Type: Panel

Rohini Nilekani’s Comments on Philanthropy: It’s Time to up the Game

Rohini Nilekani’s comments on a panel discussing Mr Azim Premji’s new commitment to philanthropy totalling $21 billion. The panel discusses whether there are lessons in compassionate capitalism here for India Inc? What is the future of philanthropy in India? What are the challenges? How can India increase the effectiveness of charity? The panel discusses what that means within the sector and whether there are lessons in compassionate capitalism here for India Inc. The other panellists include Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson-MD BIOCON, and Anant Bhagwati, director Dasra.

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s comments on the India Development Debate, exploring the future of philanthropy and the challenges India faces.

Azim Premji and his family have really set targets and goals that we all must aspire towards. Even before Nandan and I came into our wealth, I’ve always believed that the wealthy should feel a great sense of responsibility towards society. It’s no use for some people to be wealthy, if the rest of our society doesn’t benefit in some way from that wealth. Wealth creation and philanthropy must go together, you cannot separate those two things. So it was an obvious step for us to embark on our philanthropic journey. We have publicly committed to giving away at least 50% of our wealth.

However while there are people like Azim, Kiran, and I who are willing to give away these large amounts, we also face certain challenges within the sector in India. A major factor is the absorptive capacity of current civil society organisations. At this stage, they simply aren’t able to absorb and use the large amounts of capital that people are ready to give away. So what we need to be doing now is encouraging new civil society actors, and investing in the philanthropy ecosystem of this country. We need to be involved in creating and strengthening the pipelines for giving, investing in the capacity for organisations to scale so that they can use the money effectively.

The Challenges of Giving

The Bain report of 2019 shows that individual philanthropists account for about 60% of the total private funding in the ’18 fiscal year in India. 80% of that amount is credited to Azim Premji. So while high net worth individuals have grown at a rate of 12% and are expected to double in terms of volume and wealth by 2022, many question whether philanthropy in India only consists of the same handful of individuals and foundations who give, year after year.

When we begin to explore the reasons why other wealthy Indians don’t give more, it comes down to a question of wealth creation versus wealth inheritance. As Anant notes, first generation entrepreneurs and wealth creators from the IT sector for example, are willing to part with large sums of money for social good. But there’s also a lot of wealth in India that is inherited, and passed down from generation to generation within families. So those individuals may feel a responsibility to leave a legacy and wealth for future generations as they are not necessarily the sole owners of that wealth. This kind of thinking could explain why the US gives almost 2% of their net worth while India is only at 0.2%.

However, I think we’ve reached a point where we have to challenge all the ultra-wealthy, even those who have inherited wealth, to give more. Today many families who come from old money have also realised that protectionism doesn’t serve them, and have opened up to global competition. There are a lot of people now who have not just come into their families’ wealth, but have actively added large amounts to it. So I think they can afford to be bold and publicly commit to giving some of it away. It’s time for Indian philanthropists to strike out and carve their own space within the sector.

As for the question of where and whom to give, and how to effectively impact society, who better to answer that than successful business entrepreneurs? If they can build huge, successful corporate empires, they can also build successful, scalable societal missions. Some of us are already engaged in this work, through what we call societal platform thinking, and we have developed a framework for scale. So at this point, the wealthy need to step up to this challenge and be creative about generating scale themselves, rather than waiting for NGOs to do the work. As philanthropists we can pool our skills together and work with other sectors to help organisations adapt and streamline. In the current economy, with the rich simply getting richer, the existence of inherited wealth should no longer be an excuse for people to not give.

Creating a Culture of Giving

It’s critical to impart the duty of giving, across economic classes in India, but especially among the wealthy. Between 2018 and 2022, India is estimated to produce 70 new dollar millionaires every day, i.e. people with a net worth of seven crore. So we need to think about how we can inculcate a sense of civic duty and philanthropy in our citizens. As Kiran points out, our country has philanthropy in its DNA. A lot of modern India was very impactfully built through the philanthropy of people like the Tatas or the Birlas, who invested in creating the educational ecosystem, and the healthcare ecosystem, among others. The current and future generations should be able to take this work forward. I agree with Kiran that people must be inspired to do philanthropy, they should believe in this culture of giving, in order to really make an impact.

Our media should keep the spotlight on the wealthy, and enable the public to ask what good the super-rich are doing for the rest of society. I actually think Indian society in general is a lot more giving than we imagine. While the Gates Foundation is coming out with specific data on everyday giving, we do know now that even middle income individuals are willing to step forward publicly and commit to giving their money steadily and visibly. With the convergence of public pressure and media attention on the super-rich to give a portion of their wealth, and the emergence of transparent data around who gives, and how much, I think the giving culture in this country is only set to grow. I’m hopeful about the potential of public participation in creating public goods as well – so that even if we ignore the ultra-high net worth individuals, those who are less wealthy but ready to give can have a serious impact on the ground.

We’re seeing a change with companies as well, where corporate social responsibility is playing a role in creating value for organisations. As Kiran mentions, the culture of corporates investing in solving issues and impacting society is almost becoming a part of good governance, and a way to evaluate their worth. Hopefully this will have a cascading effect, where we hold all companies to higher standards.

Moving the Needle

In a country like India, the size of the issues at hand makes combating them extremely tricky. Whether it’s education or healthcare, if the eventual aim is to reach 200 million people, it becomes clear that you have to work alongside the government, and philanthropic capital is catalytic capital. Anant correctly points out that, purely from a numbers perspective, if this capital works in unison with the government to tackle certain issues or to ensure the state’s scheme is more effective, that is when philanthropy actually starts to move the needle. When we talk about things like societal platform thinking and building out the philanthropic ecosystem, these projects need risk capital and they need duration. The giving must be strategic, for long durations, and focused on addressing a specific problem. Scalability is a key factor here, and as Anant also states, unless we tackling issues at a district level, if not state level, we’re not going to be able to create lasting change.

Philanthropic capital is risk capital, it’s innovation capital, and India’s wealthy needs to up their game and give generously and to new and difficult areas. We need to invest that capital into areas that ensure human rights for all our citizens. We need to expand our idea of philanthropy and address issues such as gender inequality, mental health, and other social justice areas. So in addition to working alongside the government in order to scale, we also need to open up new areas that may be slightly riskier, and put in that innovative capital where it is needed. The future of philanthropy needs individuals who are willing to offer up the risk capital, who accept the possibility of failure, and who build relationships based on trust – with more people like this, we will definitely see large-scale impact in India. I’m hopeful that this process is already taking place, and we’re all going to up our game.

We The People | Are India’s Rich Charitable Enough?

According to a report, the richest 1% Indians possess 58% of all wealth in the country. With the country’s growing income gap, the silver lining seems to be the deepening philanthropic streak in India’s ultra rich; the Nilekanis being the latest addition to the list of Indian billionaires who have pledged a portion of their wealth for social betterment. On this episode of We The People, we ask: can the Indian rich help narrow down the widening inequality? Is philanthropy enough to push our development agenda without a streamlined structure and proper execution? Are CSR and inheritance tax feasible tools to help improve the way our resources are allocated?

