Keynote Archives - Page 2 of 5 - Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies

Skoll World Forum 2024 | Philanthropy’s Role in Change at Scale

At the 2024 Skoll World Forum, many conversations turned to the importance of collaboration in the face of widespread disruption and social unrest. Don Gips and Rohini Nilekani came together to explore philanthropy’s role in activating and accelerating change through networks, partnerships, and knowledge sharing.

Addressing the power imbalances in philanthropy, Rohini emphasized the need for trust and risk-taking, and the role of wealth in enabling positive societal impact. She encouraged philanthropists to invest in ventures that may be imperfect, using philanthropic capital as risk capital. Both Don and Rohini stressed the necessity of collaboration across sectors (society, government, and markets) to achieve meaningful societal change.

They also announced and discussed the newly created Center for Exponential Change, a network supporting systems orchestrators and helping changemakers overcome gaps and scale their efforts.

Featuring Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies
Former journalist and current Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and Co-founder and Director of EkStep, a non-profit education platform. She also founded Arghyam, a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation that funds initiatives across India.

Featuring Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation
Leads the Skoll Foundation’s work investing in, connecting, and championing social entrepreneurs to create transformational social change around the world. His experiences span public service, politics, business, finance, and technology.

Don Gips: I could not be more excited than to be here today with Rohini and with all of you. She truly is one of the great voices in philanthropy. And I’ve gotten to work with Rohini in a number of projects, but in preparation for this conversation, I listened to her speeches and I read her many writings, and I realized I speak in prose and she speaks in poetry. And she did it again to me this morning in another meeting we were in.

Across her career, she’s been a journalist, an author, a children’s book creator, a champion of education, a bridge builder, and currently Chairperson of the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies Foundation. We, at Skoll, have been incredibly fortunate to get to partner with Rohini and with the Nilekanis. We’ve co-funded at least a dozen organizations. We, both, are part of Co-Impact. And today, or this week, we announced the Center for Exponential Change that we’re working on with Tulaine, New Profit. There they are.

Rohini Nilekani: Chris.

Don Gips: Yeah. Chris, and we think it will help drive change for systems orchestrators, and we’ll come back to that. The work that we both try to do is about trying to transform the factors that destabilize society. Polarization, misinformation and disinformation, inequities across gender and class, and the sweeping burnout of change makers. I see Aaron somewhere there, Wellbeing Project, which is helping us with this. We can’t wait to hear from Rohini about her views about creating change at scale and tackling these global crises. And I’m sure we’ll solve all of this in the next 45 minutes.

Rohini, I’d like to start with a personal question. As a role model for many of us in philanthropy, and a leading female philanthropist, can you share more about what led you to this field in your journey with philanthropy?

Rohini Nilekani: First of all, thank you, Don. Thank you to all of you for coming. It’s a real honor for me to be on this stage. Skoll is the place to come to if you’re in the social sector, anywhere in the world. So thank you for that, for 20 years. That’s awesome. Thank you. Like everybody else, I came to philanthropy, well, I came to philanthropy because nowadays you can’t do philanthropy unless you’re wealthy, okay? In the good old days, you could be a philanthropist just by loving other people. Now, you have to be a philanthropist when you get wealthy.

So before I became a philanthropist, I was what you call a social entrepreneur. I was a journalist before that and set up two or three organizations in education. And then I co-founded something called Pratham Books, which I urge you to look at because we started out with the mission, a book in every child’s hand. And today we have books which are contributed to — from all around the world, for little children in 350 languages, because it is out in the creative commons and it is a societal mission around the world. Those books are free to read. If you have a child in your neighborhood, a nephew, a grandson, please pick up a story from storyweaver.org.in. After that–

Don Gips: That’s incredible.

Rohini Nilekani: Yes, it has been quite a journey. And after that, since the money I sensibly invested in my husband’s company yielded a little bit of something, I put it all into my foundation, which worked on water. But what I learned along the way is that wealth comes, Don, with extreme responsibility. And that I do believe the role of wealth in society is to enable society. Yes, you can buy a few Ferraris or whatever you want to, Lamborghinis or a couple of diamond necklaces, but after that, what are you going to do? And I don’t see why societies and nations will allow runaway accumulation of private wealth if the responsibility of that wealth to make societies better is not visibly seen.

And so, I think, as I learned the ropes of philanthropy, I got very excited in the topic today that, how does philanthropy enable change at scale? And that’s why we started the center this morning together.

Don Gips: It’s such an incredible story and such an incredible impact that you’ve had. And just even the language you just used, when I first got to Skoll, one of my team members, who’s Hawaiian, taught me the word kuleana. Kuleana, with great privilege comes great responsibility.

You know, we so admire your approach to giving and we have learned so much with you, listening and learning and taking risks, trusting your grantees and the openness with which you’ve approached your philanthropy. When you signed the Giving Pledge, you quoted John Adams. I love this quote.

Rohini Nilekani: Yes.

Don Gips: “Power always thinks it has a great soul. There’s great danger that I will fall in love with my own virtue.”

Rohini Nilekani: Yes.

Don Gips: What have you learned about how philanthropy needs to grapple with its own power to listen better to its partners and take more risks?

Rohini Nilekani: To be very honest, and this group knows this very, very well, especially if you’re on this side and looking for money, I’ve been on both sides, I think wealth comes with extraordinary power and you know this as well. And we have to be very careful. I don’t think that power imbalance ever actually goes away, but even so, you can hold that power a little better. So I believe that the first thing in that redressal of the imbalance is if you know how to listen and if you know how to trust.

At least in these 30 years, I have learned that if I start with trust, I end up with even more trust on both sides of the equation. And so, I think that’s what I’ve learned, that philanthropists need to learn how to trust. At the get-go, it’s very hard to let go, but you learn it as you go along. And that is a goal that actually philanthropy must strive to reach, to create a system of giving or granting where the philanthropist and the foundation can learn to let go. Learn, let go, learn, let go. And we’ve tried to do it, you don’t always succeed.

The other thing I think is, and this many people have said that philanthropic capital is risk capital. And if you don’t invest in ventures that may fail, that may not succeed, then you’re just simply not doing your job as a philanthropist. And yes, always keep a mirror in your bag, in your house, next to your bed. So before you go to sleep, you can just take a quick look. Has my head swollen a little more today? I would suggest that. What about you? Tell me the truth about how you feel about the power you hold.

Don Gips: Since I took this job, I’ve become more handsome, taller, more intelligent. It’s amazing how much people compliment me.

Rohini Nilekani: By the way, you’re looking really good today.

Don Gips: Thank you. You know, I’m going to tell a little story because it hit me. So last year when we were having the closing event, a woman on crutches came up to me and said, “You know, you guys did this amazing forum, it’s so great, but you’re not doing enough around disability.” And it like hit me like a rock. I was like on my high and all of a sudden, I realized we really haven’t even had the conversation. And by the way, anybody who misses tonight when Eddie gets on stage to talk about it, we’ll see we learn this lesson.

I was talking to, I was describing this deep listening and that we need to do it. And I was using this as an example when I was talking to some of the Skoll Fellows on Monday. And all the people in the room had this look on their face and I’m like, “What’s going on?” And Lizzie, who was the woman who’d come up to me a year ago raised her hand and said, “I’m the one who approached you.” If we don’t listen, we walk into this world with our preconceived notions of who we are. And we, to your quote, we all think we have so much virtue. And it’s only by that humility and listening that we grow and learn and get better at this incredible gift that we have for philanthropy.

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. One of the, when I set up my foundation, the very first grant we made, which was a big grant considering that we were just on our, that person, Mihir Shah came to me and said, “Please never think of anybody as your grantee and don’t behave like a donor. We are going to be partners in this and always remember that.” So I think I value that first lesson I got when I gave out my first big check.

Don Gips: Yeah. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about collaboration. And we both have gotten to work together because we are collaborating. The Center for Exponential Change, which we announced today is a global action hub for systems orchestrators supporting their efforts to build a better society with speed, at scale and sustainably. Can you say more about how collaboration can help us meet today’s unique challenges and how will something like The Center for Exponential Change help us collaborate more effectively?

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah, I think we all know this, but it’s, something, some truths can bear constant repetition and one of them is that you simply cannot achieve meaningful societal change without collaborating. First of all, collaborating with the people in whose name you are working. Sometimes even social change, entrepreneurs like how I was and am, we forget that we are representing and when representing, you have to be even more careful to be accurately representing. So your first collaboration has to be with that.

And then of course, all down the way, you have to be able to collaborate. In any societal change, you need Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar, society, state and markets to contribute to their role in effecting change. You need to be able to collaborate across these three sectors. You need to be able to collaborate with other donors. And the good news is, Don, I’ve been watching this space for a while, I think finally, we philanthropists have, in India, we call it a tube light, a little slow, but it comes on eventually, have learned that we must learn how to collaborate better. And that’s why so many global new institutions like Co-Impact and so many others that are a lot.

And collaborating, of course, again, means you have to let, keep your ego a little at the back, towards the back burner. You have to really appreciate that other people bring something to the table and it’s not just you, however smart you are. And that, because you have learned to do that, you are going to be much more effective than you could possibly have been. And I think we’ve had enough of, and that’s why we collaborate so much.

The Center for Exponential Change has come out of a long journey. We are co-founders together with Institute Bejo and New Profit, who are in the room here. And you will hear more about it in the days to come. And we all hope you will join us. There’s going to be a website where you can give us feedback. We want to hear from you. The goal is that all of you change makers, sometimes there are gaps that need to be filled. You’re full of your passion, your mission. You know where you want to go. And some gaps are there which are not filled.

It could be that as leaders, you feel very lonely. It could be that you want to be tech-enabled, but don’t know how. It could be that you need a little help re-imagining the scale of what you want to do. You may need to find others who think like you, who have the same ambition. We hope that this center will help you.

There are four donors who brought in us a decent amount of money to begin with, which is $40 million. All of it is directly going to go into paradigm grants to social change organizations that are looking to go to the next level. Sanjay Purohit is in the room. Priya is in the room. Those who want to talk to him, please do so. Sorry, Sanjay, but that’s what we hope to do. I don’t know if we will succeed. We will try very, very hard with all your support. And Don, if you could tell us why you joined this effort, because you’ve been in many collaboratives. Why one more?

Don Gips: Well, let me take a step back in answering that. So I’ve been in philanthropy now five years. I’ve been in government, the private sector, civil society, and now I actually get to give money away. And first of all, it’s so clear that the problems we’re facing, as you just said, Rohini, all need, if one sector’s working alone, we’re not going to get there. You need government, you need the market, you need civil society working together on any of these intersecting problems. I think, and when I got to philanthropy, it literally is the most fragmented sector I’ve ever been in, and it’s very personal.

Philanthropists are giving in their own image or vision, but because of that, for our grantees or our partners, as you are so correctly, we’ve got to get rid of that word of grantee. Your original grantee or partner taught you that. Our partners have to go door to door to door. Instead of finding that single place, they can go to get funding, and then they have to file, okay, this one wants this impact report, this one wants that one, this one needs this in their grant agreement. As philanthropy, we need to get better at working together so that those in the field can make a difference.

When we came into Skoll, Shivani, who’s our head of strategy, and I, Jeff asked us to sort of rethink what we could do to make a bigger impact at a faster pace. And one of the things we found as we went on a deep listening tour to one of your earlier points was, as we talked to the people we’ve been funding for years, our partners, many of them were shifting out of running their own organization to saying, how do I change a system at scale?

Rohini Nilekani: Correct.

Don Gips: How can I be what we’ve called a systems orchestrator, somebody who, unlike in the musical orchestrator where the conductor’s out front, be behind, but helping, as you beautifully said, weave that web of connectivity that drives change? And we’ve been on this journey, and we’ve been working with Bridgespan on doing research on this, and then all of a sudden we get on the phone with Sanjay, and he says, “We think systems orchestrators are these really important thing,” and it was like a light bulb went off that we could get to work with you guys. And through your generosity, helping set up the center to provide, because what she didn’t say is they provided the funding so that the infrastructure can get built. So that whenever we find one of our partners who’s a systems orchestrator and can use this, all the money goes directly to them. So a round of applause for that.

Rohini Nilekani: That’s Nandan Nilekani, my husband, and I, and a whole team behind it.

Don Gips: Well, yes, and it takes a village to do all of this. I’d say the other thing, because I think it’s really important was not having this be a globally north, global north-led initiative, but truly having it be a partnership that crossed continents was sort of Sanjay’s vision and your vision, and I think it’s very powerful. I know we’re learning in every one of these conversations by being a part of that.

Rohini Nilekani: Thank you.

Don Gips: Which actually leads me to one more question before we open it up to the audience, so you guys start thinking of your questions. SaveLIFE, who will be accepting the Skoll Award later today, and many of our awardees have come from your early investments. As we see an increase of local, national, and regional funders, can you share a bit about the important role you see more proximate and place-based funders playing and driving impact, and what is the ideal role for global philanthropy in collaborating with these more proximate funders?

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. No, that’s a very good question. I think it’s very, very important for local social organizations to find local support. It’s harder, because sometimes the more established global foundations are literally more generous and quick to give grants, small grants, in the global south. But I’ve come to believe that it’s very, very important to get local funding, and which means it’s a challenge to social leaders of non-profit organizations that we have to learn to tell our story better to the donor community around us.

There’s a lot of wealth being created in many countries in the global south, but there is still not a practice of this kind of modern philanthropy yet, and I think it behooves us all in this wonderful new world of communication to tell our story in such a way that we bring small and local donors along with us. The minute they come into this sector, there is so much reward that comes from that initial giving that they will want to give more and more, and I think global philanthropy can unlock local philanthropy. I know we’ve tried to do it in different ways and had different levels of success.

