूसरे को प्रेरित किया तो क्या होगा। यह इसे एक चौथाई (1/4) आबादी बना देगा और यदि वे सिर्फ एक-एक और को प्रेरित करते हैं, तो इसका मतलब होगा कि दुनिया की आधी आबादी अपने जीवन का एक हिस्सा, छोटा ही सही, इस नाजुक ग्रह में भलाई बढ़ाने के लिए कुछ कार्य करने हेतु लगाने के लिए प्रतिबद्ध है।

अधिक- से-अधिक स्वयंसेवा को समर्थन देना महत्वपूर्ण है। यह समाज को मजबूत करता है, यह लोकतंत्र को ही शक्ति प्रदान करता है। यदि लोकतंत्र जनता का, जनता के द्वारा और जनता के लिए है, तो जनता के कार्यों का भी मूलभूत महत्व है। यह चुनावी लोकतंत्र से कहीं आगे जाता है, मतदान करने वाले और कर चुकाने वाले नागरिकों के रूप में संतुष्ट रहने से कहीं आगे जाता है। इसका मतलब उस अच्छे समाज का सह-निर्माण करना जिसकी हम सभी लालसा रखते हैं, ऐसी आज़ादी जिसे हम खोना नहीं चाहते, सुशासन जिसे हम मानकर नहीं बैठ सकते। इसका अर्थ है अपने समय, अपनी प्रतिभा, अपने संसाधनों को लेकर उन लोगों तक पहुंचना जो हमसे अधिक कमजोर हैं। यदि शाश्वत सतर्कता स्वतंत्रता की कीमत है, तो शायद शाश्वत सहानुभूति एक अच्छे समाज की कीमत है।

हमने अभी-अभी अपने स्वराज्य के 75 वर्ष पूरे किए हैं। लेकिन यदि स्वयंसेवा की शक्ति न होती तो हम में से कोई भी स्वतंत्र राष्ट्र के गर्वित नागरिकों के रूप में इतने आराम से नहीं बैठा होता। हमारे ऐतिहासिक स्वतंत्रता संग्राम, हमारे अद्वितीय सत्याग्रह में दसियों लाख लोगों ने स्वेच्छा से भाग लिया। आज के भारत में भी, ऐसे सैकड़ों संगठन हैं जो ऐसे लाखों स्वयंसेवकों पर निर्भर हैं, जो तन लगाकर और दिल से लोगों को देते हैं।

कई तो आस्था-आधारित हैं, कई विचारधारा-आधारित हैं। वे हर क्षेत्र, हर पेशे, हर वर्ग के लोगों को अपनी ओर आकर्षित भी करते हैं। किसी को भी आर्थिक पारिश्रमिक नहीं मिलता। जैसा कि शेरी एंडरसन ने कहा, “स्वयंसेवियों को भुगतान नहीं मिलता है, इसलिए नहीं कि वे बेकार हैं, बल्कि इसलिए कि वे अनमोल हैं।” वे सभी दुखों को दूर करने, संस्थानों का निर्माण करने और आपदाओं का प्रतिकार करने के लिए अविश्वसनीय कार्य करते हैं।

लेकिन क्या हम नागरिकों के एक ऐसे राष्ट्रीय आंदोलन की कल्पना कर सकते हैं जो आस्थाओं,विचारधाराओं और संकीर्ण पहचानों से परे हो? क्या यह मानवतावाद का उच्चतम रूप होगा? आई वालंटियर(I Volunteer),भूमि(Bhumi), मेक ए डिफरेंस (Make a Difference)आदि जैसे संगठनों ने हजारों युवाओं को एकजुट किया है,जो मानते हैं कि जब तक वे ऐसे समुदायों का निर्माण करने में मदद नहीं करते जो हर परिस्थिति का मुकाबला करने लायक मजबूत हों, भविष्य की राह तय करना कठिन होगा। अपने उद्देश्य के एक प्रदर्शन में,“हमारा स्टेशन,हमारी शान” के बैनर तले 25,000 स्वयंसेवी एक साथ आए और उन्होंने 7 दिनों में 40 रेलवे स्टेशनों को रंग दिया! ! इससे `7 करोड़ की बचत हुई, लेकिन इससे उत्पन्न सामुदायिक गौरव अथाह था।