India’s economic growth over the past two decades has led to the emergence of a new economic class of the super wealthy. In tandem with this, private philanthropy has tripled between 2011 and 2016, according to the Bain India Philanthropy Report, and is expected to increase significantly over the coming years. With this in mind, it’s worth considering what has led to this uptick in philanthropic giving, and what bearing it might have on the Indian non-profit sector.

The other panellists invited to We The People, to discuss this issue included Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, CMD of Biocon India Limited; Medha Patkar, social activist; Pushpa Sundar, founder of the Sampradaan Indian Centre for Philanthropy; Amitabh Behar, Executive Director of the National Foundation of India; Lakshmi Nalapat, the 12th princess of Travancore; Shreyasi Singh, author, ‘The Wealth Wallahs;’ Gurcharan Das, author and former CEO of Procter & Gamble, India; and Jeffrey Alan Gettleman, the South Asia bureau chief of the New York Times.

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This is an edited version of an episode of We The People, where Rohini Nilekani and others talk about whether the rich can help narrow the widening economic inequality, and if CSR and philanthropy are enough to push the development agenda in India.

In Order to Give, We Need to Scale

In terms of giving, Indians have actually matched or surpassed other countries when they were at the particular stage of the economy that we are at now. The reports from Bain & Company also show this trend, so the data does indicate that the country is doing well, in terms of philanthropy. Certainly, there is always the potential for people to give more, with the top 1% garnering more power and wealth than ever before. Our society today is undoubtedly unequal, so people do need to address that in a way that is effective. But at least the reports show that India is on the right track, in that we are as generous, if not more generous, than other economies at this stage.
However, philanthropy in this country is not a simple question of parting with one’s money. One of the major issues that this class of wealthy Indians find, is that the pipelines aren’t set up so they can pour in their investments and immediately have real social impact. Instead, what happens is that they must first build out those ecosystems and widen the pipeline into which they can give. The Indian non-profit sector is diverse and thriving, but not many institutions have the ability to absorb such large amounts of capital. So the starting point for many of us in the philanthropy sector, is to invest in building up the capacity of organisations to scale, so that they have the ability to receive the money that’s waiting. It’s a long process that involves learning and adjusting, to ensure that the organisation can expand and implement those donations in an effective way.

Two Kinds of Wealth

Within the socio-economic strata of Indians able to part with vast amounts for philanthropy, I think we’re beginning to see a change in the sources of that wealth, as well as a change in attitudes towards giving. Only in the last 25 years or so, have the wealthy felt secure enough about their financial positions to be willing to give. Guruchand Das points out that wealth accumulation in India only picked up after ’91, when India got its economic freedom. He further notes that the life of a business house in India is around 60 years. The first generation made the money, the second generation used that money to gain power, and the third generation which now has money and power, tries to build their reputation by giving money to philanthropy.

People who inherit their wealth do feel like they have to save it for future generations, as it has been saved or them, rather than to give it all away to philanthropy. So it makes sense that this new wave of first generation wealth creators are more willing to give their wealth away. In terms of individuals with inherited wealth, the question of whether it’s time to bring in an inheritance tax, if not other kinds of taxes on the wealthy, is certainly an appropriate one. Perhaps that could function as a motivator for philanthropic giving, depending on how it’s implemented. There might be a lot of resistance to this, but I do think this discussion should be opened up in India.
Shreyasi Singh also explains this difference between inheritors of wealth, who believe they are custodians of the family wealth, and the newly wealthy. The latter are in their 30s or 40s and the truncated time it takes for them to come into these large amounts of money leads to a greater sense of gratitude and responsibility to give back. She also points to the possibility of greater ambition among these first generation wealthy, who value innovation and risk-taking when it comes to philanthropy. The culture around philanthropy is also changing. Singh mentions an interesting perspective from someone she met while working on her book, who said that while in the past India idolised its freedom fighters, today we idolise wealth creators. The sociological filter for who we value and what the metrics for success is, has changed, and now this class of super wealthy must be seen giving back to society. We need to create a culture of giving, where people aren’t forced to give, but see it as something aspirational. When figures like Bill Gates started working in the philanthropy sector, we saw him as a role model and it encouraged others to also give. So even if some criticise this as a PR move, it’s important to celebrate these role models and to foster the culture of philanthropy.

Philanthropy, Charity and CSR

There is, as Pushpa Sundar mentions, a difference between philanthropy and charity. While charity is also a form of giving, philanthropy involves planning for social change. Indians do a lot of charity, especially when calamities like floods, earthquakes, etc strike. But we also need strategies to ensure social change on a larger scale. I think it’s important for us to now be tackling social justice issues and larger societal problems. Medha Patkar also points to this need for people to address the basic causes of inequality, and we need philanthropy in order to do this. Patkar makes a very cogent argument about the way we should go about doing so. CSR ensures that companies earning a certain amount of net profit a year should give back to society. However, they have made that profit through the labour of minimum wage workers who could never dream of making that much money. So the question becomes whether something that comes out of inequity can actually bring about equity or justice. It’s only when the people who we want to bring justice to are actually involved in the process of envisioning a solution, that any kind of real change can take place – and that is the role of philanthropy.
According to the Bain report, we know that private philanthropy is growing faster than CSR, and government spending on welfare. While some may be concerned by that, individual actors in the philanthropy sector may actually have more freedom to work in areas that business houses or companies would want to avoid. The kind of work that Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has been doing, as well as what we have been doing, involves engaging people who have lost their rights, who require legal initiatives, etc. which corporate philanthropy might steer clear of, because of certain politics involved. CSR initiatives usually focus on safer areas like education and healthcare, but we need to invest and scale for other issues as well. Between CSR, charity, and philanthropy, I would agree with Amitabh Behar that what we really need today is strategic philanthropy for social justice.

I personally believe that philanthropy cannot be apolitical, and I mean this in the best sense of the term. I don’t mean that party politics are involved at all. The work I do is political because it is essentially about the redistribution of power. When power is not distributed equitably or sustainably, then you have to address it, in whichever sector you’re working in. When it’s a question of access, or where people don’t have the same rights or ability to enforce those rights, those issues are automatically political issues. A lot of my work has been within this space and addressing these questions, so I do think it’s very hard for philanthropists to be able to stay apolitical. I understand the danger of this, when powerful individuals have the ability to fund initiatives and impose their own views on others. However we do not live in a vacuum, and I don’t think there’s any such thing as safe philanthropy. All of us have our politics and they do play out in how and to whom we decide to give. At the end of the day, if we want to affect change and tackle issues of power, then we need to be ready to take risks.

The act of taking risks is integral to the sector. Patkar points out that if we reduce the role of philanthropy to simply be about reducing wealth inequality, then we are undervaluing all the other roles it plays in our society. We need philanthropic initiatives to back experimentation, innovation, and talent, which can result in creatively rethinking solutions for certain issues. By taking risks ourselves, and learning from our failures, we can map out entirely new blueprints for societal change, which the government can then use. Patkar says that a society needs much more than bread, and philanthropy can provide the platform for those possibilities to bear fruit.

Bangalore vs Bengaluru: The Tale Of Two Indian Cities

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s panel discussion with Naresh Narasimhan (Architect), Vinay K Sreenivasa (Alternative Law Forum), Pawan Kumar (Film-maker), and T M Veeraraghav (Resident Editor, The Hindu Bengaluru). The discussion, titled ‘Bangalore vs Bengaluru: The Tale Of Two Indian Cities’ was a part of The Huddle 2017, held on February 10, 11 & 12 at ITC Gardenia, Bengaluru.