Certainly the Giving Pledge is one of many such organizations, but you know, there is so much more capital to be unlocked. Even in the Giving Pledge, there’s half a trillion dollars sitting all dressed up with nowhere to go, and I think it also is up to us because sometimes small social sector organization bemoan the lack of funding. But I think we also need to go out there and bravely tell our story in a way that we can be heard.

When I say we, I seem to be talking all over the place, but you know what I mean, that funders like me also need to hear your stories more. Sometimes they don’t reach funders, so that’s something. So how can global philanthropy, which is already so good at pushing out the money, how can it help local philanthropy to hear those stories better and carry them along? If Skoll could come to many countries and say, “We are here, now you join us,” which you’ve already been doing in some places, I think we need to unlock local capital for local work, especially in this very, very critical human decade where we all have understood exactly how interconnected we are, even as we are trying to tear ourselves apart with polarized ideologies.

Don Gips: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And just from our perspective, we’ve learned so much doing this with you and with philanthropists around the world. Every time I go, travel, and it’s not enough, so Shivani’s going to make me go travel a lot more next year, the insights and the local understanding is so critical, and that support, and just an encouragement to all global funders to find those local partners.

Rohini Nilekani: Absolutely, because we can all be unified in our missions. We all have similar ideas of equity, justice, freedoms, and so many other things, right? But we cannot be uniform in our solutions. The solution has to be in context, and therefore it will be in a myriad different diverse ways. And funders also have to be very sensitive to that. Please don’t try to push one solution down the pipeline. Please let the funder community learn that our job is to distribute the ability to solve, to restore agency, to uphold dignity, and to create more choice. So I think, I think you need to create a conference. It’s easier to tell you than to do it myself.

Don Gips: Can’t we do it with each other?

Rohini Nilekani: Where social sector leaders get to train donors.

Don Gips: I think you just created a, we’ll have to do that next year at the forum. I’m going to open it up for Q&A. They’re going to run around with mics. We got a couple, let’s turn on some lights so I can see. We got a hand there. Right there we had a hand. Where else were there? There’s one up there. Let’s start wherever you guys can get to first. Of course, everybody’s in the middle.

Nidhi: Hi, thank you. I’m privileged to be here.

Don Gips: Say your name and organization too, please.

Nidhi: My name is Nidhi. I represent, my dream is to make sure on the Indian streets women and children can walk safely without the fear of sexual harassment as safe as we all walked at 10 o’clock, 12 o’clock in Oxford. So I work with various organizations. One of them is Arpan, who I support. So yeah, my question is a difficult one and it’s a question of the six people we were on the table yesterday at Exeter College. Lovely Harry Potter type dining hall. So happy we were there. And I had someone from Nigeria, Germany, Spain, United States, London, India. And what we were discussing is this.

We are on this platform. There’s so many of us here. There’s so much power, money, doers, everybody in this room and there’s so much conflict in the world, which is creating more problems and it is taking us away from achieving the SDGs all of us are working together. So where can we take the plea to make that collective power work for everybody so we can persuade the governments and those leaders to cease fire? So that’s my difficult question. Sorry, but I just hope we do something together.

Don Gips: Do you want to take a stab at it?

Rohini Nilekani: I think you go first.

Don Gips: Oh, great.

Rohini Nilekani: I’m empowering you to answer first.

Don Gips: Oh, why thank you. I mean, this is a, look, I’ve said it from a stage yesterday. I don’t think I’m an old guy, so I’ve been around a while. This is one of the more challenging contexts any of us have ever worked in. We have global crisis. We’ve had conversations here about Gaza, where Ukraine is like the big sucking sound for resources and causing huge pain. And those are the ones we’re all talking about. From a numbers perspective, Sudan, Haiti, DRC are even worse.

We need to empower the voices in this room. That’s what we try to do with our philanthropy, to help shape that. You heard Mary Robinson yesterday from the stage talking about this need to build this collective power. I wish we had the answers, because we’re obviously not doing enough and not doing it fast enough, given the scale of what’s happening geopolitically.

I also, this is my own personal belief, and not necessarily, I’m not speaking on behalf of Skoll, although that’s going to be hard to do when I’m here at the Skoll World Forum and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, but I think we’re also operating in an information ecosystem that is driving these divisions at an incredibly fast pace. And misinformation and disinformation were already bad, and AI is making it an accelerant to that fire. And so, at least at Skoll, we are trying to think through what can you do to rebuild a healthier information ecosystem?

I spoke to our grantees earlier in the week, and I was talking about this article I read in Axios about the US media ecosystem, but I think it’s true globally, where in the US, we used to look at the world through several windows, television, radio, print, and the article said each of those windows has been broken, and it’s now we look at the world through shards of glass. It was a very powerful analogy. And then they went through sort of who the influencers were in each, as they saw it in like the 12 segments of the US population. I have to say, I didn’t know who 90% of them were. I found my little shard of glass. All the people I read, and they were in one of the shards of glass that was described in this article.

And the other thing I don’t think we’ve understood, and I see a few of you with your phones, that’s how we get our news and information. It’s through these little windows and snippets. And how do we address that? Because I don’t think until we address that and figure out how to tell narrative in a more powerful way that gets through in those screens, we’re going to start to break down some of those divisions. And I’ll say one more thing, because it’s something I struggle with.

In a democratic society, there is no arbiter of truth. So it’s hard to say what’s misinformation, what’s disinformation. In an authoritarian society, somebody gets to decide the truth that people are going to be told. So in this information ecosystem, those social media tools can be very powerful in an authoritarian society, and they can be used to divide a democratic society. And I think this is a fundamental challenge. So if anybody has solutions, come find me afterwards, because I’m all ears.

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. No, I don’t want to evade the question. I would say I don’t know. I am, this is way above what I’m able to do. But I’ll tell you what I believe in. And you talked of shards of glass. The Japanese, I may be mispronouncing, is it kintsugi? They would take the shards of glass, repair them, and create something whole, new, and beautiful with gold.

Don Gips: I told you she was a poet.

Rohini Nilekani: Well, you know, I can do as much poetry as I want, but governance has to be done in prose.

Don Gips: Yeah.

Rohini Nilekani: But maybe together we can take these shards of glass and do kintsugi. And you know, who can do it? We can’t expect our leaders to do it. We have to do it. And that’s why at the core of my philanthropy is the firm belief that states and markets have been around to serve society and not the other way around. Right? We are not born to serve the markets. We are not born to be subjects of states. The states were created, markets were created to serve all of us as human beings and citizens. So it’s we who have to take back certain things that we have yielded in terms of our collective power to act.

And I think I don’t know how to avert wars, but I do know that every day’s, every person’s work every day is to restore community, be it just in your family, but be it in your neighborhood, be it at any level, but to restore the human-to-human connection that we should not be ashamed to talk about. Yesterday we heard such beautiful words from so many people on the stage and not to let, well, sometimes men–

Don Gips: Almost always men.

Rohini Nilekani: tell us otherwise. So I think that’s the work and you all do it every day. So I don’t want to lecture you on that, but however long it takes, that is the work ahead.

Don Gips: Beautifully said.

Rohini Nilekani: Thank you.

Don Gips: Question over here and then there are other hands up behind.

Angela Nguku: Thank you. My name is Angela Nguku. I come from Nairobi, Kenya. I lead a movement for women and girls working to advance their rights at agency from an asking and deep listening approach. I really acknowledge and appreciate what you’ve said, Rohini, and thanks for what you’re doing across the world. That deep listening is really, with intentionality to hear, understand and act is really important. And that systems change from what I’ve heard since the time I came here. This is my first time at Skoll and I’m really like wowed by what is happening. If we really want to impact, we have to start with a few things that we must change. And one of them is deep listening.

Embracing those who are doing the work and trusting that they know the solutions. That volunteerism is exhaustive and that passion cannot pay bills for those doing the work. And that sometimes we need to acknowledge that even after three years, four years, when the funding is over, the people are still living the solution, the context and the realities and we must acknowledge that they are the people who understand the solutions.

Yet a lot of times you hear that we need to embrace new actors in this space, but a lot of times what I’ve observed over my last 16 years of working in this space is that philanthropists most of the times are the ones who perpetuate the usual suspects. That you block out the new actors in this space, but by continuing with the same, same people doing the same results over and over and not getting new results.

The question that comes to my mind and I’m speaking on behalf of almost over 120 networks of women and girls that I work with in Kenya and across Africa, how then do we stop that? How do we remove ourselves from where we are and move closer to the new actors in the space and be able to be ready to do things differently? Acknowledging that it will take something I had today morning, a multi-solve approach, intersectional approach in how we do things and those usual suspects might not really be having the answers to that intersectional lens of looking at things? And are philanthropists really ready to listen, understand and act with those new actors in this space? Thank you.

Rohini Nilekani: I’m not quite sure I got the question. Is how do philanthropists?

Don Gips: I think how to, was the question how to get philanthropy to reach out to new actors in the space?

Angela Nguku: Yeah, a lot of times there’s a lot of the usual suspects that you know that I am Rohini, philanthropist and I only give money to A, B, C, D. Anyone coming to the space is blocked and these people also become the new, the big brothers syndrome comes in where you become the block.

Rohini Nilekani: So how does philanthropy stay more open–

Angela Nguku: Yes.

Rohini Nilekani: to new actors?

Angela Nguku: Exactly.

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah, no, I think that’s a very good point. Any good philanthropy, any good philanthropic institution should be able to constantly re-strategize based on what it is seeing and hearing in the field. And definitely they should. And I think it is time for more conferences in the world where philanthropists can be held publicly accountable, not by, please, no stone throwing or anything, just a very friendly–

Don Gips: Yeah, don’t like, we’re still up on the stage.

Rohini Nilekani: friendly, civilized learning sessions. I think sometimes we don’t know what other people are thinking of us as philanthropists, right? It’s not possible to do that 360-degree listening all the time. But I would say for sure, Skoll has pivoted, I have pivoted often, our teams have pivoted often, because you come somewhere and you say, you suddenly find how much you were missing all this while. And I think, again, I’m telling you, stories need to reach the donor community. They don’t reach enough. So maybe we need to do a little more brainstorming on how to do that in this time of our global situation. I’m sorry if that’s not a great answer.

Don Gips: First of all, one of the hardest parts about this job is, there are so many more organizations that we end up not being able to fund than those that we fund. I mean, civil society is so vibrant around the world and it’s very hard for all of us to find who we should be funding and where we go. And I think Rohini’s 100% right. It’s through deep listening that we figure out how to keep getting better at this. And we have a long way to go to get really good.

I do think one of the things we’ve done at Skoll that I would encourage others to do, and it’s part of the reason I’m here on the stage with Rohini, is we’re 60 people, is the total number of staff at the Skoll Foundation. We’re all based in the US. Yeah, we’re a global philanthropy. We try to learn through, we call them proximate funders, that’s why I’m on the stage because I can’t, I don’t know enough to know who the right organizations are, who are making a real difference around equity and change in Nigeria. But we’ll fund the Tutu Fellows or African Visionary Fund who are closer and can build out that network. We give up our control to them and then it also, selfishly, it builds a great pipeline of organizations for us to look at for the types of organizations who’ll be on the stage tomorrow or tonight, wow, we’re already into day two, receiving the Skoll Award.

So I think as philanthropy, we have to think about this as an ecosystem. We all have a role to play, but I think those of us in the Global North in particular should share some of our power with the more proximate leaders in philanthropy who are closer to the ground.

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. Maybe we also, a little bit, might have to reset our expectations of the donor communities because I think donors also struggle to be relevant. Power of intent is very often there in the donor community, but it’s not necessarily, many donors I know are usually very wealthy individuals who’ve done extremely well in the financial sector or the corporate sector, and don’t necessarily know how to effect social change here. They try, but they bring some of those ideas here, which don’t necessarily make sense here. And it’s a journey to reach a point where you finally understand that what works in markets may not work in civil society. So I think a little bit of allowing the journey to happen.

And in any case, we all know that it’s not like the rich are going to come and save the world. Okay? Eventually it has to come up from below. And in the old days, or still in many parts of the world, the power of voluntary movements, where it’s not necessarily about writing a proposal and getting a check, but voluntary local public movements are incredibly powerful to effect societal change. And later on they can become institutionalized and look for grant money. But again, I repeat, starting from society, from our human connections with each other and repowering that engine of human beings and citizenry to address some of our problems seems to be incredibly important to reaffirm today.

Don Gips: 100% agree. Oh, 10 minutes, wow. And just one second, then I’ll get to you. When I look around the room, I see all these dandelion pins on people, it’s a sign of that type of movement. No funding. They’re just getting out there, building a movement that’ll wake up philanthropy and it’ll wake up government and it’ll wake up the private sector.

Roopa Dhatt: I should say, it must be serendipitous since– My name is Roopa Dhatt. I was on the table with Nidhi so we were meant to be. The woman who spoke before me is talking about women’s movements. And I myself founded a movement almost a decade ago and it was by chance. I describe myself as a physician by hobby and now leading one of the fastest growing women’s movement in health around the world. We have 57 chapters. It’s my first Skoll Forum. So again, thank you for the invitation. I’m coming here as a first-time grantee.

I’m feeling very inspired because this room feels like a room which is converted. I don’t feel like the odd person saying that I’m leading a movement. And I also want to just really acknowledge, Rohini, your remarks on the role of women’s leadership so resonate, but it’s resonating throughout the forum. And that’s the problem we created Women in Global Health to solve. Women deliver health, men lead it. And until women are actually leading at health at all levels, we’re going to keep missing out on those health solutions. So that’s a big problem that I’m here to solve. And I hope that many of you will reach out to me.

But turning to the topic at hand, one mind shift that I’ve gone through is, when I started Women in Global Health 10 years ago, I was thinking it was going to be a two-year campaign. That’s all it’s going to take. But now here I am crossing a 10-year milestone next year. And as we talk about the role of philanthropy and I think all types of partners, how do we get you on the journey with us for the long-term change?

