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.
Rohini Nilekani, who has stepped down as Arghyam Foundation chairperson, talks about how corporates can make social accountability part of their mission
There’s no secret, quick fix formula to changing habits. It takes years, even decades, to break out of established patterns of behaviour, but philanthropist Rohini Nilekani believes the pandemic has shown us that habits can change rapidly.
“In a year, people have adjusted to this thing,” she says, picking up a surgical mask and tugging at its ends. “Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people are always near a mask—whether wearing it, carrying it, or even wearing it on their chins—because we’ve understood the urgency of the covid situation,” she says. “It’s become a habit. This is something to think
At their core, most non-profits grapple with changing habits—getting people, organisations or governments to understand how certain actions or behaviours impact society or the earth, and working towards transformation. The challenge, most often, is to frame the problem or mission in ways that make people act. “This is a virus, but frankly, so many problems we face from climate change to inequity could be just as devastating. What we in the non-profit sector can learn is this: how do we tell stories and organise our work so that people feel that same compelling motivation to change as they did during the pandemic?” says Nilekani, who recently stepped down as chairperson of the non-profit Arghyam Foundation, which has focused on water and sanitation since 2005.
The power of good intent
Nilekani, who has been involved in the non-profit sector since 1992, says she decided to hand over the reins after more than 15 years as she believes that just like a corporate, a non-profit also needs structured changes in leadership for true innovation to happen. “Otherwise, one tends to have a disproportionate impact on the organisation,” says Nilekani, both founder and funder of Arghyam.
The foundation runs on a personal endowment of about ₹156 crore from Nilekani, who’s married to Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani. In 2017, the couple, worth more than $2.8 billion, according to the ForbesBillionaires 2021 list, signed the Giving Pledge to contribute over half their wealth to philanthropic causes in their lifetime.
“Giving away that much money is not easy. You can’t just throw money at a problem. It needs some strategic thinking so that the mission will succeed, have impact,” says Nilekani, who turned 62 this year. “I want to give, well, in ways that move us towards a more socially and environmentally just society.”
While she hasn’t openly sought ideas from the corporate world, she realises that years of seeing corporates up close and meeting industry leaders has lent her philanthropy a more strategic tone. “Leadership changes so much in the corporate world, strengthening them. Ashok Soota (Happiest Minds founder) comes to mind not only because he is a philanthropist but also because he has constantly built new organisations. His is a positive continuing journey of learning and achievement.”
She adds that the non-profit sector can also learn financial accountability, being outcome oriented, and putting in place robust processes for HR from the corporate sector, though being too dependent on processes could slow down the work of some non-profits. “NGOs need to be structured for flexibility to respond quickly to social injustice, a natural disaster or even a pandemic,” she says.
And there are big lessons, too, that the corporate sector can draw from non-profits, with the most important being making social accountability part of their mission.
“The power of good intent is definitely something the corporate sector can learn. In most non-profits, the first passion and commitment is to fix something that is broken in society. They have to take a holistic look at the problem—ask is why this happening, how can we better people’s lives or agency. While the corporate sector tries to do that I wish they would have a more societally and environmentally inclusive vision so that there are fewer negative externalities for government or civil society to clean up.”
The idea of being a good corporate citizen has been gaining ground with ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) and CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives but Nilekani believes the desire to work towards a more fair and environmentally sustainable market system needs to run deeper in the corporate world. In other words, corporations’ profits could be underpinned by the idea of a larger good towards people and the planet. Such changes could take place within the organisation too—by following labour codes and environmental regulations, and ensuring that equity is built into the organisation’s DNA whether by reducing salary gaps or hierarchies.
“There is research now to prove that companies which put in the extra effort and resources to do this, to be socially responsible, are not faring badly in the stock market or in their balance sheets,” she says. “The corporate sector could do more to translate the power of intent, and that is definitely something they can learn from the non-profit world.”
Rohini Nilekani is the Founder-Chairperson of Arghyam, a foundation she set up for sustainable water and sanitation, which funds initiatives all across India. From 2004 to 2014, she was Founder-Chairperson and chief funder of Pratham Books, a non-profit children’s publisher that reached millions of children during her tenure. She has written several books for young children, published by Pratham Books including the popular “Annual Haircut Day”. In 2017, she was inducted as Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A member of the Advisory Board of the Well Being Project from 2019, Rohini Nilekani is a committed philanthropist. In 2017, she, together with her husband Nandan Nilekani, signed the Giving Pledge, which commits half their wealth to philanthropic causes.
Please describe your childhood and early years.