When thinking about Bangalore vs Bengaluru and whether they are two different cities, I would argue that there are many cities in Bangalore, cities within cities. This is perhaps because there are many different interests that compete with each other here. So it’s not surprising that the elites and the poor have very different ideas of what their city should be. But in terms of understanding each other in these cities, I don’t think Bangalore is inclusive. Over the last few years, we have seen that the elite are receding behind their gates and walls. So while there are some issues where all of us come together, I don’t know if we have the means to protest together or push the political class to do something for the city.

As T M Veeraraghav explains, if we look at the recent protests that have taken place — be it the Cauvery protest, the garment workers protest, the steel flyover beda campaign, or the Outer Ring Road (ORR) protest – we can see that they have been disparate, and that the people taking part were not the same. For example, the people who took part in the Cauvery and garment workers protest were not present in the steel flyover beda protest or the ORR protest and vice-versa.

The city has certainly changed. In the 80s when we first arrived here, it was obviously a different city. One of the things I remember writing about at the time was the ‘Bangalore boom’ going bust. Today, that seems like a naive thought, compared to the problems we are facing at the moment. In fact, I have been asked about what it feels like to be associated with Infosys and the changes that came with it, and the truth is, a lot of people blamed us. They said, “Infosys started it all. We are such a nice city and look at what happened. You tech people came in and destroyed a beautiful city.” In that sense we got the bouquets and the brickbats. Given that context, we were definitely part of making the city’s face change, and I hope in the end it’s going to be a good force, and not a bad one.

Bangalore Divided

As Naresh Narasimhan says, in our imagination Bangalore has been two cities for a long time – it is the city and the cantonment. The British cantonment was set up in 1809, more than two hundred years ago. Post independence and the regional formation of Karnataka as a linguistic state, the city of Bangalore came together, but there is still an invisible dividing line. Even an architect like Naresh can’t always tell which spaces in Bangalore are part of the city, and which part of the cantonment. That is one of the reasons why Freedom Park was chosen as the site for the steel flyover beda campaign. Freedom Park is actually a physical representation of the difference – that side city, this side cantonment.

Vinay K Sreenivasa also explains that before independence, Bangalore was actually two municipal corporations, the cantonment and the Old City. While there is integration in the sense that the physical differences are not visible for the most part, the unification has happened by class. Bangalore has a stark class divide. It exists because we never took care to accommodate working-class people through the BDA layouts. So we have a deep class divide, which goes beyond talking about whether people are able to come together for protests. Given this context, Vinay asks us to consider a simple example like friendship – how many of us can really claim that we have friendships across class today?

This context of protests and class reminds me of when I first came to Bangalore. Once we knew we were going to be living here, one of the first things I did was seek out an activist group called Vimochana which fought for women’s rights. I would go and do anti-dowry marches and other things, and it really helped me make this city my own. Having said that however, I also know that back then, there was more of a broad middle class, and less of the high elite that you see now. Given the competing class interests we have now, I don’t see how we can get everybody to come together. Perhaps for an issue like water, but other than that I can’t think of too many causes where the concerns of the super-elite are the same as the concerns of the poor. In fact, as we know, they’re in competition in many cases.

While it may be desirable for us to be liberal and progressive enough to fight for the rights of the poor, we often don’t while fighting for our own rights. Even if we look at the emergence of the hyper-local residents welfare associations (RWA) governance structures, we will notice that they’re only fighting for their own block. Very rarely do they come together (with the exception, perhaps of Koramangala). In the absence of good governance in the city, citizens are taking up issues that concern them directly and coming together with like-minded people to solve them. There are advantages and disadvantages to this new phenomenon – one that we have not seen in the last 20 years.

Planning Bangalore Today, and For the Future

Naresh has pointed out that in the last five to seven years, the city has been viewed differently by two main sets of people. The first is people who see Bangalore as a city they want to inhibit. They want to live here, send their children to school here, they want to have access to spaces to walk in. The other set of people are those who are part of the political class, are not from Bangalore, and view this city as a site for exploitation. The fact is that Bangalore is an enormous economic machine. We spend close to Rs. 30-40,000 crore across all the government agencies, and there are more than 36 such agencies fiddling with Bangalore and not communicating with each other. Even the BBMP, the corporation of Bangalore does not talk to the planning authority which is the BDA. In this way, we have created a structure which allows people to continuously exploit the city.

Importantly, here, Naresh also asks us to reconsider what we view as ‘development’. For the Indian bureaucracy and as well as for local politicians, building more roads, widening streets, and cutting trees, is what planning and development looks like. Meanwhile, the more enlightened cities in the world, look at planning through a completely different framework. They look at what it takes to make spaces safe for women and children, or how to make cities walkable, and plan accordingly. This is what we need more of. We need to abandon this model of bureaucratic, top down decision making about how the land in the city is used. And while doing so, we need to pay attention to areas like affordable housing, which is something that has been neglected in India. We need to spend our resources on providing housing and opportunities for people to enhance their own capital. Not on projects which make clearly visible the nexus operating there.

As Naresh says, human beings are not apart from nature, despite the whole city running on the basis of economics. If we allow the pursuit of money to be the only reason you develop a city, then the ecology will fall apart and the air will become unbreathable. Why would we want to create a system which will harm us and kill our grandchildren? In this regard, I learnt a lot while travelling through South Bangalore for Nandan’s campaign. I saw first hand how cut off we are from the people in the slums and the problems that they have.

Here, Vinay brings up a good point, which is that slums are not a housing problem. There are two things we need to consider. The first is that the people who are living in slums are doing so because we have a very unfair wage structure. With the kind of wages they get paid, they cannot go rent a house in Koramangala or Jayanagar. The other aspect is that, while we want to give people who live in slums housing, we don’t want to give them land rights. But that is what they want. They want you to say, “There is tenure security, you will own that land, and then you can develop it.” For years, they’ve been asking for land rights, but we don’t want to give it to them. So do we need a campaign for land rights and what will that take? And can we, as people who have benefited from the system, be the ones leading the campaign? The onus is on us to recognise our privilege and not use it to decide how problems should be solved for other communities, because that further deepens the divide.

As Naresh says, any major change in the way society is structured is always the result of mass movements. We need to remember that the one thing that politicians cannot resist is public pressure. So if we want our city to be different, we have to go out there and shape the city through our elected representatives. We are lucky in a way, because Karnataka has one great advantage over many other states in India. And that is the fact that it is a very open society in terms of access to leaders – when you call a politician in Karnataka, they call back within 24 hours. There is a certain amount of civility in public discourse, which is missing in many other states in India. But there are many other power centers now. You don’t have to be in electoral politics to be able to shape your city anymore.