We know social change does not happen overnight. We also are seeing all the tensions, the surface tensions that are taking place. And with that, we need systems change. And I really appreciate the, again, being in a place where people believe in system change. How do we get philanthropy to also be with us on the journey long-term, get multi-year funding and be committed? Thank you.

Don Gips: You want to tackle that one?

Rohini Nilekani: Well, I think a little bit you’re talking to the converted. They do, systems change over multiple years and we try to. We’ve been exactly trying to do that. But more and more philanthropists who are coming to this idea. And let’s watch over the next four or five years. I think you’re going to see much more philanthropic capital coming into systems change kind of work, more patient capital. I truly believe it in my country, there’s a lot of new wealth. And that new wealth is not attached to traditional family ideas of how to spend it.

There’s a lot of freedom and a lot of openness. And they are clearly seeing that we need our problem solving to be at least as fast, our solutions to be at least as fast as the pace at which the problems are growing. So they are very, very interested in this sort of thing. I see a new era of philanthropy coming in. Yeah.

Don Gips: And if I can just add to that–

Rohini Nilekani: And I hope the Center for Exponential Change will have a tiny role to play in that.

Don Gips: I was in Brazil this year. I can’t remember, I’m losing all track of dates. And some of my people who taught me while I was there are here in this room. And I couldn’t agree with you more. Next gen philanthropy, they’re not as patient. They want to, I mean, they’re not as happy with the status quo. They want to change the status quo.

Rohini Nilekani: Yes, yes.

Don Gips: And they’re taking a much more systems change lens to their philanthropy. And some of them who’ve inherited wealth are pushing their parents or their organizations, let’s switch the lens. Let’s figure out how we partner with those who are driving this change and accelerate it.

Harsha: Hi, sorry. Hi, my name is Harsha. Sorry, I was very anxious. So all of these kind people have come to support me to ask the question.

Don Gips: Uh-oh, this sounds like a troubling one.

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah.

Harsha: No, it’s very easy. And I think, so I’m a 21-year-old social entrepreneur, hence the nerves. And thank you. And I run an, oh. And I run a social enterprise that works with over 50,000 students, Gen Z’s to incubate at risk students into social entrepreneurs. So we develop profit generating social entrepreneurs from students who would otherwise have dropped out of school, gone into social crime and so on. And we currently operate in 26 countries. And we’ve been around for the last nine years. So when I founded it nine years ago, I was 13. People didn’t take us seriously.

They told, oh, thank you. No, but when I founded it at 13, people didn’t take us seriously. They told us we were way too young and to go out there and get some traction. Nine years later, 50,000 kids later that we’ve impacted, we have government contracts, we have Fortune 500s that have come on board, we have had Ivy League institutions, research published about us, they still say we’re too young. And a credit to Skoll, Skoll has been one of two foundations that have taken us seriously in the last nine years. So thank you.

But the problem that I see with a lot of youth is, it’s either completely ignored. They tell us come back when you’re older or it’s tokenized and it’s put up, but everyone says very cute, very good job, but no one takes them seriously as partners, as implementers, as people who have voices and real experiences to share. Many times we’re all lumped into one big group, which is people who have been running organizations for six months and for five, six years and therefore we don’t get the support we need when we’re actually at the, I would say, later stage than some organizations.

So what can we do to be changing perceptions about this simply because I think my face kind of betrays me a little bit when they see us and as much as I know a lot of good people want to support Gen Z, I would like to figure out strategies to make it easier for philanthropists to be able to do that in an effective way.

Rohini Nilekani: Okay, we have only two minutes so you should quickly talk.

Don Gips: Oh wow.

Rohini Nilekani: Yeah.

Don Gips: You have to answer though.

Rohini Nilekani: No. Most of the, in one of my portfolios called Active Citizenship, I think the average age of the partners is about 23, 24, 25. So I think the world is, in my country, 55% of the people are below 25 years. We have to encourage youth leaders and they are the future, they have to be part of this slightly sad future we have left for them, my generation, so all support to youth leaders, 100%.

Don Gips: You know, when I talked about those shards of glass, it was, reading that article was like a realization for me that the world I grew up in is no longer the world that exists and if we want to change it, we’ve got to start listening to youth. And I hope you’ll teach us how to do that better because we’re too old, or I am, she’s young, but I’m too old.

Rohini Nilekani: I’m young. Rohini Nilekani: Don, we have one minute left and I was a journalist and once a journalist, always a journalist. Can I ask you a question?

Don Gips: Yes.

Rohini Nilekani: CEO of the Skoll World Forum, maybe people haven’t heard you answering that. You’ve been in Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar, civil society, government and markets. Out of those, which was the most impactful role that you have had in your life?

Don Gips: You caught me off guard with that one. I thought I was going to tell you all to go to the next event. They’re all different. I had the incredible blessing to work for President Obama and President Clinton. It’s pretty hard to beat in terms of impact and feeling like directly responsible. But I actually think this job is the most rewarding, not because of what I get to do, but because I get to see all of you at work out in the field.

It is so moving and it gives me hope that we can actually fix some of the problems that the first questioner brought up and that the youth are reminding of us that if we’re going to get through this, it’s by the people on the front lines building these movements. And being in a position to help them get there is probably the most rewarding thing I can do.

And let me tell you, walking around this forum, I’ve been driving my staff crazy because I like disappear. And I’m just walking around trying to listen to the conversations because they inspire me, they give me hope, and they let me know that there’s a brighter future ahead. And so, thank you to all of you.

Rohini Nilekani: So, you can do poetry, too.

Skoll Foundation

Keynote Address – Launch of “Wealth with Purpose: A Report on Private Indian Philanthropy”

Rohini Nilekani (Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and Core Founder of AIP), in her Keynote Address at the launch event for the AIP-BCG report, “Wealth with Purpose: A Report on Private Indian Philanthropy,” emphasised the critical role that the report will play in expanding the understanding of philanthropy in India. She also spoke about the importance of collaboration between samaaj, sarkar, and bazaar in addressing complex social issues.

The launch was held at the Motilal Oswal Tower in Mumbai in July 2024.

Transcript

00:00:00 Rohini Nilekani: Namaskar, how are you all? It’s wonderful to be in my native city in the monsoon with the sea looking so beautiful, and yet we are not flooded out. What better can you hope for in this beautiful city of Mumbai? It’s wonderful to see this room, as Ajay said, of people who have understood the true meaning of using their wealth for societal purpose. And thank you, Ashish, thank you to the whole team for putting together this report. I have read it. It adds substantively to the discourse on Indian philanthropy. Congratulations, and we look forward to much more because there’s going to be lots more to uncover about the journey of the philanthropists of India.

0:00:49 So I thought most of you are very well-versed in what is happening in philanthropy. Many of you are doing most amazing, innovative work as your journeys in philanthropy move along. And it is a journey. It’s like climbing a steep ladder. It’s 32 years now since I started working in this space, and every day I learn something new and aspire to do something more. So in this journey, all of you know, you’ve read many reports, you’ve done a lot of research in your own philanthropy. So I said, what is the one thing we all don’t talk too much about that I should broach?

0:01:25 And I thought that some of you know that I keep talking ad nauseam about Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar. But I realized that in this journey of philanthropy, Ajay spoke about how we as philanthropists can work together with Sarkaar to do systems change. And he described a lot of the leveraged work that they are doing with Sarkaar. But I realized that many of us have not talked enough about the role of Bazaar. Without Sarkaar, Samaaj and Bazaar working together, there is simply no way we can solve the many, many societal, complex issues that face India today. As we grow economically we also want to have our society develop so that everybody in India, all 1.4 billion of them who are standing outside these hallowed rooms have a chance to sit at this table along with us. Isn’t that the final goal? That all of society should have the same opportunities, at least.

0:02:27 In that journey, civil society organizations and philanthropies have learned in the last 20, 30, 40 years, especially to work with Sarkaar. And indeed, there are thousands, if not millions of champions within government who are working together with civil society, Samaaj institutions and philanthropic foundations to help achieve scale in poverty reduction and increased all sorts of societal goods. However, we have not learned how to work with a very key component which all of you, most of you in the room represent, which is the Bazaar. Now why is that?

0:03:08 I think it is because we have not, civil society has not managed to make Bazaar enough of an ally in this journey. I must say that many of you will agree that many of the societal issues that are created are…many of them, not all of them, but many of them are actually negative externalities of the Bazaar. Whether it is societal issues of labor, livelihoods or it is environmental issues, many of them stem from inside the fences of Bazaar.

0:03:46 And again, I’m not trying to bring anybody from Bazaar down. I’m a very happy shareholder of the Bazaar. I think the results of Infosys came out today. Vallabh Bhai, I haven’t seen them. I hope they were good, but so I’m not at all anti-Bazaar. I’m saying how can we all together learn how to tap the Bazaar as a more of an ally? And I think there are many synergies possible that in this journey of wealth with purpose that we can unlock. I’m going to give you two examples from my experience.

0:04:17 So tomorrow, in fact, I’m going to co-host together with Rainmatter Foundation, somebody here from there. A climate leaders meet. Some of you will be there, together with the India Climate Collaborative. And we all are very acutely aware of what’s going to happen with climate change, especially in this extremely critical decade of human development. And this India Climate Collaborative was set up together with the Tata Trusts, the MacArthur Foundation, EdelGive and us, and this collaborative hope to build India’s climate ecosystem and harness the climate philanthropies potential working with government, business, civil society, etc.

0:05:09 This is a classic example of how we can pull in Bazaar from both inside and outside. 2-2.3 times is the growth of fund flows towards climate action just in six years, between 2017 and ’23. Earlier, climate action represented about 1-2% of overall philanthropic funding. But it is increasing very rapidly because of this kind of collaboration between civil society organization and Bazaar organizations. And I believe that we need much more such collaboration where, while Sarkaar, of course, is going to be the dominant player when it comes to funds because they have the most money, I do believe that we can unlock much more when we use Bazaar as an ally.

0:06:02 Today, Bazaar knows very well how climate change can affect everything in its supply chains, right? More and more and more people come and say, “How can we be much more sustainable end to end?” And I think here is where there’s a very close possible relationship between civil society organizations working at the first mile to limit the impact of environmental destruction, working together with the best intentions of Bazaar to certainly reduce the damage that is coming our way and to create a future very different from the future that we fear.

0:06:40 A growing body of research has demonstrated how greater respect for CSOs and civic freedoms increases actually the Bazaar’s potential, financial investment, facilitating economic reform, reducing social unrest, and allowing both ideas and resources to spread at unprecedented rates. There was a 2018 paper called the Business Case for Civil Society, which shows that the work of civil society organizations can reduce the cost of corruption, can help businesses be sustainable, can enhance investor and employee and customer relationships.

0:07:22 Remember, civil society organizations also help to maintain societal harmony. And business houses know very well that in the absence of societal peace, it is really very hard to conduct business. So there are many synergies between the civil society sector and the Bazaar sector, which I think remain underutilized. And I think we should start thinking together, how do we create better synergies between these two sectors?

0:07:51 I would give one example of an organization called Agami, which we fund through the Access to Justice portfolio. It is dedicated to accelerating innovation and law and justice in India. Some of you might know of their excellent work. Since 2018, they have also played a critical role in developing the online dispute resolution (ODR) field in India. I’m sure you all know that ODR is a public facing digital space in which parties can convene to resolve their disputes. Agami has been nurturing early-stage startups, Bazaar sector startups in which they can build a compelling narrative around the potential of ODR to unlock support from key stakeholders in government, in the judiciary and in the private sector.

0:08:40 The partners by the way, include NITI Aayog, the judiciary, ICICI bank and many, many startups. ODR is not far removed from our lives as we think. Dispute resolution costs borne by citizens and business have resulted in an aggregate loss of $56 billion to the Indian economy, and that means it comes close to 1.88% of GDP. Not at all a small number. And if we can improve online dispute resolution, can you imagine what ripple effects come down into society?

0:09:16 So there are such innovative possibilities where you bring Samaaj, Sarkaar, of course Sarkaar is there, but Bazaar together to solve some of our problems. And I have become very interested and would be very happy to hear from people in the room as to how we can bring Bazaar into a much, much closer relationship with both Sarkaar and Samaaj. I urge philanthropists and business leaders to think more about this.

0:09:46 I think in the report I was very struck, hundred HNIs were interviewed and more possibly, and you’ll be hearing much more so I won’t waste time on telling you more about the report, but what was interesting to me is the forms of giving were as diverse as Indian society itself. And it is our diversity I do believe, which allows us to experiment and innovate and successful models to be adopted. So there’s much more work to be done, but it seems the most heartening thing in the report, as you will hear, is that most wealthy people want to give more, faster and better.

0:10:22 So can you imagine the opportunity as India grows wealthy? Unfortunately, it is likely that a small portion of India is going to grow wealthier faster than everybody else. We cannot keep staying so far away from what was so beautifully described just now about the districts, for example, and the people for example, that are left behind. We have to pull up other people along with us. That is the purpose of wealth creation in society. No society will allow runaway wealth creation unless it is seen as a societal good. No nation will allow only a handful of people to grow wealthy and use wealth only for themselves without bringing in all forms of restraint.

0:11:10 So I won’t belabor that point too much because I’m already in a room of the converted. I don’t need to urge you to do. But there is always scope to do more. We struggle to do more, Nandan and I struggle. How can we give back more? We have signed the Giving Pledge. We have a long way to go to finish it, hopefully in our lifetimes. So always looking for more and more opportunities to collaborate at the systems level to create exponential change. For that, we have set up The Centre for Exponential Change very recently, and we hope to be able to take at least 10 societal entrepreneurs to significant scale in the next 3-5 years, in 3-5 countries. But that kind of imagination is needed to be unleashed throughout the chain.