I was lucky to have a happy, carefree childhood in Mumbai, which was then called Bombay. We had lots of friends and cousins, we played outside a lot – cricket, lagori , badminton and many indoor games too, like carom and Mikado. I am the middle child, and I had fun fighting over small things with both my older and younger sisters. Maybe it helped to create the strong bond we all share now! Our parents were very encouraging with us girls and helped us to be well educated and independent. And by the way, we had no internet, no TV, no computers and no mobile phones. Yes, you can have fun without those too! All of you are experiencing the pandemic now, but when we were young there were two wars, the 1962 war with China and the 1971 war over Bangladesh. We too experienced difficulties then such as curfew, and having to stay without any lights at all, because there used to be air raids, and rationed food, including sugar, which was hard to get then. Now all of you have too much sugar, na? Many things change, but somethings always remain the same. Difficulties come and they go, and we all learn from them. Why do you give back to the society ? What do you feel when you give back to the society ? In my family, there has always been a tradition of giving forward to society, either in terms of time or talent or money. My grandfathers set an example in this regard. My maternal grandfather set up educational institutions. My paternal grandfather Babasaheb Soman joined Gandhiji’s call to help the people of Champaran way back in 1917. When family members are an example of good values of citizenship, it is easy for their children and grandchildren to follow. The same was true in my husband Nandan’s family. So we truly believe we are the trustees of the wealth that we have been fortunate to receive. We think so much wealth should not be accumulated in private hands. It must be used for the progress of society as a whole. We are not just doing our duty with our philanthropy, and hopefully impacting some people’s lives for the better, but we are also experiencing much joy in doing so, and intellectual stimulation too. Giving forward allows us to better connect with our country’s people and their situation.
How can children get involved?
I would say we have to first be very curious about the world around us. Observe everything that you can, with mindful eyes. You may discover a passion for something or the other. Then follow that passion – whether it is for science, or the environment or cooking or just about anything that is socially positive. Then work hard to follow that passion with commitment and courage, but without losing your curiosity. That will lead you to the answer of “What should I do next?” Like in all the books you read, where your favourite characters always find mysteries to solve, and problems to tackle, you too will find something where you can make a difference. And then, you stay connected to that problem until you , along with others can help make a change for the better. Even if is as simple a thing as planting trees, or growing a plant. Your action matters. So – Stay Curious. Stay Connected. Stay Committed.
How do you chose projects for your work?
I have some areas of my own curiosity, connectedness and commitment, such as access to justice, the environment, active citizenship and more. My team and I work with and fund committed people and institutions in those areas. I truly believe that we need to build an ethical society, or samaaj that can keep active in solving problems in its context and locality and beyond. A good society can also work to make sure that business organisations and government organisations act in the interest of the larger public.
Are academics important?
I think you all know the answer to that. Yes, academics are important, but not only to pass exams with flying colours. Doing as well as YOU can in your school and college will help you to improve your ‘learnability’ for your whole life. For all the new things you will have to learn as you grow up in this complex and fast changing world. So trying hard with your studies is a gift you will give to yourself. I know it can be so boring sometimes, especially now, with online classes. Shall I tell you a secret though? Allowing yourself to be bored without being too frustrated with boredom and without complaining too much about it, maybe the best thing you do for YOURSELF! Life can always be boring and if you can deal with that, you will be a winner! Remember this when you have to spend all those awful long hours studying for some test!
Should we have a hobby ? Are playing games online a hobby?
You have to do what you love doing; you have to enjoy playing, especially with others. We certainly loved our hobbies when we were young. I so loved reading! And I don’t know if this is a hobby or an assignment but I am so glad you have this children’s newspaper. I was a journalist too, and I hope some of you will become good investigative journalists in the future. But nowadays, many of you children have so much access to online games. A lot of research is now emerging that too much online time may not be the greatest for your physical and mental wellbeing. I think all of you should get together and decide how much you should do online and how much out in the real world. If we don’t stop to think about that, it may harm us. But if we ourselves decide to be mindful, it is the best solution. Sometimes it is hard to stop. I know! It happens to me too, when I am playing Scrabble or something online. Then my children scold me “Mama, you need to stop and pay attention to what we are saying!” “Oops, sorry, I say, and I shut down my computer.”
When will Sringeri Srinivas finally get a haircut?
Aah, now that is a very good question. I think it depends on when we feel that we have truly managed to make the Covid 19 virus harmless. Sringeri Srinivas is happy to see that many people are vaccinated, but he feels that we have to ALL practice being safe in public so that there are no more waves of infection. He is impatient to cut his hair, which was very itchy in the summer. No one wants to help him wash such long hair! Take care, be safe. This pandemic too shall pass! And you will be together. with your friends again. Treasure your friendships.
Arghyam announces the retirement of Rohini Nilekani as the Chairperson; Sunita Nadhamuni is appointed as the new Chairperson
Since its inception, Arghyam has operated via an endowment of Rs 150 CR provided by Ms Rohini Nilekani in her personal capacity.
Bengaluru, June 28, 2021: Arghyam Foundation announced that Rohini Nilekani has decided to retire from the foundation on September 30, 2021, as Chairperson and Member of the Board. Sunita Nadhamuni, currently Member of the Board at Arghyam and Head of Digital LifeCare, Dell Giving and Social Innovation at Dell Technologies, has been appointed to the position, effective October 1, 2021.
Rohini Nilekani has been the Founder – Chairperson of Argyham, a foundation she set up in 2001 as a vehicle for her personal philanthropy, and which, since 2005, has been working exclusively on water sector issues.