Here, we can consider what Pawan Kumar notes, which is that people need to feel connected to the causes that they engage with. For example, movies are a very strong medium to create a huge public opinion, and as a result can put pressure on government bodies. But, a filmmaker needs to feel connected to the cause to put in the time to make a movie out of it. However, if all of us only focus on the issues that matter to us, does it mean that we’ve become self-centered about how we represent our activism? Personally, I think it’s natural that people will want to come together for something that they need for themselves first. There are some pan-Bangalore issues that people will come together for, and while I wish they would do so for land rights, I don’t see it happening in a big hurry. An important factor here is the language barrier. If we look at the current discussions around urban planning, we’re not even able to have these discussions in Kannada. A lot of conversations around the city tend to happen in conferences which are largely English. To overcome this, we need effort, and time.

When we talk about making people connect with causes, we need to consider click-tivism, or slack-tivism as well. This is where people are sitting at home and watching the news or posting on social media and saying, “Yes this is bad” but are not really connecting or engaging with the issue. Here, Vinay asks us to consider the garment workers’ protest and the number of people who said, “How dare these garment workers come here? If they want something why did they have to block the roads.” People were angry that the garment workers who blocked Hosur Road, Magadi Road, Mysore Road etc, without thinking about the fact that these are workers earning Rs. 6,500 a month and facing sexual harassment at work. Meanwhile, people were taking photographs and posting them online, without considering that the Bangalore city police are on Twitter and Facebook. There are street vendors who have been evicted in certain parts of south Bangalore as a result of this.

We don’t need people to either be apathetic or to say, “I will decide what is required for the garment workers and slum dwellers.” Instead, we need people who are allies and provide support. But how do we make the middle class more empathetic to these larger issues? I think it’s a political process by which people will begin to realise that the fates of the poor are linked with their own. If we all breathe the same air and if we are going to poison that air, then we will share the same concern. Having said that everyone seems to be looking out for their own interests right now, and I hope this phase ends.

Inequality and Bangalore’s Billionaires

Vinay explains that one of the problems in Bangalore is that we’re not concerned about inequality. We know that we are creating millionaires, so many more people are millionaires today than ever before and so many others have a much higher salary. This is what we end up focussing on, however we need to instead try and create a society which is equal and sustainable, that works for everybody. Right now, nobody is bothered about inequality, and instead they are okay with the idea that some people are millionaires, mega-millionaires, billionaires, etc. because they think there will be a trickle down effect. Even if that were the case, we need to start thinking about how we are going to bridge this gap.

To understand this further, consider what Naresh says – there are currently less than 1000 people in Bangalore who are holding this city to ransom. They are a mix of politicians, contractors, businessmen, and many other people who drive the fortunes of the city without listening to anybody else, and it is our duty to start calling them out. The only way to do this is collectively. Perhaps it is on us to look out for a mass opportunity and find an issue that will unite people.

Given the fact that Bangalore or Bengaluru is India’s only truly globalised city – in the sense that a large part of the city is connected to the global economy and ecosystem rather than the local one – does the divide we’ve been discussing make it possible to sustain such a dichotomy? Is it possible to have one portion of Bangalore which is entrepreneurial, innovative, high technology-led, connected to the global economy; and have them living in Bengaluru, which is a city with a million problems? Given how much creative, innovative, technological, energy and expertise we have in this city, how can we tap into it to solve the issues that it faces? I think Bangalore has more reformers per square inch than any other city in the country. All these people have been working hard to create better, more democratised citizen movements, and global or local, I think both will come together soon.

Strengthening Philanthropic Giving & Impact Investing for Development of India

This is an edited version of a panel discussion on Strategic Philanthropic Giving & Impact Investing in India, with Rohini Nilekani, Moutushi Sengupta, Vineet Rai, Deval Sanghavi, and Seema Chowdhry at DPW 2016: Philanthropy Day.

Within the social sector, many people have been working towards bringing traditional philanthropy and impact investment together. There are certain public services that markets can provide, if not to the very bottom of the population pyramid then at least to the population with some ability to pay. In a country where the government is not able to deliver those services, and the nature of which prevents them from being delivered by typical nonprofits, there certainly is an opportunity for a third agent to step in.

The Risks and Rewards of Impact Investing
Motushi Sengupta notes that while donor and institutional interest is focused on verticals, we also need to think about philanthropy and impact investing as a whole, in order to assess what needs to be done to push the sector forward. Traditional philanthropy involves providing support in terms of money, effort, and time, without seeking personal return. Impact investing differs in that people are asking whether market sustainable models are available, which would also serve the bottom of the pyramid population groups as well.

It’s an interesting space for markets to play in the social sector in India. In fact, there is a whole group of impact investors who are not even expecting financial returns for themselves, but rather financial sustainability in the business model of the social service. So in a way, it’s still patient capital like any other philanthropic capital that gets reinvested. This is especially interesting to me because it means that the investor has taken greed off the table and miracles happen when you take greed off the table, especially when it comes to development.

As Sima Choudhury points out, impact investing in media outlets, for example, would make a huge difference. There are a lot of under-reported stories that need to be told. Unfortunately, the media has decided that readers like to read only certain kinds of stories, and I don’t think they test readers enough. The media is probably not doing enough to tell us what is happening in the rest of India. What we really need are publications who will shine a light and focus on issues and areas that we don’t know about, so that we are more aware and can make smarter choices about who we vote for or where we spend our money. Media houses and publications need to be supported so that they can do more of that work, and cover aspects of impact investing and philanthropy as well. Deval Sanghavi gives the example of Sneha, an organisation that spoke to the New York Times in 2012 on malnutrition in the slums in Mumbai and the different models and theories of change. That’s what we need our media to do — to share learnings and what it’s actually like on the ground.

However, there are also risks and one that Deval Sanghavi mentions is in relation to CSR. With CSR, the people who are likely in charge of allocating large amounts of capital to the sector may also have full-time jobs in PR, HR, or communications. They may not have access to information, time, or resources and so just like any other uninformed investor, they might go with the wrong entrepreneur and risk the reputation of their company as well as the reputation that the impact investing sector has been building over time. So there needs to be more information and self-regulation, both from nonprofits and social businesses, as well as from impact investors.

How to Professionalise the Sector
When we talk about philanthropy, there are certain inherent risks to it. It’s why transparent data and accreditation is so critical. Deval mentions that the reason why Dasra launched Dasra Philanthropy Week was so that organisations could share practices, and experiences in a forum, educate themselves, and not repeat those mistakes. From the microfinance crisis, we learnt a lot of lessons and those need to be encapsulated and shared quickly. People are looking to invest in public services which were usually handled by the state, like water, health, housing, and education. We don’t want the mistakes that Vijay Mahajan made to be repeated again in those areas.

In terms of nonprofit accreditation, I think that over the past few years we have realised that we need many ecosystem organisations that bridge the gap between investors and grassroot nonprofits. Many organisations like CAP, Dasra, and GiveIndia are functioning as that bridge, but we need more because people want to give, but they don’t know how or to whom. The trust element is missing, and you need to build that trust between the giver and the receiver. So we need more of these institutions and we need them to be stronger, so that the sector can grow faster and professionalise quicker.

The catch is that in order to do that, we need to draw more professionals into the sector. So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. The new generation of professionals working in the sector pose different challenges as well. In the 70s, all my mentors were working in the nonprofit sector for a pittance, because they were doing it out of passion and commitment. I think these young people who are coming into the sector are not going to be willing to do that and it is a problem.