0:11:57 Even if you’re beginning at the first step of philanthropy, I urge all of us, successful entrepreneurs, all of you to start thinking scale at the get-go. I’m not suggesting you launch millions of crores worth of ventures, but if you start to imagine, even if you’re supporting one child’s scholarship, think because you have this much, you have the wherewithal, you have the education, you have the networks, and you have the intent. How can you put all of that to think what will it mean to take your passion to scale? Your organization need not scale, but your mission can scale in collaboration with a hundred other entrepreneurs like yourselves.

0:12:39 So we have started looking at how do you scale? And we’ve come up with a framework, not the framework. And some of the elements of that to think about is how do you design for scale from the get-go because pilots succeed, and scale often fails. So knowing what works at scale rather than scaling what works, how do you put technology to work for you? Not be led by technology but be enabled by technology. How do you distribute the ability to solve? How do you create a system which is unified in its vision but not uniform in its processes? How do you therefore leverage the wonderful diversity of India to solve in context? How do you unleash, how do you distribute the ability to solve? This is the kind of, a few things I’ve told you about a process by which we can really scale every good idea that exists in this room.

0:13:41 Without belaboring too much because we are already a little behind schedule, I’m going to leave you with one thought. I love being in nature. I love everything from tigers to ants and the beautiful diversity. This is one country in India. Never forget that as you step out even into the city of Mumbai, India is the one culture, the one country in the world where despite so much population pressure on our land, we have nurtured flora and fauna diversity almost unparalleled in the world with this kind of land pressure. And that comes from a deep culture of respect, a deep culture of understanding the nature cannot be separated from human beings.

0:14:24 And for me, that is one of the most inspiring things in my life and work. I always look to nature for inspiration every day. One of the things I’m fascinated with is spiders. And spiders have been around for a hundred million years, much more longer than us. There are dozens of species that are doing miraculous things to build their webs and catch their food. And I always used to wonder, how is it that a tiny little spider manages to make a web from here to there with empty space in between? How does the spider cross from here to there with his web?

0:15:00 And then I read up about it and found that yes, the spider is capable of spinning different kinds of yarn with different stickiness and strength. He’s all ready, with the web to be spun, but you know what he has to wait for to go to create a web from here to that wall, for example, while all of us are sleeping at night? He has to wait and wait and wait for a gentle breeze to come along, which allows him to throw the first thread across that yawning gap of space.

0:15:29 And I always said, “My God, that’s so fascinating.” We didn’t realize the role of the gentle breeze in the making of the World Wide Web. And I think, I’ll leave you with that thought, ladies and gentlemen, maybe philanthropy is the gentle web which allows the spiders of Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar to spin the beautiful intricate webs for societal development all over the world.

Let’s be the gentle breeze and use our wealth with much more purpose. Dhanyawad. Namaste.

Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaaar – Role of Active Citizenship in a Democracy

Rohini Nilekani’s keynote address at Volcon – India’s flagship national conference on volunteering.

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s keynote address at Volcon – India’s flagship national conference on volunteering.

*

Like so many of us, I grew up on stories of volunteerism in my family because my paternal grandfather, Babasaheb Soman (Sadashiv Laxman Soman), was among those clutch of people who were the first to respond to Gandhiji’s call during the Champaran agitation in 1917. Gandhiji said, “I need people here to support this community.” At the time, the whole indigo agitation was over and the people were in deep distress. We forget just how brutal the British rule in India was and Gandhiji just wanted good people to come. So my grandfather was on that first train that went from Beldaur all the way to West Champaran in Bihar to stay there and help build the first ashram in Bhitiharwa, to set up schools, to build toilets, to work with the local farmers, and so on. Why did he do this? Because of the really big question of our times, as Martin Luther King said, which I am paraphrasing – what is it in our lives that we are going to do for others? I think he answered that question himself. He was a lawyer but half the time he was busy getting the two conflicting parties to agree out of court which means he did not get any fees. My grandmother did not like this strategy very much but that is how he lived. And so the most meaningful thing he could do in his life was to join Gandhiji. He remained a Gandhian, working hard for the freedom of our country and he died just before independence but left a legacy that still goes on in our family.

So in my family, this power of volunteering to put society before self was always held up as an aadarsh i.e. a goal, a vision, and an ideal and it has really animated the spirit of all our lives. For me, the highest personal ethic is to volunteer. As we all know the word ‘volunteer’ comes from the French word, ‘volontiers’ which means willingly and that is the most important thing. Willingly, from intrinsic motives, from inside we wish to give of ourselves, right? One’s time, one’s talent, one’s money, whatever we can give to enhance the greater public good. And so this volunteering, it is from self to create society, to create a better Samaaj. It is a very English word actually. If we try to bridge it in our languages, there is no exact translation. So then we will end up saying ‘seva’ maybe or ‘swayam seva’ which means to give yourself forward. But maybe if we were to search for a common animating spirit to bridge these two – volunteering and seva – maybe we can turn to a wonderful word which concisely illuminates the universal truth that I am because you are, right? In the Bantu language, they use the word ‘Ubuntu’ which means you are because I am. And I think that word really captures why this room is so full of people, because we intrinsically understand our deep connections and that unless we keep up the flame of seva, of giving forward of ourselves, we cannot get back the society that we want.

Building Samaaj Through Seva

Seva is as old as human beings are, and even primates do seva in the sense that they serve each other. The American anthropologist, Margaret Mead, said that the first sign of civilization that she could uncover was when they found a skeleton with a healed femur. And what did the healed femur from so many tens of thousands of years ago imply? In much of the animal world, sometimes when a weak animal has a limb that is broken, the other herds move on and just leave the animal to die. But a healed femur means that even when the person could not walk, had broken his thigh bone without which he could not fend for himself, somebody was caring for this person and probably getting nothing back in return. This is what Margaret Mead called the dawn of human civilization – when there was proof of volunteerism, of seva, of service before the self. And ever since then, volunteering has been strong and active in human society all around the world. In fact, UN Volunteers, an organization of the UN, claims that 1 billion people have been volunteering at some point in their lives globally. Now, I am not sure exactly how they define volunteering, but that is one-eighth of the population, that is one-eighth of humankind that has self-declared that they are doing some form of volunteering in their lives. What excites me about that is if each of these 1 billion could inspire just one more each, that makes it 2 billion. And if those 2 billion could inspire just one each, that makes it 4 billion people, right? Imagine, that is half of all humanity and maybe that should be our goal. Even in this room, can we manifest this idea that half of humanity will be trying to serve somebody else, not from morning till night, but at some part of the day? If that is the goal, then working backwards, how do we all have to organize the volunteer movement so that half the world feels animated to give of themselves at some point in their lives? So I do believe that seva and giving of oneself is absolutely critical in today’s time. We proudly live in a democracy and that volunteer spirit strengthens democracy. In fact, it is absolutely at the core of building the kind of Samaaj that we all want to live in.

Democracy is not created for us and gifted to us by leaders, democracy is of the people, by the people, and for the people. That is why people – Samaaj – has the foundational supremacy to keep democracy alive. This democracy of Samaaj goes way beyond electoral democracy. It is not just about voting during every election. Real democracy is about much more than voting. And inside, we all know that. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, and we cannot forget that, we cannot take our freedoms for granted. And if eternal vigilance in a democracy is the price for our freedoms, then I am going to say today that maybe eternal empathy is the price for a good society. And that is something that we need to remember.

In fact, none of us would be sitting so comfortably and proudly in this room as citizens of a free nation if not for the tremendous waves of volunteerism across the length and breadth of the country for 100 years. Tens of lakhs of people participated in our historic freedom struggle, our unique Satyagraha. And for me, the lasting image is always a very common and powerful one, that of the Dandi March in 1930, when Gandhiji just picked up a fistful of salt against an unfair tax that the British had imposed, which led to the 24 day march from 12th March to 5th April. After that first act of Gandhiji, at the young age of 61, bit by bit, thousands of people joined his brave act of selfless service to the idea of a free nation. These acts are what we must really be grateful for, for all of us being able to sit here today. The young people in the room especially need to look deep into our history books, to really understand what has kept this diverse nation together. A lot of it has to do with the selfless voluntary service of not just countless leaders that made up India’s modern nation, but many, many unnamed ones just like my grandfather.

Another highlight of volunteerism in India was during the ’67-’68 Bihar famine. At that time crops had failed and the weather had let us down. There were policies, perhaps, that needed to have been different, but lakhs of people were facing death by starvation. And that actually became the cradle for the modern volunteer movement of India. I know dozens of people, now getting on in their years, who were so troubled by the fact that people at the time could be so close to death that could be preventable, that they left their cushy jobs. Vijay Mahajan is one of them. It was the birth of the Jayaprakash Narayan movement. That crisis really brought out the humanity in many people and it also birthed many of the nonprofits in India today. So we are all wired to reach out to other humans who are suffering. That is just one example and there has been a tradition of service in our society.

There is a practice in Rajasthan called ‘laash’, where people volunteer to go from one village to the other to create public works, usually around water, such as digging farm ponds and laying roads. It could be any physical public good that is being created and they all take off in their bullock carts or their tractors, go to some designated village, and do Shramdaan i.e. voluntary labour for the whole day. They get a magnificent meal cooked by the local villagers and then they charge back home with the pride of having helped that village create its own new public infrastructure. And naturally, those villagers then similarly reciprocate in a history of mutualism that runs through the veins of this country.

In India today, there are also thousands of organizations, many that are faith-based and ideology-based, that depend entirely on volunteers. The largest organizations in the world are volunteer-based and I think the most scalable thing in the world is actually service. Of course, some things need to be scaled by the Bazaar or by the Sarkaar, but those two sectors came out of Samaaj itself. So in some ways, we can see it as a continuum, that some innovation started through service, through volunteerism, started in the non-profit sector, eventually gets embedded in either Bazaar or Sarkaar. But the most scalable thing in the whole wide world is service to others. Right here in Bangalore we have Art of Living and so many others that get volunteers across caste, class, and religion simply to serve others as much as they can. We all know about the langars and there are so many other examples, more modern examples that I am very proud to have been associated with.

One of those initiatives is ASER, the education report that comes out every year. It is such a simple idea but tens of thousands of volunteers from literally every district of India come forward, go to a village and they have to do a statistical sampling. I have participated in these surveys, where you ask the children of the house to come sit with you and see how much they have learnt in school. And all the children, everybody gathers and it becomes like a festival. And through this, we have learnt that in fact, we have a very long way to go to ensure every child in school and learning well. So this is another example that is driven by volunteer energy and the spirit of that, and shows what that volunteerism can achieve. For me, the ideal volunteer is not one animated by an ideology or a sect or a religion or a faith, but only with the highest form of humanitarianism. It does not matter who is in front of you, which religion, which country, which geography, which choice, which anything they belong to, we see the human in you. As I said earlier, I am because you are, so when I do something for you, it is for both of us together. That is the highest ideal of volunteerism and that is why volunteers do not get paid, someone said, not because they are worthless but because they are priceless.

I know there are many corporations represented here, which have large volunteer programs, which is really good because we are getting more and more data that employees want to work for corporations that do good rather than those that are there for greed. People want to work for corporations that are not only for profit, but there to be citizens of the societies that they participate in. Young people especially want to be very sure that their companies are doing good as much as they are doing well, and volunteering is a huge part of that. But even when people go out as corporate volunteers, can we reach deep into our hearts to find that humanitarianism? It does not matter which corporate logo is on your t-shirt, what you have to find when you go out there is that human thing for which there is no logo except that inside our hearts. So, that is the opportunity really, for corporations today to allow their employees to do much more strategic, long-term work in communities. Because I have absolutely no doubt that if we look at the balance sheets, eventually even that bottom line is going to get enhanced if we look at this frontline.

And as Samaaj, we need to put more pressure on corporations to do better. We need more transparency and authenticity in ESG disclosures, for example, it is not just some whitewashing you put on the walls. It is genuinely linked to the success of your business. And more and more corporations are beginning to see it. Right now there is still a bit of airbrushing going on, but it is up to all of us now to hold companies accountable. Never, never forget that we are Samaaj. We have the power. We must exercise it. And whether they are corporations or the government, they have no choice but to bend to genuine public pressure. So we have just begun the journey where the public is holding businesses accountable to ESG, apart from the government’s regulatory frameworks and it is a journey that has to become more transparent and more authentic over time. Obviously volunteering will be a big part of this and it is up to all of us to find ways to hold corporations accountable and do so without fear or favour.

So in philanthropy, corporations play a huge role. After all, volunteers also have to eat. Volunteers also have to dress. Volunteers also have children to put into school. And that is where philanthropy plays a big role in supporting the acts of volunteering. And I think in India, this is really a call to action to philanthropists’ foundations in the room. How can we come together to support a national movement of volunteers? How can we help platformize it so that I stop getting asked, “What can I do?” And our philanthropy is not really set up to just take in volunteers. I wish it were because it is a hard thing to do. So how can we knock our heads together to see how is it possible to find or to create a platform? We have a team that we call ‘Societal Thinking Team’, where we look at what architecture is required to create urgent impact at scale, and how we can distribute the ability to solve in context. And importantly, how can we create a technology backbone that allows people to co-create on top of it?

Volunteerism in the Digital Age

One of the goals we must all keep for ourselves is to create that enabling infrastructure so that millions more people can join the volunteer movement. We live in a digital age and volunteering has also gone digital. How many of you have ever signed a petition for change.org? Well, the ones who have not, try it out. Sometimes it can be clicktivism, meaning it is very easy to just say yes or something like that and not to know what happens next, though change.org is quite relentless. It tells you what happens next. And I know the young, enthusiastic founder who set it up, but it is one pathway to start your volunteering journey in the digital age. And it is very important because it is the first step that then leads to the next step. So there are many such innovative apps and platforms that have really increased volunteering in India. And there are more techie volunteers of the digital age. ISpirit was set up purely to use tech talent to help other nonprofits to help ideas develop further.

