Type: Article

Indian philanthropists need to become bolder, lead with trust, look for new areas to fund: Rohini Nilekani

Winner of FILA 2022 Grassroots Philanthropist, Nilekani props up causes that others may find risky, and steers her philanthropy by having an ear to the ground, operating from a place of trust, and being liberal with her time for the causes and people she supports

By Divya J Shekhar, Forbes India Staff

It was less about the money and more about the intent.

Kuldeep Dantewadia has a clear memory of that meeting with a philanthropic donor in the latter half of 2019, which was scheduled for 45 minutes, but lasted over 1.5 hours. Dantewadia, the co-founder of Bengaluru-based non-profit Reap Benefit, was building a community of citizens to solve problems in their local wards and neighbourhoods.

The donor asked him questions about his non-profit model, not from a place of criticality, but curiosity. She wanted to know how Dantewadia planned to translate individual actions to collective problem-solving in order to bring about larger societal change. She was curious about how women were solving local issues vis-a-vis men, and whether Dantewadia’s team encouraged diversity, not just in terms of gender, but by being inclusive of people of different languages, regions and socioeconomic strata. “She made me think deeper about my own work,” Dantewadia recollects.

What he felt more heartened by, however, was that when he was leaving, the donor inquired about his mental health, something nobody had done before. “She said, ‘You look tired, are you sleeping well? Do you take breaks?’ It was refreshing to see somebody ask me that,” he says. “I came out of that meeting energised.”
Soon, Dantewadia received a grant of ₹5 crore over three years, and his association with the donor continues to date. Reap Benefit, he says, has today built a community of over 50,000 people [who he calls ‘Solve Ninjas’], who have taken over 94,000 civic actions, started 3,143 campaigns, and built 552 civic innovations to address local civic issues across the country. This involves mapping water-logging during floods, providing urgent Covid relief to over 1.6 million people, executing campaigns to improve sanitation in government schools, and collaborating with government officials in budgeting for and solving municipal issues.

“We are now able to establish the connection between the work done by individual citizens and the systemic impact it creates,” Dantewadia says. The donor’s accessibility and support over the years, he says, helped him build a more resilient organisation. “That is important in philanthropy, because otherwise, philanthropists come with a worldview and push people on the ground to subscribe to that worldview. Here, it was almost like she was subscribing to our worldview and helping us have more confidence in that.”

Rohini Nilekani invests in people, not projects. Perhaps that is her biggest strength. Or perhaps it is the fact that while currently supporting close to 80 civil society organisations—in sectors as diverse as access to justice, climate change, gender equity, independent media, governance and animal welfare—she is keen to learn from each one of them.

In 2020-21, she donated about ₹70 crore in her personal capacity, up from ₹58-odd crore the previous year, as per data on the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies website. The Edelgive-Hurun India Philanthropy List 2021 calls her “India’s most generous woman”, also noting that in 2017, she and husband Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of IT services major Infosys, signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate half their wealth toward philanthropy.

Nilekani says while Nandan and she together work at the societal level by investing in intellectual infrastructure and institution-building, her philanthropy at the grassroots involves supporting people trying to solve problems in their own contexts. In 2022, this will involve opening up to new areas like mental health and solid waste management, which require “pan-India deep work”, she says.

Understated profile, oversized impact

Nilekani, 62, believes she just got lucky coming into wealth. An investment of ₹10,000 of her money [partly from her savings and partly given to her by her parents] in Infosys when it was set up in 1981 resulted in her becoming wealthy alongside Nandan, as well as independently of him. Her investments have been separate from those of her husband’s, and therefore, it is her personal wealth that she gives away. In 2005, when Infosys issued American Depository Receipts, Nilekani got ₹100 crore, and decided to create a corpus with the entire amount—along with another ₹50 crore later—for Arghyam, a non-profit she co-founded, to work on sustainable water and sanitation solutions.

She also co-founded Pratham Books to democratise reading for children and served as founder-chairperson between 2004 and 2014. Along with Nandan and Shankar Maruwada, in 2015 she set up the EkStep Foundation, which uses technology to help vulnerable children access education and learning opportunities. She was just experimenting and working on her own in the early days, Nilekani says, before building institutions, deciding to get more strategic and setting up teams. “This way I could focus on strategy and direction, instead of day-to-day management.”

Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies (RNP), at present, is a three-person team that is expanding. “That is small for a philanthropy, but the only reason it works is because of the value system, which Rohini not just preaches, but also practises,” says Gautan John, director of strategy at RNP. Allocation of money is the easy part, he says, but the process of building a portfolio with their early-stage funding to individuals and institutions is where the effort lies.

Nilekani and the team spend a lot of time getting to know individuals, their teams and their approach in order to assess if they are able to think about a problem, and its underlying reasons, holistically. Rohini loves to travel and meet people, John says. “And when she is on the field, what she is doing is listening very deeply.” This helps her garner visceral insights about the work that is necessary, and what is absent. Then the team builds a portfolio around it. In each portfolio, RNP has a clutch of people and initiatives that work on the same problem, but have slightly different approaches.

Current and past grantees under Accountability and Transparency, for instance, include Civis, a non-profit platform that facilitates dialogue between the government and citizens on draft laws and policies before they are passed. There is Haiyaa that runs grassroots campaigns to strengthen democracy, governance and human rights, and PRS Legislative Research, an independent research institute. John explains that RNP supports grantees with capacity building, makes connections for them and exposes them to new ideas and thinking. “This way, the portfolio becomes a powerful way to build scale,” he says.

Nilekani has the ability to take risks, and back unconventional causes when many would rather be in their comfort zones. “Indian philanthropists need to become bolder, lead with trust, and look for new areas to fund,” she says. “There are a thousand things that need philanthropic capital to come into.”

Take, for instance, her support over the years to independent media outlets like Vaaka Podcasts, Khabar Lahariya, the Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation, India Development Review and Oorvani Foundation. The business model of media in India is a “little broken”, Nilekani says, and therefore such efforts deserve philanthropic support. Another example is the Access to Justice portfolio, which supports organisations working on a range of approaches to make the legal system fair, equitable and accessible.

“Law is still not treated as other sectors like health care, education or finance where innovation and entrepreneurship have a greater place,” says Sachin Malhan, co-founder of Agami, a non-profit that works to make law and justice more accessible through initiatives for online dispute resolution, digital courts, creating open legal datasets, and bringing together young change-makers for justice. He has received a grant of around ₹8 crore from Nilekani. “Rohini doesn’t come from any fixed script. She does not have some kind of long history of funding only one kind of cause. She funds a diverse spectrum so she knows there are very different ways of getting things done,” Malhan says.

