A tale from the underbelly
of India Shining
Location: Nayanagar Village, Bihar, India
Date: 19.05.2011
Time:
05:30 PM IST
Sitting in a jam-packed room in
a village near Samastipur (Bihar), India in May 2011, I was busy having my
fourth cup of tea in the day; As my tea cup was about to topple on the floor,
we were informed that the local leader of the village, who happened to be a
woman, couldn’t come out to meet us personally owing to the purdah or zeenana
system that was prevalent in the village, and hence could interact with us only
from behind a curtain. Just imagine; an elected leader of a village whose
responsibility was to meet people, discuss their problems and come up with
innovative solutions , was prohibited from openly interacting with the people
of her own village. For all practical purposes, she was merely a pseudo or
statutory leader while all the executive decisions were taken by her husband
alone. This prompted me and my colleagues from Tantra Consultancy Services (a
startup we formed a couple of years ago) to contemplate about the leadership
challenges that are existing in rural India and what we could do to fill the
void. As a consultancy firm, we were well placed to provide risk management
know-how to tackle the everyday problems to which rural development laid
hostage. We ended up kick-starting a project on “Rural innovation based
leadership” in the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand. During the course of
implementing our project we got valuable first-hand insight into the shocking
state of government sponsored rural schemes and how they were rendered
virtually ineffective owing to a variety of reasons. To circumvent the risks
involved in implementing well-meaning rural development schemes, we proposed
“The Buddy Program”. Since then, our initiative has received positive feedback
from several quarters.
Risk Management for Rural Initiatives is now
a Necessity
Most developing
and under-developed countries have launched a slew of programmes for rural upliftment
and development. Indeed, most of the times, lack of welfare schemes is not a
bottleneck. It’s the ineffective implementation of these programmes which
practically derails them. Risk management is conveniently ignored in rural
environments, as this is a discipline that has been little explored outside the
boundaries of enterprise entrepreneurship. And since, rural initiatives
generally trickle down from the highest quarters of national governance; they
have a massive footprint as far as their impact is concerned. Lapses in
implementation of such national-level schemes due to an insufficient risk
management plan can be disastrous and a huge drain on the national treasury.
The fact that risk management has become a necessity for effective rural
development is now well established and a reality that needs to be faced.
The
Stumbling Blocks
A
Leadership Vacuum
Good leadership is an essential
pre-requisite for envisioning a long term development plan for any nation. A
leadership vacuum in the lowest common denominator of the society fails to
inspire any growth and can only spell several ills for the future of the
nation. Nearly one-third of India’s rural population is living below poverty
line. These are the people at the bottom of the pyramid and who are affected
the most by lack of leadership at grass root level. Also, most of the small
scale ventures in rural India are unorganized and hence command virtually no
bargaining power. Lack of coordination and uninspiring leadership plaguing the
small-scale agro industries makes them highly vulnerable to the crushing forces
of globalization and free market.
Rampant
Corruption
Sometimes local elected leaders also indulge freely into corruption. Social Audits of NREGS
(National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) reveals that majority of
government sponsored schemes failed to achieve their desired goal due to
rampant corruption in the panchayati raj institutions (self-governance
institutions prevalent in India).
Widespread
ignorance
For development at grassroots,
rural population as well as their immediate leaders needs to be aware and
informed about the social and economic development model. The major proportion
of the Indian population lives in the rural expanses. They don’t have secure
and high paying jobs to feed their families and many of them are still dwelling
under the old orthodox mentality of like, for instance, not sending the girl
child to school. The situation is improving but at a snail’s pace. Also the
depressing trail left behind by failed rural schemes ends up making the
villagers, who are the actual stakeholders, indifferent to any future schemes. The
central issue is that people elected at rural level as well as the villagers do
not have enough awareness about their rights, roles and responsibilities. They
lack the basic administrative, financial & management skills and because of
this they fail to attain the desired goals, despite having well-meaning
intentions.
Self-Empowerment:
The Unsung Messiah
The rural
population is a source of massive manpower, and as is well-known now, thanks to
the growing economies of populous nations like India and China, manpower
constitutes one of the most important national assets. True, the rural manpower
is mostly an unskilled labor force. But at the same time, they also provide the
critical pool of untapped talent. Through innovative ideas this workforce which
is currently mired by the ills of orthodoxy, resistance to change and a
decelerating lethargy, can be easily turned around to contribute to national
productivity. What is needed is a system that diligently builds the capacity of
villagers by empowering them to take their own decisions, be it on
entrepreneurial initiatives or the exercise of their rights in matters of
politics and self-governance. Self-empowerment though a painstakingly long and
tedious process, will bear rich fruit in the long term. Not only does it create a sense of ownership
but also reduces the uncertainties involved in the implementation of rural
welfare schemes by striking at the heart of widespread rural ignorance.
