Industry leaders and philanthropists Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Rohini Nilekani have made individual and collective contributions towards furthering science and research in the city and outside. They told TOI’s Chethan Kumar in an interview that philanthropy could help provide the ‘patient funding’ that is needed to boost science and also help liberate science from ivory towers and minds from textbooks. They had recently contributed Rs 51 crore to Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB), a unique initiative that aims to open up science to the society. Excerpts:
Kiran: For a science capital of India and a science city like Bengaluru we want science to be a very important ecosystem for the city. From that point of view we feel we need to liberate science from the proverbial ivory towers and liberating minds beyond textbooks. A set up like this will enable ideas to be created and evolved. It can get society to think about science, create solutions and bust myths.
Rohini & Kris: A city like Bengaluru requires open spaces like the SGB, which is also part of an international collaboration of galleries. We thank the state government for backing something like this, because along with all the science that happens in the city, we need to create more such public spaces where citizens can get involved in science.
Kris: Philanthropy needs to be a lot more active. There are three sources of funding: Industry, government and philanthropy. Industry typically funds applied research that has a horizon of 3-5 years, so it’s government and philanthropy that looks at basic research that requires years of work. This kind of patient funding needs to be enhanced.
Rohini: We need much more patient capital/funding for research and philanthropy can help provide that.
Kiran: There’s not enough research funding in India, and philanthropy can augment this.
Kris: Up to a stage of development in a country, causes like food, primary healthcare, and education deserve immediate attention. It is only when they grow to being a middle-income society or higher that you see attention shifting from the immediate causes. India is slowly getting there and you’ll see more money from philanthropists going to science in the coming years.
Kiran: We’ve always pursued interests that we think are important for the country. I’ve personally felt the need to ensure we reach out to scientific institutions. Rohini has done a lot of work in sustainability.
Rohini: There are many that are doing work in this regard. But for a country of our size and the challenges we face, there’s a lot more to do in terms of funding research if we want to do science that can help provide solutions to all our problems.
This is an edited version of a conversation with Rohini and Nandan Nilekani as part of the #IIMChat series hosted by IIM alumni in Singapore. The event was moderated by Sonia Gupta, Vidya Vasania, and Suresh Shankar.
Like all of us in this room, while I didn’t grow up rich, I still grew up very privileged. My family was part of the urban middle class in Mumbai. I feel like just being in Mumbai was a privilege. Now, when I think of it, when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s in Mumbai, we had clean running water, we had electricity, we actually had public transport, we had roads without potholes, we had safety, we had art, we had culture, we had the sea – we had everything when I think back on it. And I think that itself was a privilege. I was also a bit of an activist do-gooder, which nobody likes, but I learned to get a little more sophisticated about it. So, it was inevitable that I would become a journalist.
When I became accidentally wealthy, because Nandan became an accidental entrepreneur, I found myself being a philanthropist. So then, I could actually support all the hundreds of thousands of amazing social entrepreneurs we have in India. This has pretty much been my journey. But I would like to add one more thing – in my family, and in those days in India I would say, we were always taught that the culture was service before self, and simple living, high thinking. My grandfather was among the first group of volunteers who went to Champaran in 1917, when Gandhiji called for help in setting up an Ashram there, during the Indigo agitation. He was held as the biggest person in the family to look up to. So those kinds of values that were instilled in us is what, I think, got me here.
Both Nandan and I support different things. But after he lost the election and said, “Now what shall I do”, we started working together in 2014. And it has been quite a journey. We support the intellectual infrastructure of India, including many policy think tanks. I am very passionately involved in environmental issues, and education has been at the very core of my work. I also care about access to justice, which is very important in a country like ours, and active citizenship. The goal is societal change, which is why, if you ask, “What did you achieve?”, most philanthropists cannot tell you what they achieved because societal change is so extremely hard to bring about. And sometimes the solutions lead to the next set of problems. But you have to keep at it and keep at it and keep at it. You have to create evolvability in your approach.
I think the first thing I changed my mind about was wealth. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, we thought wealthy people were not exactly the world’s best people. The country was a bit socialist and leftist, and we thought it best to stay away from wealthy people. And then I suddenly found myself wealthy and I said, “Oops.” It took me a while, but I changed my mind about wealthy people, wealth, and the responsibility of wealth. The other thing I got to change my mind about, because it is now 42 years that I have been living with one man, is technology. I studied the liberal arts, unlike many of you in IIMs and IITs. So, I was more interested in French literature and poetry and a little bit of economics, but was a bit skeptical about the impact technology can have on the world. But my God, I’ve changed my mind since then.
Climate Change, Urban Governance, and Samaaj
I have been talking about ‘Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar’ for years now, but I owe the origin of that thinking to Prem Kumar Verma, one of our partners in my foundation, Arghyam. We were on this road trip in Bihar, from Patna to Khagaria, and that too at night, which I am not sure is the smartest thing to do. But during that journey, he told us many stories, including how there was a massacre at a village and my friend asked, “So where was that?” And he answered, “Jahan pe hum jaa rahe hai, wahi pe hua tha.” [It happened where we are going]. So we felt even safer. But he also talked about his own insights. He was a protege of JP Narayan, who started the Sampoorna Kranti revolution in India against corruption. During our journey, he told us that there seems to be a great imbalance in the world, because earlier Samaaj or society used to be the foundational and clearly more powerful sector. Even though they were monarchs, they really didn’t interfere too much in the life of Samaaj.
But in the last two or three centuries, especially since the Industrial Revolution, the Bazaar or the markets became more and more powerful, and he gave the example of the East India Company. Then in the last century, the state became incredibly powerful. So Samaaj has been pushed back a little, and he felt that was at the root of some of the problems that we were all facing. I found that this was a very powerful way of framing the question. And I started doing a lot of research on my own, and then talking more, writing more, thinking more about Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar. The need for a better balance between the three sectors is what animates my work and philosophy. So, no matter which sector we work in, the goal is to strengthen Samaaj. How can you strengthen Samaaj to solve much of its own problems? And, through its moral leadership and through its institutions, how can it hold the Sarkaar and Bazaar i.e. the state and markets much more accountable to the wider public interest? Because nowadays, we get up in the morning and open Amazon or Google, and we immediately become customers even before we brush our teeth. Sometimes we see ourselves as subjects of the state, rather than citizens of a society. So, is there something we need to change? Is there some mental model flip that we need to make? That is my quest.
And it is really a quest. I am no expert, I am not an economist or historian. As a citizen, I believe this and I think there is a dialogue that needs to be had. We have reached peak polarization and I think people are fed up of it. We can all learn to build bridges, so that this discourse, about the role of Samaaj and society in the 21st century, can be deepened across the aisle, without canceling anybody and without any judgment.
In Mumbai during the 60s and 70s, there was not much of a difference between the rich and the middle classes. But in today’s India, the elite have, over the last four or five decades, completely seceded from all public services, right? And I am including myself in that. We have our own water, electricity, transport, education – everything you can think of, we have seceded from the rest. We have separated from the rest. And that doesn’t bode too well for democracy at large. So I believe that we now need what I call the end of secession, because we know that you cannot secede from pandemics. You cannot secede from bad air quality. You cannot secede from floods. When the recent Bangalore floods happened, many friends we know lost tens of crores of their assets, and it was really shocking for them. So many slum people nearby also had all their assets washed away. That is when I wrote about the responsibility of the 1% to do a little more, because this secession of the elite has resulted in castles being built on a very weak public foundation. We have excellent private infrastructure, but it is built on the back of a weak foundation of public services. So can we, the elite, participate in some way or the other? And there is always scope to do a lot in India so that the public foundation, whether it is a physical infra, digital infra, in any field whatsoever, is so strong that then, on top of that, wealth creation can lead to the elite. They can build their own fortresses or palaces or what have you, but on top of the foundation that everyone can benefit from. That is the argument I was making.
One of Nandan’s passions, and it is something that we are both very interested in, is urban governance and how cities should develop in India. We support a lot of organizations trying to do that work, because in Bangalore, I think we have the best Samaaj of urban reformers anywhere in the world. Every few inches you can trip over one reformer. They sometimes fight with each other, but they also sometimes work together. As a proud Bangalorean, I believe that many of the most interesting ideas on reform across the sector come from Bangalore. So that is an important thing. But I also think that the wealthy do have an extra responsibility in a country like India. Right now there is no great backlash against the wealthy in India as there is in many other parts of the world. I think that is because India is still a growing economy. People are still very, very hopeful about their own future. Most of India comes at the top of optimism surveys all the time. And when people believe that there is headroom for them to grow, then they are optimistic and do not resent what is happening with the very unequal wealth creation that is happening around the world and in India. But that is why the wealthy have so much of a responsibility to make that base stronger. So they need to engage in societal issues, whether it is about livable cities, whether it is about how people sometimes want to go back, or how we are going to reimagine our agricultural economy. Because all of us urban denizens are so dependent on other people’s products and services, just as all urban people are all over the world. So it is a matter of great interest to us.
Although I’m not an expert, I would say that things have improved so much in the agricultural sector. When I was young, we were still reading about hunger and starvation. Today also, the pandemic has certainly pushed a lot of people back under the poverty line, in India as well as globally. But at least in South India, you will not find a single hungry soul. And in much of the rest of India, the situation is improving however there are, of course, going to be pockets where more work must be done. But we do not know what is going to happen next. Due to climate change, our food production patterns are going to change dramatically, and the government policies and the markets are going to have to keep up. So all of us have to be worried about food – its production, transportation, and the energy and nutrition of food, not just for ourselves, but for all the people around us too.
I think in India, people are feeling the effects of climate change quite directly on their lives. We have had floods and droughts, and as we know, one disaster can change the lives of tens of millions of people. I am very happy to support organizations like Goonj, who are present on the ground the minute something like that happens, and who have a very revolutionary approach to helping the people get back on their feet. So people are feeling climate change. And I think they will be open to policy shifts that seem to have a lot of short term trade offs. They can see that in the long term they want their children’s lives to be better.
I had the good fortune of bumping into an old friend, Adam Werbach, recently. He was the youngest president of the Sierra Club and quite an environmental activist – he actually helped to re-green many of America’s national parks. But then he began to understand that it is not enough to stand outside the gates and agitate. He started to understand that we have to work with the government, of course, but also and especially with corporates if we are going to have a real, serious impact on consumption and therefore emissions and climate change. Today, he works with Amazon, and he works on sustainability.
There has been so much doom and gloom in this conversation over the last 30 years because governments simply have not been able to move as fast as all of us want. But we have not moved fast either. We have not particularly changed our lifestyle. But we like to tell the government to move faster than Samaj can because that is okay. Yet, in my conversation with Adam, he said something that really made me think. He mentioned how companies like Amazon are using 75% renewable energy in their supply chain. And he said something that I think we have not realized yet – humanity’s most important task now is to reverse 300 years of putting carbon into space. We do not think of it and it is not visible yet, but we are on the right track. I told him that many grandparents feel bad about what their grandchildren’s lives are going to be like in the future. He replied, “You know, I believe that in your grandson’s life, around 2060-2070, you will have less carbon in the air than we have today.” So many good things are happening. Of course, that does not mean all of us can now pack up, go home, and buy our next blingy thing. We have to keep at it, work at it, look at our own lives, look at what policy work we can support, and what action we can support on the ground so that Adam’s predictions for my grandson’s 60th birthday can come true.