I know when Nandan set up the Aadhaar team, dozens of highly qualified, highly successful corporate professionals from around the world wrote to him and said, “Can I join and give my time?” Some spent two years here in India, gave up everything that they were doing, often from America and Europe and came and just gave their time and talent to set up India’s digital ID. Similarly, with all the other public digital infrastructure that is being rolled out in India today, India has the best public digital infra in the world because it is all open, free, and unleashing innovation everywhere. It is the foundation of economic democracy in our country and it is powered by volunteer energy. So it is very, very important to understand that.

Talking of technology, all of us sitting here would probably have mobile phones and computers that we spend hours on, and we should all doff our hats to Tim Berners-Lee. He created HTML and http, which is the backbone of the world worldwide web which is really today’s internet. But his energy of society before self allowed the internet to be completely open in the public domain, and allowed people to co-create on it. Just imagine what public good that man has unleashed in the last 30 years. So that is the kind of energy and impact that can come from that creative impulse to do good for others.

So, of course, we need more visionaries like Tim Berners-Lee. Of course, we need more Mahatmas like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. But you know, there is a bit of both in each one of us. And surely we saw that during the pandemic, when so many of us reached out to help someone else. We have internalized, more deeply perhaps than ever in our lifetimes, how interconnected we all are. No matter if we are rich, no matter if we are not so rich, all of us are in the same boat. Some of us are in the upper deck, I must admit, but we are all rowing in the same ocean. And Ubuntu has come really to the fold. As Mahatma Gandhi said, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

I must say that sometimes in our philanthropy, I can feel a bit remote from what is actually happening on the ground. And I really got re-energised when I participated in a small project outside my office with The Ugly Indians. It is an organization that allows everybody a chance to participate in just taking agency to improve our own society, our own roads, our own infrastructure. I can do it. I do not need to wait for the BBMP, the electricity board or anybody else. I can do it with you because together we are what makes Samaaj possible. I was able to work for half an hour in the hot sun picking up stones and making what they call a ‘beauty spot’ from an ugly spot. It reconnected me to say, it is so easy to give of one’s wealth and so hard to give of oneself.

One of the things we want to be working on very seriously is how to provide discoverable opportunities to volunteer. Of course, people will volunteer where they are and do what they can, but many people want to do more but do not know how. We have to make it much, much easier for people to consistently volunteer their time and talent. And I think that is not happening. There are many great intermediary organizations in this room, but there need to be many more and then we possibly need some kind of societal platform that allows them all to discover each other. I think that is the work ahead and we are committed to it. The other difficult thing is how to sustain volunteer energy. We need to create the structures around volunteering. How can we continue volunteering in the post-pandemic world? And I hope at the end of this two day conference, I will also learn from everyone. What I can think of is to create the platform for discovery and co-creation and also to enable people to not just see each other’s work, but to create new opportunities. I think that is necessary. We also need to provide people with structuring for more sustained opportunities and we have to make it easier, that is the challenge ahead of us.

Of course, people’s motivation to volunteer might affect this, like students who volunteer very vigorously just before they file for college applications, right? All of us begin somewhere, but somewhere during that journey it becomes its own inspiration. Neuroscience has proved today that we are so wired for doing something good for others, that it actually releases endorphins and oxytocin and all the good chemicals in our bodies. You have to keep that person in it only till he gets that first reward back. And then you cannot stop really, because it is such a joyous thing in and of itself. I think the key thing to us is how do we handhold a person till that point where actually evolutionary biology kicks in? Because we would not be a successful species, if not for the human urge to serve. I think you just need to cross that one point. Even after submitting your college application, if you can make the person do one more thing for its own sake, then we will reach the numbers of volunteers that we want.

And these acts can start small and in the home. There are a lot of opportunities even for 5-6 year olds. My grandson is very animated in his school, he came back one day and said, “I am a nature protector.” So, he is clearly learning something and is motivated to do something to save nature today. Mostly it involves planting trees or understanding bugs or something like that. But you can put such ideas into young children’s minds because they also want to be, they can also see, they can discover themselves by discovering others and doing something good. Of course, there is plenty of potential. And in fact, the new national curriculum framework for foundational learning and early schooling has many of these elements embedded in it. Now it is up to all of us to make sure that they actually get implemented in the schools. So, the earlier you start, the better. And you know how young ones are always trying to train their parents to save water or save nature. I think it is very important to involve them in this wonderful journey of humanitarianism.

One thing we know for sure is that collaboration is key. You can do volunteering alone, like ‘each one teach one’ was a big thing that was working for a short while. And in fact there still are lots of organizations that do that. But organizations and intermediaries are needed to enable good collaboration and not just temporary collaboration. So again, I go back to that, the structures of the intermediary organizations that make it easy to collaborate, right? In any case, if you are doing some task, like building out a public infra, cleaning up a public spot or improving facilities in a school, you cannot do it alone. And I will tell you, if you are a good storyteller, if you can carry your story well, you will attract collaborators very quickly. So one of the things all of us must focus on is to tell our stories much better. Because we believe in what we are doing and what we are saying. We need to hone our skills to carry the message better or to have powerful symbolism. Just imagine what picking up just one small fist full of salt could do. What is the metaverse in 2022 that all of us can visualize together, so that as we take the next few steps, a million people will come along with us. That is the challenge for all of us today.

So let us enjoy, explore, and continue on that journey of giving, and let us really push for half of Indians, that is 700 million, to do some volunteering at some point in our lives and put society first, before ourselves. It is doable if we all do it together.

Closing speech: Build Together 2022

Namaste, everyone. And wow, it has been an exhilarating one and a half days. Of presentations, conversations, the igniting of ideas , the sharing of experiences and the airing of our hopes and our fears. That too in a place called IF?BE. Which reminds us that IF we can converge in our ideals and our approaches, we can BE successful in our societal mission.

This gathering has been a melange of people and organisations that work in the gender space, with both men and women and other genders, of practitioners and donors, of academics and artistes, and of diverse people all passionately interested in this very human project of together building a more gender equitable world, and more importantly a compassionate, more empathetic society that is both empowered and Co-Powered (a term I first used at one of our similar conferences before) to create the better future we crave.

A big thank you to you all for coming here, for sharing, for helping build together this field of gender equity. RNP does have a special focus on young men and boys, but really it is for the goal of universal equity and agency, and this is one pathway to that, something we see as a root cause to address.

I am so humbled and delighted to see so many organisations that work with women present in the room. Six years ago when I made a rather naive though passionate speech on the need to work with young men and boys, I thought maybe I have burnt some bridges at the bridges conference as it was called, because many of the feminists in the room were clearly worried that I was going to cause a shift away from women’s empowerment. But of course that is NOT AT ALL what I was talking about. I was expressing my concern that if we overlook the needs of half of humanity, we may be missing something crucial in the big picture, and exactly for the women whom we want to empower.

I think recent events, not just in india but worldwide confirm that there is indeed a backlash from increasingly insecure males of all political and religious hues. And all of us here in this room must pay keen attention to why that is happening, and design a non-judgemental, highly creative response to this emergence, not just in our programmatic work, but within each one of us, and in our homes, social groups and in the broader samaaj.

As Rajni Bakshi said yesterday, we should not forget how much has already been achieved. You can never lock up an idea that has already been liberated. Yes, powers that be may try to push women back – in the US, in Iran, In Afghanistan, and here too, but this is like the waves on the Sea in a high tide. As they recede, you see the ocean of possibilities underneath. Gender fluidity, gender equity are now in the body of this ocean, no matter the shapeshift of the ebbs and flows. So let’s make this belief, this hope, a habit, the positive energy that drives our work together. And as I keep saying, we have to be particularly optimistic in a country as young as ours, history tells us how idealistic youth are, how energetic and how determined to make their own futures. Young people always innovate, always find new ways to meet old goals, and I can really see that in this group. So a shout out to the idealism and energy and optimism of the youth in this room, and May you infect us all.

I picked up so many ideas and thoughts from all of you since yesterday. One clear message was that we cannot lump all men together. There are vast power imbalances among men due to caste religion geography and income. We need more qualitative, maybe ethnographic research to understand both the lived realities and the pathways forward. I couldn’t agree more. But as some of us were discussing yesterday, can we create new opportunities from this understanding? Even as we acknowledge and empathise with the harsh conditions in the lives of Dalit or other minority males, can we work alongside them to reimagine their use of power in their horizontal groups, and with the women they live among? If this whole mission is really about reimagined power structures, and not simply about replacing one set of oppressed people with another, then this work becomes incredibly important. So let’s keep these questions and these debates alive in all our gatherings going forward.

Another thread I picked up on yesterday was on funding anxiety. It is hard to find donors for the gender space. While we will do our bit to expand the donor community, and I again call out with gratitude the number of donor organisations represented here, I also want us all to commit to telling our stories better. We need to build stronger bridges to the islands inhabited by the donor community. Good stories are the bricks by which this bridge can be built. We cannot expect donors to fund us just because we are doing really good societal work. We must draw donors to us by the power of our stories, by the analysis of our impact, and by our keen understanding of how this problem affects them and their interests as well. As I have been writing and saying for a while now, we are all interconnected, the elite and the poor and the ones in between. Some of us are on the upper decks, in private cabins, some in the lower decks, some are right at the bottom of the boat, shovelling coal, but we are all perhaps on the Titanic together, and we must all work to steer it away from the iceberg, or we all perish. No one can secede from this task. So there lies the opportunity for us, to share this story and reel in some big donor fish. Donors, I do hope you are coming close to the bait. And don’t worry, we release the catch!

Speaking of stories, I watch this Hindi serial, which is currently the most popular TV serial in the country. Millions of people watch it every day , including many many men, some surreptitiously, as I read in an article. It is called Anupama, and it is on Hotstar. How many of you watch it? I watch it partly to educate myself, partly to keep my Hindi current, and partly because no one in India can really resist high melodrama.

The point of bringing it up is that its story line quite confuses me at times. Sometimes, its ideas are boldly progressive, sometimes confusingly regressive. But maybe that just reflects the state of our society. Many ideas, many centuries, many streams are lived in simultaneously on this land. There is good and bad in all of us. Maybe we should thrive in this diversity, in this confusion, until the clear streams of reason emerge. The good news is that all those ideas, all those view points are passionately aired in this serial, and there too, the arc of its history seems to be towards justice. More power to good stories, I say.

That reminds me of another thing that we have been talking about at this conference. We must remember that there are , many many many good men in the world, who have silently worked on themselves and with the women in their lives to balance power better. Again in the spirit of inclusion, of not generalising, of not lumping men together, let us acknowledge, celebrate and ally with and work with the men who are in this journey. Many of them are in this room, so dhanyavaad to you all. And to our great joy, as we found out in the extensive research work done by our communications partners, Cracker and Rush, some of whose findings are represented on the walls outside, and I urge you to really look at that carefully, apparently many young people now celebrate and idolise a new kind of male, Shah Rukh over Salman earlier and now Ayushmann Khurana. That gives me great hope for it represents new norm formations and new sensitivity and new aspirations, as well as newly found comfort in a more caring, less aggressive, less overconfident maleness. As we heard in Men Ki Baat, Gen Z believes in women’s rights. They need embodiments of this sentiment. So Yay to actor humans like Ayushmann, Ranbir and Ranvir.

And now, as I come to a close, I want to point out again, as I did yesterday, how many senior leaders and established organisations we have in this room, from MAVA and Harish, to Abhijeet and CHSJ, to Sujata and CORO, and many more. Among our many partner portfolios, this is the one where all these organisations already have much experience of working together , and that is fantastic. so while we promise to support the convening, we urge you to take the leadership to continue to broaden and deepen these meetings, to give them a rhythm and a cadence, so that more meaningful work can happen, more bonds of trust can be woven, and this becomes a true, inclusive and strong movement for gender equity and reimagined power relationships. We still have a long way to go, to together create the grammar, the accessible language , the many more approaches needed to make our societal mission a reality, so let’s continue to build, but together.

At RNP, we feel we have come a long way from when we could partner with only one organisation ECF, to get this portfolio up and running. And now look at this room full of possibilities. Once gain, I thank you all, and I say a heartfelt thank you to the team at RNP, in this case especially Natasha Joshi, for working so hard to gather us all. At RNP, we are committed to the journey ahead, and as you will be hearing more of, we are renaming this portfolio because it was getting a little awkward to keep saying how interested we all are in young men and boys! I kid you not, that after some of my phone conversations with my colleagues on this subject, I get ads for dating services! So after the brilliant work done by our agency, we have converged on the word LAYAK. We like it because it means worthy, and the one strong aspiration that young males expressed in the research was to be layak, for themselves, for their loved ones, and for society at large. The word also holds us responsible at RNP to ourselves to be layak for the task ahead. We do look forward to your response and your collaboration.

Enjoy the rest of the meeting, including the film, safe journeys home, and see you again soon. Dhanyavaad and Namaste.

Schemes to Systems: Samaaj led Welfare Delivery Models

Rohini’s keynote at Indus Action’s Schemes to Systems conference. Philanthropist, Rohini Nilekani stresses on how the voice of Samaaj should be amplified and understood, while reducing the administrative gaps.

Thank you to Indus action and all the people gathered here. A special namaskar to the two senior politicians here – Dr Palanivel Thiagarajan ji and Mahua Moitra ji. Civil society groups must find ways to interact ever more with the political class and the business class – after all we are neither anti-government nor anti-market but we are pro people, pro samaaj. That is the first calling of the civil society sector. And everybody, bar none, is a citizen before they are a politician , a bureaucrat , A CEO or an employee, we are all citizens first, and last too, when we shed our day job identities and go home.
It is now exactly 15 years since I started speaking and writing about the continuum of samaaj, bazaar and sarkaar – and it is a continuum always in a dynamic balance and the continuous quest is to make the balance more just to all . And I have been saying that samaaj must become conscious that it is the first sector and it has to work to make sarkaar and bazaar, which come later, accountable to the larger public interest of the samaaj.

