In recent years, it has been heartening to see a good number
of well-qualified and “successful” men and women from “middle class India” take
on the challenge of national development. The social enterprise bug has bitten
these professionals and they have taken on, in their own way, some of the
country’s biggest challenges.
Innovation, scale and sustainability are their keywords.
Their arenas of work encompass education, health, renewable energy and
livelihoods.
This phenomenon is not entirely new, of course. One of the
most well-known such social enterprises, Aravind Eyecare, was founded about 30
years ago. But the achievements of Aravind founder Dr. G. Venkataswamy, and,
more recently, people like Dr. Devi Shetty of Narayana Hrudayala, Harish Hande
of Selco and Madan Padaki of Head Held High have triggered a widespread
interest in taking on these tough challenges.
In the last month, I had occasion to meet two passionate
individuals who have taken the plunge into making a difference through social
enterprise. Both their experiences were insightful, so I thought I could share
these here.
Gram Oorja
I haven’t figured out why, but Pune seems to be a hub of
interesting work on energy. I wrote earlier about the Pune Power Model, an
industry initiative to avoid load-shedding that emanated from this city.
Prayaas, one of India’s leading think tanks focused on energy is also based
there. Gram Oorja (“Rural Energy”) is the latest in this series of
distinguished energy initiatives from this city.
As I write this post, there is much excitement in the media
about the launch of iPhone6. But, the world of exciting new electronic gadgets
is far removed from the energy challenges of India. About a quarter of India
lacks access to electricity. The actual number may be much more – I remember my
friend Vidyanand Jha telling me that many villages in Bihar were electrified
years ago, but there is no supply through the grid today as they have been
disconnected due to prolonged failure of their residents to clear their dues.
While the State is unable to find sustainable ways of
supplying power to rural consumers, decentralized solutions have emerged. Some
of these are straightforward entrepreneurial initiatives – someone sets up a
genset and supplies power to homes nearby. Others have an ingredient of
alternate energy solutions – Husk Power Systems has a model of small power
systems that run on biomass and has franchised these in some parts of Bihar.
Gram Oorja has demonstrated that a solar-based,
decentralized model can also work, but under certain conditions. Their current
focus is on rural communities who do not have access to grid power because they
live in remote places that are not connected to the grid because laying
transmission lines would be too expensive. For these villages, a solution like
solar energy is ideal because once it is set up, it requires little
maintenance.
Anshuman Lath, an IIM Bangalore alumnus, is one of the
founders of Gram Oorja. During a recent talk at IIM Indore, he shared with us
the interesting social model under which one such solar system works in
Darewadi.
The system is managed by the villagers themselves. Village
youth have been trained to take care of essential functions. The village
council has to take tough decisions like disconnecting those who fail to pay.
So far, the council has shown its willingness to stand up to even influential
local users. Finally, basic economics forced one such local user to pay his
dues and return to the local grid – he
had a marriage in his family and accessing the local power microgrid for the
function was much cheaper than hiring a generator for the event from 30-40 km
away!
Apparently, before the advent of this solar system,
villagers used to send their mobile phones with anyone who was visiting the
nearest town (a whole day’s journey, including a long walk from the village to
the nearest bus stop) to get them charged. A shop in town provided this service
for Rs. 5 per mobile (I hope I got the number right) which if you look at the
power involved was 100 times the cost of accessing the same amount of power at
home!
Anshuman explained that solar power is still too expensive
to recover the capital cost from users. The Gram Oorja project I described
above needs to recover only the cost of the local distribution infrastructure
and running costs, as the solar panels were donated by Bosch as part of a
demonstration project.
Pan IIT Alumni Reach for India (PARFI)
PARFI is an initiative that has grown out of the Pan IIT
Alumni Association. I have never attended a Pan IIT meet, but Pan IIT conferences
have attracted excellent speakers at the different venues where they have been
held.
Somehow, Pan IIT itself always came across to me as an
elitist, self-congratulatory movement, an effort by IITians to show their
clout. Not surprisingly, the association itself has been at the centre of some
controversy with accusations that one group of alumni has tried to corner the
leadership ignoring democratic processes.
So, I was pleasantly surprised when I recently had occasion
to hear about PARFI. The origin of this organization is a plea from
ex-president Abdul Kalam to Pan IIT to do something concrete for the country.
PARFI is focused on creating livelihoods. Its model is
simple (always a good sign, indicates it’s likely to be scalable!). They set up
rural gurukuls across India to train youth for industrial jobs (drivers, welding,
construction, etc.). Each gurukul has an anchor industrial client who promises
to place the students in its enterprise, so placement is not a problem. The
same enterprise also provides instructors for the gurukul.
The students are drop-outs from poor families, sourced
through NGO partners. They are trained in a residential gurukul mode under the
eye of retired servicemen. This is essential to inculcate discipline and soft
skills in the trainees. PARFI’s programme underlines the fact that skilling and
livelihoods is much more than just training and certification. It’s also about
socialization into regular work habits and attitude. Interestingly, PARFI has
found that the work ethic varies quite a bit across regions, with young men
from tribal origin in Jharkhand being some of the most diligent.
The training is short, and typically lasts about 30-45 days.
Students get loans through a microfinance mechanism and the loans are recovered
through EMis after the student starts working.
Avinash Jupudi, an IITB and IIMC alum who manages clients
and partners for PARFI, visited us at IIM Indore some time ago. It was great to
hear about PARFI from him.
Conclusion
I was really enthused to meet both Anshuman and Avinash.
They are both smart, committed, and above all, very grounded. The future of
social entrepreneurship will be bright if we can have more such youngsters
entering the fray.
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