Author: chester.c

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani in conversation with Naushad Forbes, business leader and ex-President of the Confederation of Indian Industry, for an episode of India Development Review’s podcast, On the Contrary. Along with Arun Maira, the host of the show, they discuss what markets must include, whom they should serve, and the role they must play in enabling inclusive economic growth.

IDR Online

The Assumptions of a Good Market

A good market is one which helps to increase the public interest and prosperity, not just for a few but for all people. Ideally, this is also done without harming our planet. I see a good market as a kind of conversation rather than a dialogue of the deaf. It should be a way for people, societies, and nations to discover services of value that can be traded in as fair a way as possible. In our 21st century environment, there are so many questions to ask about market failure. However, I prefer to call it societal failure because it only happens when societies and the state are not able to create the leadership, institutions, and governance which can rein in excessive market power. I look forward to a world where Samaaj, Bazaar and Sarkaar can be in a better balance.

Unfortunately, over this past century we have watched this balance grow increasingly skewed. My philosophy is that societies came first i.e. people came first and created both the Sarkaar and the Bazaar in order to reduce conflict among themselves and create more efficiency, productivity, and prosperity for all. Over time though, instead of the Samaaj being the first sector, somehow we have relegated civil society and its institutions to the ‘third sector’. We need to set that right at the outset if we are going to make sure that the state and the markets are more accountable to the larger societal interest. We must now ask ourselves, how do we create a better system of capitalism or market economy which doesn’t allow all value to just pull towards one end of the spectrum? Secondly, how do we start to keep at the forefront of our minds that we are the proverbial frog and the water is getting hotter without us noticing it, because this is the decade in which we have to heal ourselves and the planet.

Naushad Forbes points out that when people talk about markets, they assume that a market needs many buyers and sellers to work efficiently, that a single buyer or seller cannot control the market, and that there is equal information about the potential benefits and costs of the trade on both sides of the seller and buyer. This is what creates equity that markets can potentially deliver together with efficiency. However, when these assumptions are not true, we end up with a less equitable market. So, how do we enable markets to work for people who are most disadvantaged? The solution may be to invest in the capabilities and skills of people.

Naushad gives the example of investing in education, since it enables people to participate in more productive activities and participate in markets where they’re able to earn good salaries and livelihoods, and get the rewards that an efficient operating system can deliver. There are also many failures that take place in markets, one being the environment since the cost of pollution is not something that markets have factored in. It’s possible for states and civil society to tax itself such that it invests in education and capabilities for all people in a society such that they can participate in markets. At the same time it’s possible to create minimum standards that must be maintained regardless of what the market outcome might be.

Listening to What the People Want

We need our government to start creating better regulations in order to safeguard certain resources, especially when it comes to environmental issues. These don’t have to be regulation which kills markets or innovation, but regulation which creates fair competition. As of now, competition seems to be reducing instead of increasing. We have seen how so many sectors that were more competitive are now becoming oligopolies, if not monopolies. This is not good because the power of some of these big players has become so vast that when innovations do pop up, they just swallow them up into their own stable. We need the government to be able to enable competition and innovation coming from everywhere, which means it must also look at how a small entrepreneur with a very good idea does not have to take far more risk in putting his innovation out than a big player.

This point goes back to the welfare role of the government. We cannot separate the idea of innovation and entrepreneurship from a safety net because otherwise we’re distributing risk unfairly. When a small entrepreneur does not have the safety net of public health, public education, disaster management, or the risk of absorbing failure, in comparison to the big guy who has access to private education, private healthcare, private capital, etc., then we are not distributing the risk of innovation fairly. This is where the government has to step in to create fair competition, a welfare net which I think is necessary for creating good markets. It also needs to regulate the excessive power and oligopolies, monopolies forming. Ideally, capital would also be made available to all, in the right doses and at the right time without you having to sell your soul for it. 

If we consider the trends of the past 150 years, an increasing number of people in the world have been able to participate in activities from which they have then benefitted, says Naushad. The same is true in India – since 1991 we have seen a greater reduction in the percentage of the population below the poverty line. These are indications that markets deliver a degree of prosperity, which any alternative system tends to struggle with. The issue is that it may not deliver this uniformly and equitably. However, Naushad argues that allowing the government to try to regulate the market may not be a wise solution. He mentions what happened in India in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when the government determined the price of cement, which led to a situation where there was a shortage economy co-existing with high prices. Once the intervention was removed by the government, the market operated efficiently – the price fell and the shortages vanished at the same time. So Naushad suggests finding ways where institutions independent of the government set the rules of the game. Some of them might be public institutions, others might be private institutions and they could propose a variety of formal and informal rules. However, he does not believe that India has the capability and competence in government to determine the right outcomes.