फिर भी, इन सभी अद्भुत स्वयंसेवियों को समर्थन की आवश्यकता है। मैं जहां भी जाता हूं, लोग मुझसे पूछते हैं, “मैं कैसे मदद कर सकता हूं?” और मेरे पास उनके लिए कोई आसान जवाब नहीं होता। हमें स्वयंसेवी अवसरों की खोज को बहुत आसान बनाने की आवश्यकता है। लेकिन वह परोपकारी पूंजी (philanthropic capital)और प्रतिबद्धता की मांग करता है। महामारी ने स्वयंसेवा की शक्ति को उजागर किया है। अब, इसे बनाए रखने के लिए, यहाँ इस देश के धनवानों का आह्वान करते हैं, जिनमें से कई इन पन्नों को पढ़ते हैं। आइए हम सभी भारत में स्वयंसेवीवाद का समर्थन करने के लिए अपने परोपकारी पोर्टफोलियो का एक हिस्सा लगा दें। आइए हम भी अपना समय स्वेच्छा से दें। साक्ष्य बताते हैं कि यह अधिक उदार और अधिक प्रभावी परोपकार के लिए माहौल बनाता है। लेकिन, सबसे महत्वपूर्ण बात यह है कि यह हमें उबांटु के विचार को अपनाने में मदद करता है।

(लेखिका रोहिणी नीलेकानी फिलैंथ्रॉपीज की चेयरपर्सन हैं। उनका यह लेख इकोनॉमिक टाइम्स में अंग्रेजी में प्रकाशित हुआ था जिसका अनुवाद महिला एक्टिविस्ट कुमुदिनी पति ने किया है।)

Janchowk

Seva is the Secret to a Good Samaj

An op-ed published in The Economic Times

A few months ago, my team and I joined some flash volunteering to do a quick cleanup right outside our office. Arun Pai, an enthusiastic volunteer with Ugly Indian, a nonprofit that inspires ordinary people to develop civic pride, showed us how to roll back our sleeves, pick up any tools we could find and turn a space filled with debris into a thing of civic pride.

Neighbours came by to help. Passersby, including a security guard and a domestic worker on her way to work, joined in. When we finished and stepped back to admire our handiwork, with its bright paint and rangoli decorations, we felt a sense of camaraderie and joy that is hard to describe. We stood together for a photograph, promised to keep that space clean and thanked Arun, who had sparked off this volunteer action.

For me, that was a highlight of this past year, because it continues the very important story of the upsurge of volunteerism that was driven by the pandemic. Millions of people came out to do acts of kindness to absolute strangers. I believe this experience has fundamentally changed something in us, reminding us sharply what it means to be human. Now the challenge is to keep that flame alive post the pandemic, in more normal times.

Volunteering has always been held up as the highest personal ethic in my family. Babasaheb Soman, my paternal grandfather, gave up his livelihood as a lawyer to be a first responder to Gandhiji’s call for volunteers in the Champaran satyagraha of 1917. For him, it was a joyful duty. For us, it is a reminder that we all have the capacity to gift our time and selves. There is no exact synonym in Indic languages for “volunteer”, coming from the French “volontaire”, which means willingly, though “swayamsevak” is often used. To search for a common animating spirit that bridges the two, maybe we can use “ubuntu”, the Nguni Bantu word that concisely illuminates a universal truth — “I am because you are”. If I, therefore, give of my self for you, I am also enhancing the public good, and I, too, benefit from it as a citizen.

Seva, ubuntu, volunteerism is as old as humans are. Margaret Mead famously declared that the first sign of human civilisation was the healed femur in an ancient skeleton, because it meant that some old humans had actually volunteered to care for another tribesman, and not left him to die, a common occurrence in the animal world. This spirit is still burning in us all. UN Volunteers claims that 1 billion people volunteer globally every year.