But what is the role of Samaaj actors in times like these, when people the world over, and in India too, seem to be fearful and insecure and retreating to narrower and polarized spaces?

I really believe, and this came to strongly this morning as I wrote this speech, is that today, as always, the role of empathy is absolutely critical. Empathy within, for ourselves, and empathy for others.

This is the important inner to outer journey we all struggle to make as civil society actors, isn’t it?

And in this aspect – how civil society institutions themselves behave becomes important –
How can we avoid the cancel culture so prevalent in the west, how can we reduce otherization? It is hard to eliminate otherization completely perhaps, because humans do seem often to define themselves against something else, maybe even an enemy, possibly as part of our evolutionary biology – but can we reduce this tendency through more awareness of the benefits of coming together ? Can we look outside OUR ideological walls if we want others to look outside theirs? Is it the work of samaaj institutions to create windows in all such walls?
Can we create those shared spaces, which are held without judgement, so we can discover ways to build a better society, a better samaaj?
How do we awake to and help awaken people to see ourselves as more than subjects, more than beneficiaries, more than consumers?
To see ourselves as humans in a complex web of humanity, as CITIZENS, as NAGARIKS?
And then, what are these citizens, these nagariks? What do citizens do?
Citizens are aware, they are alive to what is happening around them socially, economically, ecologically, politically. They belong to a community of other citizens. And it doesn’t matter if that is a small neighbourhood community or a global one, each is important, especially if it has thick bonds. One problem that has emerged is that social media has allowed the thriving of very thin bonds, and that has created groups of people that can be easily aroused to negativity. It is part of the work of civil society groups in fact to help build social bonds that are thick, so that people can work together in more harmony for a common cause.

Citizens, when fulfilling their role, are curious about and willing to participate in the co-creation of a society that makes their own lives and all others better, more abundant, more creative. And after empathy, for me, Creativity is an important word because the zenith, the apex of human history may be the ability of people to generate beauty, through their own talent ,agency and co-operation with the talent and agency of others.
To create is the is to be human. And I don’t mean just art and sculpture and beautiful buildings and things, but also the creation of big new social ideas and societal movements too, that enable humans to take such giant strides of consciousness, as in the universal vote, as in so many freedom struggles, and so much more.
That creativity is the most precious thing for samaj organisations to nurture. And we need to debate much more on how we can generate more sympathy and more creativity as the green fuel for the engine of samaaj as a whole and for CSOs too.
But these are challenging times, and our work is not so easy.
In a kind of reversal of the global liberal order which had perhaps gone stale & lost its relevance, and more importantly, its creativity – we seem to be in the grip of a shrinking of identities to narrow and narrower selves –

From Global to National
From National to Regional
From Regional to Religional
From Religional to the Tribal
From Tribal to ??

For the political class, this narrowing of identities frankly, can be useful, as it creates easy to capture voter groups.
For markets too, it can be beneficial , as it creates good segmentation to capture consumer bases.
In fact, sometimes, I only half-jokingly say –
Bazaar has made the tyranny of choice so complex (even to buy rice, a daily staple we have to choose between price ranges, between polished and unpolished, red and white and brown, organic and non-organic, and so on, endlessly, )& the pandemic has made personal/ family choices in the social space so frightening that people want simplicity in their politics- just delegate to one entity and forget about it.
But this is a cop-out and we must all beware of this trap.
Because when we cop out of being citizens, full citizens, what we are likely to get is a monopolies or monoculture of ideas and of practices that eventually will start to make societies less stable and less sustainable. We all know the cliché of the plantation and the rainforest and most people agree that the rainforest, with its diverse ecosystems is more healthy and sustainable, and so it is with societies too. But to maintain the diversity in society, citizens, unfortunately do not have the luxury to sit back and relax. We have to tend to our social gardens, however small they might be, and in all seasons.
Because, no matter what the benefits may be to sarkaar and bazaar, for Samaaj, and for civil society this shrinking to the smaller self only generates more fear, more insecurity and more divisiveness,
inevitably leading to conflict over identities, ideas and resources.
So the role of CSO’s then is to inspire people to see ever more of themselves in relation to the outer world- through collective action, collective creation, through campaigns, projects ,workshops & more. And eventually all of these hopefully, will foster more empathy, allowing people to see themselves in others’ shoes, even looking to the well-being of future generations, and thus to become the highest embodiment of themselves
Is this all too idealistic? Ye of course it is. But if we together believe in this grand human project – of increasing empathy and creativity in society – even if it takes 25 years or a 100, then we can move inexorably towards this magnificent goal with a feeling of hope and belief that all our actions, however small, like little drops of water – will eventually create the ocean .

Thank you for this opportunity to speak among so many amazing organisations seeking to build active citizenship, and also among senior politicians, whom we look to to help shape a positive social agenda. Dhanyavad and namaskar.

Closing Event at Contagion – Science Gallery Bengaluru

Phase one of Science Gallery Bengaluru’s exhibition-season CONTAGION phase came to a close Sunday 13 June, 2021, with closing remarks by Rohini Nilekani.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent alarm bells ringing throughout the world. While we have witnessed great socio-political and economic turbulence since the start of this pandemic, we’ve also seen a renewal of trust in science and experts.

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s closing remarks during Phase one of Science Gallery Bengaluru’s exhibition-season CONTAGION on Sunday 13 June, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has sent alarm bells ringing throughout the world. While we have witnessed great socio-political and economic turbulence since the start of this pandemic, we’ve also seen a renewal of trust in science and experts.

*

Almost a year of social distancing and isolation has made us value our communities and public spaces. Not only do public spaces build a sense of identity and shared ownership of the city and its environs, they also become a hub for public discourse, engagement, and dialogue. Science Gallery Bengaluru is hopefully shaping into exactly one such public space in Bangalore, alongside the Bangalore International Centre, The Museum of Art and Photography, Ranga Shankara, and many others. Through their exhibitions and programmes, Science Gallery Bengaluru connects with the city, especially its youth, and invites them to make it their own space by crafting a vibrant cultural conversation on science. Bangalore is a leader in science, research and technology in the country, with institutions such as IISC, NAL, ISRO, DRDO, NCBS and with globally renowned scientists such as Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, Satish Dhawan, Roddam Narasimha, Obaid Siddiqi, and many others who continued to work in our institutions and laboratories. But the mission of the Science Gallery is to take science beyond the hallowed gates and laboratories of these institutions, and out onto the streets, mingling with the citizens, instilling in them pride for the city and a curiosity about scientific research and experimentation, and its importance in our lives.

Science Gallery has a special focus on the young. As we have seen over the past one and a half years, the country’s youth have played a critical role in challenging the public health crisis that we are living through. They have come forward to help in very humanitarian and innovative ways, and as a society, it is our responsibility to invest in them and empower them to become active citizens of the future as well. Working with partners such as Azim Premji Field Institutes and the Agastya International Foundation, Science Gallery has created online learning resources for over 100,000 young people, and training programmes for youth working in underserved communities on COVID awareness. Additionally, during the CONTAGION exhibition, Science Gallery Bengaluru has trained its largest cohort of mediators to date. The mediators are young, enthusiastic people, who have had the opportunity to converse with visitors from across the globe through this exhibition, not just in English but also in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and other languages. CONTAGION’s masterclasses, workshops, and tutorials have now become a global platform for young people to be mentored by experts across disciplines.

The pandemic has further exposed the gap between research and the public. There’s an urgent need for strong efforts to facilitate better public understanding and appreciation of science. Young people need to get excited about curiosity-driven science and scientific exploration that could create a better, more hopeful future. This can only occur through a democratic dialogue examining how research intersects with our lives. CONTAGION did exactly this and touches upon this through its exhibits like Ranjit Kandalgaonkar’s ‘Drawing the Bombay Plague’ and Christos Lynteris’s ‘Controlling the Plague in British India.’ They provided a subtle yet sharp commentary on the dissonance between scientific research, the formulation of policy, and its subsequent implementation and impact on society.

The programmes at CONTAGION further highlighted this dissonance and an expert panel of a virologist, a physician, an epidemiologist, and a rural and tribal public health practitioner, led by the immunologist Ajit Lalvani, unpacked this fraught relationship between scientific evidence and the ground realities of pandemic control measures, especially in India today. CONTAGION invites us to think differently, open our minds, and ask critical questions of the world around us. The exhibition also asks us to reflect upon rapid scientific and technological progress to see that nobody is left behind, offering an inclusive vision of the future. We are witnessing the cracks caused by widespread structural inequities in vaccine development and distribution, which Achal Prabhala spoke about in his lecture, and we find a heart-rending experience because of skewed access to healthcare in Basse Sttitgen’s exhibit, ‘Fluid Dialogues’ and T Jayashree’s film, ‘A Human Question.’

Adia Benton spoke of the politics of care in a global health system that is becoming increasingly militarised. How do we make our way out of this? How do we begin to re-imagine the health sciences to integrate human, animal and planetary health. The frameworks of One Health are one way forward and were explored by Uma Ramakrishnan and Michael Bresalier’s talks in the CONTAGION’s Public Lecture series. CONTAGION, as several participants and visitors have said, is timely and relevant, it provides a historical, conceptual and ethnographic context for the pandemic and the pandemics to come. It has shed light and allowed people to be equipped with knowledge and feel empowered when they see that such experiences have happened to people before and that humanity has within us the wherewithal to confront what is in front of us and to prevent what may come in the future.

Science Gallery Bengaluru has chosen to explore transmission as a phenomenon, rather than focus only on disease. By looking at the spread of ideas, emotions, and behaviour, the entire programme provided us with some relief from the relentless and somewhat terrifying news around us, by helping us to put pieces together and take a longer and broader view. Given the difficulty of assessing and filtering vast amounts of information in the public domain i.e. the ‘infodemic,’ Science Gallery Bengaluru also provided a platform for young people to ask questions and engage with leading experts, like Gagandeep Kang and Shahid Jameel. With the generous consent of the artists and scholars that are exhibiting, the exhibition season will remain live with monthly programming until 31st December 2021. Given the crisis that we are continuing to live through, it is vital that CONTAGION remains freely accessible as a public resource and the team will continue to add new resources and new programmes.

Rohini’s Comments at The Annual Desh Apnayen Awards Ceremony

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s address at the ACTIZENS awards ceremony hosted by the Desh Apnayen Sahayog Foundation. In her speech as Chief Guest, Rohini Nilekani discusses how we can harness India’s latent potential to shape extraordinary citizens who will make India the world’s greatest democracy.

You and your friends, and all the young people like you in our country, have a really joyful responsibility to hold a brighter future and not to get weighed down by it, but see yourselves as trustees of a bright shining future for our country. I truly believe that if we can get our country right, if we can get India right in so many ways – including on the front of equity and justice and environmental sustainability, and opportunities for all – it is much easier for the whole world to be in the right path, because we are soon going to represent 1/5 of all humanity. So, think of the future as a road on which we will all walk together, carrying a light, joyful responsibility on our shoulders, because we are poised for so many good things. But as Vallabhbhai said, “Each one of us if we’re not active, this potential can fall apart.” They keep saying that what we call a demographic dividend can become a demographic disaster. And I must apologize for my generation, we seem to have left young people with a host of problems. But, in some sense, I think sometimes the crisis as we saw last year, the crisis of the pandemic, showed how much marvelous humanitarian energy could be put forward into the world.

So if we decide to look at the potential of abundance everywhere, I think we can genuinely collaborate to make a better future than some people claim that it might become. And democracy is a very important part of this, I believe. Because what do we want when we all sit and quietly think, what kind of society do we want to belong to? Just like you and I, all want our freedoms – the right to act, to speak, to wear what we like, to work, to improve our opportunities, and to improve the opportunities of the people around us. Everyone wants the same thing. So, the minute we step out of ourselves and into our communities, we realize that pretty much everyone wants the same thing. And therefore, what can I do? Because all of us here, some of us are more privileged and I accept that. Definitely, I belong to the very lucky privileged class. But all of us who are gathered here today are very, very privileged people in this country. And we know there are so many people out there who are not as privileged as we are, and yet, they have the same dreams, the same aspirations, and the same hopes that all of us have. So, one of the first things I believe we need in this century, which is already somehow 20 years old, is empathy.

I keep telling young people to stay curious, because there’s so much that we don’t know. And life is full of so many possibilities. So one: Stay curious. Two: Stay connected, because everyone is dependent on everybody else. And sometimes we forget that we are part of this big web. So stay connected, understand all the connections. This small little virus has taught us that. And third : Stay committed. Because all of us, especially when we are young, are trying to find our little space in the world, right? Who am I? What do I want to be? What about my personal ambition? But what about everything else? And from what I’ve seen and heard of all of you, you’re already much more mature than I was at your age. You are very clear about what you want to do. And I salute you. Really, I meet many young people in this country, except in the last year, which I feel so sad about. But they have shown me the limitless possibilities of India’s future. So again, I thank you for taking on this project, which Vallabhbhai started a few years ago.

So, when I was like you I must say that I was an activist. I was a bit aggressive, which I don’t recommend. But I was like that. And I used to say everything must be right. I grew up in Bombay and actually, I was very lucky because we had very good public services. Some of you who are in Bombay may not have even experienced what I had in the 70s and 80s. We had a good bus service, good electricity, good water, public safety, and women could go safely out at night. It was a different time and a different city. But sometimes people used to throw garbage. I used to get very upset and I used to go and pick up the garbage in front of everyone and glare at the person who had thrown it. Now, while that seems like the right thing to do, I soon realized that it didn’t make me any friends. Why? Because even though I was doing the correct thing, which is picking up trash from the public, I think my attitude was not right. I was doing it in a superior way, not accepting that I also have so many faults, other people have faults, we are all on individual learning journeys. So even as you pick up that trash and put it in the dustbin – we had proper dustbins in those days – something was not right, okay? And I had to learn, my young friends, over the years that the ‘what’ is less important than the ‘how’. So, I grew up and became more mature over the years.