How Philanthropy is Changing
In terms of striking a balance between the professional and personal, I think the main thing is that if your professional life and your personal life and interests are too diverse from each other, you can create unhappiness for yourself. So, at least for Nandan and I, our professional and personal lives are not that separate. We think about the same kind of issues in both and we have been very lucky that it is kind of seamless, unlike Americans who separate their Monday to Friday lives from the weekend. So we are very privileged to be able to say that it has been aligned. Having said that, of course, there is always the desire for being alone with yourself so that you can think and absorb the mysteries of the universe. We are lucky to get that time as well. I do that by disappearing into the forest. During the pandemic, I was away for 80 days. Nandan was quite happy with this situation. I stayed in Kabini, searching for the elusive Black Panther. In the end, after five years of searching for Karia as he is called, I finally found him in December 2020.
Philanthropy is not so easy as well. It takes time to learn how to give well, as some of you already expressed. So it has been a bumpy journey. When I came into wealth for the first time, I came into 100 crores, which at that time seemed like a mountain of money. And I decided to put it all into my foundation because I did not think we needed it in our personal life. So when I got my first chunk of wealth, I just put it all into Arghyam. And then of course, as I said, the way the economy is structured, the wealthy make more wealth while they are sleeping than most entrepreneurs used to make in their whole lifetime. So we became more and more wealthy and had to learn to give more and more away, faster and faster.
So we became more ambitious, took more risks, and had more trust in people, ideas, and institutions and that is how it has been going on. That is the philosophy. Trust in good ideas, good individuals, and good institutions, and let go of a little bit of control. That is when you find the opportunities to give more.
It also helps to remember that we are all members of Samaaj, first and foremost. We all have multiple identities but when you go to sleep, all those identities have to get stripped away. You are a human being first and a citizen next. And, of course, you may be a father or a mother too. But I think we sometimes get confused about those identities in our day jobs. We forget how much we are citizens at our core, when we go into our corporate selves. And I think that alignment has to be returned. Survey after survey says young people do not want to work for companies that do not have an expressed purpose to improve the world. So this change is very essential. As I say in my book, and I often say in person, even and especially in the Bazaar and in your corporate avatars, there is so much change you can do, by making the smallest of differences. If we have these conversations in the workplace, I think aligning purpose and profit can happen better. But we have to wake up and think about it very deeply, not just at a surface level. We know that capitalism has always evolved and tried to change based on the resistances it has found. And we are seeing that happen. We are seeing so much of conscious capitalism, stakeholder capitalism, all kinds of nuances in capitalism are coming into the marketplace. Nick Stern said that climate change is actually market failure. And I think the market has woken up to that sense of failure and wants to find new opportunities to reverse this failure. So that is the first thing I think all of us have to do, to keep that conversation at the dinner table ongoing. It is not something you forget about when you come home from work.
With the pandemic and other crises, we have seen how Samaaj comes together to help each other. But it is easy to do something in a crisis and then forget about it. I do want to note that we are seeing how the short and long term is now merging. Crises seem to roll about, but I have had the great fortune to support dozens of young leaders who are pulling together young citizens of India to solve their own hyper local problems. For example, Reap Benefit created something called Solve Ninjas and they have 50,000 Solve Ninjas around the country who look at some local problem and activate citizens around them to solve the problem. It could be about water, it could be about some public infrastructure, it could be about education or fixing a school. There are all kinds of things that they do. There are many other examples of initiatives like this. So I think people are actually putting a little part of their everyday time into this because it makes them feel very good. I met many of those volunteers. It gives them great purpose and satisfaction to do good and belong to a club of people like them. So we are seeing things move among a section of young people.
We have also seen retail giving in India growing by leaps and bounds. 300 crores were raised in just a short period during COVID by ordinary citizens who are not even used to giving that kind of money. Today, there are many more people doing small giving through events like Daan Utsav which is held from October 2nd to October 9th every year. So it is not just about giving their time but also their money on a routine basis.
I think faith and hope are necessary things. And I get my hope and faith from the people that I meet in India. I also live with a man who is an optimist, and sometimes is quite irritatingly optimistic. But I can say, it is infectious. What is most infectious is definitely, definitely going in the field, and seeing people giving so much of themselves to change the world. Then you come back and say, “Yeah, I can do it too!” I also look at my grandchild and I wake up wanting the world to be just a little better every day, for his sake.
In this session of The Conversation Series, Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and a committed philanthropist, shares insights into her journey from self to society, and recounts personal stories of how she arrived at this philosophy of a strong Samaaj as the foundational sector. The author of ‘SAMAAJ, SARKAAR, BAZAAR: A Citizen-First Approach’ addresses questions such as: What does it mean to reclaim our role as citizens? What does this ‘citizen-first approach’ entail? What is the role of citizens in co-creating good governance?
This is an edited version of an episode of The Conversation Series, hosted by Ahmedabad University. In conversation with Prof. Jeemol Unni, Rohini Nilekani discusses her journey in philanthropy and her philosophy of building a strong Samaaj. * I was born in 1959, and when and where you were born really has an impact on how you lead your life. Of course, that is true of everybody. I think that time in India, there was a certain outlook, where citizens were called upon to reflect on the state of the nation, on our contribution to the nation. Politically, there was a lot of salience to the idea of citizenship. And I grew up in those times. In my family, my parents were first generation urbanites. And we were lucky to be in Mumbai, which was an amazing city in those days, where the public infrastructure was actually very good. So the difference between public and private infrastructure was really not as great as you see in India today.
The way we were raised reflected the ideals in the country at that time as well – to believe in service before self, in responsibility, in duty, and in integrity. The big example in my family was always of my paternal grandfather, Babasaheb Soman, who in 1917 was among the first group of volunteers that went to Bhitiharwa in West Champaran to help set up Gandhiji’s first Ashram. He was a lawyer, but he gave up his profession. He never really was able to focus on his profession, because he was very much involved in the freedom struggle. I often think about what that kind of sacrifice means and how this country stood on the sacrifices of people – the bigger ones we know, but so many ordinary people like my grandfather as well. So I think background, culture, and upbringing matters. I think location matters. Being in a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai, where everybody was trying to make something of their lives, all those things had a huge influence on me. Restoring Primacy to Samaaj
15 years ago, I was traveling for work related to Arghyam, my foundation for water that I set up in Bihar. One of our partners was Prem Kumar Varma, who unfortunately passed away during the pandemic. On my trip all those years ago, he was speaking to me about Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar. He was a protege of JP Narayan, whose Sampoorna Kranti movement animated a lot of the politics in North India for several years. However, Premji’s conversation on the role of the three sectors stretched far beyond the 60s, back to two centuries ago, when he believed that Samaaj was more meaningful and the role of the Sarkaar and Bazaar were somewhat limited, even during the time of monarchies. That balance has changed a lot in the last century. Today, we are seeing the powerful rise of both the state and the markets all over the world. And so the question is, “How do we restore primacy to Samaaj?” Because all of us are Samaaj. Sarkaar and Bazaar came out of Samaaj. So the political questions about power today are really about how we can restore that primacy to Samaaj. At least in my opinion. And that is why I wrote the book, Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar: A Citizen-First Approach. Because that philosophy has animated my work. For thousands of years, people have discussed citizenship and the idea of Samaaj, whether it was Aristotle, or whether it was in any kind of context about people and their lives. So, all of us are Samaaj. Samaaj is the whole human tribe. And whether we work in Sarkaar or we work in Bazaar, it does not take away from us belonging to Samaaj first. And I think as long as we understand that very clearly, how we will behave in Sarkaar and Bazaar will change based on whether we understand, of course, that whether we are CEOs or chief ministers, we are humans first and citizens next. So I think Samaaj is all of us. Samaaj is all of the institutions that we belong to. And there could be many, many identities. In India, we are part of so many caste groups, unfortunately, but that is the living reality. I could be part of my neighborhood association. Of course, I am part of my family, an extended family. But any representation that we have in our communities are representations of us as being in Samaaj. So that is what I mean by Samaaj.
If we all do not strive to restore a better balance between the three sectors, I think the political question of the day is whether we are willing to remain consumers of the markets and subjects of the state. We have been turned into consumers from when we wake up and look at our phones, clicking on something or using some app, to when we go to sleep at night, because all of that is an aspect of the market. Similarly, we have become subjects of the state in our daily lives as well, in some form or the other. As long as that is working for people, it is alright. But when the balance gets distorted, that is when we need politics right? Because it is about the redistribution of power, so that there is a much better balance between the state, society, and markets. I think that many people in many ways, all over the world and in India too, are striving for that better balance.
For example, there are thousands of very wonderful civil society organizations that work on the Samaaj side, to give people more voice and agency. And I think that is the work of the day. How do we make the Bazaar in all its new forms – which are growing exponentially thanks to technology – more accountable to the larger public interest? Similarly, the Sarkaar has so much more power today, again thanks to technology. How do we keep it accountable to its citizens and not allow it to become a power unto itself? These are living, breathing questions that affect each one of us. So that is what the politics of today is about.
Today we are seeing several kinds of civil society institutions stepping up to do this work and empower people. It is not just what we used to call NGOs in the 70s who are doing this work now, it is any form of civic associations. For example, in urban India today, there are resident welfare associations. To me, a citizen-first approach is also meant to shift our mental model, to understand that we are citizens first, right? And that markets and states evolved over centuries in order to serve the larger public interest of Samaaj. If we flip the model to understand that we have to be activist citizens first, then it changes how we behave in our day-to-day lives, in the associations that we form, in how we become participants in creating the good governance that we all want. It could be just by participating in a child’s education at the lowest possible level. It could be getting involved in your street level problem, whether it is about waste management or lights, or it could be just about anything. The minute we do that, the minute we step outside into society to solve even the most hyperlocal problem, I think that we raise the citizen in ourselves. And it is an incredibly rewarding experience, as all of us who have engaged in that, however small a way, have already discovered. So, we need a lot more of that to happen. Because it has become too easy now to secede from everything and just remain as subjects and consumers. We can sit in our homes and be unaffected. But I think that is just an illusion. As I recently wrote, even the elite and the super elite cannot really secede anymore. You know, we have created all these private islands of wealth – we have our own schools, we have our own energy systems, our own water systems, our own health systems. Anything you can think of, we have it. But as I have been arguing recently, if all of that wonderful, private infrastructure is sitting, as it does, on a very shaky foundation of public infrastructure, eventually that too is going to crumble. So how do we participate in making the public infrastructure foundation much stronger and more resilient? Because if anything, the pandemic has shown us just how deeply interconnected we are, and how nobody can escape from viruses, floods, climate change, and more, right? So we have to go out there, outside of our homes and families, to participate in creating the well-governed society that all of us crave to belong to. And it is an ongoing process. There is no endpoint, we have to keep continuing. Solutions sometimes create new problems. So we have to keep on evolving the solutions. And we all have to participate. All of us have diverse skills, and we have to apply those diverse skills, I believe, to build the better Samaaj that everyone wants to belong to. Philanthropy and Urban Governance With the rise of the 1%, the world has gotten split, right? They became so wealthy, and I belong to that class. We became so ridiculously wealthy, that we had to elevate the idea of philanthropy. Suddenly, I found myself a philanthropist and I had to deal with the responsibility of my wealth. On the other hand, charity is something that human beings do all the time. And in India, we know that people are incredibly charitable. There is enough data to suggest just how much charity ordinary people of this country do. Hundreds of crores were spent by ordinary Indians during the pandemic. And institutions like GiveIndia were able to raise more than 350 crores, just from ordinary people who felt the need to share other people’s sorrows. So, there is a sense that charity just comes from the love of humankind, the need that we all are wired to have – to relieve other people’s suffering. But philanthropy nowadays, at least, is aspiring to be more strategic and to address the root causes of inequality. That is what good philanthropy should be doing. So it is a fairly simple difference between charity and philanthropy, and I think it has been created because of the rise of extreme wealth inequality. What are the wealthy going to do with their wealth? They better give it forward, because no society will tolerate so much disparity for too long. So, the responsibility of wealth must be seen to create better societies. We have seen examples of what happens when the wealthy do not take responsibility across history, when wealth disparity creates more suffering at the bottom and more secession at the top, leading to turmoil in society. So there is a responsibility of wealth. Yes, we need wealth creation. Yes, wealth creation must come from innovation, from providing better services and goods. But those who acquire that wealth have a deep responsibility to give it back. Wealth has a responsibility and extreme wealth has an extreme responsibility. So that is what philanthropy should be about.