I don’t know exactly how they define volunteering, but that is still 1/8th of the entire human population. Imagine what would happen if each one inspired another. That would make it 1/4th population and if they inspired just one more each, it would mean that half the world’s population was committed to spending a part, however small, of its life, doing some actions to increase well-being across this fragile planet.

It is critical to support more volunteering. It strengthens the samaaj, it powers up democracy itself. If democracy is of the people, by the people and for the people, then it is people’s actions that have foundational importance. It goes way beyond electoral democracy, way beyond being content as citizens who vote and pay taxes. It means co-creating the good society that we all crave, the freedoms that we do not wish to lose, the good governance that we cannot take for granted. It means reaching out, with our time, our talent, our resources to those more vulnerable than we are. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, maybe eternal empathy is the price of a good society or samaaj.

We just celebrated 75 years of our Swarajya. But not one of us would be sitting so comfortably as proud citizens of a free nation if not for the power of volunteerism. Tens of lakhs of people participated willingly in our historic freedom struggle, our unique satyagraha. In today’s India, too, there are hundreds of organisations that depend on lakhs of volunteers to give from their hearts and with their bodies.

Many are faith-based, many are ideology-based. They attract people from every sphere, every profession, every class. None receives financial remuneration. As Sherry Anderson said, “Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they are worthless but because they are priceless.” All of them do incredible work to relieve suffering, to build institutions and to respond to calamities.

But can we imagine a national movement of citizens that goes beyond faiths, ideologies and sectarian identities? Will that be the highest form of humanitarianism? Organisations like I Volunteer, Bhumi, Make a Difference etc., have rallied thousands of young people who recognise that unless they help build communities of resilience, the future may be tough to navigate. In one show of purpose, 25,000 volunteers came together under the banner, Hamara Station, Hamari Shaan, and painted 40 railway stations in 7 days! It worked out to a saving of `7 crore, but the community pride generated was immeasurable.

Yet, all these wonderful volunteers need support. Wherever I go, people ask me, “How can I help?” and I have no easy answers for them. We need to make it much easier to discover volunteering opportunities. But that takes philanthropic capital and commitment. The pandemic revealed the power of volunteerism. Now, to sustain it, here is a call to the wealthy of this country, many of whom read these pages. Let us all give part of our philanthropic portfolios to support volunteerism in India. Let us also volunteer our own time. Evidence suggests that it makes for more generous and more effective philanthropy. But, most importantly, it helps us rise to the idea of ubuntu.

The Economic Times

Putting Samaaj on top for Positive Collective Action

This is the third book by philanthropist and civil society leader Rohini Nilekani, the founder of Arghyam, a foundation that works towards sustainable water and sanitation goals, and Pratham Books, a publishing nonprofit that helps millions of children to read books.

Samaaj Sarkaar Bazaar is a collection of Nilekani’s articles, speeches, and interviews, which offers an overarching framework for India to achieve its full potential. The book is divided into six chapters covering a range of topics from justice and governance to water and environment.

In the Introduction and Epilogue, the author explains why India must get the ordering of Samaaj (society), Sarkaar (government) and Bazaar (market) right. Nilekani recalls a conversation she had with a local NGO partner, Prem Kumar Varma, during a road trip to Khagaria in Bihar in 2007. “Premji”, she says, outlined the ways in which power had shifted between Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar in India over time.

In the good old days, he said, Samaaj would be on top, and Sarkaar below it. During the British Raj, however, the Sarkaar took over, and India’s Samaaj and its norms were pushed down. However, Bazaar remained below both these entities.

After Independence, Sarkaar remained on top, while Bazaar tried to get close to Sarkaar. After economic liberalisation, however, the inversion has been complete.

Bazaar now dominates, Sarkaar is in the middle, and Samaaj is placed last, exploited and “unable to defend and help itself”. This, the author says, is true globally as well. The role of the state became all important in the wake of the World Wars. However, over the decades that followed, markets came to dominate across the world.

Nilekani posits that we should think of Samaaj as “the foundational sector which alone can hold the Sarkaar and Bazaar accountable to the larger public interest”. She points to the ways in which social cohesion is taking a hit — rising inequality threatens to create a backlash against wealth creation, and climate anxiety is growing.