Self-empowerment is indeed the most effective tool for implementing risk
management strategies in the context of rural development programmes.
Managing Risks through Strategic
Partnerships
Strategic
partnerships can be formulated to nurture rural talent and reduce the risks
that come with over dependence on national schemes for rural upliftment. A basic building block of this three-tier
structure is the village cooperative comprising of local rural leaders as well
as villagers. The cooperative should have a partnership with a private organization
(Consulting firm), which can help them in training rural leaders and villagers
on the basic administrative, financial and management skills. The consulting
firm should have responsibilities of capacity building for the rural leaders
and villagers as well as suggesting and helping the rural leaders and members
of cooperative to start sustainable small scale businesses, awareness schemes,
education & health drive etc.
Rural Buddy System: A Unique
Mentorship Program
The rural buddy system started by Tantra Consultancy Services intends
to connect the rural leaders and villagers through Gram Sabha (body comprising
of village adults) and helps them to create cooperatives & self helped
groups (SHG). The private consulting firm creates a buddy system that initially
provides training to rural elected leaders as well as few villagers on basic
administrative, financial, and management skills through real time case study
method as well as by showing skits in local dialects. The training module
should also focus on leadership development, team work, women empowerment,
child education etc. Each of the trained members will be recognized as a buddy
and will be assigned to a particular training group. This would create a chain
of buddies and will extend the reach of buddy system. This initiative was
covered by The Economics Times and The Times of India and then government
started a talk with us to implement this for the whole state. Even today;
Panchayati Raj System is most ignored in a country like India.
Buddy Help Line
The online portal is to be developed which will have all the necessary
information about the government schemes, latest rules and regulations, the
training material for buddies, animated videos on different modules like women
empowerment, child education etc saved on the database so that one can access
it online and take print of desired information. One entrepreneur from the
village will be selected and trained on the basic IT skills so that he can get
the work done for the people. The concept has been finalized but it’s still in
incubation stage and we are quite hopeful to deploy this by the month of august
this year.
Controlling Risks while Promoting Rural Entrepreneurship
Future Leaders Enterprise Group
(FLEG)
The future leaders enterprise group will be created as it will
constitutes all the buddies, the women representatives and the youths who all
will be trained to start a small businesses of their own like stitching,
knitting, painting, milk production etc. Unlike the traditional form of small
business the consulting firm should also help some of these people by starting
a small service based venture. FLEG will be the part of cooperative which will
seek consulting help from the Tantra Consultancy Services. For instance there
can be a scenario where consulting firm helps the farmer to find the market
place for the vegetables.
Tea Time Manoranjan Cart (TTM)
Tea stalls are small-time vendors
who primarily sell tea, coffee and milk along small road-side shops in India.
Indians gather at tea stalls right from daybreak to have a tea. Tea stalls
generally have strong local knowledge and thus often become human Yellow Pages
and discussion tables for the respective localities. We have started this
project in the year 2009 and it also helped us to fetch the award for the most
innovative startup of the year in 2010 by TiE. The idea is to be originated at
the cooperative level with the participation of women, local rural leader and
the members of cooperative. Each women representative will be assigned a
movable cart and will be given packaged tea leaves on credit of 7 days. The women will be preparing and selling tea
on the cart and she will be retaining the profit. She will be needed only to
pay the dealer price of tea to the cooperative. Apart from this, the cart will
be prepared in such a way that there will be space for advertisements thus
through our consulting firm there is a scope of getting the advertisements of
some corporate brands on the carts. Revenue earned through advertisement can be
used for the education of the child of the lady cart in charge. It’s a model
for generating revenue as well as touching people’s life by doing good stuffs.
Conclusion
While there are many challenges
involved in initiating a nation-wide self-empowerment drive to curb the risks
in rural development, no one can deny the benefits that can be reaped in the
long term through such an exercise. A three pronged partnership strategy for
training the villagers in basic skills can help to stem the rot that breeds
from a lack of awareness and subsequently quantifies the risks. A risk
management strategy with a long term vision is the need of the hour. The time
has come to think out of the box and use innovative methodologies to trigger
growth and productivity in the villages, which because of its sheer size can
make a mountain of a difference to the national GDP. It’s not a charity but
it’s a social venture. We believe that one can earn good enough by doing good
for the society. Doing a social business is not a social crime; it’s all about
touching people’s life by addressing the need of people at bottom of
pyramid.