When my husband was working for the government, outside our house in Delhi there was a tea stall and people used to drink tea and throw the paper cups right there. Now I said, “Should I go and make a big fuss? What should I do?” Then I said, “Be calm.” And I used to go everyday and very quietly, without making a fuss, picked up those cups and disposed of them correctly, and smiled and did namaste to those people, because really I’d learned that we cannot sit so much in judgment of other people. And when I did that, young friends, to my great surprise, within two days, the throwing of those paper cups stopped. After that, till I left that house, not one single piece of garbage I saw anywhere around me. Why am I telling you this simple story? It’s because we all evolve, yes, but I would like you to learn from my journey that sometimes when we do the right thing in the wrong manner, it really doesn’t help anybody.

So, having said that, always participate. All of us know things around us are not right. Some child may think, “Oh, why are we wasting water?” Some other young person may say, “Oh, what about our rights of expression?” Some other young people may be interested in other environmental issues. Please learn more about that thing which you care about and are passionate about and you want to change, and then think, talk to your elders, talk to your friend, “How can I participate in making real change and not make the mistake which Rohini did?” Participate with humility, participate without judgment, participate with self-reflection, and you will see the difference between doing it one way and doing it another.

Young friends, I was very lucky because Infosys, the company my husband set up with Narayana Murthy and others, that we became very wealthy, but not immediately. Infosys had to work for a very long time, very hard. It was after 15 years or so that Infosys succeeded wildly and beyond anybody’s expectations. And I had made a very early investment. From my small amount of money which I had in Infosys, I turned into a wealthy woman. Now, why do I tell you that? It is because in my family, wealth was not considered something great to be proud of. One of my grandfathers was very wealthy and did a lot of philanthropy. The other grandfather, my father’s father, Babasaheb Soman, was a lawyer who half the time didn’t want to take his case to court and asked his clients to settle issues out of court, and so he got no fees.

So he was certainly not wealthy, but both of them had wealth of mind. My father’s father joined Gandhiji when Gandhiji made his first clarion call for volunteers to come to Champaran in 1917. He was among the first people to go and was there with Kasturba and Gandhiji for several months. They built schools, they built toilets, they did a lot of work and then my grandfather joined the freedom movement. But always we were told that wealth is not what you aspire to, you aspire to high thinking. So, when I came into so much wealth, I was very confused, “What should I do?” Because I was on the other side before, and now I was on this side. Now I was the wealthy one. And it took me a long time, my young friends, to accept that wealth because it was ethical wealth. It came about the right way. And what was the responsibility of that wealth in society? I slowly learned that I was only a trustee of that wealth, and that it must be used for society.

The responsibility of wealth in a democracy is to be useful to society. And then I started my more serious philanthropic journey over the years, working with several organizations. Today, my husband Nandan and I have signed the Giving Pledge, which is a global pledge, where we have committed publicly to give half our wealth away to good causes in our own lifetime. And I tell you, it’s not easy at all to do that well, okay? It’s a huge responsibility, but we take it very, very seriously and if God forbid anything happens to us, our children have promised to fulfill that pledge.

The last point I will say is that in the continuum of the state, society, and markets, my strong belief is that society must come first because at the end of it, no matter who you are, you may be a student, you may be a teacher like Vallabhbhai, you may be a very successful investor, you may be doing very well in the Army or in politics, or anything, but who are you first? Of course, you’re a human being first, but after that, you’re a citizen. You’re a citizen of your society, you’re a citizen of your nation, and you’re a citizen of this world. So you’re a citizen before you are an employee, you’re a citizen before you are a consumer of market goods.You are a citizen before you are a subject of the state and good citizens together make a good society, and a good society can make sure that governments are accountable for the larger public good. They can also make sure that markets don’t become runaway powers and are accountable for a good society. So,by being the first building block of a good society, as citizens and actizens, together we can build a democratic society, where we can hope that, that child whose face you sometimes see when you’re coming to school or when you go for a vacation somewhere, who doesn’t have the benefits that you do, even that child can be included in a brighter future. So again, I say, stay curious, stay connected, stay committed and magic will happen.

Comments at SVP, Kolkata 3rd Anniversary Meet

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s comments at SVP’s 3rd Anniversary Meet in Kolkata.

My Journey to Structured Philanthropy

I have been on my philanthropic journey for about three decades now. When I look back at it now, I think the real journey started much before, with my ancestors, because it is what you learn that you take forward. In my family, there was always great respect paid to my grandfathers, who were very philanthropic individuals especially my father’s father. He gave up a lot of the income-generating part of his livelihood to join Gandhiji and the freedom movement. He was among the first few people to go to Champaran in 1917, and spearheaded the development work that was done in the first Ashram started by Gandhiji in Bhitiharwa. So, our family credo was to live simply and that life is about sharing and giving forward. It doesn’t mean that you have to wear loincloths, you can certainly enjoy your life but there was an emphasis on a larger responsibility towards society.

So we inherited this idea that our lives are not surrounded just by the walls of our home, or even our community. We need to look much further than that. I was a bit of an activist right through my college days, and as a journalist I got to see the way different people live and how most of us take for granted what is valuable to others. Especially because I grew up in Mumbai, I took for granted our relatively good public infrastructure, and only later did I learn the importance of how simple public infrastructure can help people rise up to their own potential, even if they are not economically well off. But when they’re stuck with bad public services, every day is a battle. When I was growing up, we had water, electricity, roads, which sounds very basic but many people don’t have assured access to these things. We had public safety, parks, and the beach to walk on – all the things that make urban city life much more meaningful for individuals to prosper. We can’t say this is true of present day India, we have not kept pace with public service delivery.

We grew up in that kind of middle-class atmosphere in a cosmopolitan city like Bombay. Later, when I went to America I was once again a beneficiary of amazing public infrastructure. We had no money in the early days of Infosys, we only had an allowance of $500 for the month. Luckily, in America, food and public transport was cheap, and best of all, public libraries were free. For me, it was like discovering a treasure trove of knowledge at my fingertips. I mention these details because I feel that we always rest on the shoulders of our forefathers and foremothers, and that the level of public infrastructure that we are exposed to really helps us move forward.

At the time, I had decided to invest all of my money, Rs.10,000, in a small company called Infosys, mostly because I trusted in its founders. We got lucky, and that Rs.10,000 multiplied. The idea of Infosys was bigger than all our personal ideas of ourselves and our families, and it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. But when I came into my own 100 crores, it took me a long while to become comfortable with that kind of wealth. I decided to put all of it into a foundation and thus Arghyam was born in 2001. I saw it as public wealth, not private wealth and so I put it into a trust even though I wasn’t sure what to do with it. And so my structured journey of philanthropy truly started, although I was involved earlier with setting up institutions and joining Akshara Foundation and the Pratham Network. I started to learn the ropes of giving in a more structured manner through Arghyam. For the first few years, I would randomly try things out with learning grants, and from 2005 onwards I focused on water because it was clearly a sector that impacted everyone at all levels and that we were not managing sustainably. So there was a system play and also a human play where it impacts everybody’s quality of life if you don’t have access to water.

Arghyam has been around for 16 years now and I’m pleased to say that we have been able to impact the water sector in a positive way. Alongside this, I co-founded Pratham Books, which was one of the most joyous phases of my life because we decided to put a book in every child’s hand. We started with this very big mission and over the years, we were really able to democratise the joy of reading for children. Today, Pratham Books is 17 years old and we have reached hundreds of millions of children, with good stories from around India and the world. Nandan’s philanthropy also scaled up his own institutional philanthropy, making very large grants to organisations such as IIHS, NCAER, ICRIER, and eGov, where he focuses on impact at scale using technology as a means to achieve this.

Creating Resilient Societies

Over the years, I learned that what I really believed in is the power of people, of citizens to do things for themselves. I built this construct, that in the continuum of Samaaj, Bazaar and Sarkar, the Samaaj or society is the first sector. It is the basic sector for which the markets and the state are developed, because society needs institutional authority so that we don’t collapse into disorder. We need markets to create prosperity and innovation, but they have to work for the larger public interest; and we need order and rule of law, but the state exists to support societies, so that citizens could be their best selves. All of us are citizens first, not subjects of the state or consumers of the market. Even if we work in government or are heads of large corporations, we are citizens of our communities and our nations first.

When people understand that we, as citizens, can come together to solve our problems and co-create the structures to hold markets and state accountable for collective public interest, then you get a thriving society where all of us can hope to flourish. There’s no such thing as a perfect society, but there is such a thing as the imagination of a society that is constantly striving to be better. So my philanthropy is based on this simple premise – if we can support moral and ethical leadership of the Samaaj and the building of better institutions that serve the Samaaj and contextualize local problem solving, then we create resilience. If we want good societies, we need resilient societies so we have to look out for the opportunities in the Samaaj, to support good people, good ideas, and good institutions, so that we can continuously innovate our way to a better future. With this in mind, I support people in many areas such as access to justice, education, independent media, young men and boys, and the environment. I believe that we are all philanthropists because all of us feel that something needs to change, something is not right, something can be better. And we all want to be a part of that positive change.

Many younger philanthropists ask how we should prioritise our focus, especially in India where there’s so much poverty and inequity. To me, philanthropy is love for humanity, and it can be expressed in a myriad of ways. People must go where their passion is, whether it’s to alleviate poverty or whether it’s in relation to art, music, culture, or sports. There are many pathways to the same goal, and arts and culture is one way that we create the energies and creativity that allows people to understand poverty and justice. It allows us to make meaning of our journey on this little planet, and so I don’t think art, culture, or sports is in any way less important than feeding the hungry. After all, there are many institutions for feeding the hungry. But when we talk about philanthropy, we are allowing ourselves a creative expression of our humanity, so I would urge young philanthropists to do what comes from their hearts first. For those who are just starting out, I would encourage them to experiment with different organisations to figure out which of them will be able to scale. When you make learning grants, you’ll quickly be able to tell which organisations show potential. Once you identify them, then double down. The other thing I would suggest is to lead with trust. My whole philanthropy is trust-based philanthropy.

Trust-based philanthropy also involves open communication with your partners. One of the issues in the development sector is that founders may sometimes get too attached to their creations or sometimes organisations lose their way if their founders have to leave. We’ve seen that happening to many NGOs. So when we talk to our partners, this should be a question on the table. What is their succession plan and who are their next level of leaders? This is crucial for institutional sustainability. One charismatic founder is good for some time, to draw in other people but it’s not enough for the institution to last. We need to talk more openly without partners, without sounding prescriptive, and ask these questions. For people who are actively engaged in philanthropy, it’s crucial to be empathetic. However, feeling other people’s pain more sharply also takes its toll on us mentally and emotionally. Personally, I had to train myself over the years to be detached, so now my credo is maximum concern but minimum attachment. We need to keep doing the work that we can, but we should detach ourselves from the result so that we can continue. Otherwise, if we allow empathy to override our abilities, we won’t be able to do this work in the long-term.

Reimagining the Culture of Giving

My parents grew up in an India where people had to work very hard to make a living and usually people were only born into wealth. So there was a sense of potential, but not enough security to say that we need to start giving. In India, people give anyway to their family, their community, and their temple. But in order to do what we call ‘structured philanthropy’, society also needs to reach a level of confidence in its economy and its future. Today we are seeing this, with many young people becoming independently wealthy. Even if they are not super wealthy, they have some surplus money. They’re also very aware of what’s happening around them, through social media and communication channels, and realise how intricately their lives and futures are connected to others. So they are getting interested and stimulated by the question of how they can be part of creating a better system.

I have met many young people who want to give back early, rather than waiting until they retire. My young friend from Healthify was also saying, “We came into money, but we just took out a little for ourselves and we are going to immediately set aside 20% of that. Please tell us how we should invest.” So I think the culture is shifting and changing. The pandemic has also taught us that the elite can’t just secede to its own private world. The virus doesn’t recognise gated communities. So we have no choice but to swim in the same water, and make that water healthy for all. Finally, the ecosystem around giving is also improving in India. It’s much easier to give transparently and organisations range from working in the arts to media to sports and healthcare. They are more discoverable, and bridging organisations have grown so it’s also easier to give back. Retail giving in India is increasing with civil society organisations and not just temples. Especially during the pandemic, giving by citizens who are not so wealthy shot up and we raised hundreds of crores. This is the spirit of India that we have to tap into. Kindness to strangers is a value that is an integral part of our culture, we just need to revive that idea.

We need to reimagine the culture of giving. It has to become the norm and we need good storytelling around it and institutions that show that the people can come together for a much larger purpose – to solve large societal issues. Even if we are small, we can become part of a very large stream of giving forward. Our brains are wired for joy by giving, and there are multiple rewards for society and for individuals in this giving journey. So we must re-imagining a culture of giving small and big, and carry that story forward.

Rohini Nilekani’s Keynote at DH Changemakers

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s keynote talk at DH Changemakers, an annual feature by Deccan Herald to honour people who make a difference in Karnataka.

What do we mean when we talk about change? We all know that change is the only constant in our lives. Change keeps happening, but I think as we get older we come to realise that change is the rule, but it does not need to be our ruler. We can embrace change without getting swept away by it. This past year is a perfect example of how humanity had to cope with so much change. Anthropologists, scientists, and evolutionary biologists all tell us that human beings can’t change easily. But within a matter of months, nearly two billion people learnt how to cover their faces with a mask to prevent a virus from infecting them. We were able to change and adapt to our circumstances very rapidly. So each one of us has had a marvellous year of learning how to deal with change. Of course, a lot of people suffered tremendously which we mustn’t forget. But to me, change represents an opportunity. When something is not right, that’s when we use the opportunity to create change. My philanthropy is based on the optimism that there are many people in the world that want to be changemakers and we must support them so that we can collectively create positive change.