The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment (FCRA) Bill, 2020, tightened the noose around civil society organisations, with provisions that prohibit ‘re-granting’ or the transfer of foreign funds from one organisation to another, and reduce the cap on FCRA funds for administrative purposes to 20 percent [from 50 percent earlier], among other changes. “I feel really sad, because you should not cap administrative costs. Can a company run without all its departments? Of course not. Nor can NGOs,” says Nilekani. “So we need to have much more flexibility and freedom on whether an organisaton spends 15 percent on its overheads or 30 percent, depending on the work done.”
Nilekani says there needs to be more dialogue between government and civil society to reduce prevalent mistrust. “Civil society and the state are in tension everywhere, but it should be a creative tension. It cannot be a climate of fear or so much distrust. We have some fairly draconian laws on our books and you are seeing how they are being used,” she says. After all, Nilekani adds, everyone is working toward the same goal of a better society, albeit walking on different pathways. “That doesn’t mean we can disrespect the other person’s pathway.” And that is the reason she dedicates a lot of effort and money to build capacity to scale, and develop leadership in organisations.

It is Nilekani’s funding toward building capacity that has been the driving force of the India Climate Collaborative (ICC), says acting CEO Shloka Nath. “The crux of the support is that it has been flexible institutional funding that many domestic philanthropists are hesitant to give. They prefer to fund clearly defined programmes that can be tangibly understood, which is why Rohini’s support has been critical, especially given the limits of foreign funding in India.”

Nilekani is also one of the founding members of the ICC, which works to build the capacity of both domestic donors and foundations to support climate action in India, and support efforts to plug gaps in the ecosystem. As per their 2021 annual report, the non-profit has mobilised ₹45 crore since its launch in 2020. “The RNP team has really challenged us—Rohini specifically—to grow, explore and question, while still assuring us of their support,” says Nath. “We found her and her team to be very vibrant, very curious. They really look to learn from their grantees and share their learning with us as well.”

John agrees that Rohini bypasses the power balance between donor and grantees, and insists on learning from the organisations RNP collaborates with. “She says the act of giving should not just change the recipient, but the giver as well.”

One of the things she has also done over the years is to get a lot more Indians interested in philanthropy. “It is important to pick up the phone and get someone excited about what you are doing,” Nilekani says. She believes the indiscriminate accumulation of wealth makes no sense in a society as iniquitous as ours, and that the wealthy owe it to society to be transparent about what they are doing with their wealth.

Social problems do not just go away, Nilekani says, and so there is no end point to philanthropy. “Which is why some people find philanthropy so frustrating, right? That you do so much and still nothing is happening. Yes, it can be frustrating, but it is also a very stimulating and humbling journey.”

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Forbes

The Virus has Reinvented Philanthropy in India

The recent announcement of Susmita and Subroto Bagchi, together with Radha and N.S. Parthasarathy, donating ₹425 crore to set up a postgraduate medical school, along with a multi-speciality 800-bed hospital, at Indian Institute of Science’s (IISC’s) Bengaluru campus is terrific news. Much like the vaccine, this singular shot in the arm for Indian philanthropy will dramatically increase the scale of healthcare, research and training in the country.
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Is this one act an indicator of things to come? The phenomenon of individual philanthropy in India is certainly not new, and many families have made their mark on society through decades of giving and institution building, especially in health care and education. This has been the staple of Indian philanthropy, and is expanding.

In April last year, the Bagchis had already committed ₹340 crore for a palliative care unit at a cancer hospital in Odisha, in partnership with Karunashraya, a Bengaluru-based hospice, and Shankara Cancer Foundation. Similarly, Ashok Soota had announced a donation of ₹200 crore to set up SKAN, a not-for-profit entity in the private sector exclusively for medical research, with partners such as St John’s, Centre for Brain Research in IISc, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Roorkee, and National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru.

A few years before, Kris and Sudha Gopalakrishnan had announced their commitment of ₹225 crore to set up a Centre for Brain Research at IISc. It will focus on ageing and age-related disorders like Parkinson’s, dementia and Alzheimer’s.

An emerging trend

This sort of large, academic partnership-based institutional philanthropy is necessary, especially to fill certain critical gaps. And much of it, importantly, is from direct capital infusion, not from the interest on endowments.

But another exciting wave has been building over the past few years. A new circle of philanthropists with different approaches has been slowly forming outside of the usual donors and their continued giving. It includes the next generation of older philanthropists and also the newly wealthy. They are inherently more comfortable with technology, data, innovation, and risk. They will dare to be different.
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In 2021, Nithin and Nikhil Kamath, the young co-founders of Zerodha, committed $100 million over the next decade to fund climate entrepreneurs and to support grassroots individuals and organisations working on solutions for climate change via the newly formed Rainmatter Foundation. They have been moving quickly and smartly on this pledge.

In a welcome development, these givers are focussing on important areas that have been under-funded—from brain research, geriatric research and cancer to genomics, sports and climate change. It is a great irony that big philanthropy is made possible only by an economic system that has allowed the unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the hands of very few. Many new entrepreneurs have benefitted hugely from recent economic and technological advances. Luckily, some of them have realised both the urgency and the responsibility to give forward as quickly and effectively as possible. I believe we are witnessing an emerging trend that was too long in coming.

Another movement is around pledges and promises. Azim Premji, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Nandan and myself are the three India-based signatories to The Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffett, Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates. We are committed to giving away at least half of our wealth. Many other pledges have now been set up alongside. LivingMyPromise brings a similar opportunity to upper-middle-class Indians with a net worth of more than ₹10 million to promise to donate a minimum of 50% of their wealth to charitable causes of their choice. Amit and Archana Chandra, Fiona and Luis Miranda and Venkat Krishnan, the pioneer of retail giving in India, are among a community of 95 and growing that have signed this pledge.

The Founder’s Pledge is another innovation, signed by people such as Tushar Vashisht, founder of HealthifyMe, and Bhavesh Manglani, co-founder Delhivery. Inspired by the effective altruism movement, the Founder’s Pledge asks entrepreneurs to commit to donating a portion of their personal proceeds to charity whenever they sell their business and come into money. The Young India Philanthropic Pledge is built on a morally binding obligation for Indians below the age of 45, with a minimum net worth of ₹1,000 crore, to pledge 25% or more of their wealth publicly and make a minimum donation of ₹1 crore a year.

The two-year-long pandemic has really shaken the conscience of many and propelled them to act fast. The India Philanthropy Report 2021 says that contributions made by wealthy families in the social sector grew to ₹12,000 crore in the fiscal year 2020. It’s not just UHNI (ultra-high net worth individual) giving. A report released late last year by Charities Aid Foundation, a global non-profit, based on online surveys of 2,000 Indians across cities showed a significant revival of small giving, nothing that “… average amount of individual donations to philanthropy in India went up by 43% during the pandemic”. An example of this kind of philanthropy would be Give India’s Covid Response Fund, launched during the first wave, which quickly attracted over ₹220 crore and was rapidly disbursed to 250 NGOs, impacting more than 56 lakh people in more than 115 cities at a very critical juncture.