How do we not look at everything in monetary terms? How do we celebrate that you get a lot more non-monetary benefits from being in this sector? Perhaps we need to share more stories. People want to come in, but there’s been a lot of distortion, and some of the bigger foundations pay good salaries. But in a corporation, if you don’t meet your sales targets, you’ll be looking for another job. How do you do the same in this sector? These are real issues. How do you judge the impact of people’s work? It’s very hard and we have to be able to figure out some middle ground between monetary compensation and something else.

Moutushi agrees that accreditation will have a major role to play in terms of building that trust as well. However, we need to then define what we mean by accreditation. Do we use the same type of metrics that are used in a corporate framework or do we need separate types for this particular sector? We can’t mainstream or take a model that will work everywhere. There are certainly challenges, but having platforms that provide information to potential givers could phenomenally change the scale of the game.

Fostering a Culture of Giving
We need to improve the culture of giving, across economic classes. There needs to be much more public pressure on the wealthy in India, including myself. Wealth in this country has been allowed to be created at a runaway rate over the past 25 years and that’s good, but that wealth must be used more responsibly. The public needs to put pressure on the wealthy to say, “What you’re doing with that wealth? How are you giving back to society?” The media has to play a role in that, as well as thinkers and influencers — all of us have to hold the wealthy accountable to society. Once that happens, not only are people paying their wealth forward, but they will also have to talk more frankly and explain who they are giving to, how they are giving, and their reasoning behind it. This needs to be shared, honestly and transparently.

The problem occurs when the wealthy mistakenly believe that it has something to do with our own greatness. When that happens, the kind of relationships that we develop with the people and causes that we give to become too much of a patronage model rather than a partnership. This is a real danger because the donor-driven programs that we know or we think are working in the interest of the poor, actually may not be. We won’t have permanent change if money is being poured into sectors with the motive of self-interest. Instead, we need people working towards changing the structure of power in society, and enabling people to become capable of finding their own solutions. As the wealthy, we need to be self-aware and check our own motives when we give.

I agree with Moutushi that events like the Daan Utsav are helpful in this respect, because they create awareness across various sets of stakeholders as to what they could constructively do to participate in the country’s development. It’s a powerful tool with a wide reach, and we need more events like this where we don’t necessarily try to monetise it. We also need to put out more research in the ecosystem that is accessible and easy to explain to people, because sometimes it is difficult to communicate the challenges and roles within the sector to people who are outside of it.

Giving brings a lot of joy, and we need to share that with people. More of our wealthy should talk about that. I try to do so in my own way, and I think that will encourage more people to give. At the other end of the spectrum, we must also celebrate ordinary people giving, because in India people actually give all the time. It’s almost reflexive, the way people give, financially and through other means. But we need them to give a little more strategically now. For that, we need platforms at local levels across different parts of the country, where you can share and learn. We’re starting to see organisations like Dasra do some of that work, and celebrating ordinary people’s act of giving.

India at the Crossroads

This is an edited version of a panel discussion with Neera Nundy, Rikin Gandhi, Tim Hanstad, and Rohini Nilekani on Social Entrepreneurship: India at the Crosswords, at the 2015 Skoll World Forum.

India is clearly at an inflection point. There is global momentum, true economic incentives, and real desire to achieve social and economic progress in this evolving country. However, social entrepreneurs and funders looking to work in India face a unique operating environment: rapid modernisation, lingering poverty, regional and religious distinctions, urban and rural differences, complex laws that vary state by state, and competition with millions of nonprofits. The key to success has been identifying local staff and partners to help navigate this tricky landscape.

Never in human history have there been changes at the scale that we are seeing in India today. 1.2 billion people across economic classes are being brought, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. There’s a lot of progress happening at the grassroots level, but there are also obvious problems as well. As Neera Nundy mentions, we are the world’s largest democracy, a global leader in technology, one of the leading importers of weapons, we have had a mission to Mars, and we are the third largest economy based on purchasing parity. On the other hand, we have some of the worst development outcomes in the world in terms of malnutrition, maternal mortality, and access to water. We now have a huge opportunity for a country of this size, with problems of this nature, to really innovate and ensure rapid change at scale and for the right reasons. Entrepreneurs in India today have great ideas, passion, and optimism. They are energized by both the challenges and the opportunities for solutions.

In Order to Scale, We Need To Work With Governments
When I started working in the education sector through the Pratham Network, I helped set up Pratham Books which has become India’s largest nonprofit children’s publisher. Arghyam, my foundation, works on issues of water and sanitation all over India. In addition, I have been focusing on governance-led initiatives and helping to increase the scope of philanthropy and spotlighting the role of the wealthy in India. Through my years working in the social sector I have realised that in order to scale, the only choice we have is to work with the government and try to influence the way it rolls out public services. If we look at water, health, education — with most societal issues, we need to figure out ways to partner with the government in order to scale. In my experience the government has been relatively open to adopting new ideas at all levels, from the local to the centre, if someone is willing to innovate and work with them. But as anyone who has worked with the government knows, for every two steps forward you get pushed one step back. Sometimes you have to start over again because the government is not one unified entity, but different departments and people working in silos. It’s tough, but it’s necessary if your aim is to scale something.

Rikin Gandhi notes that the challenge for governments is that they don’t always have flexible resources to innovate and improve their existing programs. So investments from philanthropists are catalytic, to actually demonstrate proofs of concept and evaluate whether those will be able to provide impact that the government can then take to scale. The government knows how to put a lot of resources behind something. Once it decides on a course of action, it can roll it out at a kind of scale that is impossible for any other body or organisation. When you innovate outside the government, you need to keep the goal of scaling in mind because the government cannot scale in the same way as civil society can. Often what happens is that the pilot succeeds but the scale up fails. So we have to get better at innovating in a way that the government processes can adopt effectively. For example, there are certain things that are more amenable for civil society actors to do, involving moral leadership and bringing communities together. Governments can’t do that sort of thing.

Civil society organisations in India also exist on a spectrum, including groups that remain outside the purview of the government and are often antagonistic towards the government. That is a legitimate role too, to protest and show a mirror to the government and say, “We will not work with this government.” It is an understandable position, especially when the goal is to bring certain issues to the fore. On the other hand, some organisations prefer to take problems to the government and work together to help solve them. These are all legitimate options for civil society actors to choose. We should be clear about what we expect the Indian government at all levels to do, what should remain with the civil society, and what should remain with the markets.

Challenges and Changes in India
There have been rapid changes in the way outside investments in India have been made in the last decade. As a consequence, a lot of the work that philanthropy or investments from outside were doing in spaces like governance and human rights cannot be done anymore. The government is coming down hard on foreign money coming into India in these sensitive areas. But while those opportunities have changed, others are opening up. Organisations like Omidyar, the Gates Foundation, and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation are investing in for-profit and nonprofit spaces in India. The innovative work that’s being done, especially by new social entrepreneurs, does require capital, and that’s where we will be able to bring best practices from somewhere else and scale them up. In India, when we talk about pilots, we are talking about 500,000 people to begin with. That gives us the opportunity for really large evidence creation and there are many spaces that we can begin supporting or start working in, whether that’s data, ecology, education, or health. So many areas are ripe for innovation and collaboration and the opportunities are immense. Rinkin points to international perspective as well, where the Indian government can work with other countries to share best practices and apply creative solutions.