Talking about her retirement, Rohini Nilekani said: “Every organization needs a churning of its leadership to stay energetic and to bring innovation and new wisdom to its work. I have immense gratitude to the Board, the team, and to every one of our partners in civil society and in the government, for all we have worked on together. I hope I will always remain a spokesperson for better equity and sustainability in water. I am also delighted that the Board has appointed Sunita Nadhamuni as the next Chairperson of Arghyam.”
Sunita Nadhamuni has been associated with the Foundation over the years as a Trustee and was the first CEO of Arghyam in 2005. Sunita is a technology professional with a decade of IT experience in the Silicon Valley, followed by a decade as a social entrepreneur in the development sector in India. She is currently the Head of Digital LifeCare, a social impact initiative of Dell Technologies driving digital transformation of public health services. As partner to Government of India for the Ayushman Bharat NCD (Non-communicable Diseases) program, their technology platform has been deployed in 28 states with 100 million people enrolled across the country.
Commenting on her appointment, Sunita said: “I am privileged and humbled to take on the role of Chairperson of Arghyam succeeding Rohini. Under Rohini’s committed and visionary leadership, Arghyam has built up a rich body of work in diverse communities across the country through a strong network of partners and Government. I thank her deeply for her trust in me and look forward to working with the Board, Mala and the team as Arghyam continues its mission of equity and sustainability of water for all.
Talking about the transition, Mala Subramaniam, CEO of Arghyam Foundation said: “Rohini’s vision and passion for equity and justice in water has been embedded deeply and firmly in what we do as Arghyam. It has been a shining light guiding us for all these years and I have no doubt that it will continue to drive us into the future. I welcome Sunita and together, we look forward to building on this foundation to enable more people toward better water security in the country.”
This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s conversation with Arun Kumar on Succeeding in Partnerships. The discussion highlights the importance of partnerships in addressing large and complex societal issues and the need for including partnerships in the organisation strategy.
Collaboration is an important topic in the social sector today. Collaboration as an idea should, in its essence, be an equal partnership of different players and actors. You cannot call it collaboration if there is one power center and everybody has to follow that power center. Collaboration is difficult in practice because it requires that all collaborators should have a common vision and mission, and learn to give up control. In collaboration, we need to see everyone as a leader or rather as players on the same team, rather than seeking leadership roles. Good collaboration is possible only if we let go of control and truly co-create a path together. There are many forms of collaboration, which can be light touch or very deep, but I believe that this is the era for us to learn how to collaborate better, both in the social sector and in the philanthropy sector, and between the two.
According to Arun Kumar, collaboration is about conceptualizing and visualizing the bigger picture that perhaps needs to be completed by a collective. One of the biggest challenges is to enable every participant to see that bigger picture and agree on its broad contours, which includes a commitment to a certain concept or ideology, which are called non-negotiables. Those who have the ability to think in abstracts and to conceptualize the big picture may not always be the most skilled in facilitation or negotiations to get the collective going. This often results in issues of attribution, clashes of egos, representation, and leadership.
To be successful in your mission, a broad agreement is necessary. Kumar mentions the example of Child Rights and You (CRY) which headed an almost seven-year long campaign with a coalition of more than 200 organizations from all over India. Although there was no agreement on how to start a common school system or the medium of instruction, there was one common goal theme that everyone was committed to – that there should be free, compulsory universal education. Kumar also mentions the Right to Information and food security as other successful examples of collaborations.
Kumar speaks about his experience in 2020, where after the lockdown was announced in Mumbai, 14 organizations came together to collaborate and coordinate, to share information and find the cheapest mode of transportation, making sense of the procurement. They were organizations working in different geographies and on different issues, but there was an overriding need, and they came together beautifully. Another example shared was of Mission 24, an initiative by Apnalaya. It was aimed at improving entitlements in M-East Ward, which is right at the bottom of all 24 wards of Mumbai. With limited resources, it was difficult to keep people together on questions of advocacy, and to keep them committed for a long time. Advocacy and policy level change invariably knock at the door of ideologies, so it becomes that much more difficult to keep everybody together. However, if we are aiming for sustainable change and sustainable impact, there is no running away from collaboration.
But we also need to consider broader questions when it comes to collaboration. For example, Kumar asks whether we can view collaborations beyond the lens of a funding project, and view them as an investment in a longer term cause. What we can focus on is research, data, evidence, advocacy and policy change since these are areas where funding is scarce and collaboration difficult. This would mean looking beyond implementation and multiplying operations in the name of collaborations.
Having set up and worked with many organizations like Akshara Foundation, Pratham Books, and my foundations, Arghyam and EkStep, I think philanthropists have understood the need to collaborate. More so among themselves so that we can fund areas broadly, which it is hard for individual philanthropists to continue to fund, till it reaches the impact that it needs to reach.
There have been a few good examples of collaboration recently. The India Climate Collaborative has more than 20 donors and donor organizations working together to respond quickly and effectively to the challenge of climate change. The scale of the problem is only going to grow, and although we are still finding our feet in the ICC, the commitment and collaborative framework is in place. Similarly, with the Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation, we recognise that good media is the foundation of a good democracy and a good society. A few of us came together to birth this organization which has noteworthy trustees – who make decisions to find good media so that the voices of the people around our country can be better represented through various media. This has also been a collaborative effort from the beginning.