However with the rise in wealth inequality across the globe, India is an interesting outlier in some sense, along with some countries in Africa as well. Today, research after research, survey after survey, shows that Indians still feel very optimistic about their future. Ordinary Indians, whenever they are surveyed, say that they still feel there is headroom for them to grow. It is societies where you have seen young people feeling very economically stagnant, who have lost hope that they will have better futures than their parents did, for example, where the question of inequality hits hardest. This has clearly influenced the politics of so many countries. But in India, people still feel hopeful about their futures. Very often, I ask certain taxi drivers or other people and they seem to not yet resent the wealth creation that is happening in this country, because they are seeing it as dynamic economics. They still feel that they can participate in this growth, and that it is a wide growth. Now, it is up to this country, its government, its policies, and its entrepreneurs to make sure that people continue to feel that they can participate in this wealth creation, and in this growing economy. So we still have a few years left to get it right. When Nandan decided to stand for the Lok Sabha seat of South Bangalore in 2014, I had to take a dip in electoral politics myself. One night, we were on the streets at people’s doors, telling them why we believed they should vote for Nandan Nilekani. Of course, different people had different responses to us. But what astounded me was that whether they were the elite living in high rises with swimming pools, or whether they were people living in shanties and slums, they all wanted the Lok Sabha MP to directly address their local level problem.
We know that there was no sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the different three tiers, because nobody tells us and we do not discuss these things. We do not discuss the real role of our legislators. And that conversation is missing from the media and it is missing from the public discourse. So I cannot blame people for wanting the most basic amenities in their lives to work, right? That is stopping them from reaching their own potential. For example, it is hard to get to work if there is not enough water, just the very basic things. I took that for granted in Mumbai, even though we were not wealthy, we were ordinary, middle class people. But we could take public services for granted in Mumbai at that time. Nobody can take public services for granted anymore.
So, voters are impatient and want every politician to serve their personal needs. But unfortunately, that is very short sighted on our part as voters. Because what we need to hold a politician accountable to, at least at the MP level, is making the good laws, the good regulations, and the good policies that will actually enable the executive to do its job, and create that public infrastructure. One elected representative is obviously not going to do it for anybody, it is impossible. You would need to be a superhero to do that.
I think that is why I say people expect too much, and too much of the wrong thing from their politicians. If we allow our legislators to participate vigorously in the creation of better laws, we would see greater improvements. In my book I have argued that better laws make for good societies, and good laws make for good societies, if they are implemented and upheld. Rule of law matters. And that is what we must hold our politicians accountable to us to do, among other things. Of course, they also have to hold the executive accountable. But if we have the right policies, the right laws with deep public discourse, I think that is half the battle won. So we need the voters to shift a little in their expectations of their politicians.
Today in India, the 74th amendment is completely unrealised. We do not even have a functioning municipality in Bangalore right now – there is no mayor, everything has been suspended. People are so frustrated. We need elections to happen. We need to elect our representatives in our cities. I think very few cities have achieved the kind of 21st century governance that our cities need. And unless citizens get involved, it is simply not going to happen. You cannot sit at home and consume good governance. You have to co-create it. You have to be out there and demand it, fight for it. More than fighting, you need to work for it. That is harder. If we do not do that, our cities will remain dysfunctional, and unfortunately we are seeing it more and more in Bangalore. Government after government is struggling to cope with the growth of the city. And there is so much work ahead in urban governance.
Participating in the Digital Future The digital age really compounds change. Change becomes so much faster, and everything is so much more complex because of the digital revolution. And there is no escaping the digital age, right? So we have no choice but to be digitally savvy. For people my age, it is a bit harder, but for my grandson’s age, it seems to come as naturally as playing games. So there are obviously new challenges facing us in this digital age. And it makes being a citizen in some sense even harder. If digital is done right, it will reduce the distance between the citizen and the government, and between the citizen and the markets. But if not done right, then actually you get layers and layers of non-transparent markets and states.
So, the task before all of us is to become savvier as digital citizens. And the task before civil society organizations in India is to give up any reluctance to join the technological age, and actually create a thriving digital civil society. Because we need a digital civil society to hold the digital state and digital markets accountable to the public interest. And within the public, within the Samaaj also, there is so much competition, rivalry, and conflict. This is playing out in the digital space today, whether it is through social media or something else. So you need digital checks and balances in the digital age. The digital age is also new, and so society is still developing the new norms that will govern civility in the virtual world. But it has to come. I really believe that people are totally fed up with the crazy polarization, the hate spewing, and anonymous hate that is spreading.
I believe people are fed up. And these things cannot keep on going endlessly. So something will come to balance this out. We need new norms. We need new forms of behavior online, which are much more civil than we are seeing today. Some organizations are working on that. And it is collectively our responsibility to create a very different digital future. But I believe it will happen. It has to happen. The digital divide in India is an issue we have to address, but let us also look at the positive side. There are more than 700 million smartphones in India. Even surveys like ASER, the education survey that Pratham carries out, showed a rising number of people deciding to join the virtual learning community by buying the family’s first phone during the pandemic. Of course, it is not perfect, but there is a growing segment of people that have access to smartphones, and we have to keep pushing so that every single person has access to cheap data and good smartphones, because there is really no escape. So much of life is happening on those virtual devices. So actually India is in a better place than many other countries.
I would say India has one of the most sophisticated, open, public, digital infrastructures in the world. And I truly believe, after seeing Nandan’s vision for universal access to digital public goods and services whether in the markets or in our relationship with the state, India is in a remarkable place. If we really build out the remaining parts of that digital public infrastructure, I have truly begun to believe that it is the foundation for economic democracy. Of course, nothing goes in a linear fashion. And if people do not work for it, it is not going to happen.
But if we work for it, if we spread awareness for it, if there is an almost civic movement, these tools which are now allowing market transactions to be leveled out and allowing citizens to reach out and make demands of the state, if you get that right, these are the tools for economic democracy. And economic democracy, social democracy, political democracy are very closely tied. So, I try to be optimistic on this. But really, the future is what we make of it. So there is really a lot on Samaaj’s plate right now, with all these changes happening around us. But good things are happening in terms of digital public infrastructure. And we need to participate in democratizing that further.
I derive a lot of my positive energy from meeting young people in this country wherever I go. And I always come back feeling optimistic about being such a young country. Young people are usually optimistic, idealistic, and energetic. And we are very lucky that for the next 20-30 years, India is going to remain a young country. So universities have a big role to play in this, because from ancient times, they have been the cradle of politics, whether we like it or not. And I do not mean politics in terms of electoral politics at all. That could be one of the streams that emerges. But I mean politics in terms of being continually concerned about the distribution of power in society, right? Young people have to be seized off what is actually happening in the real world, and what happened in history about the distribution of power in society. And whether you are studying mechanical engineering, computer science, or sociology, it does not matter. I think to really be able to understand the distribution of power in society, those years in university are the crucial formative years when you develop your worldviews, where you have time to think of the past, and not just rush into the future. So universities have a huge role to play, I believe. I went to Elphinstone College, Mumbai from 1976 to 1979. So can you imagine those are the Emergency and post-Emergency years? There was thriving discourse. I do not think I was as much in class, as I was in the corridors of Elphinstone College. But everybody was talking about what it means, what emergency powers mean, how does it affect us as citizens? What should we be doing? What is resistance? What does resistance look like? And within two years, fortunately, we came out of that darkness and that real enthusiasm for the new government, and of course all kinds of things started to happen pretty quickly then. But imagine, those years in this country’s political life is when we were in college. And I think it was as much of what our college did and did not do, so that we could allow our minds to be free. I think it was a remarkable experience for us at that time. I am not suggesting that students continually disrupt their learning life. Because really, today, what they learn has become so important to develop their capacities, because the future of work is changing so rapidly. So to get those foundational, resilient sort of capabilities in your school and college has become even more important. So you have to focus on your studies. But this is also the time when you have to ponder about the distribution of power in society. So universities have to allow for that freedom.
Few people in India have confronted issues of social urgency in the many ways that Rohini Nilekani does—as a philanthropist, but equally, as a founder-member of some of India’s best-known civil society organisations, as an inveterate mediator between society, state and market, and as a writer who has thought long and hard about what happens when people come together to fix a problem. Her new book, Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar: A Citizen’s First Approach (Notion Press; 270 pages; ₹ 349), is a collection of her writings and speeches on the intersection of the three spheres. She speaks about her life as a reporter, rights-based activism and community action. Excerpts:
Your tribute to the river Aghanashini is among the most evocative and impactful pieces in this collection. You also funded a film on the river. What is it about the river that is close to your heart?
The Aghanashini emerges from the town of Sirsi, and the village Nilekani is part of Sirsi. For the past 41 years that I have been married, whenever we went back to Sirsi, I was able to see it. And, hearing about the people’s struggle to save it from being dredged and meeting those who have been trying to keep it clean, I felt it was a story worth writing.
What was life as a reporter like in the 1980s? What stories do you remember covering?
I remember covering the Antulay cement scandal. I remember struggling to understand the political and economic implications of it. I had lots of fun reporting on the city. We were India’s first city magazine—Bombay. It was exciting because we had to cover fashion design, celebrities, politics and business. In some sense it exposed me to the workings of samaaj, sarkaar and bazaar—I got to cover all of it. I even covered a murder in a Bandbox.
Then I started writing for India Today. I covered India’s first satellite launch— Insat 1A at Cape Canaveral. While the satellite failed, I do clearly remember the pristine surroundings and our scientists solemnly breaking coconuts and doing a little pooja before the launch.
You hosted a show, Uncommon Ground, for NDTV, bringing business and civil society leaders together to discuss something of interest to them both. How did this idea take shape?