All of us wear many different hats and sometimes we think we can have different perspectives when we wear different hats. But I actually don’t believe that. I think there needs to be a single, unifying principle through all your identities. This does not mean that we can’t change our minds though, otherwise I don’t think we can make progress in this world, either personally or as societies. So I have learnt how to change my mind because when we are younger, we are full of hubris. I thought I knew everything – I soon found out that I don’t know anything at all. I had to keep my mind open and allow my world views to change as I learnt more about the world. It’s important to keep your mind open enough that you can change it in response to change, and I’ve tried my best to do that. This has been challenging in my experience. I was brought up in a middle-class family and all the stories I was told were about selfless service, simple living, and high thinking. In college, I was a bit of a leftist and an activist, so when we suddenly came into a lot of wealth later, I was not ready for it. As a shareholder of Infosys, we became more wealthy than we ever thought was possible, and to deal with that change took years for me. I had to change my mindset and view this wealth as an opportunity for me to help people change the world as they see fit.

When I look at this year’s 21 changemakers that have been chosen, I feel extremely hopeful. My philosophy is that all of us must work together to create a good Samaaj or society. These 21 people are perfect examples of this, where they are not waiting for someone else to create change for them. They don’t want to remain part of a problem, they want to be part of the solution. For that, I salute them because that’s exactly how we create a good society. To me, a good society is the foundation for all human progress. What they do next will depend upon their ambition, persistence, commitment and the circumstances and opportunities that come their way. But I hope that each one of them will continue to draw in other people to expand their work, so that even if they and their organisations don’t scale, their ideas and their mission for society continues to scale.

If changemakers have the ambition and the desire to create a large impact and if they are able to collect the resources for it, they should be able to achieve that goal. Inaction is never a good thing, you must continue to try. With any project, the goal is never to just mindlessly scale, that won’t work. But if you have a passion in your heart and a fire burning in you to improve on something in your communities, you may attract many others to your cause. I think people should connect with other changemakers to widen the impact that is possible. Rather than chasing scale for its own sake, I would urge young changemakers to say, “Even if my organisation doesn’t scale, even if my effort alone doesn’t grow, how can I keep connecting more dots so that my ambition and my mission for society can scale?” That’s how we should approach this challenge. My team has come up with something called Societal Platform Thinking, which tackles the challenges of getting impact at scale by distributing the ability to solve. For example, if one individual or organisation is able to make a difference, they can share their story and methods so that others can also take up what they are doing – that is a way in which scale can happen. So there are many pathways to scale and we must aim for more impact through more action.

Some questions to keep in mind then are ‘Why and with whom are we trying to scale?’ and ‘Are we keeping our core values while scaling?’ It’s a very challenging thing to do – I liken it to a small child growing up and the problems that parents have to face become more complex in the process. Just like parents, we have to face these problems and sometimes we will fail, sometimes we will succeed, but we must face them head on. We should know what our core values are and that those should not change, so each new member joining our team when we want to scale should share those clearly articulated values and goals. This reduces the risk of sudden scale. Throughout my 30 years of working in the philanthropy space, I’ve had to deal with scale and I’ve tried to abstract the lessons by which we can scale in the proper way.

An Introduction to Uncommon Ground

Introducing Uncommon Ground – a Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and CAMP Arbitration and Mediation Practice initiative – that looks to develop the individual and organisational capacity for deploying dialogue as the primary method for resolving conflict. Using a multi-disciplinary framework, including principles of dispute resolution through mediation with its emphasis on self-determination and collaboration, we are building an approach to effectively catalyze dialogue and would like to share the broad outlines of this work with.

This is an edited version of Dr. Krishna Udayasankar on Uncommon Ground – a Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and CAMP Arbitration and Mediation Practice initiative that looks to develop the individual and organisational capacity for deploying dialogue as the primary method for resolving conflict. Using a multi-disciplinary framework, including principles of dispute resolution through mediation with its emphasis on self-determination and collaboration, we are building an approach to effectively catalyze dialogue and would like to share the broad outlines of this work.

Dr. Krishna Udayasankar holds a BA.LLB (Hons) from the National Law School of India University and a PhD in Strategic Management from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

*

In its previous iteration, Uncommon Ground was a book and subsequent TV show which brought together leaders from across the Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar i.e. society, state, and markets, to engage in dialogues to find some degree of common ground. Those were important conversations to have, in order to facilitate discussions at the influencer and leader level. However, Dr. Krishna Udayasankar asks how we can further those ideas and engage with them in our everyday lives. What are the ways that we can build that societal muscle and engage with these issues in our interactions, so that we can work towards positive outcomes?

Dr. Udayasankar is a Bangalorean of Tamil descent, and says that he loves festivals because he gets to enjoy both the Kannadiga and the Tamil side of the food that’s prepared. One of his favourite dishes is tamarind rice, puliyogare, the way his mother makes it. She boils the tamarind in oil and spices for four hours until it forms a kind of sauce. Then she adds the rice and allows the mixture to marinate for a couple of hours before adding dry species, and serves it. Dr. Udayasankar describes a bite of the dish – a seedless red chilly which has been marinating for hours along with a burst of tamarind that fills his mouth. Our reaction to this description, he tells us, comes from the ‘thinking’ part of our brain. When we talk about food or other things that we may enjoy, or when we hear about someone else’s experiences in a way that we relate to, our brain’s mirror neurons are triggered. Certain triggers help us learn, relate to one another, or co-experience things that others are experiencing. Mirror neurons are intrinsic to social interaction and the social behavior of mammals, including humans. This social function is located in the same part of the brain as the cognitive or rational part, which is not to say that emotion and instinct don’t play a role in it as well.

The emotional brain is where we process most inputs from, whether they are responses or threats. This triggers the instinctive brain which typically gives you three responses – flight, fight, or freeze. For example, if you are taking a jungle walk and you run into a particularly nasty looking panther, you may decide to run instead of freezing or fighting. The instinctive brain makes sure that the adrenaline runs through you, and you are able to think on your feet and even run faster than usual. This knowledge of neurobiology helps us because it’s an important connection between the social and the rational, cognitive functions of the brain. If we are able to get the human brain to experience a social engagement, interaction, or experience, that will trigger the thinking brain which allows us to understand and balance all the messages that the emotional and instinctive part of the brain are putting out. That social process we are trying to use, on the basis of this science is the dialogic process, states Dr. Udayasankar.

The Dialogic Process

What is dialogue? The dialogic process is a social process that we are using to trigger neurobiological functions towards a determined end, but what exactly is a dialogic process? Dialogue could mean lines from books, entertainment, audiovisual experiences, or simply two people exchanging words, an interaction through communication. ‘Dialogue’ comes from ‘dialogos’, a Greek word which broadly splits into ‘dia’ i.e. through and ‘logos; which can mean ideas, words, speech, or even thoughts depending on the context. When you put these together, the meaning implies a certain degree of community, relationships, and cooperation. In Indian languages as well, there is a sense of coming together and co-creating, cooperating in an exchange of ideas and words. So the notion of dialogue in itself has to do more than just speaking or exchanging words. It is rooted in the co-mixing and co-mingling of ideas in order to create something. This is reflected if we take a social-constructionist view of dialogue, which informs a host of applied disciplines including management sciences, leadership or behavior. It is a process that provides a space where multiple ways of looking at a situation can be brought together, people can vocalise different perspectives, and there is an end goal to it that may be actionable. Whether it is something more intangible like advancing our thinking and knowledge or coming to a conclusion on next steps, the process of dialogue involves coming together, communicating ideas and perspectives, and drawing benefit from the multiplicity of perspectives involved in order to create new possibilities and alternatives.

Dr. Udayasankar asks how we can use this approach, involving dialogue that allows for different perspectives and communicating those to achieve an end goal. He gives an example of a restaurant where two chefs are having an argument because each needs to use an orange in their dish and there is only one left. In this situation, the first solution that might occur to us is to divide the orange and give half to each chef. But another approach would be to ask the chiefs what they want to use it for and how much they need. This information can help us reach a solution that may address both people’s interests. It’s possible that one chef only wants the peel and the other wants the juice of the orange. In this case, we had the opportunity to metaphorically create two oranges, where there was only one. This is important because often when we look at a conflict or problem, we tend to find solutions that distribute value. But when we move from a question of “what” to asking “why do you want this”, it allows us to look at various other options. There could be several other solutions to the orange problem – perhaps someone could go out and get another orange or perhaps one chef can be persuaded that the recipe tastes better with an apple instead. But we will not figure out any of those solutions unless we move from ‘what’ to ‘why’. In today’s world, when positions are so often presented as binary, it’s important to see that there’s actually a multiplicity of views and dimensions in any given situation, even in conflicts. The idea of Uncommon Ground, says Dr. Udayasankar, is to understand the elements that we can use and evolve the skillset to be able to see these solutions.

The other element of the dialogic approach is to be able to put multiple perspectives on the table so that when we take a decision, we benefit from an abundance of ideas and address as many needs and concerns as we can. In the case of the orange problem, we also need to involve the chefs in this process. It is their decision and if they are engaged in finding a solution together, it will also improve their relationship and efficiency. Our goal is to co-create a consensus or instead of simply splitting the difference. Rather than simply looking at a way to solve the problem, if we use a dialogic approach we can identify the underlying needs and concerns and find a sustainable and lasting solution.

However, what if there is a power difference, which often happens when different stakeholders come to the table. What if both chefs did not have equal say in claiming the orange? This is one of the most important things that we face when implementing this method. Power equations may be different, but the aim of the process is to give a voice to everybody who is impacted by the final decision. There will be invisible stakeholders, people who are not part of the discussions but ought to be, as well as invisible influencers i.e. people who don’t have much to do with the situation but have a huge impact on it. So we must make sure that the process allows for the vocalisation of all perspectives. Biases may also lead us to see a situation in a particular perspective. We must be aware of our own bias and understand when inherent or unstated biases may be playing a role in the communication process.

Building Societal Muscle

Dr. Udayasankar says that his aim is to be able to build a societal muscle for engaging in this process. These elements are crucial in terms of creating the space, generating multiple perspectives, sharing information, being able to listen, and actionizing new solutions or alternatives. Building that societal muscle is not just about being able to get people to think from the perspective that this is possible, but also to equip people to be able to engage with the process and realise that we don’t have to necessarily share similar views in order to achieve common goals. With Uncommon Ground, we try to change perspectives and get people to think differently about what can be achieved through a dialogic process, and then invite them to engage and develop skills by which they can continue to do this, says Dr. Udayasankar. So far, they have worked across the Samaaj sector, with young changemakers and NGOs. They have also been working with women in rural Karnataka along with Buzz Women, an organisation building human and social capital in the area for over eight years.

Together they worked on engaging women with interventions and games where they had to look at a conflict as a problem to co-solve. For example, one of the biggest conflicts for women at home is about money, which usually starts with accusations of spending too much or not earning enough. So the idea was to shift the conversation to identifying the problem at hand i.e. not enough money, and then finding a solution together, as a team. They were able to re-examine their existing curriculum and incorporate these exercises without increasing the time of the sessions for women. With this curriculum, they hope to reach 2.25 lakh women over five districts of South Karnataka. In the case of one woman who had undergone the course, she was able to solve a 15-year-old family property dispute because she was able to build the skill and took charge of the problem to look for sustainable solutions. They are now working to develop a module for women to have the capacity to facilitate the dialogic process in groups and communities themselves. Dr. Udayasankar shares that they are also looking to develop the practice support and community building verticals, and experimenting with different ways of doing this.

Moving Beyond Binaries

Everyday, we negotiate various kinds of micro and macro-conflicts. The intent of Uncommon Ground is to build a structure around this as a method so that it can also have a learning component for those who want to get better at it and become more aware of how to build their capacities in this direction. Practice is a big part of behaviour change, and learning to listen or learning to dialogue, taking a leap of faith, suspending bias, and sometimes even suspending that instinct to react immediately, are all very instinctual. It takes a tremendous amount of practice to curb these instincts, which is another facet of the work of Uncommon Ground.

Dr. Udayasankar mentions Sriram Panchu, one of the pioneers of mediation in India, and his thoughts on the use of mediation to be able to resolve conflicts. These ideas are not new – in villages you don’t go to court, you still try and figure it out with the village elders and have a dialogue. It’s based on the idea that we must put our heads together to figure out the problem and come up with a solution that is based on cooperation and understanding. These are not new ideas, but the goal is to be able to bridge this uncodified but culturally held element with the very formally defined, commercially tested, well-used method of mediation on the other. If we take the example of the farm bill, three different newspapers give completely different impressions of it because perspective position is reduced to a headline. But behind it are the nuances that a dialogic process can hopefully bring out. When those nuances are brought out, it is possible to focus on a solution rather than just deciding who to agree with. We must move away from binaries of right and wrong to ask, “How do we fix this?” says Dr. Udayasankar. How do we make everyone happy? How do we give everybody what they really need? How do we address their concerns?

One of the objectives of the Uncommon Ground project is to be able to influence our response to issues like the farm bill issue, in a manner where dialogue is possible. Right now, our instinctive response is not to be able to facilitate a dialogic process. When a conflict begins, we have systems in place that support the resolution of that issue through the dialogic method. This is a classic example where this process is far more amenable to the resolution of the issue than a formal court system, but that is the response mechanism that we know. However, if we as a community were able to set up systems from the get-go so that our response to it would be different and would allow a facilitation of dialogue, that’s when we would see real change.

As Rohini Nilekani suggests, we need to encourage a culture where we can go beyond binaries, and to find good, simple, understandable methodologies by which we do so. Everyone understands this concept at an intellectual and emotional level, but how do we do it? The Tällberg Foundation in Switzerland’s tagline is, “How on earth can we live together?” and they mean every word of that because the planet’s sustainability is what they care about. So how on earth can we live together? I think the weariness that has settled in as a consequence of our increasingly polarised world is exactly the wedge we need to push in a new positive energy of dialogue and conversation.