There seems to be a sudden uptake in the idea of collaboration too. While there are older collaboratives, such as Social Venture Partners, with about 200 members giving steady amounts to curated NGOS, there are newer versions popping up. One example is ACT Grants, a ₹100-crore relief fund set up in 2020 as an emergency response to the pandemic. It brought together, perhaps for the first time, venture capitalists like Prashanth Prakash, private equity investors and start-up executives to give both time and money to philanthropy. The first fund was successful enough to have spawned more ACT funds with pooled capital for emergent challenges such as education, climate and sustainability, and gender issues.

The GROW fund was recently launched to help 100 civil society organisations scale their operations, with a total budget of ₹100 crore. Anchored by Vidya Shah of Edelgive Foundation, it has been co-created by several foundations and philanthropists working together to support civil society.
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This collaborative philanthropy, anchored in the lessons of the pandemic and focused on flexible and quick funding, trust-based approaches, and innovation, may signal a reinvention of Indian philanthropy.

We must celebrate this new giving by new players. But can we do better? With so much wealth being created so rapidly among so few, the need is to respond at the scale of the problem, at the pace at which societal challenges are growing. This requires more generosity by more of the wealthy. It means more collaboration, and more strategic, systemic approaches to giving and institution building. But most of all, it needs societal thinking to design a philanthropic model that restores real agency to all those who sit at the vulnerable heart of social problems. That will be the driver of exponential change—change that generates ever better change.

Rohini Nilekani is the chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies.

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The great migration: A sky full of Amur falcons in Nagaland | HT

“They’ve changed their course, they’ve come closer,” I got an excited call, early in November. This year, the much-delayed, much-awaited migratory Amur falcons had split up into several groups. Some flew as usual to the far reaches of the Doyang valley and reservoir. But another flock chose to visit Hakhezhe village, not far from Nagaland’s main airport at Dimapur.

What a lucky break. For years, I had been planning the pilgrimage to witness the largest migration of winged raptors on the planet. In the past I had hesitated, daunted by the long, bumpy ride and trek to Pangti, the falcons’ favourite resting stop.

Every year, in late October, lakhs of these majestic little predators emerge from their breeding grounds in Siberia and Mongolia. Together, they soar on westerly winds to their hunting grounds in South Africa, crossing the Arabian Sea along with their prey, the pantala dragonflies, and making a fortnight’s fortuitous stopover in Nagaland.

Once I had confirmation that the falcons had landed propitiously close to somewhat navigable roads, I quickly banded together some friends and our guide, wildlife filmmaker Sandesh Kadur, whose crew had already done the recce. Just hours later, our ragtag team was hurtling from Dimapur to Hakhezhe, where a newly printed welcome banner proclaimed it the village of the Amur falcons.

Three minutes to go, promised our naturalist Sriharsha HK. And as we watched in disbelief, the first black dot in the sky showed up exactly at 4.15 pm, as he had predicted. I thought then of how no one fully understands the biological mechanisms that birds use to navigate; about the theories of vision-based magneto-reception. Then came a second falcon, and a tenth. Within minutes, the sky was darkened by hundreds of thousands of the Amur falcons, swooping down in ever-narrower circles, heading towards the row of teak trees in which they would soon roost. A faint chirping grew into a mellow symphony as the birds signalled to each other, perhaps to avoid mid-air collisions.

After the first overwhelmed oohs and aahs, we could only stand in meditative silence. Necks craning, we waited respectfully in the shade of trees so as not to disturb the birds, who, mercifully, seemed oblivious to us. Within an hour, it was over. The birds had settled precariously in the canopy, soon folding into the night.

In the morning, the pattern was repeated in reverse. We set off at 3 am to make our tryst with the waking falcons, as they snatched the rays of dawn in a dazzling display of golden acrobatics. Now we could train our binoculars better to distinguish the males from the more striated females, the collared juveniles from the parents. In widening, rising circles, they then took off for the day, heading towards the green hills on the horizon in search of food.

Goodbye, we said, our hands on our hearts. It was one of the most unforgettable of experiences. There were many people to thank for this opportunity, first and foremost being the local people. But also, conservationists like Bano Haralu, Rokohebi Kuotsu, Ramki Sreenivasan and Shashank Dalvi, among many others, who have worked for years with the local communities to weave one of the biggest success stories in India’s bird conservation history.

A decade ago, in keeping with long-standing hunting traditions, locals would trap these falcons for food, using large fishing nets strung across treetops. In a remarkably short time, they have begun to see these birds as honoured state guests. There is a hope that the rising opportunities from the growing ecotourism in the area will sustain the positive energy shown by the community to protect the falcons.

It is a fine lesson in the architecture of trade-offs that citizens will have to actively participate in designing, in order to conserve nature and wild beings, not least in order to save ourselves.

Much work still remains ahead. New communities must sign on to become stewards of this vulnerable migrant flock, as the birds shift their routes due to a degradation of their roosting habitats. An eco-tourism based on trusteeship, not extraction, will have to be nurtured. The government could finish tarring half-done roads so that the journey can itself feel like the destination for tourists and birders, across the lovely landscapes of north-east India.

More research is also needed to document the entire voyage of the amazing Amur falcons, across two hemispheres, over plains, mountains and seas. We don’t know since when the falcons have been visiting India, as there are no cultural artefacts and no words for these birds in local languages. Technology could help quantify just how many birds come here (our group estimated 800,000 to 1 million at Hakhezhe, though we have no way of verifying that number). Perhaps research could determine how many such odysseys the average Amur falcon makes in its lifetime (one tagged bird was observed making four trips of approximately 20,000 km each, from its birthplace to its wintering ground and back).

Most of all, many more people need to belong to this tale of mystery, of beauty, of resilience.

It is said that when we are curious, we learn, then we understand, we come to love, and we want to cherish. As I returned home, I felt renewed hope that it is this human journey that may yet turn the tide on climate despair.

Article in Hindustan Times

What has COVID-19 taught us about disaster response? | IDR

Civil society organisations became the first responders during the #Covid19. Read about their response to the second wave as well as 4 key take-aways from it that can help us prepare for future disasters. Written by Natasha Joshi & Sahana Jose of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies for India Development Review.

Published in IDR

If you were a disaster, where would you strike? How would you make sure no one can avoid you? When would you show up?

As a disaster, you will likely do one or all of these things: find the densest, most vulnerable populations that have few ways of protecting themselves; occur when society least expects you; and keep evolving so that everyone remains in a state of confusion.

COVID-19 has been this disaster, and the second wave earlier this year was ferocious. It caught most people off guard; accelerated at an incredible pace, leading to the wholesale collapse of an already shambolic public health system; and left silent epidemics we are yet to contend with in its wake.

As the crisis started to unfold, civil society organisations came into play the first and the fastest. Owing to their connection with the ground and vital intel, grassroots organisations became the first responders. But, at the same time, another remarkable effort swept across the country—that of ordinary citizen volunteers. People who had never participated in social service or relief efforts found themselves making calls for oxygen or rations, driving ambulances, tending to sick people, or raising funds. These volunteer coalitions added capacity and revealed the power of the public, despite the failure of public services.