I loved TV as a medium. I didn’t pursue it in my journalistic career because there weren’t a lot of opportunities till NDTV came, and also, I was travelling a lot with Nandan. As I travelled, because of his corporate career, and my interest in social issues, I could see how everyone’s goals seemed to be the same at some level, and yet, there was no conversation between the social sector and the corporate sector. Since I knew both sides somewhat well, I said, why don’t I facilitate dialogue between representatives from both sectors—not talking at each other so much as talking to each other—on national television. When I approached NDTV, they were very keen that I do it. I reached out to people and everyone said yes right away. I enjoyed it a lot and it made sense to turn it into a book more as a record than anything else. A lot of people asked, why did you stop, why didn’t you continue to do that show? I guess Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar is one way to pick up that thread again, as to how we can create and continue that conversation across sectors.
What was it like setting up and working in a civil society organisation for the first time, over 30 years ago—what did you set out to achieve with Nagarik?
We failed spectacularly. We set out very idealistically saying we can do something for safer roads—because of a tragedy I had personally experienced but also because of the newspaper headlines every day. India remains a country with the highest road accident rate, and when you think of how few cars we have per capita, how few vehicles, it remains a real tragedy that not enough focus is given to road safety. But we didn’t quite know what to do. Everyone had other jobs. We worked very hard, put in a lot of hours. I remember standing at junctions with traffic police, talking to motorists, making sure signs were put up right. At the time there were about 32,000 traffic junctions in the city, and we might have worked on 20. So the scale of the problem and our response were not aligned. I think, mainly, we didn’t know how to make this the pressing issue of the time, or we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You have to either fight for issues that people are concerned about or spend a lot of time drawing attention to those issues. We learned a lot along the way, we made minor improvements at some junctions, we got the conversations going. In my heart I would still like to support people who are concerned about this. I am sorry I haven’t done much about it.
Where do you get your optimistic streak from?
You have to go into India and meet people. You cannot come back depressed. Most of the time, people are trying to do whatever they can to better their situation. And we tend to meet people who are trying to be part of the solution, so we get energised by them. You have got to be optimistic in a young country.
The second reason is that Nandan is an optimistic spouse.
You are passionate about civic engagement and about ways to scale it. What is your take on the protests and citizen movements, such as those against the farm laws and against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, that mobilised more people than anyone could have thought possible in an age of web petitions?
I think when people have to come to the streets to sustain a movement, we have to understand it very carefully, no matter what the politics. In a democracy we have to allow these voices to be heard. It is not easy to come together for collective action these days. It is so much easier to go click click click. In the farmers’ agitation we did see the political class taking note. In a democracy, the ability to go out and make your case, whether it is for Nirbhaya, against corruption or environmental pollution, or to demand your rights, which you think are not met, whether it is anganwadi workers, whoever it is, we have to respectfully give space for that.
Is this space shrinking?
Sometimes governments don’t like too much protest. Nobody wants everything spilling out on the streets. Other members of the samaaj, too, get angry if the streets are blocked. Worldwide, the space for dissent is shrinking. Yet, when people feel wronged, they will always make themselves heard. In my articles you will see this thread about why governments should allow for dissent, and not be thin-skinned.
You have written about the dangerous trend towards criminalising minor and common failings.
Our access-to-justice portfolio is fairly large. Actually, there is consensus at many levels, and this government has scrapped a lot of outdated laws. What is important is to have a public conversation on the role of punishment. Do we need imprisonment and hefty fines for minor crimes? This is where the samaaj needs to wake up. There are so many laws criminalising small, human failings. It is a good time to take stock, create the right framework that is discussed openly, about what laws should be made and how punishment should be framed. Issues of crime and punishment need to be discussed in society. Is the purpose of punishment reform or just revenge? All human beings need chances to reform themselves. I am not saying release everybody. But every society has had to deal with crime and punishment. This question has to stay alive—what is the end objective of punishment? How should society respond? I am interested in this public discourse.
Is there a middle ground between rights-based activism and community action?
A lot of people are inspired to speak up for those who are left behind. They feel it is their moral duty. When you meet them, you realise they are full of that zeal. I do admire that. But there is also a space, which is being filled increasingly in today’s civil society, where people see themselves as actionists rather than activists. That’s the middle ground where you don’t deny the injustice, you don’t only play the role of calling it out loudly, you work through the system, to figure out how things can be changed for the better. You find champions inside the state, you find support in society, you look for sources in the bazaar, you try to build bridges, create constructive positive work around the problem. That element is growing in civil society. For instance, after Aadhaar, so many organisations have set up help centres to help people understand their rights and translated government policy to make it accessible to citizens. Those are critical things. They are also asking people to be more aware and to know what they have to do. If you look at Reap Benefit, for instance, their Solve Ninjas go into their own communities and figure out how to solve local problems through community action.
As part of continuing the work I began on Uncommon Ground, we have helped incubate an organisation, which was already doing work on mediation to create what we call the societal muscle for dialogue. How do you prepare people and societies to reduce or prevent conflict? It’s almost a science because there are some clear methods you can use. They call themselves Kshetra and they have had a tremendous response. A lot of people from NGOs to corporates to educational institutions want to install this process. We have to see how to scale it.
Can you tell us about adolescent boys and men as a focus area in your portfolio?
Earlier as a feminist, and then as someone who feels that we need to go to the root causes of things, when I began to see young men on my travels and the situations they find themselves trapped in, I felt it was important to think of a portfolio of approaches to address the issues they are facing. I don’t think they have enough safe spaces or role models. They are often forced into identities that are thrust on them. We need to imagine a new public policy oriented towards what the 200 million or so young men in this country need. It’s not just sports and skilling. It needs to be more than that. This has been interesting us and when we started supporting organisations dealing with it, there were just one or two, now there are 14-15 who are working with young men and trying to help them, sometimes just giving them a bit of space to speak and think. We have to secure the future of all our youth and look at what could go wrong with them and try to prevent it.
This is an edited version of ThePrint’s ‘Off The Cuff’, a conversation between Rohini Nilekani, ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, and Senior Editor Sandhya Ramesh. They discuss Rohini’s new book, ‘Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar’, as well as the changing nature of philosophy, the role of women, and how technology can be used to improve education.
My book, ‘Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar’, is based on a lot of the work I’ve been doing over the last 30 years. Through my experiences in the sector and the kinds of people I have met, I propose that Samaaj is really the foundational sector and the Sarkaar and Bazaar are created to serve Samaaj. Markets didn’t come first, the state didn’t emerge first, it is society that emerged first in various forms. And today, I feel that we need to really understand how important Samaaj is as the base, the foundational first sector. Sometimes even civil society organizations are called ‘the third sector’, but that doesn’t make too much sense to me. Civil society in all its forms and its representative institutions are the first and foremost sector, and the Sarkaar and Bazaar were created to enable the larger public interest. There’s no question that all three must work together. We cannot do without the Sarkaar and Bazaar. But I just wanted to focus on the fact that whether we are part of the Bazaar or are working with the government, we are all human beings and citizens first, before these other identities. Always remember that we are Samaaj first.
Creating Active Citizens
This book came together because I felt it was time to put everything in one place. A lot of people, gratifyingly, have been using the phrase ‘Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar’. Although people have been talking about the role of markets, society, and the state for hundreds of years, I thought this was the time for me to write my particular take on it and bring together all that I’ve been speaking and writing about over the years. I wanted to clarify what I meant by saying that Samaaj is the foundational sector and this book also gave me the opportunity to write 10,000 new words and includes some of my latest writing on the subject. I hope that the book will be a conversation starter. The reason I have put it out in the Creative Commons where it is available to download for free, is so that everyone – especially young people – are able to access it easily and use it to trigger conversations among themselves. I want them to question and discuss how we should think of Samaaj, how we should think about the accountability of our Sarkaar and Bazaar to society, and what that actually means. So for me, this book is like a conversation starter, it’s an invitation to deepen the public discourse.
I think it is very important to engage young people in these conversations. We are such a young nation and young people are usually idealistic. While some of us are always looking back, young people like to look ahead, their future lies ahead of them. And I think in a country like ours, with its extreme diversity and very lively debates, young people need to be involved in these discussions about India’s future. We have so many complex problems but when young people get involved and become an active part of finding solutions to better their neighbourhoods and communities, it helps them to develop a sense of community, it helps them to develop their critical thinking, and it also helps them to learn leadership skills. And after talking to the many, many, many young people in the organizations we support through our philanthropies, I have seen that they also find a purpose in life. They feel there’s more meaning to life than just downloading whatever the latest thing is on social media. They say such things to us, and they themselves get excited by the work they do. So I think young people becoming active citizens is very important in a democracy like ours. So we try to support many organizations that gather local people, especially hyper-local action to solve local problems. There’s only so much that can be done through the government. I think we do need to look at more public policy and programmatic funding around helping young people to create institutions that build more social capital. That is one part of it, but I think it is really up to civil society institutions to help develop this youth muscle to get involved and engaged. We need more debating clubs, we need more book clubs, we need more spaces for young people to come together and discuss ideas – there are sports clubs and other such groups but I think we need different spaces as well.
One of the interesting projects that I’m supporting is an organization called Kshetra, which actually evolved from the work I did on ‘Uncommon Ground’ many years ago to bring corporate and social sector people together. Kshetra is developing a curriculum to help people engage in processes to reduce and prevent conflict. Through that process, you walk in another person’s shoes and actually understand different points of view and therefore evolve your own. I think we need more initiatives like this, but that is really in the hands of civil society institutions. I also believe that we need to do right by the young men in this country. We have almost 180 million young men and boys, and while we invested a lot of public money and attention on women’s self-help groups, I feel like we now need to think about what the right formation for these young men can be. They are also confused, scared, and need mentoring and support. We have seen the kind of backlash that’s come with women gaining more opportunities to move ahead, because men now feel insecure in some situations. And the last thing we need is to roll back women’s rights and women’s freedoms. So, we need to take men along with us on this journey as well, and one of our philanthropy portfolios is focused on that. When we began, there were hardly one or two organizations working with young males. Today, there are 17 and growing. So I think helping young men achieve their potential and be able to speak freely and safely is also something that is very important when it comes to the youth of India.
In my earlier work, whether it was with water or education, there was a lot of focus on what was happening to the girl child, or women in villages who were trying to access water resources or have a voice in how the local budget should be spent. There was a lot of gender focus on women. But as I was traveling around the country, I would often meet young males who were feeling left out, who had questions that could not be answered, and who didn’t know where to turn. And I began to slowly realize that perhaps something needs to be done about this. So we started this portfolio to work with young men and boys, with the idea being that you cannot achieve women’s empowerment unless men themselves also feel empowered. And what does that mean? What is the gap we need to fill so that all genders can reach their potential? What should society be doing? See, I always come from the lens of Samaaj, so what can Samaaj do more of to help its own citizens, its own communities? And it’s been a very interesting journey. Men do feel a bit threatened, young men sometimes, and they struggle to see what their role is – they are supposed to be providers but they themselves feel insecure about the future of jobs and how fast things are changing. They feel they cannot catch up with the new technologies. So there is a lot of uncertainty and insecurities which then allows them to become ripe pickings for all sorts of other things. So it is very important to create positive programs for young males in this country.