It is becoming clearer that collaborations can help you to de-risk from all kinds of failures. I think the era of collaboration in the philanthropy sector is upon us. I hope this means that a diverse set of civil society organizations will get funded.
Diversity is crucial when it comes to solving complex societal problems because we need different kinds of ideologies, methods, experiments, and innovations to be backed by philanthropy, citizen movements, and civil society leaders so that when something works, we can try to scale. Cookie-cutter solutions will not work at scale – this is why our team has conceptualized what we call Societal Platform Thinking. Our main goal for this was to ask ourselves, during these challenging times, how we achieve the most impact at scale. Carrying out a successful pilot and then trying to scale up was not as effective, so we are flipping that around to understand what works at scale. For that, we need the Samaaj, Bazaar, and Sarkar, to be involved if we are going to solve complex societal issues. Our whole effort was focused on reducing the friction to collaborate between these three sectors. In order to do that, we’ve put together a framework on www.societalplatform.org, along with many public digital goods for people to use, toolkits, processes, and our team is always available to answer questions.
Solutions do not come from only one end of the pipeline, and if we want more collaboration, we have to learn how to distribute the ability to find solutions. How do we create more agency in a distributed way? How do we scale up diversity? How do we use technology for the public good? How do we allow people to solve problems in context? And how do we bring Samaaj, Bazaar, Sarkar together to do what they do best? This is how we are looking at collaboration. Globally, we are seeing increasing examples of good collaboration as well as from the civil society side in India. NGOs like Pratham, probably the largest education NGO in the world, require all kinds of collaboration at all levels.
While collaboration remains extremely difficult because it is hard for people to give up their space, egos, branding, and their need for attribution, the need for collaboration has trumped the need to go it alone. The pandemic has made it increasingly clear that we need to work together rather than in silos. We saw this happen over the past year, with people coming together in ways they had never done before, mounting a whole logistics model to tackle pandemic-related issues. They had to resolve their differences to be able to work together, and I think it has taught us how to collaborate a little better from the heart.
It is not an easy task to work across sectors, but we must keep at it and keep in mind that there is a common interest between society actors, civil society institutions, and market actors to work together to uphold rule of law.
Civil society organizations come from a lens of equity, and social justice; I am sure many in the market do too, but it is also about innovation, efficiency, and creating prosperity for a wide number of people. Both of them must uphold the rule of law to be able to function and have the license to operate in society. Corporations need to not only follow the rule of law to the extent possible, but also uphold the rule of law so that business can be done peacefully. Of course, the state is not infallible, in our country or anywhere else in the world. Power does extend itself in human beings and when they have power, they try to extend their power, and the state has a monopoly on many powers.
It is in the interest of civil society institutions and market institutions to make sure that the Samaaj, Bazaar, and Sarkaar remain in a dynamic balance and that one sector does not become so powerful that the other two are left at the mercy of any one of them. Each needs to work together to keep the others in check if we want a good society.
Global research points to the fact that when corporations attempt to become better corporate citizens – by reducing negative externalities which society has to pick up the cost of, by treating their employees better and working towards improving the world rather than destroying it, those companies are doing better. There is not only a moral but a strategic imperative to get there. Businesses are not going to put themselves at risk because they constantly need the state to approve of everything that they do. But there are always openings to collaborate on some aspects which are morally undeniable and need to be done for a better society.
In India there is a good separation between the markets and the state, and I see the opportunity for samaaj institutions to work with the state to ensure that we have better markets which do not try to capture value only but distribute value down the line. The age of partnerships and collaborations is truly here and whether we fail or succeed, we have no choice but to keep trying.
It may not be easy for civil society organizations to collaborate with people whose ideas may be completely different from theirs. However, given the circumstances now where the trust between the state and civil society organizations has reduced considerably over the last few years, I think it is imperative that civil society actors create new networks for collaboration so that the interests of society are better represented with a diversity of views.
Civil society institutions need to come together and collaborate better. They can seek some philanthropic support for this as well, because sometimes we may not be good at storytelling or presenting our messages. I would request my civil society friends to come together through more platforms to tell your stories, and bridge the divide between yourselves and Indian donors. The age of the foreign donor is going away and there may be a kind of philanthropy nationalism emerging. Everyone wants to fund in their own countries and Indian philanthropists are coming together to fund new areas and new collaborations. So civil society actors have to come together as well.
In this interview with IDR, Rohini speaks about why we need to underwrite failure in the social sector, how philanthropists can support failure in practice, and shares some of her own failures as an activist philanthropist.
When working on complex issues of social change, failure is inevitable. Yet, people in the social sector are reluctant to talk about it. Why do you think this is the case?