If we look at government data, we have lifted 300 million people out of absolute poverty in the last 15 years. There’s no doubt whatsoever that a lot of change and progress is happening on the ground. However, there are also new kinds of poverty coming up — we are seeing the feminisation and urbanisation of poverty. India is now a country on the move, and we have 150-200 million people migrating within India looking for livelihoods. That’s creating a lot of change. With government planning and schemes for structurally changing the way people access services, I think we will see absolute poverty decreasing over the next 10 years. Unlike countries like China, we progress at a slow pace. But that also means that we don’t make large mistakes very quickly, so there are trade-offs to that. Our democracy and diversity allows us to cope with many complex challenges in locally relevant ways. I have great faith that things are changing for the better in India. There is a lot of evidence for this on the ground.
As a foundation we are seeing this as well. Our partners in water and sanitation around the country have very relevant, contextual answers to local problems. We’ve been supporting exciting solutions in groundwater and participating in groundwater management. We have learnt from the people that we’re supporting, and my big takeaway is that we need to support local creativity, innovation, and commitment.

The Role of Social Entrepreneurs
We are seeing a lot of entrepreneurs coming into the public service spaces, whether it’s water, sanitation, health, housing, education, or energy. The government has not been able to provide these services, so the market players have started coming in and getting some investment and support. But it’s tricky because there isn’t much clarity in India on the role of markets in these spaces. So far, either civil society or governments were expected to deliver public services. Now we are seeing a shift, and we need to be aware of how that shift is going to play out and whether it can scale. There’s a lot of ecosystem build-up to be done around it, in terms of policy and capacity. However, the issue of the gap in capacity that Rinkin points out, affects not just organisations of social enterprises, but even governments or the private sector. That is where social entrepreneurs can have a larger role to play, by building out the capacity and thinking about how our programs can be more comprehensive and easier to scale.

For example, the agricultural extension services used to be in the government domain, however now there’s almost no extension services left on the ground, which presents us with an opportunity to work with the government and enable them to use a certain model or framework to roll out effective programs at scale. Another example is in India’s energy policies, which will influence other spheres not just in the country but in the world. It will be interesting to see what decentralised off-grid solutions we can create because I don’t see how we are going to reach everybody with the centralised grid. We need a basket of energy solutions, and we are closely watching that space, because the kind of mega power projects that are planned by the government is going to incite a lot of conflict as well. I hope we can innovate an energy solution for India that is different. We cannot follow the path of the rest of the world, we just don’t have that luxury. There are many entrepreneurs in that space so we need to invest in it.

In terms of trust in the government and its reputation of corruption, I think the solution is more transparency, and organisations are working towards that goal. For example, the ASER Report that Pratham has been doing for 10 years, has allowed people to know what’s happening in the education sector. Through the Right To Information Act, there’s a lot more transparency around government actions. Many new entrepreneurs are setting up data sites where they make government data visible and accessible to people, using graphics and visuals. So there are many innovative ways in which corruption is being tackled, and funders are beginning to support these initiatives. There is a demand to know how the government is functioning, and this increase has come with creative solutions.

We are at an inflection point of sorts, and a lot has been already invested by many actors across different sectors in India. It feels like the time is ripe for big things to happen. If we don’t get it right though, it won’t just be bad for India, but for the entire world. So we need to work on these problems and innovate our way, while also building social capacity. The future lies in investing in people and communities. In spite of all the challenges, I genuinely feel optimistic that things are going to get better.

Philanthropy and Corporate Social Responsibility in South Asia and the US

This is an edited version of a panel discussion on “The Use of Philanthropy and Corporate Social Responsibility for Social Change in South Asia and the US” with Rohini Nilekani, Geeta Pradhan, and Alnoor Ebrahim. The event was presented by The South Asia Institute at Harvard University in 2014. It was cosponsored by the Hauser Institute for Civil Society at the Center for Public Leadership

Wealth has become a prerequisite for philanthropy today, however the original meaning of philanthropy was just about the love of humankind and the act of giving your time and resources to help others. My journey as a philanthropist began in 1999, when I was working with the state government in the education sector in India. Through an organisation called Pratham, our aim was to ensure that every child in Karnataka was in school and learning well. From there I went on to co-found and fund Pratham Books, India’s largest nonprofit children’s publisher.

Around that time, I had come into some money because of a smart investment I made a long time ago in my husband’s company, Infosys. Suddenly, we found ourselves with more money than we needed. It took me a long time to adjust to that idea, but eventually I realized that this was an opportunity to use that wealth responsibly especially in a country like India. Redefining what wealth is meant for in societies became something that was very important to me and I moved from doing philanthropy on my own to engaging with larger questions within the sector. For the past few years, I have been very actively involved in growing the philanthropy sector in India.

The Changes in Indian Philanthropy
Since the 1980s, many of the original philanthropists of India were outsiders, including four of the Rockefellers and bilateral agencies from Europe. They were doing a lot of society building work on issues like human rights, inclusion, governance, etc. However, in the last few years, we have seen them receding for various reasons, discontinuing the work they have been doing for decades. It appeared as though India had enough wealth on its own, and there was also a political backlash. In the meantime, the Indian wealthy began to do new kinds of philanthropy, but there is still a vacuum left by the organisations that are receding that I believe has not been filled. Therefore some of my work involves drawing new Indian philanthropic capital into some of those spaces such as the environment, human rights, and children. Today, a lot of Indian philanthropy goes into areas like education rather than other areas. Traditionally, Indian philanthropy focussed on neighborhoods, temples, or direct charity work. But in the last eight years, we are seeing a sea change, with more young people getting wealthy thanks to the technology boom and other sunrise industries. These young, wealthy people have decided that they need not wait till they’re much older to start giving. It’s a very exciting new landscape because they want to see impact and metrics, rather than waiting for years.

My own approach has been a little different. I think that the new wealth comes from people who have benefited from the market economy and have strong faith in markets. I tend to be a little more on the left of the political spectrum, and I have never run a company in my life. My work really focuses on the non-market, nonprofit side of things. I believe that it is only when we build out a strong society or Samaaj in India that we can have an accountable government and accountable markets. That work can only be supported either through direct action by civil society activists or through philanthropic support. So I spend my philanthropic capital to do a host of things that help build out people’s institutions, contextual collective action, and stewardship of the idea of a strong Samaaj which is able to resist the potentially oppressive forces of the state and the market. It’s the biggest lesson from the last century’s history — both the state and the markets can get oppressive unless there are sufficient checks and balances in society.

There is also a change in the CSR environment in India, requiring companies of a certain size and profitability to give 2% of their profits to certain narrowly defined areas. Although these areas seem broad, when you get into the clauses it is actually quite a limiting framework on what you can and cannot do with that 2%. Personally, I have been opposed to it, because it seems like a tax by alternate means. It also seems like the government is trying to outsource governance to the private sector. This kind of forced social responsibility is already creating some perverse incentives in India. We have to wait and see what happens but it’s going to mean approximately 15,000 crore rupees on an annual basis. We have to see where that money goes and what impact it can possibly have.