A Different Approach to Climate Change
I also worry sometimes that all of us are getting fixed in binaries, whereas most of life’s nuances are in the greys. And so to prevent people from falling into binaries, we have to have a very healthy dialogic process in society, especially in a democracy like ours. So how do we encourage the dialogic process so that we don’t break down into divisions that allow for an ‘us versus them’ scenario? These are too simplistic. It was alright when we were very, very young. But now I think the nation has to encourage critical thinking so that more people can live in the grays, and not be locked in by binaries and conform to one side or the other.
From my years in philanthropy I’ve learnt that we can’t really solve problems by looking at them in silos, because these problems are so huge and complex. When I started working in the water sector in 2005, we had just begun to see how water as a key resource was going to affect everything in India – the economy, the ecology, and of course, people’s health. So we started working on this and I was there for about 16 years with Arghyam, which was the foundation I set up for water. I think India knows its hydrological issues much better and there is very good policy, but as usual everything comes down to implementation. I would say that successive governments have made significant strides on providing better drinking water and better sanitation. We still have huge problems, though, that are going to be climate change related and for which there are no easy answers. Our groundwater situation is not exactly healthy in about two thirds of our districts. So there is a lot more work to be done to manage this scarce resource well. I think Samaaj has to contribute to improving the water situation as well, because we need better implementation of our policy frameworks. It is something that Samaaj, Bazaar, and Sarkaar should collaborate on. In fact, Bazaar is also very involved because they know that even for industry to run in this country, you have to increase water efficiencies throughout the supply chain. I think all that awareness has come, but we still have a long way to go. We don’t know what will happen with climate change. That’s my big worry.
We have seen recent examples of this, from the Yangtze River drying up in China to the severe floods in Pakistan. These sorts of climate events are very hard for farmers to predict and plan ahead for their crops. And because farmers are essentially entrepreneurs, it really makes their life much more difficult to adjust for climate variance. Again, we need a lot of public policy support. I have also often said that we are going to have to model for climate change in any kind of policy formulation and design of public infrastructure going forward. Today, would you take a decision for a coastal road in Mumbai, knowing what you know about what is happening to the sea levels? So, it is critical that experts get involved in the planning for these kinds of things.
Climate change has already begun and, according to the latest IPCC report, it is happening much faster than scientists thought. This is why the commitments to reduce carbon emission and to increase renewables is so critical, along with designing better public transport around the country. It is a challenge for all citizens to get involved, knowing what we know and that we are racing against time now. How should we be thinking about our consumption patterns and how we design our lives? Everybody has to think because, in a sense, we are all in it together. We know that India’s coastal areas are going to be very vulnerable, and so much of our population lives along these coastal areas. Then there is the Gangetic plain where we also have a large population, and will people be different inland? What does that mean then? We are talking about 20 or 30 years from now. I don’t envy the government having to think about the future.
In terms of environmental and ecological research, we also need the kind of long-term observation that ATREE has been doing for 25 years. One thing is to keep a track of what is happening in yearly, annual cycles, and there are enough sensors to give us some indication of that. But we need a lot of research institutions to have the resources and permissions, because nowadays even obtaining permissions to be able to go into our wild areas to set up long-term monitoring stations is getting a little tough. Today we have the national biodiversity mission, for example, which I think is going to be very critical to catalogue our biodiversity and understand what is changing in our biodiversity map. We need many more such initiatives and many more environmental research institutions to spring up, so that we know what are the absolute national treasures of biodiversity that we have in this country.
India is one of the few countries in the world which have so much population pressure, and yet because of our 5,000-year old culture of respecting nature, we are also one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world. We need to preserve that, not just because it looks beautiful, but because it is the future resource for this country – for medicines, for precious materials, for carbon sequestration. When we think of the hundred reasons why we need to understand and preserve our biodiversity, we need a lot more monitoring stations and the ability for more researchers to go into various wild areas of the country to really understand what is going on. And that is going to be our work against climate change as well, to understand what is happening and to be able to prevent some of the worst parts of it.
The State of Our Samaaj
Public engagement and participation is also more important now than ever before. As the world is turning more authoritarian, we have to ask why, right? Perhaps it is because many people may feel like “I don’t want to participate in everything all the time, I’m fed up of this. Let me just trust in a strong leader to solve my problems.” But history has also shown us that it doesn’t happen that way. As I say many times in the book, we cannot simply outsource good governance only to the government. It is too important. Citizens have to co-create good governance and have to strengthen democracy themselves; it is not just going to happen for us. If we don’t participate, we lose ground. We cannot outsource citizenship to anybody else. It can be messy, but we have to get involved. We cannot just want to lie back and enjoy life. If more people don’t get involved in solving local problems at least, we will find that more of our public infrastructure will break down and more authoritarianism will be on the rise, because we have abdicated our role as citizens.
What is happening in Samaaj all over the world? We know that social media has had a long and big role to play in the last few decades. But I still believe that we get the kind of governments and societies that we help to create. So, if you are not involved then you do not necessarily get what you want. You can’t expect good societies to form on their own. Everybody has a role to play. Not everybody has to work all the time for it, but we do have to be aware of what is going on around us. So it is more important than ever to get young people to ask these questions. What kind of society do I want to live in? What is my role in creating that society? How much control am I willing to give up to a government? How much can a government do for its citizens if citizens don’t do for themselves? These questions have to be alive in the public discourse.
Unfortunately today, there is a breakdown of trust between the state and civil society actors. And I really wish there wasn’t, because a strong state really needs a strong and diverse civil society. The state cannot reach the first mile. No state, however efficient, can reach the first mile where the real problem is, where people are suffering for various reasons. So, it is civil society institutions that are most likely to understand the gaps that need to be filled, so that the people at the first mile can be helped.
Any strong state really needs the participation of civil society to go with it. So I wish that both sides will do whatever it takes to build more trust. I think we have an extraordinarily diverse and vibrant civil society, but they are facing some challenges. Just among our civil society organizations, I wish we could find a way to build better bridges with the state, both at the local level and at the center. I think it is needed, because civil society is needed to provide a mirror to governments as well as the corporate sector and society at large. That allows for healthy self-correction and preventive correction. As someone who belongs to civil society, I wish we could find ways to build many more bridges of trust, for which we need transparency on both sides.
We also need to build trust within Samaaj itself. It is very easy for social media, etc. to create polarizations. It serves some people but it does not serve Samaaj well at all. And I really believe that people are fed up with these polarizations. They are fed up with this ‘us versus them’ culture. And I think we are at peak polarization. It has to go down from here, it cannot get worse than this. And I think this is not something that we just write about or read about. Each one of us can do something about it. In our own families, we have seen arguments because some people are on one side and some people are on the other. So how do we build the societal muscle for dialogue? That is the key thing needed today. How do we practice this in small doses tonight at the dinner table? Can I talk to a family member who thinks differently from me without getting all hot and bothered and judgemental? That is the new sanskar that we have to develop in today’s democracies. Because otherwise all of us are shrinking. We are shrinking into narrower and narrower selves. That is not rich living. That is poor living. So, a lot of people are engaging with these ideas now. How do we reduce the binaries? How do we reduce polarization?
I think we need to get to a place where philanthropy is unnecessary because, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, we should never forget why philanthropy is needed in the first place and what caused this imbalance, where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. We also need to remember what philanthropy actually means – it means people being interested in the welfare of others. Now, because of the hyper wealthy class that has been created, philanthropy is perceived as something much larger, where people like Bill Gates spend $5 billion a year on philanthropy. But it is not only the super rich who can do philanthropy, ordinary people also do it routinely in India.
So there may never be a time where human empathy will not be needed and human resources will not be needed to help others, but I do hope there will be less of a need for intensive philanthropy to do what society should have done anyway. Societies tolerate private wealth creation because they assume that wealth creation will spur innovation, create jobs, and will also help create better societies. But societies will only tolerate runaway wealth creation so long as that wealth appears to be working for society. Otherwise the government will swoop in and tax it all up.
In my book, I mention Anupam Mishra, who did a lot of work in water. He told us about this tradition in villages in Rajasthan, where people go to other villages to help work on public water projects. All the villagers from the surrounding areas do Shramadaan to help create public water resources. It might be digging a well or a farm pond, repairing a bund or anything else that may be needed. In return, the villagers make them a nice meal. Fun is had by all and everyone feels good, and a public infrastructure gets created. The same thing is then repeated across all the villages. So, this kind of reciprocity Samaaj, which is really trust-based social capital, is absolutely critical. And we see it in many forms if you travel around the country. Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar are also integrating – we saw the best example of this during the pandemic.
Lots more will have to be done when other disasters come along, but the pandemic showed us how quickly Samaaj was able to respond. The first responders were neighbors, families, and civil society organizations; the Sarkaar came in pretty quickly after that. And the Bazaar, especially in India with Serum Institute, was able to act very quickly to get vaccine delivery going. In just two years, so many things happened that had never happened before, in terms of how Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar came together. Samaaj quickly got the message that what’s good for me is good for all of us. And what’s good for all of us, I have to do, right? For example, we didn’t see so much vaccine resistance here as we have seen in other parts of the world. So the pandemic resulted in very rapid action from all three sectors and I’m hoping that this experience will allow us to be much better prepared because now a little more trust has been built. When the next time comes around, we should be able to organize a bit more quickly and efficiently.
A Holistic Education
We started Pratham Books in 2004, as part of the Pratham network, and through this so many children had been taught to read. But when we started looking around to set up libraries for them, there were hardly any children’s books for the 300 million children of India. So we decided that something has to be done and we started publishing books in 2004. It has been an incredible journey. One of the great things that we decided to do was to put all the books out for free in the Creative Commons, which impacted the kind of pickup that we saw. People came to give their volunteer energy to translate, to write new books, to read out books to children, to download and share them in their communities, to edit – just the whole community response. It became like a societal mission.
I retired five years ago, but the new team has done even better. Today, they have created a StoryWeaver platform on which there are books in 320 languages now, contributed by citizens from around the world for our children. There are thousands and thousands of stories available and there have been more than 10 million reads just in the last few years. We know that even through the number of books that Pratham Books has sold. So we have helped to change the paradigm of children’s publishing in India. That’s the power of bringing Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar together. The Samaj came in to write, read, and as Pratham Books. The Sarkaar came in because many state governments worked very closely with us to get books into children’s classes, to get the library periods activated. And the Bazaar came in because some of those books are also sold. So it was a real coming together of these three sectors in a very wonderful example of what is possible when the three sectors work together for a common societal purpose.