To make sense of the second wave and our experience as funders, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies convened a group of organisations that played an important role in relief efforts through the second wave.1 What emerged was a larger appreciation for the nature of disasters. Partners expressed the need to simultaneously look at building resilience, so that society can be better prepared, while also putting in place strong crisis management protocols, so that response and relief can be swift and efficacious when disaster strikes.

From this meeting we came away learning about four key areas that function as enablers (or barriers), along with questions around how work in each of these areas can be furthered.

1. Trust

Our partner organisations shared that trust played a vital role in getting people together to move quickly. Referral systems ensured trusted information came from the field, which improved the direction of fund and resource flow. Nonprofits with an already credible presence in certain geographies were able to build better relationships with the local government. In addition, access to politicians significantly improved response time to emergency requests. Citizen coalitions like the Covid Rural Response (CORE) are another example of volunteers tapping into pre-existing relationships to ‘make things happen’, including raising funds for such self-organised, informal networks that didn’t come under any institutional umbrella (something typically hard to raise funds for).

We realised the key here was pre-existing relationships or tapping spaces where trust already existed. In particular, partners attested to the value of their prior good relationships with well-meaning locally elected officials or community leaders, as these individuals were able to surmount regulatory bottlenecks well.

This raises the question: If trust is an ingredient for a resilient society, how can we invest in more trust building between multiple stakeholders?

2. Volunteerism

In any disaster, volunteers help add capacity on the ground. However, we obtained valuable feedback from field-based organisations on how and when volunteers are helpful versus when they get in the way. The second wave saw many volunteer networks kick into gear. But often different volunteer groups acted in isolation, which led to the replication of efforts that overwhelmed service providers (who were constantly being contacted by volunteers). There was a mismatch between the skills volunteers possessed and what field-based organisations needed in many instances. Within volunteer networks, institutional governance was also an issue—in case a volunteer dropped out, what they were working on left with them.

The question we must answer is: What are good ways to create open digital platforms where volunteers can register, be oriented, have their skills matched with needs, and have all this information shared in one place to avoid duplication while keeping volunteers engaged on a continuous basis?

3. Information and infrastructure

One common challenge in relief work pertains to the availability of timely, accurate, and verified information. The second wave relief efforts revealed that while there were many information gaps, certain institutions were underleveraged. For example, MyGov had comprehensive data on cases that at times local administrators did not have, but they weren’t aware that this data was available on MyGov.2 On the other hand, collaborations with primary health centres (PHCs) were successful for many nonprofits, indicating the potential for mitigation when basic public health infrastructure is in place.

For long-term resilience, greater engagement with the state and district disaster management authorities is also needed. There are certain cadres governments always call on in times of crisis—ASHA workers, Anganwadi workers, and often teachers as well. Ideating on ways to supplement the capacity and resources for these cadres is useful. For instance, one participant observed that Anganwadi workers could not visit villages for relief work as they did not have money for petrol. Bottlenecks like these are frustrating and ought to be removed.

To make progress on this front, we wonder: How can nonprofits, donors, and the government collaborate today to develop systems that will allow for better apportioning of resources in times of crisis?

4. Funding from a humanitarian lens

A tremendous amount of money was mobilised to deal with the second wave. Many donors radically shortened approval timelines and allocated large amounts towards relief efforts. Yet, many field organisations reported challenges with compliance and paperwork and funds being allocated towards what funders saw as useful versus the actual need on the ground. Two other things are common when disaster strikes:

  • All capital gets temporarily diverted towards relief-only work, leaving many non-relief-focused nonprofits in the lurch.
  • The silent and latent second and third order effects of the disaster such as livelihood shocks, relocation/migration, and impact on children (child marriage, missed immunisations, malnutrition, etc.) that arise downstream are not built into an overall relief plan.

A positive observation shared by field organisations and members of volunteer coalitions related to the emergence of ‘new-age funders’ (such as Ethereum), who were more open to experimental ways of self-organised and self-governed funding coalitions like CORE.

A question to explore this further is: What are some ways to engage traditional philanthropists, institutional donors, emerging new-age funders, and nonprofits in trust building for better disaster management? How feasible is it to create disaster-specific protocols that allow for information and pipeline sharing and faster unlocking of capital?

Building societal resilience against disasters is a complex, non-linear process that requires progress in multiple fields—health, education, livelihoods, climate, and technology. We hope to start with civil society.

The second wave showed us that civil society, when enabled, can bridge many gaps and serve as an equal partner to the state. Maintaining this trust is vital. COVID-19 blew open existing fissures in society, but it is not the last crisis we will face. With exacerbating climate change, society will find itself in the midst of small to big disasters. Pre-emptively building for that moment today can prove to be the investment we need for tomorrow. Can we out-think future disasters?

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Footnotes:

  1. Aapti Institute, Agami, Aveksha Hospital, Fields of View, Give India, Hasiru Dala, Institute of Public Health, Mapunity, Rainmatter Foundation, Rishabh Lalani (independent consultant), Sattva, Takshashila, and Swasth Alliance.
  2. Government of India’s citizen engagement platform which collaborates with multiple government bodies/ministries to engage with citizens for policy formulation and seeks the opinion of people on issues/topics of public interest and welfare.

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Know more

Do more

  • If you would like to join this small informal group in thinking and designing disaster-resilient systems for the future, please email natasha@nilekaniphilanthropies.org

Keeping the Hope Unbroken

It was wonderful to read the thoughtful, frank reflections of so many younger philanthropists on the future of philanthropy. What struck me the most was that almost everyone acknowledged the need to shift and broaden the centres of power, both within philanthropy and in society. It is a great irony that big philanthropy is made possible by a broken economic system that has allowed the unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the hands of very few.

Can those who benefit from this system be trusted to change it? I believe it is possible only if everyone, including super-rich philanthropists can recognise that a system which pools value so narrowly does not work for anyone for very long. Just look at the existential problems that we are facing in this century – especially due to anthropogenic climate change and global warming – also described as a massive market failure.

One small way to correct the imbalance would be to align endowment investments more closely with philanthropists’ missions. The other way would be to fund causes and efforts that give more agency to people across the power spectrum. Within philanthropy, the future needs to be more open, more transparent and hence more accountable in its practice.

A mirror is a must in the philanthropist’s hand

As one author wrote, we must break down the artificial divide between charity and philanthropy. After all, we are a social species and our desire to help others is rooted in our genes. Philanthropy can be much more trust-based; we must learn not to push down solutions ourselves but to distribute the ability to solve so that we can be more transformational. As philanthropy sheds its vanity project image in the future, it simultaneously needs to become bigger, bolder and more collaborative.

How can we jointly deploy resources that match the scale of the problems we are facing? In this digital age, philanthropy has the opportunity to be technology-enabled, though not technology-led. It can underwrite the creation of public digital goods to enhance participation, co-creation and knowledge sharing on a real-time basis. In the post-Covid world, we will have to run fast just to catch up to where we would have been on the SDGs without the pandemic.