Most Indian civil society movements until now have come from a left-of-centre combination of Marx and Gandhi. That has been a very different civil society action than the kind that new philanthropy wants to fund. Today’s new philanthropists focus more on problem solving and impact measurement. What worries me about this trend is that by only seeing things through the lens of impact, factors which otherwise may be crucial but not easily measurable fall to the wayside. You cannot measure a society’s sense of self, inclusion, the rights of many people left behind, and whether they have a voice in the system. The danger of coming to the philanthropy sector with the belief that markets can solve most social problems, is that you tend to leave out some of these things that are really below the market. For example, in villages across India, Dalits and the minorities are left behind. Today, many young, able-bodied people are migrating out of villages, so the old, the very young, and the women are left behind. Nothing there is attractive to the market, but that is exactly where the state is completely inefficient in terms of reach and accessibility.

I’m involved in working towards making water resources more accessible and ethically utilised. My foundation could have focused on giving everybody a water filter which we would replace every three years, but that is not a sustainable solution. What we do instead, is to ask communities why the water quality is bad there, and how they can hold the state, which is a public authority that is supposed to be managing the water supply accountable. As Geeta Pradhan points out, in communities where people don’t have a political voice, you will see that there is not the public investment.

Takeaways From American Philanthropy
There’s a lot that the Indian philanthropy sector can learn from the US, and vice versa. Personal generosity is certainly something we can take away from America. A lot of the wealthy give without necessarily expecting fanfare, and they give consistently and well, which is something we could also learn to do. The second thing we can learn is transparency. In India, we don’t really know who is giving what, to whom, and what it’s all adding up to. The public pressure on wealth is beginning to increase in India and that’s important, but we still have a way to go in order to create a transparent regime around giving. We also need professionalisation in the ecosystem around philanthropy, whether that means enabling public policy, match-making platforms, or any other sorts of services for the sector.

However America also serves to warn us about certain things within philanthropy and one of these is inequity. We see how so much wealth concentrated in so few hands is a very distorting thing, even if it’s given through philanthropy. However much I like and admire Bill and Melinda Gates, it is a serious problem that they have to give away $4 billion a year and create a huge bureaucracy for that giving. In my mind, philanthropy should question how so much inequity and concentration of wealth happened in the first place. That is something to learn from this country — how not to create the kind of society where the 1% and 99% are so sharply delineated. The consequences of this kind of inequality can be seen through the distortion of political influence. The recent American election was partially funded by wealthy individuals. It is hard to say how much the results of the election reflected the majority of its citizens versus the few wealthy who funded certain campaigns.

This could easily happen in India, and we are seeing a similar kind of concentration of wealth happening here. I’m a part of that class in India and I am very conscious of how wealth enables you to wield power. What we need to work towards is dismantling the power structures of wealth. Understanding and acknowledging this in your philanthropy, and being conscious of the kind of societal outcome of your philanthropy is crucial. Nevertheless, the US has been working for decades to build out their public institutions. Thanks to Carnegie and the government, the public library system in America is the most fabulous in the world. When my husband and I were living in the US for seven years, we didn’t have a lot of money but the enormous wealth of public services — which all started out with some component of philanthropic capital — carried us through and I personally carry a debt of gratitude for that. Additionally, Geeta points out that one of the things the Indian philanthropic sector could take away from the US model is the ease of giving. The US government has actually created a lot of enabling infrastructures so that giving is very easy. Despite my critiques of America, I do have a deep admiration for what has been created there, from the kind of institutions they have been able to set up to their societal base.

Philanthropic Capital and Ethical Advocacy
In India there is a demand for more evidence-based decision making in terms of policy, so a new host of think-tanks are being set up, funded by philanthropic capital, that are building out evidence for public policies. Essentially it forms a kind of indirect advocacy platform. But decision-making in our rather noisy democracy at the political level is made in many ways, not just one way. So we have witnessed smaller organisations in policy advocacy making positive changes despite fairly small sample sizes. The right to information and right to work in India were the result of the work of three organisations at a district level scale. They were able to take up strong advocacy positions and successfully implement their work as public policy, which was then nationally rolled out. So there are many advocates of all kinds of issues, and sometimes you can be very effective even without much philanthropic capital backing you because the justice system in India is more open-based. However, I do believe that when philanthropic capital is being deployed for advocacy, there should be some mechanisms to ensure transparency so that society is aware of people’s motives and intent.

Today, the kind of philanthropic capital that was going into supporting human rights inclusion, equity, and non-market solutions is really shrinking. A lot of my personal work consists of not only funding that myself, but also to create a coalition of people. So we do round tables in different cities in India and showcase the innovative work and impact that people are having in governance, accountability, transparency, justice, and independent media. It also allows them to meet future philanthropists or current philanthropists. We have been doing this for the past five years and I believe it is making a difference.

The wealthy feel like markets have benefited them and will therefore benefit Indian society, so they put a lot of their philanthropic rupee into that sort of work. However, people are realising that no matter what causes they support, they are going to hit a governance deficit. We try to make the case that we need to invest in organisations that help the government to work better and help societies put pressure on government better. For example, governments have been ineffective in protecting water resources in far-flung areas. The spring systems in the hilly regions in the Himalayas, Western Ghats, and Eastern hills are especially suffering. The government doesn’t reach those communities, so they were relying on spring water, but those springs are degenerating. By supporting a lot of work and research, we have now created a pool of knowledge based on typologies of springs renewal in India. So while we wait for the whole system and the grid to turn up in every corner of India, allowing people simple gravity-based systems with a little bit of institution building will get a sustainable and high quality water resource for them.

Holding the Wealthy Accountable
Philanthropy can not replace the government’s ability to tax and direct that money for the larger public interest. Philanthropy is very important, however it has a limited role to play. Sometimes we tend to forget that because of the kind of large philanthropy that is happening around the world. Governments will allow the wealthy to have an easy taxation regime only so long as society feels that the wealth is being used as well as the government would have used it in taxation terms. If that does not happen there is going to be a backlash. So that’s why the responsibility of wealth is to deploy itself, at least as well as if it had been used as taxation.

While we do want wealth generation, we also need to hold the wealthy accountable to society for the larger public interest. There is public pressure on wealth now, and I think that has to stay steady. There is a lot to learn across countries and many of the wealthy are now more conscious about having to give back.To that end, we need more strategic collaboration among philanthropists. Eventually, philanthropy must be important but limited in its influence, because I believe that philanthropic capital must be deployed eventually to make itself redundant. As human beings, we are really wired for giving and sharing. Emerging neuroscience research is telling us that. So I think we should keep that as a prism to look at philanthropy, too. We are wired for giving and sharing, and we need to remember that.

Thirsty for Change – How Can We Unite to Solve the Clean Water Crisis?

This interactive session at the 2014 Social Enterprise Conference sought to define the clean water crisis, discover innovative models and solutions that are driving change, and share your call to action for the millennial generation. In addition to hearing from experts on how they are taking advantage of opportunities across the entire space, it challenged participants with thought-provoking questions to get you out of your seat and into the action.

Participants included: Dan Bena, Sustainable Development and Operations Outreach for PepsiCo Global Operations; Alex Eaton, Director of Sustainability at charity:water; Oliver B. Libby, Principal Director at Hatzimemos / Libby; Rohini Nilekani, Founder and Chairperson of Arghyam; Bill Staby, Founder and CEO of Resolute Marine Energy; and Jenifer Willig, Founder of WHOLE WORLD Water.

