Synergos Cultivate the Soul: Stories of Purpose-Driven Philanthropy
Transcript:
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0:00:05.8 Melissa Durda: Welcome. I’m Melissa Durda, and this is Synergos Cultivate the Soul Podcast: Stories of Purpose-Driven Philanthropy from Around The World. Over this series, we explore together the intersection of contemplative practices, spirituality, philanthropy, and social impact. Join us as we dive into the personal journey of each guest and what they have discovered about the role of inner work in one’s capacity to change the world. To learn more about each of our guests and view the full episode list, please visit Synergos.org/podcast.
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0:00:47.9 Rohini Nilekani: Namaste everyone. I’m Rohini Nilekani. I’m the chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and the co-founder and director of EkStep Foundation. I cultivate my soul by getting into nature as much as I can and also by spending as much time as possible with my little grandson.
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0:01:09.3 Melissa Durda: Today we are joined by Rohini Nilekani, chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. Rohini is a committed philanthropist and has been named the most generous woman in India for the third consecutive time by the Hurun India Philanthropy Report. Her philanthropic activities include supporting education, access to justice, active citizenship, gender equity, mental health, and climate & environment. Rohini is a former journalist and a published book author, including an anthology of her writing titled Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar, outlining her philosophy of restoring the balance between the state and markets by positioning society as the foundational sector. Rohini’s full bio is available on our podcast website.
0:01:58.1 Melissa Durda: So, Rohini, thank you so much for joining today on the podcast. We’re so thrilled to have you here.
0:02:02.7 Rohini Nilekani: Melissa, thank you so much. Synergos has been such an important player in the philanthropy sector, so thank you for including me.
0:02:10.8 Melissa Durda: Well, we’re thrilled to hear your story because you play an immense role in India’s philanthropy, and I want to get us started on the interview by asking you to tell us a memory or a story from your life that was instrumental in shaping your views on what matters.
0:02:28.8 Rohini Nilekani: So I guess I would say that as a young person growing up in Bombay, it was then called Bombay. I got to see all sectors of society literally. It was a very integrated society. The rich, the poor, and the middle class, to which I belonged, all lived cheek by jowl. Unlike in today’s world where the rich tend to sequester themselves behind high walls, in the Bombay, I grew up in, we were all sort of in this messy, you know, urban scenario, and I think the city shaped me as much as the values of my family. My grandfather’s example was always very critical in my life because we were told about him and my grandmother told us stories about him. He was a true Gandhian and followed, helped in India’s independence movement, and was among the first batch of volunteers when Gandhiji called for citizens of our not-yet-independent country to join the struggle. And his life, his efforts and his nature were held up as exemplars. And I was very inspired by that from the get-go. And then in college, through my work as a journalist, I became more and more sure that my work had to be somehow to be part of creating the society in which I wanted to live.
0:03:52.3 Rohini Nilekani: So there’s no one incident, Melissa. But much later, when I had come into wealth, when I was working on water and sanitation through the first foundation I had set up, I was in the state of Bihar, in North India, which has been quite a poor state, though things are changing. One of our partners was talking to me in the middle of the night as we were going through some roads to the site where I’d gone to visit our work. And he said something which stayed with me and has shaped my philanthropic work ever since. He said that state, society, and markets, that is Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar, have been in some kind of dynamic balance always, of course, but earlier, society, that is Samaaj, used to be much stronger, even through monarchies and other situations because the monarch was still fairly far removed from the citizens’ life. And citizens would have to get together to solve their own problems, for the most part. And it developed a very strong, robust society. He said that in the last two centuries, the state and the market have become incredibly powerful, especially when they collude. And it has left society to be a struggling third in this trifecta.
0:05:09.0 Rohini Nilekani: And that the job of all of us is to restore society and Samaaj to its rightful place as the foundational sector. And that had such an impact on me when he said that, that I started to fashion my own theory of change. And so, no matter what sector we work in, we try to strengthen people’s moral leadership and institutions of the Samaaj or society.
0:05:33.1 Melissa Durda: Thank you for sharing that. Particularly, your story about your grandfather and also this conversation that you had in the nighttime. And would you say that this work that centred around citizenship and society is a passion of yours? Do you have other passions, or do you feel connected to passion in this work? And if so, how?
0:05:54.8 Rohini Nilekani: That’s a good question. I’m not sure somebody has asked it that way before. Is my passion fully centred on my work, or do I have other interests? Of course, I have many, many interests, but I think even as a child, in my family, I would react more strongly against injustice than others necessarily would. I’m not sure that’s a great thing – I would sometimes get very irritated and upset because I wanted the world to be fairer than it can be or is. And I didn’t know as a young child what to do about it. One of the things I would do is pick up after other people who litter in public spaces, which was a very irritating thing for other people to watch. So that sense that somehow we have to participate in correcting for injustice was something pretty ingrained in me from the beginning. And so this work that we all try to do is part of that same journey.