In order to heal, India must reset the order of the three entities and give primacy to Samaaj. “For true equity and justice to prevail, it should be elements within Samaaj that assert moral leadership and maintain harmony,” Nilekani writes, adding that these responsibilities cannot be delegated to Sarkaar or Bazaar.

Of course, Samaaj is neither a monolith nor bereft of its own conflicts such as caste and gender discrimination. That is why it is important for people to get involved directly and to not wait for solutions to emerge on their own. And getting involved, she says, means far more than the “empty clicktivism” of the digital age.

Nilekani ends the book with the evocative image of the “miraculous murmuration of starlings”. “The metaphor of this dynamic fractal is incredibly powerful,” she writes. “When we are engaged in action with mindful awareness of those around us, together we become better and bigger versions of ourselves”.

Explained Books appears every Saturday. It summarises the core argument of an important work of non-fiction.

Indian Express
PDF

A Call to Action: Why We Need a Citizen-First Approach

Recently, unseasonal rains flooded the city of Bengalaru. Visuals of privileged citizens living in upscale independent bungalows, riding tractors to get away from their inundated spaces, as their luxury cars lay submerged in the water, flooded our phones. Delhi is choking. As I write this, there are alarming newspaper reports of the rise in pollution levels in Pune where I live, and how complacency is sure to lead to a catastrophe. It’s glaring that if Sarkaar has to tackle this, it can do so only with the support of Samaaj.

We are aware that climate change or saving water or a city’s poor infrastructure are not other people’s problems. Nor are they the lookout of only the Sarkaar. To effect a change we, the Samaaj, need to shed our laxity, roll up our sleeves and take action. This is the earnest appeal that author and philanthropist, Rohini Nilekani makes in her book, ‘Samaaj Sarkaar Bazaar: a citizen-first approach’.

As citizens, we are so used to the secondary status accorded to us by those we elect to power that not only have we become cynical, we are also conditioned to believe that action on our part is either insignificant, or too onerous or futile. But the pandemic proved otherwise. During the migrant exodus forced by the sudden nationwide lockdown, we witnessed the opening of doors and hearts. Strangers came out in large numbers to help the migrants, leveraging technology for good. Such incidents have convinced the author that it is possible for a strong, resilient and active Samaaj to play the most important role keeping the other two–Sarkaar and Bazaar–accountable to public interest, notwithstanding the fact that the past century has seen Sarkar and Bazaar accumulate vast powers. Rohini also acknowledges that while the digital age has “enhanced the opportunity for mass civic engagement, it has also made empty clicktivism an easy replacement for true action.” Her optimism stems from her vast experience—more than 30 years in civil society and philanthropy.

The book is a compilation of Rohini’s articles, interviews, and speeches, and has been self-published under a Creative Commons license that enables people to download it freely, read and share it forward, and further the discourse on the roles of Society, State and Markets. Rohini concedes that “with a subject like this which encompasses all human interplay, there is a high likelihood of generalization, oversimplification, reduction and the exclusion of vital historical trends”. She emphasises that she writes as a concerned citizen and not as a scholar.

In the introduction, Rohini narrates a heart-rending account of losing dear friends to a horrendous car accident on the Bangalore-Chennai highway, which took their unborn daughter and orphaned their three-year-old son. This unnecessary loss created a searing impact on her and moved her enough to want to do something to improve road safety, which led in 1992 to the launch of a public charitable trust called Nagarik, with the tagline, ‘For Safer Roads’. This experience taught her many early lessons. With the founding of Arghyam and Pratham Books, and her involvement in several other philanthropic institutions, Rohini gained tremendous learning.

I confess that when I began reading the book, my hard-boiled cynicism refused to yield to the optimism and can-do approach in the book. As I read further, the earnestness, the conviction that is born out of hands-on experience, the author’s trailblazing initiatives, the concrete results, the significant changes brought about thereof, and the never-say-die spirit that remains intact despite reality checks and setbacks, began making a slow but sure dent in my obstinate stance that the author’s vision was utopian. Therein probably lies the problem with Samaaj. We have forgotten to dream. Very few of us are driven to act. By settling for our subordinate status as citizens, and probably intimidated by the effort required to drive a change, we have begun to perceive the achievable as a pipe dream.