When I think about failure, I think about the different ways in which it is perceived across samaaj (civil society), sarkaar (state), and bazaar (markets). In bazaar failure is underwritten structurally by financial markets. You’re allowed to go there and try something really crazy. And if you fail—not that anybody chooses to fail—there is a safety net for you. That’s why bazaar can afford to glorify failure a little bit, and say ‘fail forward’ or ‘fail fast’.
Sarkaar, on the other hand, is not incentivised or structured in a way that invites failure. That’s why they will prefer to see a proven model that they can take to scale, rather than try to innovate, because innovation involves a lot of failures. And this is alright because the government’s goal is not to provide risk capital to society, but rather to provide equity and service delivery.
Coming to samaaj, there is a greater risk appetite to try out things to help society, but there is less underwriting of the risk of failure. And this needs to change, because we are talking about people and their lives; we’re talking about their emotional, financial, and social well-being. So, in this context, it is important for social sector organisations to talk about failure, recognise it early on, and course correct. To do this effectively, we need patient philanthropic capital that will allow organisations and missions to experience some failures, some learning, and some experimentation, to find what works.
You make a very important point about philanthropy providing risk capital and staying the course. What does this look like in practice?
The way I see it, there are three main things that can create an enabling environment: trust, patient capital, and allowing the conversation on failure and innovation to be upfront and transparent. For me, it all begins with trust. The relationship between the philanthropist and nonprofit partner has to be built on trust, so that the nonprofit feels accepted when they are trying to do something different. Because if they’re not trying to do something different, how are things going to change? And some of these experiments will fail, either because the demand for those services or the institutional structures that support them are not ripe enough. Philanthropy needs to create space for these failures to be talked about and explained, and then allow more experimentation.
Once a funder trusts an organisation, they need to think about committing to multi-year funding.
We also need to be very conscious of timeframes, when talking about failure. Take the education sector in India, for example. About 25 years ago, parents were not very committed to putting their children through 14 years of schooling. Dropout rates were high and the number of out-of-school children was large. But thanks to the work of nonprofits, government policies, and markets, the understanding that education might lead to a better life for their children began to grow, and the demand for education built up rapidly. Today the idea of education being necessary has been completely internalised in India. Though it took some time, what might have initially seemed like a failure to the nonprofits and philanthropists working in the space, (the number of children with no access to education), today looks like a lot of success.
Once a funder trusts an organisation, they need to think about committing to multi-year funding so that the nonprofit is not spending 30 to 40 percent of their organisational bandwidth trying to raise funds, instead of trying to innovate on the ground.
In spite of a growing recognition among philanthropists that the programmes they support might not work, nonprofit grantees might still be hesitant to talk about their failures in fear of losing funding. How do we address this?
I think the social sector putting forward more stories and examples of short-term failures that allowed them to innovate and succeed in the long-run will build an understanding and make philanthropists more open to having a longer timeframe with their grants. In doing this however, both the philanthropist and the organisation need to make sure that failure is not glorified. We are not trying to achieve failure; we are going to fail because it’s not always possible to succeed, and it’s important to accept that.
While doing this we also have to be careful to distinguish between the failure of the organisation and the failure of some individuals within the organisation. There is a different way of responding to failure of some individuals—perhaps from a moral lapse—than a failure coming out of a good intent to innovate. The analysis of the failure and its origins is extremely important. Creating the space to do this—first internally by the organisation and then a little more openly—should become a structured process. I’m sure many organisations do this already, but it would be helpful if we could come together to create frameworks, toolkits, and processes, which are easy for organisations to follow and share publicly.
Beyond acknowledging and analysing failure internally within organisations, what can we do to ensure that others can also learn from failures, even if not their own?
This is a very important point because the goal of the social sector should be to ensure that even if organisations, institutions, or leaders fail, their mission shouldn’t fall by the wayside. We need to keep space for others to continue the task—the societal task—even if some organisations fail. One way I see of doing this is by converting the effort and knowledge of organisations into digital public goods; using open source technologies that allow people to come in and share, discover, and learn. In a sense, this is a de-risking from the failures of individual leaders, organisations, and innovations—sharing knowledge so that we don’t make the same mistakes again.
We are not trying to achieve failure; we are going to fail because it’s not always possible to succeed, and it’s important to accept that.
But beyond just individual organisations or philanthropists, how can we learn from the failures of the social sector as a whole? To me, what would be interesting would be if we had a process to look at the failures of the social sector in India over the last 40-50 years. Because by now, it should have been in a less risky space. Could we have done something differently, together?
We are now seeing a new wave of young social sector actors using technology and other new methods to increase equity and access. What can they learn from the old wave of social sector players, who worked from the 1970s to the 2000s? What were their failures? What can we learn from them and do differently?
Can you tell us about some of your failures, and what you’ve learned?
In my professional life, I’ve experienced many failures, some worse than others. But my very first failure in my professional life as an activist philanthropist was way back in 1992, when I set up an organisation called Nagrik, after one of my very close friends died in a horrible road accident. Along with a few others, we laid out our goal to create safer roads.