0:06:49.7 Rohini Nilekani: So, in that sense, it’s not separate from my sense of self or who I am. And of course, along the way, one acquires many other passions, including really being in nature and what Synergos and all of you definitely call the inner work. That means yoga, music, reading, various wise people who have written wonderful things for the last 10,000 years of human history, and other things. But even that connects back to what I do. So, I think the best life is when your work and your life’s interests are not so separate. And in that sense, I guess I’ve been somewhat blessed that my passions and my work are part of the same streams moving towards the same ocean.
0:07:34.2 Melissa Durda: Beautiful. Yes, when it’s aligned, it flows naturally. So, before we launch into learning about the work that you do, as you mentioned with Synergos, one of our main focuses is around inner work, how we show up as self-aware leaders and how we nurture ourselves. Particularly with this work, changemaking can be quite challenging and difficult. You’ve already mentioned walks in nature and yoga and music, but could you tell us maybe a little bit more about that, your practice of nurturing, maybe where it comes from or what it does to your system?
0:08:10.6 Rohini Nilekani: So, I used to get, as I said, very troubled. I still probably need anger management lessons, still at the ripe old age of 65. But a friend told me, that perhaps anger can be a superpower if it’s directed right. Well, maybe in the next lifetime. I have to constantly work on myself just to be able to remain sane and to do the work that we do, because we are constantly encountering, really, people in very difficult situations. So, part of it is from my childhood, of course, though my parents were not religious, they were more spiritual than religious, less into ritual than using what we call the knowledge path to liberation. So we would be in those discussions about everything from atheism to different schools of philosophy that help you in your journey. So to me, reading scriptures, I have my own prayers, which I do every day to myself. I have my own friendly being to whom I talk in my private mind.
0:09:20.7 Rohini Nilekani: I think that stabilizes me a lot. I think the practice of yoga, holding yourself in stillness when you can, is absolutely critical. The art of pranayama and just slowing down your breath when you’re upset. Music, as we know, nurtures everybody. Quiet music, not necessarily heavy metal, but that, too, who knows? And just bringing oneself back to the present all the time. These are some of the practices I use. There is one thing I learned about myself recently, and that is that most people talk about the inner-to-outer journey, that when you work on yourself, you present yourself obviously better outside. But I was also thinking the flip side of that can also be true for many people. Many people may not start with the inner journey. They land on the inner journey, because from outside, sometimes you are triggered by other people’s suffering, by things breaking down in nature or something else that’s wrong and that you want to be a part of helping to straighten out. And those circumstances can then, as you think about it if you get to the root cause of everything, then you realize that, no, you need to start with yourself first, no matter which issue you are interested in. So it’s been, for me, both. It’s like a two-way street. It’s inner to outer, but also outer to inner. And they feed on each other.
0:10:49.0 Melissa Durda: Well, thank you for sharing the variety of practices that you do. I think it’s helpful for people to hear as inspiration, not only that others are doing this, or maybe even inspiration to also do some practices for themselves if they start to feel overwhelmed. So I love to hear the examples. We asked this question through Synergos with our global philanthropists and yeah, the inner to the outer is something that we like to look at. And I also agree, the outer to the inner. Some of our other members have spoken about acts of service, which is an outer expression, as their way to inner work, so. Another one described more like an infinity symbol, as it flows in and out, it’s a flow. So, thank you. So I’d love to talk now about the work that you’re doing. Please tell me what you’re doing, how you’re doing, and your philosophy, and perhaps I could also ask you to ground it in a story. I think people also want to hear one particular example of some change that you’re making through this work.
0:11:52.8 Rohini Nilekani: When the children were a little grown up, I was looking for something to do. I was very lucky to come across this organization Pratham, which is one of the world’s largest, most active and most successful NGOs, works on early education and now has expanded into many other things. They came to me just when I was ready and they said, “Can you help us work on making sure every child in Bangalore is in school and learning well?” And that immediately caught my interest. I had already done some earlier work before, but this was when I really dived very deep into this field of civic activism and philanthropy. So we just dived in and we set up all kinds of preschools in the slums of Bangalore. We did bridge courses for little children. And over time, that led to the setting up of Pratham Books, which is a non-profit publishing house. It was set up to service all the thousands and hundreds of thousands of children we were helping to learn to read, but who had no books to read in India. In the UK, for example, one child has 20 books to access published every year.