The complexity of new challenges demands that philanthropy reimagines strategic partnerships across samaaj, bazaar and sarkaar, ie society, markets and the state to unleash contextual problem-solving at scale, with speed and with sustainability. Several new global collaboratives have sprung up recently to drive more such partnerships and to unlock the massive amounts of philanthropy that have been committed but not yet deployed, partly because of the paucity of our imagination and partly because of the lack of absorptive capacity on the ground.

This is very good news though there will be a steep learning journey ahead. I hope that in the next 25 years, as the philanthropists on these pages themselves become veterans, philanthropy will be more widely and truly practised as a trusteeship of wealth for society now and for the generations to come.

Alliance Magazine 100th Issue

 

Why Shutting Down Reserves to Prevent Covid Transmission to Tigers is a Questionable Move

A blanket ban could endanger wildlife and human livelihoods. India must seize opportunity to innovate to live with and reduce the risk from the inevitable future contagion

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India’s Project Tiger is a success by any measure. Our 51 tiger reserves now boast of at least 3,000 tigers. More and more Indians flock to safari parks to marvel at them and other spectacular wildlife. Nature lovers are impatient to return to the forests after the lockdown.

On June 7, however, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) sent out a circular to the chief wildlife wardens of all the tiger range states.

Referring to the lioness at the Chennai Zoo, suspected to have died of a Covid-19 infection, it warned of the high likelihood of disease transmission from affected human beings to captive wild animals. It fears that a similar transmission may also happen in tiger reserves, and that they need to be closed for tourism activities until further orders.

The intent of the NTCA to protect our wildlife is to be respected. However, this particular directive deserves a wider public discussion.

Forests and wildlife reserves fall under the concurrent list. On most issues concerning state forests, it is the state chief wildlife wardens that are the ultimate deciding authority. This allows decentralised, contextual, and timely decision making in our very diverse ecospheres.

To mandate the closure of all state reserves with a stroke of the pen is vexatious. It has been quickly challenged in Madhya Pradesh, with its popular and lucrative safari parks. The timing of this decision, at a time when the country is planning to open up carefully, is also puzzling.

Tiger reserves in Karnataka, which, unlike those in central India, normally remain open throughout the year, were rightfully closed for almost two months in this brutal second wave. They are gearing up to reopen. Government and civil society organisations have used the lockdown time to educate, test, treat and, where possible, vaccinate communities living around the parks – be they forest staff, tourism staff or tribal communities.

As for tourists, the sad truth is that safari holidays are affordable mainly for the urban elite, and it is likely that they are already vaccinated, further reducing the risk to wildlife. Some reserves, therefore, may be even safer from human threat to the animals and vice versa than when they were opened some months ago.

There have been documented cases of SARS-CoV-2 anthroponosis from humans to zoo animals and domestic pets, though fatality has been rare. The crossover has come mainly from direct contact with infected humans, be they zookeepers or pet owners. There appear to be no cases anywhere in the world of free-roaming wildlife infected with Covid-19 through humans.

In any case, entry is strictly controlled in India’s tiger reserves. Jeeps and people are required to keep a distance from park animals. It is a safe gap even from affected humans, and that, too, in wide open spaces. With most people wearing masks, which should certainly be mandatory, there is ample additional precaution. Surely, local forest officials could themselves decide whether safaris are safe for people and wildlife?

Lakhs of livelihoods around these reserves have hung in precarious balance since the pandemic started. The impact of a prolonged shutdown needs a cost-benefit analysis, for the people who live there, but also for the impact on the wildlife that we aim to preserve. There is documented evidence from last year’s shutdown that more species of wildlife were being killed for subsistence.

The wildlife tourism economy brings in substantial revenue to state coffers. It also brings many caring eyes into the forests, which helps protect them from uncontrolled fires and poaching and, more importantly, creates incentives for conservation.

Even without tourists, forest officials and staff do go into tiger reserves to do their routine jobs. Lakhs of tribal people live close to or inside these parks and have the right to collect minor forest produce. It is not desirable or possible to exclude them from the forests they help preserve.

There is ample wildlife outside the tiger reserves, too, including big cats that stray out. This is an indicator of success for flagship species conservation, and it is impossible to control. Is there then any real risk mitigation in shutting down just the safari parks?

Forest departments, instead, could seize this opportunity to prepare for future waves and pandemics. No one knows when the pandemic will fully subside. The lesson from this pandemic is that humans will have to innovate to live with and reduce the risk from the inevitable future contagion.

There are many opportunities to do so in tiger reserves, now, with a receding second wave. Non-invasive, bio-safe protocols could be set up quickly for species monitoring and wildlife surveillance. The threat of zoonoses from stray cattle and feral dogs near the reserves is already real. Spill-over dynamics could be better understood and widely communicated. Early warning systems could be designed for rapid action to prevent spread if any wild animal died from Covid-19. India has many competent environmental research organisations that, given half a chance, would enthusiastically assist in all these endeavours.

States could quickly launch such scientific research and prevention measures and decide whether their parks are safe to open. Sometimes, a blanket ban does more harm than good, as people globally have realised during this pandemic.

Decentralised, science-based decision-making could flip the narrative from fear to hope, from the illusion of control to the possibility of resilience. It is also a creative opportunity to invite citizens back into our reserves not just as tourists, but as trustees of our rich biodiversity.

Indian Express
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Laws and criminal justice: Where the Indian Elite can’t Secede

It is extremely important that the Supreme Court is re-examining colonial era sedition laws, which were repealed in the United Kingdom (UK) itself, but which no government in India has revoked, and in fact, each has used to stifle dissent. Sedition laws, however, are at the apex of a mountain of laws that need to be examined with fresh societal eyes.

Most of us believe we are good, law-abiding citizens. We have faith that laws are made with the highest public and private good in mind. We try to obey all the laws that we know of. By doing so, we participate in a society that is justly governed by the rule of law. We don’t worry much about going to jail or about the state of our prisons. We cannot imagine anything we do that could land us behind bars. And if we got caught by mistake, surely there would be a way around the problem? Jail is for others.

Is it time to revisit all these assumptions?

Many of our laws, when examined even cursorily, do not appear to propose punishments or jail sentences proportionate to the crime. Many also shift the burden of public order from the State and its apparatus to the individual citizen and his actions. These kind of laws can turn ordinary citizens into criminals with one deadly strike. Sadly, many have been passed without any legislative debate. Nor has there been widespread public discourse on things that should keep us all awake at night.

For example, did you even know that you could get arrested if you did not properly walk your dog? The maximum sentence is three months. Did you realise that flying a kite with banned thread can lock you up for two years? That driving an uninsured vehicle could get you three months in jail?

These are just a few examples. Yet, most citizens have found it difficult to apply themselves to issues of law-making or criminal justice.