We worked on it for a few years without a large budget, but I don’t think the budget was the problem. I think the problem was that we didn’t quite know how to go about it. There was a lot of enthusiasm, passion, and intelligence in the group, but I think we didn’t structure ourselves. And so, the whole initiative faded away; but the problem didn’t go away at all. India continues to have the highest number of road accidents and deaths in the world, with 150,000 annual deaths.
When I think about my own failures, I also go back to the fact that what looks like a failure today may look like success tomorrow.
It was a failure at many levels and I take a lot of the blame for the lack of strategic thinking on myself. But it taught me a few lessons about how not to do things, how to think through things, how to set realistic goals, and how to ensure that you have a professional cadre working with you—not just enthusiastic, good Samaritans.
And when I think about my own failures, I also go back to the fact that what looks like a failure today may look like success tomorrow. We cannot predict when this will happen, and especially as philanthropists, we need to be aware of this. It’s been nearly 15 years since Arghyam, the nonprofit organisation I set up and fund, started working on supporting sustainable water and sanitation solutions. Somebody could look at us and say that the water situation in India has actually gotten worse in this time. Is this a failure of the organisation and the vision? I think we could say that Arghyam could have been much more impactful. But one could also say that the water problem in India is so huge and so complex that it is completely unrealistic to expect one organisation to do anything more than shift the needle in some aspects of the water situation. And we have been able to do that. We have been able to make the issue of groundwater more visible among practitioners, donors, and policy circles. Some of the policies that our partners have been able to embed in government frameworks will hopefully create more sustainability and equity in the water sector, sooner rather than later. To a certain extent, we succeeded in nudging, catalysing, and innovating. But of course, if you look at the whole water sector, then Arghyam has by no means finished its journey towards its mission.
This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani in conversation with Prashanth Prakash at the launch of ACT for Environment at the ACT Summit. The ACT Summit brings together India’s leading startup founders, venture capitalists and changemakers to talk about how we can leverage inventive startup assets and ideas to enable social change. In 2021, ACT will scale its resources to drive impact beyond healthcare, focusing on larger societal problems in education, environment and women’s participation in the workforce in India.
Over the 16 years since I have been working on water and the environment, I have experienced a sharp learning curve. I’ve realised how critical it is to scale this kind of work and ensure the maximum impact. We cannot have just a few handful of people who are only working on this because of their passion and commitment. The sector must expand and it needs innovation and efficiency that people from the markets bring into things. If we look at the four major sectors within this – air quality, water, waste, and land – they present a huge untapped area, both for the market sector and for social entrepreneurs. Although there is a lot of traditional knowledge there, we need to infuse it with new knowledge as well, so that both can meet to create new, India-specific sustainable models to scale. I think we’re seeing a rise in interest now, as people are beginning to realise that ecology is the foundation of life on this planet. Unless we can fix the ecology, we will have continual long-term, short-term, and medium-term risks in any economic activity that we do. If we’re hoping to lift people out of poverty and imagining sustainable prosperity for all, all eyes have to be on the ecology and the environment.
India is one of the biodiversity hotspots of the world. We are one-third the size of the US but have four times its population and multiple times its biodiversity. Of course, that is partly because of the geography of our location, however it’s interesting that we have so many people in our country and at the same time, so much biodiversity. We can’t afford to forget that people understand the sacred relationship of human life and nature. We are so deeply connected that we cannot just treat nature with contempt or hubris.
Overcoming Barriers to Knowledge Bases
India is blessed with hundreds of civil society organisations that are passionate, knowledgeable, and committed to this space. As a philanthropist, I look for good ideas, institutions, and individuals that have vested in the space of environment. And there are plenty of good organisations working on a variety of issues, in the context of their local environments. My team and I try to identify these organisations and we start out with a basis of trust because they are the experts here. We start by working with them to co-create programs and as our relationship grows, we find more opportunities to invest and work. It’s been a thorough delight travelling with these people all over the country – from Sikkim, down to the Andamans, to Tamil Nadu and Kutch. We get to see the kind of work that these organisations undertake, under different and challenging conditions, and constantly add to all of our natural capital base.
However, there are several barriers to building these knowledge bases. Policy barriers present one kind of challenge, and that’s always an ongoing political and advocacy discourse which has to be undertaken by all of us. But the lack of long-term patient capital invested in this space is also another real barrier for organisations to be effective. For example, sometimes people who invest, whether it is philanthropically or whether it’s in the market space, want high returns that are quick and visible. Unfortunately, sometimes the damage to the ecology can be slow and invisible, so it requires patience in terms of resourcing the institutes that are doing the observational analysis of the biodiversity loss or degradation of the land, etc. So there is a lack of patient capital. There’s also a lack of trust between financing institutions such as philanthropists or governments, and the civil society organisations working on the ground. We need to build more bridges of trust and discovery between these sectors so that we are not all working in silos. There’s so much wonderful work being done, but how do we learn to make it more discoverable, transparent, and accountable on both sides of the equation?