We need to listen to what the people want. Naushad gives the example of the ongoing farmers’ protest, caused in part because opposition voices were not heard. We have existing mechanisms and our parliament, where the opposition has a right to be heard. When they are not, then that voice shows up in the form of protests on the street. If we use our existing mechanisms to hear people out, we will be able to address many of those concerns. Perhaps not all of them, but enough of them so that people believe that some of these changes and reforms are in their interest. The ones that aren’t, that strike fundamentally at a livelihood, are addressed in another way such that we then say, “This is something in the longer run that I’m willing to go along with.”

Arun Maira notes that while India’s economy has improved overall since 1991, the broader picture is concerning, in terms of the size and growth of the economy and its relation to an increase in environmental degradation and inequities. Although the size of the economy has been growing larger, the shape has been worse. Per unit of GDP growth, the Indian economy has damaged the environment more than almost every other country, and it has grown less jobs per unit of GDP growth when we need to grow  much more because of our population than other comparable economies. To Arun, we have stopped listening to the people who are not benefiting from this system, and when they speak up, we say they don’t understand and that they are just protesting good reforms. The experts believe they have the solutions, the economists believe they know how economies should be run, and they’re not listening to diverse voices of other disciplines, and certainly not of people with less power in the system.

A Willingness to Learn

In order to go forward, I think that markets need to return to being spaces of discovery of goods, services, and talent, and we need to deepen trust. There has been a breakdown of trust between the state and the markets, and between the consumers and the markets as well. So we need to find quick ways to rebuild that trust. My attention is especially focused on the environmental dimension. The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ecology, and this ecology is very critical to people especially in India, because our people’s livelihoods are so deeply tied to the ecology.

We say that the perfect way of getting more people into prosperity is by pulling them off of farms because we have very low productivity in agriculture, so we don’t need 600 million people to be engaged in this sector. But even if 400 million of them are removed from the equation and we try to do more productivity on our farms, what will we do with the 400 million people and what will that do to the ecology? Unless we’re able to answer that question, I don’t think we can even think of reimagining agriculture. I see the conversation happening between the government and farmers as an opportunity to rethink how we can do sustainable agriculture while keeping people’s livelihoods attached to the land in a sustainable way. That’s one avenue through which we can go about restoring the idea of local innovation, discovery, and trust.

We are all citizens first. We are not consumers or subjects of the state first, we are citizens and human beings first and foremost. So we need to develop our own ability to hold conversations about what good markets and good states can be. We need to do this so that we can all continue to survive together. We need the power of markets for its innovation and drive towards efficiency, and we need the state to hold human beings accountable and to create the institutions to have more equity, to unleash the good of markets. I think people are realising that the time has come to grapple with these big questions 

The problem is that all of us, myself included, want to prove that we are right. And if I’m right then you have to be wrong. So how do we, in this decade of increasing polarization, have the confidence in ourselves to hold on to the grey spaces between black and white and listen to other people’s ideas without judgement? It’s only by doing this that we may be able to find our way out of the existential threat that we are facing right now and unleash more creativity. The minute I shut you down, I shut down the potential of your ideas and your innovation and vice versa. We need to learn how to hold and express doubt without fear of reprisal, and recover those spaces of speaking maturely without judgement. There are many pathways given by so many experts, so we should listen and occupy the grey area to understand its nuances and riches.

 

We have been experimenting with unbridled democratisation of opinion. It was necessary because at first, not enough people had a platform to say whatever they wanted. Social media allowed that to happen. It’s been a wild ride and an amazing experiment, but experiments can and do go wrong. Reason lies in knowing when an experiment has gone too far. While we should never have to clamp down on anybody saying anything, to undermine professionalism and experience and allow everyone to be an expert just because they have an opinion has actually damaged the building of better governance, better markets, and better societies. So we should allow ourselves to respect experience and professionalism.

The problem occurs when those who are already in power monopolise what expertise is, who can become experts, who can acquire experience, and who disregard those traditional wisdom experts. This is when things go wrong. But we have reached a point of extreme danger in society to say that everyone is equally able to profess an opinion, because we are not. Then it’s a race to the bottom. Even when it comes to the relationship between consumer and the producer, I think some forms of expertise and experience have to be respected to make the markets better. As Arun mentions, the experts we require now to find the new normal, which will produce a more inclusive pattern of growth, more equity and justice, and less environmental degradation, are experts who are humble, listen deeply, and are willing to learn. 