Rohini knows that her views are idealistic, but she asserts that “we can move inexorably towards the magnificent goal with a feeling of hope and belief that all our actions, however small, like little drops of water – will eventually create the ocean”.

By working on our trust deficit aided by civil society organisations, by creating more safe spaces for people to talk across their divides, by creating mechanisms for the three sectors to work together, by taking that one step forward, we can move towards “ever greater inclusion, ever more dignity, choice and freedom”. What’s more, it can be done in a way that is balanced, sustainable and deeply human.

Archana Pai Kulkarni is the Books Editor at SheThePeople. The views expressed are the author’s own.

She The People
PDF

A Job For The One Percent:The elite must help build better cities, in public interest and in their own interest

The recent Bengaluru floods washed up the dirty linen of mismanagement and corruption on the shores of a crumbling city infrastructure. Yet, no matter how quickly various governments build out physical public services, especially in urban India, the demand for it outstrips the supply. Be it roads and transport, electricity and water supply, hospitals, or universities.

There are simply not enough budgeted funds to provide and sustain adequate functional physical infrastructure at a per capita annual income of around $2,000 and a tax-GDP ratio of around 11%.

It is very different when it comes to the public digital infrastructure. India has among the most sophisticated and widely accessed open, public digital goods and services in the world. Whether it is broadband, smartphones, or UPI, we have made enormous progress in creating new opportunities for all. How can we achieve the same for better physical access to mobility, housing, energy, health etc?

The elites of the samaaj and the bazaar have successfully created a thin slice of high-quality private infrastructure on top of this inadequate public infrastructure. And we continue to build that out at breakneck speed.

● Think of the high-tech facilities at our high-performing companies.
● Or the incredibly fancy malls in Delhi and Mumbai.
● Think of the luxe cars, private jets and gated mansions of the ultra-rich (full disclosure – I am an UHNI, and my home and cars are also somewhat fancy).
● So far, in India, not many seem to begrudge the wealthy their lifestyle and possessions.
● The majority remain optimistic about their own upward mobility.

Yet, we have recently seen that this is not a sustainable option even for the wealthy. While the pandemic created a new leveller, the Bengaluru flooding provided the most graphic example. The local ultra-rich could not escape a common fateand cumulatively lost hundreds of crores.

This winter, sophisticated air filters will barely protect the most privileged in Delhi from the air pollution. Nor will expensive sedans and office buses smoothen the rocky rides on our potholed roads for the upper classes.

● Have the elite reached the end of our gilded private pier?
● Can private goods be sustainably built on a precarious public foundation?
● Or is there something that we the elite can do so that the base on which our private goods and services are built can be stronger, not just for us but for all?

They say much is asked of those to whom much is given. Plus, as the elite of east Bengaluru painfully experienced, we cannot merely be consumers of good governance, we have to co-create it. If we point one finger at the government, are three fingers pointing back at ourselves?

● Have we built our sprawling corporate campuses on flood plains?
● Did we build or rent our homes using ecological prudence and after a thorough legal check?
● Or have we shrugged our shoulders once too often?

The good news is that we can easily take back some agency. There are so many opportunities.

● We can invest in the excellent thinktanks around India that conduct research and provide data and analytics for improved urban governance.
● We can donate to civic institutions working on water, climate change and disaster prevention and management, because these intertwine our fates ever more closely.
● We can also support the many other civil society organisations working closely with local, state and Union governments to help implement the delivery of public goods and services, or to innovate on more inclusive urbanisation, including on dignified housing.
● Fully 42% of Mumbai lives in its slums and fast-growing cities like Bengaluru have similar numbers.

Radically, we can support more transparent taxation, so that the government can spend more on physical infrastructure and safety nets. It is time to shed the cynicism about the wastage of our tax rupees. The prospects in this country for ample wealth creation by a limited few are rather staggering. There is a strategic and a moral imperative to balance out this opportunity.