I believe that technology has a role to play in overcoming some of these barriers. Although I’m not a techie myself, after years of learning from Nandan I have realised that you can really amplify the power of good intent by using technology. And in the environment sector, data is crucial and you can use technology as a backbone to collect data from different points, to democratise it, and to ensure that it’s accessible to all. We need citizen-based science, data collection, analysis, and the ability to use this data to improve and restore the ecology. There have been several attempts at this, from the India Water Portal to the Biodiversity Portal, and other existing government frameworks. But we need more and we need them to be democratic, functioning well both from bottom-up and top-down perspectives. All the data should not simply flow upwards to where the power is, it needs to flow out and democratise access to knowledge.
The second way technology can be used is for capacity building. For example, when we started out working in water, we realised that there was no cadre like there is in education with teachers or public health with the ANMs and ASHA workers. In water, it goes from one program to another and all that knowledge is just dissipated. In lieu of this, we started thinking about how to use technology to bring all training content into a common platform where people can use technology to get atomised learning content and be able to show proof of their knowledge level. So it’s a common program after which they would be able to say, ““I am a water practitioner, I learned A, B, C through courses D-E-F, and I am available for work.” At Arghyam we have undertaken this, working with Meghalaya and other government programs to implement this. In this way, we need to start thinking of technology as a potential enabler of capacity and livelihoods in areas such as land, water, waste, and air.
I have met many ambitious young entrepreneurs who have come up with technology innovations, but I personally don’t have the setup to be able to support and invest in them. If ACT can do that and make access to capital for such innovators more discoverable, adequate, and timely, this would be crucial for the future of sustainability. This capital must be high risk and patient capital because many times only one out of 10 ideas will succeed. But this is a great time to invest philanthropic risk capital for local innovation since this is a big year internationally, for the Paris Accord COP26.
Creating an Ecosystem of Innovators
Hopefully, more technologies will flow between countries but we can’t wait around for that. We need to build on what we have had before and what we have now, which is the very new spirit of entrepreneurship combined with the idea of sustainability. And we need young entrepreneurs to innovate their way out of the mess that our generation has left them. They’re thinking about sustainability from get-go and in the design of their technology ambitions, and we have to support that. We should build a solid, healthy ecosystem of innovative entrepreneurs, both in and beyond the markets. We have nine more years, but if we don’t manage to make substantial changes in this decade, I dread to think what’s going to happen in the 2030s.
In order to change our world for the better, one of the first things we all have to acknowledge is that all of us are in this together. We must think of ourselves as citizens of this planet, as human beings first. 2020 has taught us how wrong we have been about the way we treat nature and wildlife. We cannot afford another pandemic caused by our own carelessness. We need to remind ourselves at every moment that we are inextricably connected with nature. We have to understand how deep those and complex those interconnections are, and rewrite human history starting from today. We have no other choice.
Secondly, if you are investing in something, invest in an area that you care about and that you have researched. You need basic knowledge when you invest in an area. Arm yourself first with passion and then with knowledge. Thirdly, start your relationships with trust. After you do your basic due diligence, let trust run the game because that’s how you and your partners get the best out of each other. Lastly, this work requires patience and usual market sense. If we try to push for outcome data before the time is right, we will only add perverse incentives into the game. So we must have the right incentives in place and co-create the metrics with our partners. And some of your portfolio must be reserved for developing more awareness among citizens, especially urban citizens who have been deracinated from the wild. Our cities are a nightmare, in terms of air, land, water, and waste. So we need to reconnect them to the possibility of living differently.
This is a good time to understand the relationship we have with land, water, air, or even those who produce our food. Agriculture is one of the worst drivers of ecological damage, destroying the soil, water, and air. So we need to think about reforming the way agriculture is practised, not just in India but all over the world. How can we use this opportunity to figure out how to use agriculture to improve our land, soil, and the way we use water? How do we move towards a low-water economy in agriculture and industry? How do we therefore keep our air better? How do we improve our biodiversity while producing more crop per drop? Perhaps with more funds like ACT supporting innovation and working with small farmers, we will see a shift towards a more sustainable future.
Rohini Nilekani is a fierce believer in the power of being an active, participatory citizen. She quips that her friends could get irritated with her Gandhigiri, as she went about picking up waste which people had thrown on the road or requested people to stand in line at bus stops right from her childhood days.
Today, as a philanthropist and a leading voice representing civil society, Rohini supports ideas, individuals and institutions doing ground-breaking work that enables a strong samaaj with ethical leadership, a sense of urgency and the courage to learn. She is the Founder-Chairperson of Arghyam, and Co-founder and Director of EkStep. She is also an author, Giving Pledge Signatory along with her husband Nandan Nilekani, a former journalist and a member of various advisory boards.
How did you arrive at this idea that value is created when the civil society, government, and markets come together and co-create to solve societal problems?
Since childhood, I always felt very strongly about citizens banding together to do some things. But putting these three things together really happened in 1997 – when I had gone on a field visit for our work on water in the Northern state of Bihar in India.
I got talking with one of our partners there, with whom we were working through Arghyam. He said to me, “in the good old days, society used to be very strong. And then in the last century, the government became stronger (starting with colonialism and onwards), followed by even stronger international corporations, especially with globalization. In the process, society kept getting pushed back and back and back to the lowest point instead of being at the top”.