0:13:07.7 Rohini Nilekani: 20 children in India may not even have one book published every year to service them. So we’ve stepped in right in. And today, 20 years later, Pratham Books is one of the world’s largest children’s publishing houses, a non-profit. It has a free Creative Commons platform in which there have been a hundred million reads, and there are books in 350 languages in the world contributed by the global community. And I still remember one child, when I went to visit a place called Dharwad in India. And, he was from a tribal community that had simply never gone to school in their many generations. And he was holding one of our books and he finished reading it very proudly in Kannada, the local language, and we all clapped and expected him to sit down. He said he’s not done. And he read the same book again in English. So we were so proud of that. So every time I see a child with one of the books – I’m no longer with Pratham Books, I retired – but it gives me infinite joy because we learned one thing. If you have a large societal mission that is morally undeniable, millions of people will join you. And they will join you because their hearts and minds are attracted by the societal mission and they are ready to give up themselves.
0:14:29.3 Melissa Durda: Well, congratulations on that work that is truly inspirational in terms of change that can be leveraged by filling a need that needs to be filled. Tell us a little more about what you’re doing now with your philanthropies.
0:14:43.6 Rohini Nilekani: So I was a serial social entrepreneur. Finally, I have set up the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies Foundation, and we support five or six areas. We support Access to Justice, where we are doing a lot of work, a very interesting work to work both inside the system and from outside. I’ll give you just one example. Vidhi Center for Legal Policy that we support, helps to do what I think is very critical work to help India write better laws, because good laws make for a better society, for a good society. And it strengthens access to one’s own dignity and to have a better life. So the worse the laws, the more difficult for citizens. The better the laws, the better a society you can build. So they do some very critical work. And we have some work going on, on open prisons that we support. Now, the Supreme Court has directed that every state should have open prisons where certain kinds of prisoners are allowed to go and work. So long as they register with the prison, they can get some form of freedom. And we have seen the data showing much less recidivism from open prisons.
0:15:56.8 Rohini Nilekani: And so that’s something. And I can go on and on, but I’ll tell you about our gender portfolio, in which we work with young men and boys, which is a little unusual. While I am a feminist, and of course, there is so much work to be done on women’s empowerment throughout the world, especially with the backlash now actually setting back women’s rights everywhere. Much more work to be done. Now, having said that, I think when you look at root causes, we have to look at the almost 50% of men in the world and look at, in their own right, as to what is going on with men. What are they fearing? What are they afraid of? What do they also want? And so our portfolio focuses on young men and boys and helps them find safe, secure spaces, to understand themselves, express themselves, and try to be the best human beings that they can be. So it’s an eight-year-old portfolio. And it’s been very exciting because when we started, there was just one organization with us. Now there are 18.
0:17:00.1 Melissa Durda: I was just reading your recent article that you published in the Indian Express, and you expressed hope about what you saw about recent philanthropy events in Mumbai, and how different generations and sectors are coming together to discuss their role in making change. Also, at the same time, you’ve said that perhaps no time has been as critical for the country’s wealthy to step up. So I was going to ask you to speak a little bit more about that.
0:17:30.6 Rohini Nilekani: Yeah, thank you. No, I think the Indian philanthropic space is quite exciting, though honestly, it could be much bigger, and there are many reasons why it is not bigger. There are also many reasons why it is getting bigger, and we need to do whatever it takes to make it bigger and for more people to give much more faster, better, more strategically, et cetera. But I think for India, it is a really critical time, as I said in an article recently, for the wealthy to step up now, because India’s growth trajectory has been, like in many, many countries, rather unequal to the point where if you remove the top 5% of the wealthy in India, you really drop down your per capita income to levels of Sub-Saharan Africa. So it’s that stark. Right now because India’s economy is growing well and people are still confident and optimistic about our country’s growth and therefore their own prospects, there is still not the kind of backlash against extreme wealth that we have seen in some other parts of the world.
0:18:33.1 Rohini Nilekani: But this trust, hope, and optimism will only last as long as people see themselves as upwardly mobile, and will only last if the wealthy of the country understand that wealth comes with enormous responsibility to show that it is beneficial for the society, the community, and the country. And it’s not just about wealth creating some jobs. It’s also about what causes the wealthy take up to support, both in their businesses and in their lives. So I think it’s a critical time for the Indian wealthy to really show that they are, as Gandhiji kept reminding us, trustees of their wealth for societal well-being.
0:19:15.2 Melissa Durda: So with this shared responsibility and shared opportunity, what do you see as needed in order to strengthen a space that will allow for what you see as needed?