● The 2021 Niti Aayog report states that 65% of the 7,933 Indian urban settlements do not even have a master plan.
● India has one civil servant for 24,000 people while the UK has one for every 131 people.
● We can help bridge this vast gap of human resources by lending our time or by paying to increase state capacity.
● Like some highly successful corporate professionals, we can offer our time and talent to the different state policy outfits.
● Like some foundations have, we can fund project management units in government departments or pay for fellowships to support legislators at every level.

This is an urgent opportunity but also just enlightened self-interest. Effective public infrastructure creates the secure foundation for everyone to build on top according to needs, capacities and desires.

Like it or not, floods, pandemics and air pollution put everyone in the same boat, even if some of us are in the upper deck private cabins. We will have to row together to steer away from the rising waters. Life jackets are under the seat. But the oars are right on top.

The writer is Chairperson, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies Foundation. Her recent book is ‘Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar: A Citizen First Approach’

Times of India
PDF

Grand Tamasha: ‘No govt can do without civil society in a developing nation’

“Governments need civil society organisations to serve as mirrors; they need them to reach the first mile… they need all the risk-taking capital. No government can do without that in a developing country like ours which is so highly aspirational,” Nilekani told Milan Vaishnav, host of the Grand Tamasha podcast. Grand Tamasha is a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, DC-based think tank, and the Hindustan Times.

Nilekani was speaking about her latest book, Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar (Society, State, and Markets): A Citizen-First Approach, which encapsulates many of the lessons the author has learned over three decades working in the civil society and philanthropic sectors.

Nilekani, wife of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, oversees an influential private foundation and helped found several successful non-profits, including water non-profit Arghyam and Pratham Books. To encourage readers to learn from her hits and misses, Nilekani has made the book freely available for download at https://www.samaajsarkaarbazaar.in/.

Vaishnav asked Nilekani about the state of philanthropy in India today, to which Nilekani said: “Countries allow such runaway wealth creation only if that wealth is going to being deployed for the larger good. Otherwise, why would any state or society allow this? Wealth comes with a great responsibility and extreme wealth comes with extreme responsibility.”

The Nilekanis are signatories of “The Giving Pledge,” a campaign started by billionaire CEOs Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage extremely wealthy individuals to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. “Wealthy Indians are being generous, but I think not generous enough,” Nilekani said, adding that she hopes they give away more and faster.

One of Nilekani’s biggest philanthropic priorities is improving the quality of urban governance, especially in her home city of Bengaluru. “We saw tremendous flooding in East Bangalore this year and you saw all the memes going around the world of these rich homes inundated,” with feet of standing water, remarked Nilekani. “I think there is a growing recognition that you can’t have a very thin slice of high-quality private infrastructure on a mass public infrastructure that is broken… the elite can no longer secede from participating in solution-ing for the larger public.”

In the book, Nilekani opens up about the challenge of carving out her own identity, given the immense public attention her husband often receives. After stepping back from Infosys, Nandan Nilekani served as head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, the Union government agency that oversees the Aadhaar project. Referring to her husband, Nilekani noted that he has gone on record that he has learned from his wife “how to always keep the human dimension of things at the very centre of the work to remind ourselves why we are doing what we are doing”.

Hindustan Times
PDF

Rohini Nilekani is Changing Philanthropy

Of India’s many prominent business couples, few can match the Nilekanis in their uniqueness. Nandan Nilekani is now a business legend, for his role in building Infosys (with N R Narayana Murthy and his co-founders) and for rescuing it a few years ago when he came back to set the company right. But unlike most well-known business people, he has found success in many other fields. I doubt if anyone else could have rolled out Aadhaar as quickly and as successfully as he did. He remains one of India’s leading public intellectuals and is every government’s go-to guy for technological solutions.

Perhaps because he has so many other achievements, Mr Nilekani’s philanthropy goes largely unnoticed. Nearly two decades ago when he was already a multi-millionaire, I asked him why he kept giving so much of his money away. His answer has stayed with me.