Citizens now have more opportunities to take active part in building urban resilience

This year, I have been from Bengaluru to Kabini and back several times. Every time I return from the forest and the rural countryside, my eyes and senses hit refresh, and I see my home city with a new perspective.

The overwhelming impression is of a metro undergoing a painful renewal. Masses of threatening concrete overhead, piles of rubble underneath. And through this grey canvas, dots of colour as hapless citizens weave through the traffic, without proper visibility or signposts, navigating past trucks and haulers, moody traffic signals and perplexing roundabouts.

It feels as if Bengaluru, like so many other cities in India, is testing its residents. The unfinished infrastructure is a poster promise of a better future. The city demands patience, demands faith, demands hope. The residents experience resignation, weariness, and a lasting numbness.

When I finally get home, I enter an urban version of the forest I left behind – my neighbourhood has a dense canopy of trees. Yet Bengaluru is not homogenous, and my sylvan surroundings are an anomaly now in the erstwhile garden city. It has a criss-cross of diverse identities and designs. It has layers and layers of privilege on top and tiers of disenfranchisement below. Yet, the dysfunctionality of the city creates a perverse equaliser. It brings an end to the secession of the elite. Our bubble breaks with the chaos of the traffic, the pervasive pollution and limitations on personal spaces.

But there are now new opportunities to engage with the city’s future.

All over India, there are efforts inviting citizens to re-imagine belonging. To make the city their own. The discourse has firmly shifted from whether the city should grow to how it should grow and change, and who should participate in the change-making.

Today’s technologies enable mass participation in civic design. In metropolitan areas and beyond, digital age civil society organisations (CSOs), often helmed by creative young leaders, use tech-enabled design to challenge the supremacy of the State in urban futures. Thriving Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs) and dynamic CSOs seem determined to take back their city.

For example, during the lockdown, Yugantar filed a Right to Information (RTI) petition to find the total number of slums and their population in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. This data was then shared with local NGOs to better target relief work. Haiyya, through a local campaign called Health over Stigma, helped hold service providers accountable for providing safe, non-judgmental sexual and reproductive health services, especially for unmarried women. Reap Benefit in Bengaluru has developed an open civic platform that comprises a WhatsApp chatbot, a web app and a civic forum. The chatbot guides users with simplified steps through a variety of civic challenges that are engaging and fun. If you see a pothole on the road, you can send photos, but go beyond reporting to next steps. A friendly technology helps convert agitation into action and turn bystanders into stewards.

Civis understands that technical environmental legislation can sometimes bypass civil society, even though we are all heavily impacted by environmental degradation. In March 2020, a draft notification with radical new rules was put up by the environment ministry for public consultation. Civis put up a simplified version and more people were able to directly participate in the consultation.

We must encourage these and many other samaaj-based efforts. More importantly, we must each find our own way to participate in these ventures. Democracy cannot be a spectator sport. Good governance must be co-created, not just consumed. No matter who you are, you are first a citizen. Even if you head a government department or a successful business — you remain a citizen first, a part of your community. And I believe it is only the samaaj and institutions of the samaaj that can hold the State accountable to the larger public interest of making our cities more livable for all.

Luckily, today’s new technologies allow us to participate more effectively with relative ease. I am not talking about simple clicktivism, but how a tech-enabled, societal ecosystem can distribute the ability to solve; can democratise civic engagement; and can help people co-create their city’s future.

However, there is an important caution here. We need civil society itself to get more digital in the digital age. Especially because only an engaged digital samaaj can keep tech corporations more accountable and prevent them from unleashing tools that distort the political and democratic process or reduce individual and collective agency. Urban movements are critical for this cause.

The pandemic has forced us to speed up our thinking on what cities should look like in the future. Citizens now have more opportunities to take active part in building urban resilience. Young leaders are creating more options for empowered citizens to co-create more humane environments. When we return to the city from the forest, we should feel a buzz, not a burn.

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Hindustan Times

The Newsminute

Hindi | PDF | Rajasthan Patrika

Hindi | Rajasthan Patrika

From the beginning of October and through the end of December, our minds are more attuned to giving and sharing. The giving season starts with Gandhi’s birthday and goes on well past Christmas. In between, there are many festivals of sharing, and gratitude, including Dassera and Diwali.India’s Daan Utsav is well-timed to enhance the feeling of fellowship and to encourage people to open up their hearts, minds, and pockets.