At EkStep Foundation which Shankar Maruwada, Nandan Nilekani, and I formed seven years ago, we set ourselves the goal of increased access to learning opportunities for 200 million children by 2022. And I think we have been able to achieve that because we were lucky enough to work closely with the union government and then 28 states to help launch the DIKSHA platform. DIKSHA is a digital platform for parents, children, and especially teachers, to help each other learn how to deliver their teaching across the classroom and across the school more effectively. It has been quite a success, and luckily it was ready just in time for the pandemic. We saw the uptake rise so rapidly on the DIKSHA platform, with not just millions, but billions of learning sessions. So it is now an entrenched form of learning and sharing, improving learnability, accountability, and teachability, because it is open, transparent, voluntary, and it especially allows teachers to share best practices across the country. Since this was developed by the government for the public school infrastructure in the country, we have seen mainly government schools using it, with about 12 million teachers on the platform. While we did a lot of the initial investments as part of the foundation, the government stepped in to fund it and now it is the government’s own program running almost everywhere in the country and is free for the public. A teacher in Tamil Nadu can ask a teacher in Bihar something, and we’ve seen teachers feel much more empowered because they are able to go on the DIKSHA platform and access information themselves which helps them in classrooms.
All of this learning happened just in time, and I think one thing that the pandemic has shown us is that if we do have to shut down schools again for any reason, this country is prepared to meet the challenge. I believe we have the best public digital infrastructure in the world, and we are ready to be able to reach children with or without schools. Of course, there is nothing that can ever replace the social interaction of a teacher who is in front of you rather than on a screen. But, if it happens again, we are ready and teachers have learned how to make the best of their digital tools. Hopefully, more civil society participation will happen on the platform as well as Bazaar participation.
I have been working on education since 1999 and I have seen a lot of improvement over the years. It is true that there are certain numbers that are still a bit depressing, but we have also seen a lot of improvement in many areas of the country for sure. We have already solved our question of enrollment, which was a huge problem 20 years ago. Today, we know that all our children are enrolled in school and there is a huge demand for education. We are also seeing all kinds of new technology being created to improve learning in schools and the new NEP, which is going to be rolled out soon, also puts a great emphasis on something I think is absolutely key – foundational learning. The government’s full attention is now on foundational literacy from class one onwards. Even our preschool infrastructure is going to be ramped up so that children are going to get more and better educational tools and are able to access them to be able to start thinking, describing, talking, and using creative tools, from age three onwards. So, I think we will see continuous improvement.
We also have millions of first generation students in the country. I think with one more generation, we will begin to see a huge difference. Already, if we look at some of the EkStep numbers, most children’s parents now have studied at least to class five, which in 15-20 years is a huge shift. And it will only get better from here, now that this generation is educated. It means that their children are going to have a much better learning environment, not just in school but also at home. So I am very optimistic about this.
I think we also have to realize that the government cannot resolve every issue for us. There are some questions that Samaaj needs to solve, as a community. We have to be able to see how interconnected we are, not just within India but all over the world. Just two years ago, we learned firsthand that if a grandmother in one part of the world sneezes, her grandson somewhere else can catch a cold. We know that now, literally. So as human beings try to evolve to become better and better, I think no matter what our issues are right now, there is a great human capacity for empathy and coexistence. We have to tap into that, and to do that we need moral leadership from Samaaj to come forward. When there were riots in Mumbai and other places like Bhiwandi, it was the elders who came together, created Mohalla committees, and started a peace building process. I think that’s absolutely critical today and I think we need Samaaj to take the lead.
I think this starts early, with children. We need to show them examples of moral leadership and generosity. And I think those stories have to be told from family to family. For example, in my family my grandfather’s life was held up as something worthy of emulating. He was a lawyer, but the reason that he didn’t make any money was because he was busy patching up the two parties instead of taking them to court. His brother and him used to be called ‘Ram Lakshman’ in those days in the Belgaon district. In 1917, he answered Gandhiji’s first call in Champaran and was among the first group of volunteers who went there to help set up Gandhiji’s Ashram in Bhitiharwa in West Champaran. He continued his lifelong service to the cause of freedom – through the independence movement, he worked closely with the Indian National Congress. The stories of his life and the values of simple living, high thinking, working for a cause, and service before self are the stories told in my family. If all families could do that, children would get easily inspired.
Even in schools, I think teachers have to go beyond textbooks to bring out stories. Maybe they can ask the children in the classroom to come with stories of their families. That is always the deepest and quickest connection that teachers can make. And there are so many heroes – the Tatas, the Birlas, and so many other worthy philanthropists that this country has spawned in the last 200 years. We have to keep those stories alive. It is also important to explain to children about the neuroscience of giving. There is genuinely a joy to giving. We are wired for that. We are wired to get joy from doing something for other people. It makes us also happy. So eventually giving is actually receiving, right? And that is also a gift. I think children get inspired easily by such stories. It is evolutionary biology. We are a social species because unless we work together, we will not succeed. We are wired to cooperate. We are wired for empathy. We are wired to feel joy in giving.
This year marks 30 years since philanthropist-author Rohini Nilekani started her journey in civic engagement.
She started with Nagarik, a public charitable trust, in 1992 and is now the Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and Director of EkStep, a non-profit education platform. She is the Co-founder and Former Chairperson of Arghyam, a foundation she set up in 2001 for sustainable water and sanitation, and which funds initiatives across India.
From 2004 to 2014, she was Founder-Chairperson and chief funder of Pratham Books, a non-profit children’s publisher. She sits on the Board of Trustees of Atree, an environmental think-tank.
In an interview with HerStory, Rohini talks of her new book, Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar – A Citizen-First Approach, a collection of essays where she outlines her philosophy of restoring the balance between the state and the markets, by keeping society as the fundamental sector.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
HerStory (HS): What prompted you to compile this collection of essays? In the introduction to the book, you say you want to take it forward as a hub for thinkers, writers, activists, students and researchers.
Rohini Nilekani (RN): I have been talking about Samaaj (society), Sarkaar (government), and Bazaar (market) for several years in different places and so it made sense to finally put out the theory concisely.
I thought I should put the whole collection out as an invitation to further public discourse on Sarkaar, Samaj, and Bazaar because enough has been written about the first two, but not about where the role and responsibility of the Samaaj begins and ends.
Even though we know Samaaj is not a monolith, we are hoping that people in their own way will take this conversation forward.
HS: In one of your essays, you point out that charity and strategic philanthropy can play a critical role in mitigating some inequity. Can you throw more light on this?
RN: I have always maintained that philanthropy is necessitated by the inequal distribution of wealth. Having said that, the responsibility of that wealth is towards society, eventually.
More and more people have started to engage in what is now called strategic philanthropy, which is deliberately differentiated from charity – of humans continuing to do something for other humans in distress.
Strategic philanthropy tries to get to the root of a problem and see if it can be attached to a new practice or policy to make effective change. So, more patient resources can be put in and higher capital can be dispensed, so that real change can be mapped over time.
I think, in some senses, philanthropy, in addition to what the state and civil society did, has been responsible a lot of good things that have happened in education in India. We are beginning to see more investment in healthcare, which will definitely have an impact over time.
Our team has started to talk about what we call societal thinking, an approach to look at very complex problems, and see how Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar can work together.
HS: How challenging is it to maintain the continuum between Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar when, for example, an unexpected pandemic happens?
RN: I think the first responders during the pandemic were ordinary citizens and the civil society – neighbours helping neighbours. Kindness to strangers was at its zenith all over the world.
We saw the state also moving quite rapidly, though sometimes making some mistakes. But overall, I think India did well.
And, a reason is that we already had some public digital infrastructure in place. For instance, once the vaccines were available, the state was able to roll it out quickly in a relatively unchaotic manner compared to what happened elsewhere.
The civil society was able to play its humanitarian role, work closely with the Sarkaar. As far as the Bazaar was concerned, we were lucky that The Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech played major roles, and the Bazaar actually delivered the innovation. Of course, there was death and despair, and I don’t want to downplay that at all.
But we’ve really learned a lot from what the three sectors can do together in a crisis. Now the challenge before us is to prepare even better during times of non-crisis. So that next time around, we can be even more effective and rapidly deploy the humanitarian agency of Samaaj, the regulatory and financial capital of the Sarkaar, and the innovative agency of the Bazaar.
HS: You also dwell on the role of volunteerism as the bedrock of society. How can one attract people, especially the young to become volunteers in civil society?
RN: I think India has a very long history of volunteerism and the Gandhian movements espouse it the best in some way.
Also, humans are hardcoded to be empathetic to people in distress. There’s a lot of invisible voluntary action in India. The question is can we galvanise more people?
I think one of the focus areas in our philanthropy is how do you seek out ethical leadership, especially young leaders, who are trying to rally around the volunteer energy of other young people and we are seeing it in droves. We are supporting so many organisations that bring in volunteers, across so many areas, whether it is better service delivery for the vulnerable, solving of hyperlocal problems with water, roads, shelter, or even street lighting or waste management.
Volunteer energy is well and thriving in India, the young are naturally idealistic, and if we can harness that energy better, it adds positive meaning to their lives.
HS: On the other hand, you also talk about clicktivism being a easy replacement for easy true action in the digital age.
RN: This is a real challenge, which is why you need both offline and online civil society. It can’t be only offline. So the idea of online activism in the digital age needs to change. Right now, it’s easy to say something, just click, and say I agree, or I support this or that, and feel good about yourself. It’s not a bad thing because it makes you at least look through some issue you didn’t know about, where you learnt a little bit, but the question is how do you take it forward.
The argument I make is that in India, civil society is beginning to, but needs to more rapidly come into the digital age so that online volunteering, or activism, or “actionism” – actually doing something to make a change for the better – doesn’t simply rest with clicktivism.
Many processes and pathways can be created for online citizens to gather together offline and online to take an issue forward towards a resolution point.
HS: Forging relationships and collaborations with government agencies is important. In your 30-year journey in civic engagement, what challenges have you faced?
RN: The challenges are many, because social change is incredibly hard.
No matter what you do, sometimes even people solutions lead to the next problems. So, there’s no one endpoint where you can put on your cap and think it’s done and solved; it never happens that way. Secondly, problems are so complex, they grow exponentially. For the response to keep up with the scale and scope of the problem is hugely difficult.
Thirdly, there is a lot of friction to collaborate and a lack of trust between all agents. I have learned that government in India at all three levels, local, state, and union, is very open to collaboration with civil society and philanthropy.
The intent has to be very clear that civil society partners do not have any other agenda except public good. Once that is established, the government in all its three layers is willing to experiment and innovate together with civil society.
Sometimes, there’s failure, which is why the risk has to be borne by philanthropy capital, but the partnership possibilities are there.
HS: What more can be done to empower women self-help groups and, in the process, rally men as allies?
RN: When I was working in Sanghamitra Trust as a board member, that men didn’t like to be put into groups, but I think we need to test that with some innovation. There are about 80 million women in self-help groups around the country, I think, in a positive way, the need for that social collateral has reduced because of DBTs (direct debit transfer), and new infrastructure for individual credit.
Many women are part of these SHGs to access credit, which is good because India’s sophisticated public digital infrastructure has allowed lots of innovation in financial services. That doesn’t mean that the process of empowerment is finished and more needs to be done to imagine new forms of collective action and collective membership along with innovation.
HS: These lines from your essay strikes a chord, “Families need to understand that women need to use their talents, not only in their jobs and home life, but also work to improve their community.” Can you list a few ways by which women, in their spare time, take part in civic engagement?
RN: My community in Koramangala (Bengaluru) has one of the most active Resident Welfare Associations, where many causes are taken up by women, whether it is segregation of waste, managing our parks, whether it is fighting even up to the High Courts for restoring the commons near the lake.