Apart from all the harsh, even draconian, laws that have been around for decades and even centuries, there have been new laws and rules that give sweeping powers to the State. Mercifully, there has been a lively public debate on recent laws around free speech and privacy. In one such victory, Section 66A of the IT Act was struck down as unconstitutional. Other regressive speech laws still exist, but partly because of the ubiquitous use of social media, more citizens are realising the chilling effect on their lives.

Let’s take another recent example. The government invoked the Disaster Management Act of 2005, for the proper management of the pandemic. But some of the rules pertaining to Covid-19 could potentially make millions of citizens susceptible to sentencing, if they were to be strictly implemented. The spreading of fake news about Covid -19, including forwarding WhatsApp messages which are later found false, could attract up to a year in prison. Technically, not wearing compulsory face masks, without reasonable cause, could also put you in jail for up to one year.

Some of these laws are simply unimplementable or may not be on the radar of the officers of the State, who have the powers to make arrests under them.

But the point is that they are still on the books. And circumstances could turn in a way that someone could get into more trouble than is warranted by an unintentional infringement. All the laws I mention above have actually resulted in arrests.

Should such laws with such disproportionate punishment even exist? Should they be better understood before they are passed? Do they even serve the purpose and intent with which they are framed – usually public order and safety?

There is not enough evidence to show that severe punishment acts as the deterrent it is meant to be. Research shows that imprisonment under harsh conditions often results in a greater rate of more violent recidivism. On the other hand, there is encouraging data emerging from restorative justice systems, including the open jails in India. Can we use such evidence to re-imagine our retributive justice system to be more just, more humane and more effective at reducing crime?

So far, we, the elite, have not participated in serious public discourse on law-making and prison reform. The series of lockdowns caused many of us to experience a pale yet frightening imitation of what an actual incarceration might feel like.

Is this an opportunity for society, samaaj, to participate more vigorously in debating laws that criminalise too easily? And from there, to become more involved in the broader issues of criminal justice, including the human rights infringements in our overcrowded prisons, with 70% of inmates being potentially innocent undertrials?

The Supreme Court has now turned the spotlight on sedition. The pandemic has thrown light on the Disaster Management Act. It’s time for deeper conversations with parliamentarians and state legislators — our law makers, on how better laws can lead to a better society. In the case of Section 66A of the IT Act, such a dialogue led to its annulment.

India’s elite has managed to secede from every common public service — be it education, healthcare, transport, or energy. Pollution and the pandemic awakened us to the rude reality that we cannot secede from bad air and bad germs. Well, we cannot secede from bad laws either.

Hindustan Times

Philanthropy Should be Humble, but not Modest

Apart from building a flexible and resilient framework for the future, philanthropists, civil society and the government must work in tandem so that every rupee is absorbed on the ground

We can definitely say that civil society and the philanthropy sector stepped up rapidly in the face of the pandemic, March 2020 onward. Very quickly, personal philanthropy foundations, corporates and individuals pivoted their programmes to give immediate assistance and humanitarian aid to whoever they could find and trust. No matter what plans they had for their budgets in 2020-21, those changed to be largely dictated by the needs of people and institutions on the ground.

On the heels of that, most people and organisations also recognised the need to look at their portfolios, change the way they measure how they give, and be more open-minded. I know of several philanthropists who told civil society organisations that they will not hold them to hard indicators of impact and that they will be more flexible with respect to changing budget heads or responses as needed.

Within a few months, some of the more serious philanthropists realised the need to develop a flexible and resilient framework for the future, be it by supporting good leadership, allowing flexibility in creation of metrics for impact, allowing organisations to pivot based on the needs on the ground, rethinking how to move from project to programmatic mode, or even tweaking one’s theory of change itself.

Last year, while philanthropists had to immediately address Covid-19 relief needs, civil society organisations were changing how they work. Those working in water, in sanitation, agriculture, education or other areas had to shift their attention to pandemic-related work. So there was no choice for them or the funders in the past 1.5 years. Looking forward, however, things have to be different.

Philanthropic organisations have to keep their budgets relatively flexible to be able to respond to temporary disasters that are going to come at us, wave upon wave. I’m not being pessimistic, but realistic. We’ve had enough data over the past 10 years to see how droughts, public health emergencies or just market-related emergencies like the financial crisis hit us. Planning for what you cannot plan for is becoming critical for philanthropic organisations.

While we are still in the middle of the second wave of the pandemic, by the end of this calendar year, we should be in a better place to look at the future with calmer eyes. It will take building relationships of trust and discovery. What does this mean? Find the people whose work you believe in, whose ethics you can share, and support them generously without holding back. You can co-create your impact metrics and hold them accountable, but lead with trust. Once you do that, those civil society organisations will have more feet on the ground than philanthropists can ever hope to have. They will have the agency to respond contextually as needed. That is the kind of rethink that philanthropic organisations will have to do.

I’ve spoken enough about samaaj-bazaar-sarkaar (society-markets-governments) linkages. I support work based in the samaaj, because I think a strong and resilient samaaj enables good government and good markets as well. First of all, acknowledge that we need to invest in strong, diverse institutions and leaderships in the samaaj, because it is actors of the samaaj that are going to work to make society better. Having a strong civil society foundation not only allows the state to function better, but also allows markets to discover innovations and scale up. So it makes sense to invest heavily into samaaj even if you are a market enthusiast.

Some Indian civil society organisations also tend to be a little antagonistic toward the state, but those looking at solving problems should learn to work better with the state as and when they can, since everyone, especially the most vulnerable, benefit from an effective state. Civil society organisations need to also accept that markets can play a very complementary role to expand the work of the social sector. Everyone has a role to play in deepening the positive, trusting relationship between samaaj and bazaar. Both need to work better with the state and also hold the state accountable for delivering on its mandate of equity and justice.

We all know that many people are uncomfortable with the fact that a few of us are becoming so wealthy, while the rest of the people do not seem to be able to get a leg up. While this is not the space to give lectures on how inequitable the growth of capitalism and markets has been, we need to reinvent the system for it to be much smarter and strategic than what it is now. Those who are building wealth in the process of sheer innovation and by developing good institutions are also the ones that see the potential of rapidly giving forward, and today in India, we are seeing a resurgence of philanthropy from those who have become wealthy just in the recent past.

There is a lot of new philanthropy happening in India and I find it encouraging that the younger people are giving back sooner. They are saying, even if they make $500,000 by selling shares or being bought out, a portion of that will be reserved for philanthropy from the get-go. And that is exactly the kind of thing we want to see as more young people begin to get newly wealthy. This is what is going to separate them from the older generation. The latter often came from industrial houses, whose parents and grandparents had set up businesses that the next generation took forward, but as we know, the younger people do not feel they have full control over the wealth.

The new generation of youngsters that is becoming wealthy has no legacy to uphold; it can think completely freely and afresh, just like we did when Infosys shareholders came into wealth and a few others around us in the IT sector. Just like we were free to spend our money the way we wanted to, because it was not handed down generationally, this young crop is not only ready to do that, but they are also thinking completely differently, beyond even what my generation did. And I find that very exciting.