0:19:26.8 Rohini Nilekani: I think what’s already happening in India is that some of us have got together to create peer groups that are sharing our experiences, just like Synergos does so well around the world. So sharing and learning circles among our peers, and that’s picking up nicely. There are many intermediary organizations coming up in India that are helping the wealthy to direct their philanthropy better, to discover more things to invest in, to take them on field trips, to immerse them, to allow them to feel more empathy, and so on, and also be able to see their impact better, to build more trust with civil society organizations. So those kinds of things are happening. I think that’s necessary. The media has played a very complementary role by highlighting Indian philanthropy, sometimes maybe celebrating it too much and not showing philanthropists enough of a mirror to themselves. But for the most part, that does allow people to feel good about their giving and encourages them to give more. Perhaps we need to build more trust with our government to allow them to change some policies to favour civil society further so that philanthropy has more choices to give to many more kinds of organizations.
0:20:45.3 Rohini Nilekani: And there are still only too few areas in which philanthropy gives in India. We need to expand that palette considerably, because just turning your head around in India, you see so many things that still need to be done and can be done with the risk capital that philanthropy offers. So we are hoping that the younger generations in India, and I can see that very clearly. I’ve met hundreds of young people who are ready to give and are giving. And I think they are turning to different sectors and fields as things change rapidly in our country and society.
0:21:20.0 Melissa Durda: Yeah. The peer model, what you’re doing to share your own experience and your stories, we’ve seen that at Synergos has been a powerful tool to empower, to encourage, to inspire. We also work a lot in terms of building trust across sectors in order to promote collaboration. Is that also something that you’re seeing in India?
0:21:40.5 Rohini Nilekani: Yes, finally we’ve reached a point in India where institutions, civil society sectors, and philanthropists are beginning to learn how to collaborate better. We are part of several collaboratives, my husband Nandan and I, global collaboratives like Giving Pledge, but also local collaboratives. Much of our work at Societal Thinking, which is now called the Center for Exponential Change, has co-creators and collaborations from the get-go in the design itself. In India we are also part of other collaboratives in the area of justice, in the area of education, of course in philanthropy itself, and a few other areas as well. And we are all learning finally, how to share knowledge, how to let go of the need to put ourselves first when it comes to branding or taking credit. I think it’s a journey of evolution for all philanthropists and I think many, many philanthropists in India have matured now to that point. They feel secure about their giving and are ready to let go of control, learn from others, and that path of humility, which philanthropy absolutely needs to always be on and not go off track on. I think it also comes when you literally have done enough work, you start out by thinking, “I can make all the difference,” and then you learn that you can’t. And once you really learn that, because everybody learns that, and sometimes pretty quickly, then you become much more open to partnership. And I think we have matured now in India to that stage.
0:23:22.2 Melissa Durda: So, what do you see as your vision for this work that you’re doing? You’ve been working now for 30 years in this sector creating change. What do you hope to achieve?
0:23:33.8 Rohini Nilekani: Well, the work is never done, is it, Melissa? We all know that because sometimes the problems that people create, that we support, they create their own next set of problems. So, it’s not like there’s an endpoint where you can stop. But if we can continue in our work to do some of the things that we really hold dear, which is to distribute the ability to solve, which is to create stronger societies, which is to use today’s amazing technologies for our work, but never be led by them, but be enabled by them. If we are very careful to have a very unified vision when we need to, but never be uniform in our approach, because we understand the contextual importance of diversity and diverse solutions to any problem. If we hold all these things, and if you hold a big fat mirror in front of us and we look at it every day, then I think you just have the energy to continue doing what you have to do to support all those marvelous people out there who are right on the front lines, driving societal change.
0:24:42.5 Melissa Durda: Well, how can people learn more about what you’re doing?
0:24:46.1 Rohini Nilekani: Well, my website is there. My team has put up a great website. We are just beginning to compile presentations on each of our portfolios. I think the first one should be going up on the website soon on our Gender work (Laayak portfolio). rohininilekaniphilanthropies.org will give you a glimpse into a lot of the things that we do. And so will ekstep.org, which will tell you about some of the other work that we are doing. And yeah, there is Google. You just have to Google.
0:25:18. Melissa Durda: Well, thank you. I know you’re involved in so many organizations. We’ll be posting your bio on our podcast website, which has links to the many organizations that you’re involved with or have founded or co-founded. First, I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing in the world. And thank you again for coming on this podcast and sharing your personal story as well as some of the learnings you’ve experienced so far with our community.
0:25:42.5 Rohini Nilekani: Thank you, Melissa. It was a great pleasure. Thank you for the work of Synergos over so many years in so many countries. Keep doing what you all do. Keep inspiring us, and thank you for this podcast.
0:25:56.3 Melissa Durda: What I liked about this conversation with Rohini is learning about her passion for correcting injustice and the work that she is doing to create a society that she wants to live in.
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