He had made so much money, he said, not because he was necessarily better than everybody else. He happened to be in the right sector at the right time. It was the conditions that prevailed in India and in Indian society at that time, he explained, that had benefited him. So, he had a duty to try to improve things for society as a whole so that (a) more people had opportunities and (b) India became a better place.

His was not an unusual view, he continued. In the US, for instance, many of the families that made vast fortunes in the early part of the 20th century (the Rockefellers, the Fords, the Mellons) had felt an obligation to put something back into society. Bill Gates was trying to do the same thing.

In a country like India, where there was so much inequality, everyone who made money, he believed, had a moral obligation to give some of it away.

Many of Nandan’s views were influenced by his wife Rohini, a former journalist (disclosure: We were colleagues in many news organisations in the last century!) who discovered that she too was now a multi-millionaire. When Infosys was starting out, the founders were desperately short of funds. So Rohini put every penny she had saved into the company. It was not a lot of money but such was the success of Infosys that her stake is now worth hundreds of crores.

When Nandan was still running Infosys, Rohini began a series of philanthropic initiatives and today she is one of the country’s leading philanthropists. Indian businesspeople can be generous: The Tatas have done more for India than any other business family. But all too often, many businessmen confuse philanthropy with charity.

They give some of their money away at least partly because they feel they ought to thank God for their good fortune. In few Western countries will you find very many churches that are paid for by wealthy industrialists. In India, on the other hand, nearly every business family has built temples or spent money financing religious pursuits.

While Rohini Nilekani has written and spoke about her attitude to philanthropy, it has been hard, till now, to find her views encapsulated in a single volume. With the publication of Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar that gap has now been filled. The book is a collection of essays, articles and speeches and its contents offer a fascinating glimpse into the worldview that motivates her (and presumably, Nandan’s) philanthropy.

Rohini was born into a middle-class Maharashtrian family, which valued education over money. Her grandfather was a Gandhian and the family followed his lead in regarding wealth as not being a huge achievement. That may explain why, even when the millions came rolling in after the success of Infosys, her concern was less with enjoying the money than with seeing how she could use it to help society.

To give away that kind of money, you must have an overarching vision. Her book sets out the broad contours of that vision. Her favourite expression is Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar (“I am certainly not claiming to have invented the phrase”, she writes, “but I am perhaps guilty of overusing it!”) and it captures what is central to her philosophy.

She thinks that samaaj or society is the foundational sector and everything flows from the strength of that samaaj. By itself, this is not an unusual view; it is, in fact, the basis of what we call civil society organisations. But, Rohini argues, no society can succeed unless there is a balance between the three sectors. Unlike many activists in civil society organisations, she does not view the market as the enemy or treat capitalism as the source of all evil. She accepts that technology and business can create wealth and can make things better for society. And she suggests that civil society organisations that always see their roles in opposition to the state may be making a mistake. Very little can happen in India in the long term without the involvement of the government. (Not the prime minister or the chief minister but governments at the village and local level.)

The problem with maintaining the balance is that the market can lead to exploitation and inequality. The government can turn to tyranny. The role of samaaj, therefore, is to keep a check on both, the excesses of business and the incipient despotism of the state.

It is a much wider view of philanthropy than endowing hospitals and building temples (though these have their place too). She suggests that Indian philanthropists must work to strengthen society so that the market and the government (which don’t need philanthropy) work in the interests of the citizens. She writes: “It is an especially opportune time for business and civil society to act more creatively from their own, unrecognised common ground….We can together ensure that this country’s solemn promise to itself — to secure liberty and justice, social, economic and political — for all its citizens will be met, and met in abundance.”

As a mission statement, this is bold in its scope but Rohini’s activities over 30 years of philanthropy have shown us that it can be done . As she says, “Indian philanthropy does not take enough risks. However, it cannot achieve its potential without risk-taking… It is time to look at our society as a whole and for the philanthropic sector to step up and to get into more important areas such as access to justice.”

Will that happen? The Nilekanis have taken risks. I am not sure how many others will. But as Rohini quotes Swami Vivekananda as saying “take risks in your life. If you win, you can lead. If you lose, you can guide.”

It’s a useful maxim for all philanthropists and business people to live by.

Business Standard
PDF