These youngsters are market-savvy, but not all are market fundamentalists. They recognise the potential of markets, but seem to understand their limitations too, which is why they seem to be mixing their portfolio between market-led investments and outright social non-profit giving. I like that, because one approach will inform the other, and both those together will also change the person who is giving. They are looking at societal impact in mixed ways.

The other departure from the previous generation that I see is that it is much more aware of environmental issues, because it is the climate generation. They and their children are going to face the brunt of the mistakes of my generation and the ones before me. They are willing to contribute toward making the markets more responsive toward climate challenge.

Some of the lessons to be learnt for these new young philanthropists in India is to come in with humility, experiment a lot, double down on a cause you really love and where you are able to find trusting partners. Keep an open mind, keep learning and keep on creating coalitions of philanthropic giving in your own networks, age groups and communities that are coming into wealth. Encourage them to partner with you in experiments of giving forward, because it is going to be one of the most fun things you are going to do in your life.

All crises also provide new opportunities, and the pandemic has brought all of us together to collectively do more than what we could do at an individual level. The ACT Fund, for instance, was so quickly set up during the lockdown and got such a huge response. It offered a great philanthropic model for the future, because apart from the super-rich people of India, there is a sizeable population of rich people who are willing to experiment with giving forward. They don’t really know how to do it, because unfortunately we do not have those many organisations that can trustfully support those who want to give, unlike in the West where it’s a whole industry. So having your peers set up a fund, deploying the social capital instantly through a platform like this, has been very attractive to a lot of people. So the ACT Fund worked well, and now it is being extended to causes beyond Covid-19 relief work as well. I know more collaborative funds like that are coming up. All these things point to unlocking much more philanthropic capital.

While we are doing that, we should know that the problem is not so much of philanthropic capital, but of absorptive capacity. There is all this philanthropic capital dressed up and ready with nowhere to go. Because we did not invest enough in building civil society institutions that can last and scale. It is no use pointing fingers at civil society because three fingers point back at the philanthropists. We did not invest in those institutions and give core funding. It’s like telling entrepreneurs, “Go out there and become successful, but I cannot support your office rent or even give you an accountant.” So as these young philanthropists come in and we talk about resilience and responsiveness, it is important to know that putting out philanthropic capital is not enough. We have to start learning the ropes of how to give in such a way that the next rupee and the rupees after that will be absorbed on the ground.

That said, we are all a bit confused and worried about why the government does not seem to have enough trust in the civil society institutions, or even corporate organisations, for that matter. Because the new changes in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) laws are dense and baffling to many.

Similarly, it’s becoming difficult with the recent Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act amendments. If we need to stop foreign funding, fine, but then we need to find ways to increase domestic funding. So that even if someone has ₹10 to give, it should be easy to give. In which case, we have to have a dialogue on what is the enabling policy structure that will deepen and widen Indian giving.

There is a lot of work ahead, because otherwise civil society organisations will go under. And while that might not be apparent as a problem right away, over time, you will definitely see a weaker society. Because civil society institutions very quietly do a lot of work that the state and markets simply cannot do. Even if they are tiny organisations, their contribution to nation- and society-building should not be underestimated.

Conversations with the government and deeper dialogues are required much more, so that we can understand and hopefully simplify some of the new rules that have come in. There is a breakdown of trust that needs to be rebuilt. It’s a two-way street. We need more transparency from civil society organisations, but we also need enabling policies; not restrictive policies that tie them down. The state has to be more in listening mode and involve more actors from civil society before such rules are made and thrust down. We need the government to explain what is the larger mission and goal. Once we are able to understand where the government is heading, and if we can have a little more dialogue and access, it will be hugely beneficial for everyone.

Looking into the future, there are a couple of changes required. First, the policy environment needs to improve. Two, both corporate and philanthropic foundations need to begin with trust and build out plans to support resilience.

Third, civil society organisations need to get their act together in a sustainable manner to represent their sector when policy shifts and emergencies like the pandemic happen, so that all can work seamlessly and hammer out common interests beyond ideological differences.

Then, of course, people who have come into so much wealth have to experiment with giving more freely. These one-off projects that make you happy are not enough. If you want serious social change as a philanthropist, you have to make multi-year commitments and long-term funding, along with generosity and curiosity.

Philanthropy should be humble, but not modest. They have to genuinely accept failure without glorifying it. I think the future of giving in India remains positive. We should steam ahead.

● As told to Divya J Shekhar

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What Lies Beyond the Great Anthropause

The virus has shown us the impact of a disregard for nature. Small changes to urban lifestyles could make a big difference

Recently, Apple TV released a documentary called The Year Earth Changed. It takes viewers through some delightful scenes of what happened in the world of wild animals while humans were forced to take a break from their normal activities due to the zoonotic pandemic. Leopards checked into safari resorts in Africa; deer, bears and even penguins strolled around urban areas; and dolphins and humpback whales sang free again.

For months, social media worldwide was abuzz with pictures and videos of animals and birds taking back what might have been theirs if it were not for us. Nature, it seemed, had returned to everyone’s backyard.

Yet we need to go way beyond the romance of beautiful photographs to understand what is really at stake here. We are still in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. It will take a radical shift in our development models for nature and wildlife to become truly resilient again.

It was a team of UK researchers writing for Nature Ecology And Evolution in June 2020 that came up with the catchy phrase “anthropause” to describe the global reduction of human activity and mobility during the pandemic.

Scientists have long tried observationally to measure the impact of increasing human footprints on different aspects of animal biology and behaviour. This knowledge is absolutely critical for the future. It helps us understand ecosystem connections and how to preserve biodiversity, how to prevent species collapse, how to predict zoonotic crossovers into human populations, and how to keep up with the environmental change that is speeding up around the globe.

The last 30 years have been particularly devastating for many species. The next 30 will determine whether they, along with humans, thrive or just about survive.

The anthropause gave scientists a never before opportunity to create and pool data sets across large geographies. New global collaborations are quickly developing to formalise the observation and sharing of such data to inform the future. Researchers want to use bio-logging and other strategies to uncover many mysteries. How do human-built environments affect the movement of non-human beings? Which species can adapt well to human activity and which ones are left more vulnerable? And most importantly, can small changes to our lifestyles, or smarter design of our mobility networks, have a disproportionately beneficial impact on wildlife?

What are the early results telling us?

The great human confinement brought clean air, cleaner water, reduced light and noise pollution for all. It allowed non-humans a renewed chance to move and breed more freely.

Importantly, though, it is not only a rosy picture of nature bounding back. Some species have developed an inordinate dependence on humans. Many animals subsist on food waste left lying around our streets and in gutters. Others depend on our sometimes unwise generosity in feeding them. The dramatic slowdown in normal human activity left unknown numbers of rodents, cats, squirrels, street dogs, monkeys, cows and others without sustenance.