This really made me think. I started reading and learning about societal movements, about social change, about power structures. And it occurred to me that in this continuum of society, and markets, and the state – in this continuum, the most important sector was the societal sector! That if we want any change to happen, we have to look at the role of all these three sectors. I’ve been feeling for a very long time now that the societal sector has to be the strongest foundation so that the markets and the state can be responsive to the needs of the society. So all of my work has been on how we can strengthen the foundational society, to actually try and come together to solve problems for itself, and include bazaar and sarkaar without letting the societal power reduce. Without creating an imbalance.
This idea of Societal Platform Thinking was germinating in your mind and manifesting through your work since 2004. What were your personal experiences, how did you come to this construct of Societal Platform Thinking?
Through my work at Akshara Foundation, I learnt a lot about how to work with the government. But it was when we started Pratham Books, whose mission is to ‘put a book in every child’s hand’, there I realized that even working with the government would not be enough. You have to involve a broad section of society to make sure that every child is given the gift of a reading life.
We knew that the publishing industry in India was in dire need of change: if we cannot find more than 600 books in any mother tongue language put together but English, and we have 300 million kids! Something needed to be done with urgency! So we decided that we have to unleash the creative energy of all the people in India, because every household is a storytelling household in India. Everybody tells the stories of the epics to their children and grandchildren. So how could we transition from an oral culture to a written culture?
We started working with publishers, with state governments, and we worked with every single creative artist we could find. It taught me the power of unleashing the most amazing positive energy of people. Writers, illustrators, translators, editors, publishers, governments, philanthropy – everybody came together. We innovated on how to make a book cheap to publish, and financially accessible to many? Even though it was underwritten by philanthropy, we wanted it to be eventually financially sustainable. And, we did.
So, innovation mattered a lot. Partnerships mattered a lot. I learned about unleashing the societal energy that people have in them to achieve a common goal. And this learning has informed the coming together of Societal Platform Thinking.
You have always stressed on leadership for the society and of the society. So when you think about leadership, how do you look at that dimension?
The true idea of leadership has to come from a place where I feel the responsibility to change something that I think is not correct in the world. It could be anything. And if leadership is born from that – that idea of transformation, then you have to shoulder the responsibility to make that transformation happen.
And we all know that we can’t do this by ourselves. Leadership is about being a follower of other people’s ideas, because we are always standing on the shoulders of other giants. But it is as much about being able to create a followership. We ensure that by our example.
For me, the power of intent always matters a lot. I did realize on the way, however, that just the power of intent is by no means enough. When I co-created my first institution in 1992, Nagrik, we wanted to have safer roads in India. While the intent was strong, by every metric it was a disaster – now i realise that we didn’t yet have the language or the grammar of that intent, so that we could be effective. A leader must learn with his or her team how to create a grammar, so that people can build a language.So for me, leadership is about enabling the grammar of that intent, so that everybody can work on enriching the language of that mission or whatever that we decide to do together.
You are an advocate for creating safe spaces to embrace failure, and you have talked a lot about this. So we’d love to hear your perspectives on failure and how you look at failure.
In the social sector, it’s very hard for us to talk of failure publicly. I do understand where it is coming from – most social sector organizations need funders, and funders like to hear nice things about what they’re funding. It’s only now that there is much better sense that funders need to know about what didn’t work. So that they are able to fund that as well.
We are beginning to learn that failure is okay. In fact, we had a failure conference in Bangalore three years ago, where icons of the civil society movements in India came and said, here’s how we failed. Here’s why we have failed. We take the responsibility for that failure. But here’s what we learn from the failure.
Nobody wants to fail – so we should be careful of not glorifying failure. But in our organisations, we really must make time to understand failure, to accept failure, to discuss failure, and then where possible, to pin accountability without demeaning that person or team so much that they won’t try anything different again.
You have led the charge in philanthropy in India in many ways – with investments in Societal Platform and the way you have been a risk funder through trust. Tell us more.
I started off as an activist in some sense – whether it was at Nagrik or Akshara or Pratham Books. I was inside these civil society organizations, and I knew how difficult it is to have to respond to donors who don’t understand the ground reality. The reality is that things keep changing, and you need to be able to respond to that changing situation in a flexible manner. Whereas, if you’re stuck with some programmatic kind of backed donation or something very specific, it really makes the organization very rigid, and makes people very anxious about reporting to the donor. So, I know the feeling and the hardships – I had been on this side.
So now as a donor, I know that I cannot, cannot, cannot thrust my own ideas and opinions and rigidity on to any organization and expect them to succeed. There’s just no way! I recall, one of the first people that I gave a large chunk of money to, Mihir Shah in Arghyam said, “Rohini, don’t make the mistake of calling your partners grantees. You should not be a donor and they should not be grantees, you should be partners.” We really try our best to always do that. Trust is a basic currency we need. You just have to work on trust. Of course, you have to do some due diligence and sometimes your trust will be betrayed, but you learn. So for me, trust is the absolute foundation of any partnership.
