SMART SUMMARY: In 2008, United Airlines allegedly broke a $3500 custom made guitar belonging to Canadian musician Dave Carroll. Following many rounds of fruitless dialog, during which the company’s managers relentlessly cited ‘policy’ and refused to compensate the musician, Carroll made a music video called United Breaks Guitars that had amassed 10 million views on YouTube by February 2011. The impact: According to The Times, within four days of the video being posted, investors in the airline had lost $180m due to a fall in its stock price. The moral of the story: Managers need to talk meaningfully with their customers while they can…or face the music.
Type: Interview
Charge of the compassionate brigade
Modern society is classified into different segments. First you have the state, as represented by elected officials and lawmakers, politicians, ministers, bureaucrats and other organs of the state. Then there are the commercial bodies — companies, chambers of commerce and other market players.
The third segment (there is a fourth, the underworld and the mafia, but let’s not talk about it) is civil society, comprising “the arena, outside of the family, the state, and the market where people associate to advance common interests,” a definition coined by Civicus, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation.
Our mission is safe and sustainable water for all
in the third of Mint’s “Joy Of Giving Week” interview series, Rohini Nilekani, chairperson and founder of Arghyam, talks about the foundation she set up to address the problem of one of India’s scarcest resources—water.
Uncommon Ground – Do we see ourselves as citizens or consumers?
There has to be a fine balance between society, government and the market – samaj, sarkar and bazaar.
I attempted to seek that balance through a dialogue between samaj and bazaar.
In 2008, Rohini Nilekani, chairperson of NGOs Pratham Books and Arghyam, moderated an eight-part television series called ‘Uncommon Ground’. Conceptualised by Nilekani, a former journalist, the show had an unusual premise: it put together, on the same platform, one business leader and one social leader and encouraged them to talk, nonconfrontationally, about the issues closest to their common area of work from the point of view of their divergent ideologies.
Uncommon Ground: Path to India’s future
In 2008, Rohini Nilekani did the near-impossible by bringing sets of for profit business leaders and not-for-profit social leaders together on a TV show for focused debates on issues crucial to India’s future. Now, she has turned those discussions into her latest book, Uncommon Ground.
The author-social activist-philanthropist spoke to Sangeetha Chengappa ahead of the book’s launch in Bengaluru on Thursday.
Entrepreneur Wisdom – Discussion – TiE Stree Shakti initiative
Rohini Nilekani and Rama Bijapurkar share their views on women entrepreneurship Chat Over Chai.
We aim to provide a book in every child’s hand: Rohini Nilekani, Pratham Books
New Delhi : In a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with Pratham Books (NGO), publisher Pearson Longman has agreed to set aside part of the proceeds it receives for every school title sold in India, which will then be used for the cause of the underprivileged children across the country.
BEHIND THE IT REVOLUTION –
IT companies may bring in their wake a certain culture of work and play which may veer away sharply from Bangalore’s pre-IT days, but the city is trying hard to keep its integrity.
“The city has evolved.. It has grown madly in every direction, planned and unplanned, grown with granite and glass, with bricks and mud and tin as well,” says Rohini and adds that it never seems to be bursting at the seams like the other metros. The roads are definitely better, street lighting and the signages are improving.
‘Challenge creation of islands in society’
Rohini Nilekani is essentially a philanthropist at heart and passionate about development issues. The fact that she has featured in the Forbes’ list of Asia Pacific’s 48 ‘Heroes Of Philanthropy’ for the second consecutive year proves this.
She speaks to Shruti Khairnar on middle class values and corporate social responsibilities.
India’s NGO Sector is the most diverse in the world
Writer and philanthropist Rohini Nilekani, wife of Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani, has been deeply involved in development issues for many years now. She is the trustee of Akshara Foundation, which works to bring literacy and teaching programmes to poorer children; she co-founded Pratham Books, a non-profit publishing enterprise to produce high-quality, low-cost books for children in several Indian languages; end, with a private endowment, she started Arghyam, an NGO committed to sustainable water for all, in 2001.