In many places, the world’s poor, pushed back further into poverty, had to depend more on ecological resources—on subsistence hunting, logging, fishing from the wild. In India, researchers observed the near doubling of species “illegally” killed for food during the lockdown last year. Without human surveillance, protected areas have been more in danger of poaching too. And feral dog packs, the biggest threat to India’s sanctuaries, roamed unrestrained.

While citizens have reported much renewed love for returning natural beauty, some researchers have noted a simultaneous increase in the sentiment against nature and wildlife. Perhaps it is a fear reaction from knowing that this pandemic emerged from the animal world. Bats, especially, have become the target of increasing human wrath. This is unfortunate as bats are important pollinators in a worldwide decline of pollinators. Another danger is that children could absorb this fear from adults, reducing their potential to preserve their own future by conserving wildlife.

With this mixed bag of effects on the human-wildlife relationship, what can we learn? What should we do better?

If anything, this past year has taught us that small things matter. That we can personally create change that quickly and positively impacts others. Millions of people have been wearing masks to that end.

What the urban elite does matters more than ever. If even 200 million urbanites of India make some small changes in habits and lifestyle, it could have a cascading effect. It can even create a subtle system shift, leading to more positive feedback loops over time.

Here are some suggestions for citizens from environmentalists, researchers and urban designers whom I reached out to.

— We can easily contribute to reduced light and noise pollution, to allow birds and other species more freedom. If you can, shift any lights near trees where birds nest or roost. Work with your local municipality office to redesign street lighting for safety for pedestrians but privacy for birds and animals.

— Respect all life—learn what role the smallest creatures like moths and spiders play. In neighbourhood parks or private gardens, leave some spaces undisturbed and dark for birds and insects to forage and breed or rest.

— Participate more in waste management, at home and outside. Don’t throw your garbage where animals can get at it. Plastic and cows, for example, are a lethal combination.

— Rethink your mobility patterns post- pandemic. Virtual conferences have a lower ecological footprint. Avoid travelling for unnecessary meetings. Club outside activities when you can. Join the “No Honking” campaign. It is astonishing how many birds and animals benefitted from a quieter environment last year. The Year Earth Changed has particularly poignant scenes of birds singing again near desolate airports and cheetahs being able to safely call out to their cubs without the rumble of tourist jeeps in the savannah.

— Don’t stop going into the wild. Forest bathing can heal us. Many local economies depend on nature tourists. More watchful eyes on protected areas can also prevent poaching and fires. Wildlife tourism rupees support conservation and help compensate for human wildlife conflict. What we can change is HOW we go into the wild. Can we be more “in the wild”? Can we reduce our noise and light, simplify our food and other conveniences?

— Policy matters. Speak up more against the roll-back of environmental protection, in our neighbourhoods, but also for all the wild places we may never visit. Each voice resonates.

— Spread new ideas for people to chew on. Should safari parks, for example, be shut once in a while to let animals breed in peace? Should we stop vehicular traffic once a week?

— All traditional fishing communities around the world across recorded history have customary practices that stop them from fishing in breeding season. Maybe we can learn from that.

If enough of us shift our mental model to incorporate such suggestions, say the experts, people may enjoy the benefits of last year’s lockdown without its tremendous suffering.

Let’s listen to what researchers and citizen scientists are telling us from this year of observation. Maybe we can mitigate the next catastrophe, not with another great anthropause, but with a gentle withdrawal from our most harmful habits. Wishful thinking—maybe the next documentary could then be titled “The Year the Earth Changed—Forever.”

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A Quest to Balance State, Society, Market

In the memory of such social sector professionals and volunteers, we have to rededicate ourselves to the work of supporting and sustaining a resilient samaaj. What better time than this current moment?

On April 24, one more life came to a premature end. Civil society lost yet another leader. Prem Kumar Varma died in Delhi at the age of 65. He was the founder and secretary of Samta, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Bihar’s Khagaria district. Everyone knew him simply as Premji.

Premji could have had two more decades to thrive and work on his crusades against man-made flooding, and the injustices that continue towards the Musahar community. It was not to be.

Like many others, Premji began his civic engagement as a socialist student leader influenced by the teachings of Ram Manohar Lohia. Later, in the 1970s, he became a follower of the Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan, with others such as Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar. Their goal was social transformation through “Sampoorna Kranti” or Total Revolution, but many landed in jail for their pains.

Those were difficult but heady days for India’s civil society, as the clouds of authoritarianism were gathering before the Emergency in 1975. Many groups were able to band together to defend democracy, constitutional rule and justice. It was hard and dangerous work. But it has served as the foundation for much of the expansion of civil society movements in the country, headed by a host of idealistic leaders with an inclusive vision and a mission of equity and justice.

During his illustrious career, Soli served as the Solicitor General for India and Attorney General for India.

Premji went on to establish Samta with the goal of a more egalitarian society. He focused on the most socially and economically marginalised Musahar community of Bihar, working on issues of human rights, flood relief and rehabilitation, safe drinking water, sanitation and livelihoods. Samta joined the water security collaborative, Megh Pyne Abhiyan, that my foundation, Arghyam, was privileged to support. For half-a-century, no matter the setbacks, he persevered in the mission for social change and justice.

On a memorable visit in 2007, when we travelled together in Bihar on a field visit, Premji explained to me his theory about why things were so lopsided in the world.

“Earlier”, he said, and I am paraphrasing here, “even when there were kings and emperors, people’s lives revolved around their communities – the samaaj. But ironically, post monarchy, the sarkaar began to get very powerful around the world and claimed a mandate for people’s welfare and began to act on behalf of the samaaj. And then later, the corporations of the bazaar began to go global and acquire even more power than the State.

So samaaj, which used to be the apex formation, was slowly replaced by the power of the State and then the power of the market. Now, samaaj is at the bottom and we are struggling to make the State and the market responsive to us as citizens.”

His words had a profound impact on me, and I began to chew on the idea and read more of history to develop the theory further. I became convinced that the work of this century is to restore the balance between samaaj, bazaar, and sarkaar. I dedicated my philanthropy to keep active citizens and society at the centre, so that markets and the State are more accountable to the larger public interest.

A heartfelt thank you, Premji, for starting me on this journey.

There are many Premjis in this country, who are totally immersed in the struggle to consolidate constitutional values in society. Sometimes, they risk life and limb in the pursuit of societal transformation.

The passing on of such leaders may not be understood for the social tragedy it is, for some time to come. As various factors, including the constrictive policies of the State, force many small organisations to fold up, samaaj will feel the impact over time.

Even the smallest NGOs go where the State and market often cannot or will not. They give voice to people. They shine a light on issues which can be tackled to prevent a future cascade. They make a good society more possible.

In the memory of such social sector professionals and volunteers, we have to rededicate ourselves to the work of supporting and sustaining a resilient samaaj. What better time than this current moment?

Hindustan Times
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