Bringing communities to work together is truly a rewarding experience that many women enjoy. Sometimes, I have found that women find it hard to participate in family philanthropy because they feel that they have not directly earned the money. Even if it is just the husband who has earned the money, we all know how much the woman would have supported him. So, I think women need to get bolder in doing family philanthropy and feel more empowered to do it.
Your book Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar: A Citizen-First Approach has a selection of your essays and speeches over 15 years. How was your experience of revisiting all this material from the standpoint of where you are today?
It was certainly rewarding to look at all the articles that I have written on diverse topics over the years. But looking back, some of the things that I said were in the context of the time and of my understanding then, and I guess I have learnt more along the way. For example, today I am not sure I would write about turning back the river Cauvery from Bangalore, though I would continue to argue on using water more equitably and sustainably.
Who is your target audience for this book? You have chosen to self-publish it using a Creative Commons license and have also made it freely downloadable. What were the creative and commercial reasons behind taking these decisions?
I genuinely wanted to experiment with a different model in publishing. Today, it is relatively easy to self-publish and put out your work on commercial channels, especially online. But the main reason I wanted to self-publish is that we wanted the conversation around the roles of samaaj (society) sarkaar (state) and bazaar (markets) to continue openly, and I wanted the book to be available free for students, social sector professionals and others to create a new discourse around what I consider an important public topic. I really hope that the book will become a trigger for young people, in particular, to start thinking about their own roles as citizens of their communities, of the nation, and indeed of the world too. It has been an interesting experiment so far. Publishers are interested in language versions or translations. People want to convert the book into Braille and so on. At Pratham Books (a non-profit that Nilekani co-founded to enable access to reading), we tried to open up children’s publishing through the Creative Commons. Maybe for some kinds of content, this is the right path.
If you had to pick out three key takeaways from your book, what would those be?
My first point is that I have come to believe that samaaj, which includes all of us, is really the foundational sector, and that bazaar and sarkaar evolved to serve the larger interest of the samaaj. The state, in all its forms, came up because sometimes samaaj itself – because it is not a monolith – needs independent institutions to uphold the rule of law, and maintain peace and reduce conflict. The bazaar was needed for the purpose of innovation of goods and services, and for the systematic creation of value and the regulation of fair exchange.
My second point is that these three sectors are always in a dynamic, changing balance. Sometimes, the power can shift away from the samaaj, and get concentrated in the sarkaar and the bazaar. I guess technology has made that more possible than ever in this century. I question whether we as samaaj (and even those in the sarkaar and bazaar as humans and citizens of the samaaj) need to swing back the balance a bit. After all, we are not consumers of the market first, we are not subjects of the state first. We are primarily humans in a complex social web of other humans, and we are essentially citizens of our communities first.
My third point then is that we have to be a little more aware of our own agency to collectively co-create the good societies that we all want to be a part of. I am interested in the new forms of social association that may need to emerge in this digital age for us to help restore a healthier balance among the three sectors – samaaj, sarkaar and bazaar.
You write, “Charity and strategic philanthropy can both play a critical role in mitigating some inequity.” Can charity and philanthropy dismantle structures like the caste system, which determine access to resources and rights?
Charity and philanthropy can only have limited impact, and indeed, philanthropy should have only limited impact! Definitely, charity can help reduce the suffering of fellow human beings, and philanthropy at its best can look at the root causes of exclusion and inequity. But eventually both depend on the positive intent of ordinary people to make a change for the better. Without that intent, passion and commitment, philanthropy cannot be effective. At Arghyam (a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation that she founded), we were able to support a national policy consensus on Participatory Ground Water Management (PGWM) because there were so many institutions willing to experiment and take the idea to the people.
How do your early experiences as a journalist inform the way you examine data?
As a journalist you are trained to look at all sides of an issue. You try to be dispassionate and represent the people at the centre of the issue you are reporting on. You try to use good, objective data. However, I left journalism a while ago, so now I do more opinion writing really. When I see a problem, I try to write about it. When I see people or civil society institutions coming up with innovative solutions, I write about that too.
You have written a novel that is a medical thriller, a non-fiction book about business leaders and social leaders, and over a dozen books for children. What gives you the confidence to explore different genres of writing? How have you honed your skills?
I love writing, and have tried out these various genres over a period of time. I think that some of them have worked, and others have not. I wish I could get my act together to write more adult fiction but somehow, I have not managed it. I must say that the non-fiction writing became easier because it was so closely tied to my work and my philanthropy.
Your latest children’s book The Great Rifasa looks at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic through the perspectives of animals in the Kabini forest. How did you come up with this idea? What other books are you working on for your young readers?
I love writing for children. My mind is always searching for new themes and ideas, with a little twist, for young readers. I used to go to the Kabini forest a lot during the Covid-19 pandemic, and one day, I suddenly flipped the perspective to ask what the animals would think. It was such fun to write that story. Luckily, children liked it! And now my grandson is such an inspiration for me that I want to keep writing stories that he would like to read.
You studied French literature as a college student in Mumbai. Do you still read and write in French? Are some of your books now available in French translation?
The children’s books I have written are out in many languages, including French, on StoryWeaver – a digital repository of multilingual stories for children from Pratham Books. The magic of the Pratham Books community globally is that people translate books for the sheer love of it. Unfortunately, I have not kept up with my love of French. Quel dommage!
You write about being an election campaigner when your husband, Nandan Nilekani, ran for a Lok Sabha seat in the South Bangalore constituency. What lessons did you learn during that time? Would you consider joining politics? Why or why not?
I don’t think I could join politics at all! During the campaign, I understood how difficult it is to be a politician, where you are on call 24/7. I learnt that people do not expect enough from the politicians, and perhaps expect the wrong things from them. They want direct execution to resolve their own local problems but perhaps they should be exhorting their representatives to create and uphold good policies and laws, and to effectively hold the executive to account. That would create the sustainable change they need. I also experienced just how exhilarating and exhausting our elections can be, and just how much people are willing to participate in the electoral process. So long as we have that public enthusiasm, our democracy is safe!
Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintanwriting
Rohini Nilekani, philanthropist and founder of Arghyam Foundation, believes that the state ( sarkaar), the market ( bazaar), and society ( samaaj) should strive for a balance with none of them having too much power. Her new book, Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar: A Citizen-First Approach, is a collection of essays on what citizens can do to build a strong civil society. Excerpts from an interview:
You speak of how sarkaar, samaaj and bazaar share a highly unequal relationship. We see this even more now in the way the government has come down on NGOs. So, how does a civil society thrive in the face of resistance from the sarkaar?
Power accumulates everywhere and not just in this country or with this government. Power also accumulates in samaaj. No government in the world likes to be challenged too much. Civil society’s role is to help to show a mirror to the government and to samaaj too. It is supposed to fill in the gaps where there is not enough inclusion. So, while it is true that the state is cracking down on civil society, I wish there would be more trust between civil society and the state. After all, they have the same goals. The state is mandated to provide more equity, inclusion and justice and uphold the rule of law. Civil society’s ambitions and aspirations are for the same. So, we must build bridges of trust instead of finger pointing.
How do we do that?
There are organisations that are working with citizens as well as the government to create more access to services, to get citizens to band together to solve hyperlocal issues, to create new pathways to reach government. There is so much space for creativity. We have seen it, especially among young leaders. They see themselves as ‘actionists’ rather than ‘agitationists’.
Why do you say that ‘voters expect too much from representatives’ or that a ‘politician’s job is thankless’?
All over the world, there are surveys to show that trust is coming down between all sections of society, but I believe that being a politician is a thankless task. There might be some politicians who don’t do their work, but the ones I have seen are on call 24/7. Yes, they might be promising more than what they can provide. But my focus is on what samaaj can do. Voters are confused about what to expect, which is either the politician’s fault or the fault of political parties, which are not able to talk to the samaaj about what politicians are supposed to do when they are elected. We can focus on asking lawmakers what laws they are making for us, because I believe good laws make a good society. Samaaj needs to be activated to uphold the rule of law.
Why do you think it’s so important for civil society to come into the digital age?
If civil society doesn’t get digital itself, it will not be able to play its role effectively in enabling power balance and inclusion. You can’t only work in the digital world with offline tools alone.
You write about people helping each other during the pandemic as an example of civil society coming together. But people were forced to do that. Do you think you end up excusing the state for its failures by placing the onus on the people?
I come from a samaaj lens. What should samaaj do more of, and better to hold the state and markets accountable? We cannot sit back and become consumers of the governance we need. We can’t say, “we pay our taxes, we obey the law, we are nice to our neighbours, so what else do we have to do?” Citizens need to get involved in governance, or we need to point out that the state needs to get involved. But we cannot absolve ourselves of the responsibilities of citizenship.
So, you are saying this is our duty?
Duty is a big word. I think it’s enlightened self-interest.
In 2018, the Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society’s Doing Good Index found that India is doing ‘Just Okay’ in philanthropy. How can India improve its score?
Indian philanthropy has made big strides in the last 15-20 years. But has philanthropy reached where it needs to be? No way. We also should remember how much invisible philanthropy is happening. Some of us are working to make this process more transparent. We must hold the wealthy accountable. There are terrific signs of energy among younger people who want to give much more away and much faster.
This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s conversation with Barkha Dutt on her new book and the intersection of the markets, society, and state.
I haven’t spoken a lot about the incident that I mention in the introduction of my book, which started me on my engagement with civic issues, because tragedies happen in so many lives in India and personal tragedies happen all the time. In 1987, my very close friends Chaitan and Rekha were traveling at night, which is not a great idea, but a tractor came on the wrong side of the road and smashed them to death along with their unborn child. Only their little son survived because he did not have a seatbelt on and so he fell to the floor. It was very traumatic, at the time, and it seemed so unnecessary. We’ve all had people die in road accidents in our extended families. Maybe it bothered me because my hormones were also jumping fast since I was pregnant. But it stayed with me after the babies were born too. I said, “No, no, somebody has to do something about this.” And so, talking to a lot of other people in the city, many came together including Kiran Mazumdar, Jagdish Raja, and Muralidhar Rao. We all came together to set up ‘Nagrik’ with the goal of ensuring safer roads. So, I had to do something, I couldn’t let it go. I felt that if something is wrong, I have to participate in changing it. I think in that sense as journalists, we try to report on things that are wrong so that people get engaged in the conversations to set them right. I felt I had to start a civil society organization to see what like-minded people could do. Since then – from 1992 to 2022 – I have tried to learn and do better.
The way I grew up, there’s no question that we very much are rooted in this soil, we are very much rooted in the values of this country and there’s no question of abdicating responsibility. In my house, we were taught about simple living and high thinking. I’m not sure if we’ve kept the simple living part, but we do try to keep the high thinking. In my family, the stories that were told were always about sacrifice and service before self. And those were the ideas held up to us. So, even when we came into wealth, I think we tried to see it as something that you give forward. And that creates a lot of meaning in one’s life. It enriches your life when you participate in trying to help build the better society that you want to live in. So, I think it’s added a lot of meaning to our lives and made it much richer, and I don’t mean materially of course. So there’s no question of seceding and abdicating from our responsibilities as citizens of this country.