#BlrLitFest 2014 | Children and Young Adult Fiction

This is an edited version of a panel discussion on children’s and young adult fiction with Rohini Nilekani, Paro Anand, Marie Munkara, and Lakshmi Devnath, at the Bangalore Literature Festival, 2014.

I have always thought of myself as a writer, no matter what else I have done in my life. When my children were young, I wrote a medical thriller. Funnily enough, it was only after they grew up that I wrote a children’s book. But you can’t anticipate when that creative instinct will hit you. The urge for a story to be born precedes any thought of what audience you might be writing for. As a publisher of children’s literature though, I also know that we need to create and publish many more children’s books in India. We need thousands, if not lakhs, of writers putting out fiction and nonfiction for children and young adults. Unfortunately, that space has not developed yet, so we need to encourage more writers, illustrators, readers, and platforms for distribution. For the past 10 years, I have been focused on building this space up so that more children might be able to experience the joy of reading.

There are certainly challenges when writing for young children or teenagers. As Lakshmi Devnath points out, the voice of the characters needs to be authentic rather than an ill-conceived attempt to ‘sound young,’ because children will recognise and reject that. Since the children I write for are usually in the 3-5 age group, another challenge is the level of language. The writing needs to be simple and easily digestible. This is compounded by the fact that at Pratham Books, these stories are usually read by children who may have never had a book before. They are often first generation learners who have not had any access to books.

While I’m aware of the flow of the narrative, I’m also conscious that the language must be simple and the context should be relevant to the children reading these stories. Additionally, and perhaps most crucially, the book must be compelling to the reader. As an author, you have to entertain the child, to make them want to turn the page or pick up another book when they are done. It’s not easy, but when you get it right it’s very rewarding. Many people underestimate how challenging it is, but I think it’s probably easier to write a 250 page novel than a 100-word story for a small child.

Along with the storyline, with children’s books the other key element is the illustrations. I have been very lucky to have worked with illustrators I have a rapport with at Pratham Books. As a writer, you need to work closely with an illustrator and sometimes even change the text to fit the style or vision of the illustrations. When I first write a story, I spend time trying to find an illustrator with the right style for it. The graphic side of the book is as important for young readers, so it’s important to make sure the story and the illustrations work well together.

Many writers have a strong opinion on the issue of categorising books for children and young adults since it limits the audience for stories that might be appealing across age groups. As a publisher, we are guilty of doing this — we have four levels for children of different age groups and reading skills. We do this to allow adults to make the right choice for children, to pick out a book that will not be beyond their comprehension or overwhelm them. Perhaps when it comes to teens or tweens, those distinctions are less helpful than constrictive, but with young children there is a case to be made for having these distinctive levels that function as guide rails outlining the way forward.

Children’s literature is a tricky genre because while adults can go into a bookshop and choose the kind of book they would like to read, children aren’t necessarily deciding for themselves what kind of story would most appeal to them. But as the world is opening up and becoming more digital, children are going to have devices in their hands, if they don’t already do. So at Pratham Books, we are looking at going digital in a big way, which will allow children more agency in deciding what they would like to read. And because we want to see an influx of new books and new stories for children, we have created a platform called “Remix and Retell.” Since most of our books are out in the Creative Commons, this platform allows people to tell their own version of those stories. Some of our books have 50 different versions written by 50 authors, based on the same story. So it’s a way to collaborate and allow stories to evolve in interesting ways. As a writer, my motive comes from interacting with children. They need to be creatively engaged and inspired and that is what books truly offer.

IIHS-UC Berkeley Conference | Building Urban Infrastructure in India

The “urban” economy plays an increasingly vital role in India’s economic development. The joint two day conference hosted by IIHS and the University of California, Berkeley on 26th and 27th March, 2013, brought together leading scholars from India and globally to discuss the many critical questions relating to the effective and equitable functioning of the economy of Indian towns, cities and metros. Discussions focused on real estate markets, agglomeration economies, new modes of urbanization and structural problems of urban governance as well as ways to help promote sound policies for a developed urban infrastructure, growth in job creation, increased access to affordable housing, developing transparent mechanisms of governance, generating new sources of urban finance, and constructing viable social welfare systems for the urban poor.

Rohini Nilekani concluded the panel with a focus on water, advocating that we entirely reconceptualize our approach to water management and sanitation. Water, she said, was once an organizing principle for human settlement; now, water has to be brought to people at high energy costs. How can we imagine water supply for more than 6,000 towns? One approach is to recognize informal sector innovation that is already taking place. Such innovations do not fit into the imagination of planners, but are quite effective. She suggested that we build from these informal arrangements rather than imposing a master vision of water planning. She argued for a basic principle in water management: using local water first. She also suggested organizing rainwater supply at the community level rather than the household level, and integrating planning around wastewater and other water. Costs of water, and questions of who should pay them, also need to be addressed carefully. Finally, on the “demand side,” collective action needs greater thought: more civil society activism is urgently needed. Ms. Nilekani highlighted the gap between the lack of imagination of planners and what she called the overactive imagination of activists. Whose imagination, she asked, is playing out around water? Is it possible to work within existing structures at a small scale, while building up demand at a larger scale?

Connect The Dots: Water Matters

This is an edited version of Water Matters, an interactive panel discussion with Rohini Nilekani. The event, held at Max Mueller Bhavan on 22nd March 2013, World Water Day, was part of a campaign on sustainable water conservation in Bangalore run by The Alternative, a media platform on sustainable living.

Bangalore is running short of water. We require 1.3 billion liters every day, to satisfy our population’s consumption needs, however our lakes and rivers which are our sources of freshwater, are fast giving way to urban development. They are being encroached on and the ones that are remaining are also being polluted by the sewage that’s leaving our homes, which is the second biggest problem. We send 1.1 million litres of waste water out of our city every day. So it is time to take a holistic look at what we can do individually, to be a part of the solution rather than add to the problem.

We have seen other cities around the world that have cleaned up their water bodies, and revived their rivers. I see no reason why we can’t reimagine our city in the same way, with Bangalore returning to what it used to be — with glistening lakes and enough water for all. The middle and upper classes that have seceded from the public systems, preferring their own underground pumps, overhead tanks, or bore wells are not going to be protected from water scarcity in the near future. Whether we like it or not, we’re all in this together. The people who got ousted from Ejipura and the people who live in the fancy bungalows all around the city are going to face the same problem soon. Our destiny is common, which might be a good thing because it makes us sit up and take notice that we’re part of the same problem in Bangalore. It means we all have to get together and act.

At Arghyam, we are committed to this journey for a long time. The issue is not just with big cities like Bangalore, but also with the 7,500 towns all over the country, and how to instill a culture of managing our own water systems, using local resources, reducing our ecological footprint, and managing water responsibilities. Water is not a resource we are entitled to, but a resource we are responsible for, and one that we need to learn how to use properly. I think India needs to begin functioning as a low water economy and a low water society, if we expect every citizen in India to have basic water resources that are sustainable and safe. So while we celebrate World Water Day, we must recommit ourselves to envisioning solutions that we can all be a part of.