I think many people are beginning to realize that they cannot secede as well. The younger wealthy are quite engaged. They realize that you cannot separate yourself and your wealth. I have written about how the elite have seceded and there are points when you can’t secede anymore. How will you secede from climate change? How will you secede from pandemics? You cannot. And when the realization comes, I think the re-engagement comes as well. And we have to put public pressure on this as well. I mean, it’s not gonna happen in isolation, which is why Samaaj and what’s happening in Samaaj is so important to me.
The question of the role of society, state, and markets has occupied people forever. I read lots and lots of books that are about the same theme, and my conversation with Prem Kumar Verma was also in that vein. But what he said really made me think, because he said, “First Samaaj was the strongest base, the foundation for which Sarkaar and Bazaar had to work.” Obviously Samaaj came first and Sarkaar came to serve the Samaaj, whether it was the monarchs of old or the feudal lords and now, hopefully in republics and in democracies, it is elected representatives. Similarly, the Bazaar had to come in to set value, to regulate exchange, and to build goods and services so all of us can experience more abundance. But Samaaj was first. I feel like sometimes we forget that, because in the last century or so, and maybe there have been episodes of that before too, the story of the Bazaar and the story of the Sarkaar has overtaken the narrative.
Tons and tons has been written about it, and then Samaaj sort of recedes into the background, whereas I think it needs to be in the foreground. And if we flip the switch and understand this, anybody who’s in the Sarkaar and the Bazaar, whether you’re a senior executive or a minister, when you go home you’re a citizen and a human being, right? So just flipping that switch and a mental model sort of correction to say, “Samaaj comes first, what can we in Samaaj do to make sure the Bazaar and Sarkaar are accountable to this larger Samaaj interest? Has the balance moved too much? Do we need to reset it?” Those are the questions that I’m asking.
I think with the technological revolution that we’ve seen, things are changing very fast now and we are still figuring out the public course and the new norms to set. Both the negative and positive of this are coming out. It will take time but it has to happen. People cannot live at the edge of things all the time. It will swing to some normal new codes of media just like we did when the phone came and the printing press came and the television came, right? So it will happen with digital media too. But the reason I say this is because the digital age, at least as far as I know now, seems to be here to stay. I can’t see us going back into the only physical world. Then what does that mean? These are the questions that we all have, right? While online spaces have become so polarized, how can we make them spaces for public reasoning instead? How will a digital civil society emerge in the digital age where the Sarkaar and the Bazaar have acquired even more power? They have power through algorithms where the market seems to know what we should think; through various surveillance tools, the Sarkaar wants to know what we are doing and has more data on us than we have on ourselves. So, in those circumstances, what should we as Samaaj do to claw back space? How can we do it with a positive sense of association and create new tools and processes to do so? And to do so, you have to do it digitally. You can’t be in the digital age and do things only offline. So my concern is what new digital civil society needs to emerge, to play the same roles to hold Sarkaar, Bazaar, and other elements of Samaaj accountable to peace, prosperity, harmony, etc.? So, we have to do it digitally. And civil society needs to get savvy very quickly to build out those new forms, roles, and responsibilities digitally. So that, in fact, the new and better conventions of people’s behavior will begin to emerge. People can get together digitally to do positive things.
We know that the pandemic is not our last emergency. When climate change and other things start to happen and create human distress, imagine the difference if, digitally, civil society is ready. Today, if we build trust digitally between groups and between the Sarkaar, the Bazaar, and civil society, how much more rapidly will we be able to respond? And we saw this during the pandemic, when so much organizing happened online and people’s hearts and minds were so quickly engaged. In fact, individual giving went up 43% in those three months. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because that’s all the data we have, there must be so much more. We have seen so many times that we can’t be cynical about the human species. We are capable. We have evolved to be social creatures who are willing to reach out. Kindness to strangers is something our species can actually do. And it’s not a romance, it’s a reality. That’s the power of Samaaj, to me at least.
During Nandan’s election campaign, I learned a lot and was really and truly humbled. It was really a fascinating experience. Everywhere we went, people had questions. They were so happy they found Nandan, the real candidate. But they were even happy to have me because they have so much to say. About once a year, once in five years, they get somebody to really listen to them and they just have a lot to say about the difficulties they experience every day. But it is true that therefore, they expected the candidate’s team to immediately solve all their local problems. And I used to ask, “But how will this person do it? He doesn’t have the power by the constitutional framework to actually come and fix your pipeline or your road, right? That has to be done differently with your panchayat and a civic body.” But that didn’t cut water at all. They told me, “You’ve come for my vote and this is what we want and you need to listen.” So, that was fine.
But this is an issue that politicians don’t talk about and maybe the media can talk more about it. And certainly civil society needs to get engaged as well. If our lawmakers made better laws – because in my book I do write about the issues with the kind of laws that are being framed, which sometimes unnecessarily criminalize people or which sometimes are not very clear and concise – then things could change far more rapidly. If we had better laws for all, and we had equality before the law and the constitution, then you could hold everybody to account through good policy and law. This might help those women and men I met during the campaign more than if Nandan or someone else won the election and managed to fix a pipe for now. So, if we think long term and we deepen these conversations about the role of politicians, it would certainly be better for the public and probably better for the politicians as well, who I discovered have a really difficult life. These are the questions we should ask ourselves, especially about what we expect from the state. Where should the Sarkaar be? And where should the Sarkaar not have to be? Where is it really the role of Samaaj to take back some of these things and work it out within Samaaj itself, right? So that’s the conversation, and my book is an invitation to deepen these thoughts because I don’t have all the answers. Nobody does.
Another incident I’ve mentioned in the book is where someone tells Nandan not to give a rash driver an Aadhaar card. I was quite taken aback because the Aadhaar project was quite new. And there was a lot of debate and discussion, with people who were for it, people who were against it, and people who didn’t understand it, because it was early days. We were at the Bangalore airport, and we were just crossing the road when a car suddenly rushed at us and we literally had to jump back to avoid the car. We were in shock for a few seconds after that and we heard the voice of one of those airport taxi drivers who said, “Sir, don’t give him an Aadhaar card.” That’s when I realized that it had caught the public imagination and then later, when I went around Delhi and other places during Nandan’s term in Delhi, I found that it was a very very important thing for a lot of people. Intellectually, I was thinking, “What does it all mean?” But when I met the people, for them it was something really important. And that incident helped me to see how it had caught the public imagination. It was quite funny and moving also in some ways. Over the years, I have been able to understand how India’s amazing public digital infrastructure, which is one of the most sophisticated in the world, can really lay the foundations for economic democracy.
When I came into wealth, I was very uncomfortable because I was a bit of a mental sort of activist and the messages of simple living, high thinking, were drummed into us as children. When we ourselves became wealthy, I said, “Oops! I’m on the other side now.” So what does that mean, right? It took me years to settle down, till I realized that this is an opportunity to be grateful for and I knew this wealth is going to be very important. So, of course, we’ve committed to give away a minimum of 50% of our wealth, and I hope we can do more. But, I think wealth is distorting. Let’s be very clear about that. So, in the context of the topics I discuss in my book, the Bazaar has a great, wonderful role in wealth creation, but a Samaaj can only allow wealth creation, especially such concentrated wealth creation for so long.
A lot depends on how that wealth is used by the wealthy and the Sarkaar’s role, which is to balance how much wealth is created and how it is used. Taxation is a very powerful tool that the Sarkaar has. Samaaj has a very powerful way of expressing itself, right? Today in India there are many polls which say Indians are optimistic. They are looking forward. Right now, they still feel very upwardly mobile. We know from around the world, that when countries feel like that, citizens feel like that, they don’t begrudge the wealthy from doing well because they feel, “Maybe I can also become Dhirubhai Ambani, right?” But when they stop to feel like that, that’s when it really matters what Bazaar is doing, what the Sarkaar is doing, and how the wealthy are using their wealth. Because at the end of it, the wealth of the few has to be used for the prosperity of the many. You can’t get away from that. You can enjoy your wealth, but that wealth has a responsibility which simply can not be avoided.
So I think Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar have a role to regulate the operation of wealth in society. I’ve been involved for a long time now in encouraging Indian philanthropy and I have had extraordinarily positive responses. I can’t speak for all of the wealthy, but I can say for those who I have spoken to, they are more than open. And the younger ones especially, have already started giving in really interesting ways which my generation also doesn’t understand how to do. So I am hopeful, but we can’t only depend on the generosity of the wealthy, right? We also need public policy, we need taxation, we need media attention, and we need discourse on the responsibility of wealth. And there is a lot of stuff happening now. The Hurun list comes out, people want to be on here. There’s a lot of spotlight now, so fingers crossed, I think we saw that individuals and families can be incredibly generous. The wealthy have no choice but to follow the Dharma of the Samaaj, that is what I feel.
I wanted to put out my book since this phrase ‘Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar’ has caught on. And I thought I should explain what I mean by that a little more. The goal was to help deepen the conversations happening in your homes, in your offices, and with your political representatives. This is why I put out the book in the Creative Commons, so that it could also be available for free and people can access it easily and start their own discussions.
Writer Rohini Nilekani is a doting grandma. And over the last five years, her grandson, Tanush, who has been the joy of her life has also been the inspiration for many of her books, including the latest one, The Great Rifasa (Rs 60).
Released on Sunday, young readers, accompanied by their parents, seated themselves on floor cushions at the quaint Champaca Bookstore to listen to adventurous stories on a jungle safari. “Tanush is obsessed with animals. Every time he says or does something interesting, I suddenly think that I need to write about it. I wrote Hungry Little Sky Monster (2020) and The Great Rifasa inspired by him,” says the wife of Nandan Nilekani, co-founder, Infosys.
In her book, Nilekani narrates the story of animals in the Kabini forest who were ‘heartbroken’ by the absence of tourists and jeeps. “How many of you have been to a jungle safari?,” asked Nilekani. To which only a few children raised their hands. Considering the pandemic, not surprisingly, most children had only seen animals on their screens. “Children always ask the darndest questions and have astonishing ideas. They say things you have never thought of,” Nilekani says.
Most of Nilekani’s books are under 1,500 words. “Kids take you to another space where you can drop off all the wrong things you’ve learnt as an adult and become a child again. Spending time with them is like meditation. They make sure you are in the moment,” says Nilekani.
The co-founder of Pratham Books, Nilekani hopes to create more spaces for children to gather, read, and explore. “Books help one understand the diversities of life and enhance curiosity. Childhood is incomplete without holding a book and reading it. Once a little one becomes a reader, there is no way the skill can be undone,” says Nilekani, who is looking to her grandson for the idea of her next book.
Sangeetha Kadur, illustrator of The Great Rifasa, has always been a nature lover. “When it comes to children’s books, there is liberty to bring in changes. Animals don’t have to look perfect and I get to play around with the backgrounds,” says Kadur, who has been illustrating realistic wildlife artwork for years. “The work for The Great Rifasa took two months. I had to bring in the elements from the Kabini forest to make it realistic. Incorporating details as little as the stripes on the tigers made the work interesting. Reading takes children onto a different journey and helps them imagine and explore places they haven’t
been to,” she says.