This year, the pandemic gives us even more reason to share the burdens of others, and to practice kindness to strangers. We have learned in these past few months what the state and the markets can and cannot do for us. We have also learned what the samaaj or society can do. We have seen generosity pouring out across the country; we have seen a rise in the philanthropy of ordinary citizens, both in terms of their time and money. We have seen the civil society sector, and the voluntary sector, rise up to stem the worst of the suffering.

This is a beacon of hope in these bleak times. It is the signal in the midst of all the noise. It tells us that when people engage in concerted action to help others, then we are on a strong foundation to nurture a society that all of us, not just some of us, would like to live in and belong to. I have personally always structured my philanthropy around this simple idea. If we can continue to build a good, resilient samaaj, which derives its energy from a moral leadership; which is inspired by the interconnectedness of our fates; and which is driven to co-create positive change, then we can face any future with the optimism that is unique to our human species.

So how do I help this idea along? Luckily, there are hundreds of organisations in India that are trying to do something similar: they want to help people become part of the solution rather than remain part of the problem. They want to unleash innovation, find change-makers, and support them to become leaders and institution builders. They want people to engage as citizens, especially at their local level and figure out how to come together to resolve societal issues. These cover a wide spectrum from water, health, education, livelihoods, public infrastructure, environment, and also issues of access and voice.

With my amazing team’s help, I try to find and support ideas, individuals, and institutions that resonate with the vision of building a strong samaaj, a good samaaj, through personal action. We call this portfolio – Active Citizenship. Citizenship is typically seen through the lens of voting during elections, making claims of the state, and sometimes of active resistance.

But there is ample space for deepening this idea of citizenship. Here’s just one example. We are a young nation coming of age in a digital era. This can upend the traditional imagination of citizenship and citizens’ engagement. Emerging digital technologies, now widely adopted around the world, increase the possibility and space for participation. They can allow you to better understand your community’s issues but also your own rights and duties. They can help find allies outside one’s narrow circles. They can increase the discovery of other people’s solutions.

Luckily, India’s voluntary sector is just beginning to tap into this potential. There are many initiatives, both urban and rural, rising up from the samaaj, to expand citizen participation. There are instances of new, diverse institutions of the people – from neighbourhood societies to digital, issue-based affinity groups.

I have been able to support about a dozen wonderful organisations, most led by young, dynamic leaders. Organisations like India Rising Trust and Reap Benefit work to build more opportunities for civic engagement at scale, to solve hyper-local problems. Jhatkaa works to mobilise citizens around issues and help them take action. Other grantees work to reduce the friction between the citizen and the state. Civis is a platform that helps citizens understand and give feedback on drafts of legislation and government policies. Nyaaya works on the other side, helping citizens understand laws and regulations. Socratus Foundation for Collective Wisdom looks to understand wicked problems and bring all stakeholders together through a deliberative, outcome-oriented process.

I find great inspiration from the work of these leaders and institutions, no matter their size. I do believe that this space needs to be better seeded with magnanimous philanthropic capital. I hope much of it will come from small givers giving big. I hope some of it will come from big givers giving big. During and beyond Daan Utsav, we must support organisations that activate people to become better citizens – first for themselves, and then for society. So that we can all thrive in a better samaaj.

Bloomberg Quint

 

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Water is the key sector when it comes to climate change related challenges. It is ever changing and complex, with equity, quality and quantity issues rising routinely. Usually, water issues have to be dealt with locally, in context. For example, even if you planned to bring water from a faraway river to a city, it is the city planners who need to engage with how equitably that new water will be used; they will have to design to carry away excess flow and sewage and so on.

For that, you need local talent. You need communities to come together along with trained professionals and local leaders to understand how THEIR water behaves, both above and below the ground. They must be able to find granular solutions that accommodate upstream and downstream solutions created by others. For example, to manage groundwater sustainably in one panchayat, you need to find out if you are sharing an aquifer with another panchayat, and co-create an equitable system.

This means that we cannot push for one size fits all solutions. Instead, we must design capacity building in order to distribute the ability to solve. A technology backbone, which is unified but not uniform, which allows local, contextual problem solving at scale is the need of the hour. Our teams at Societal Platform.org and Arghyam are beginning to build just such an open, digital, shared public infrastructure.

Nurturing community capacity and resilience in the face of climate change is critical. In the water sector, for life and livelihoods, it is especially so.

[Written for the September 2020 issue of the ICC Newsletter]

In these dark times, there is no harm in easing up with some sharp humour. Like the coronavirus, humour is infectious, but can spread much needed joy. The world over, social media is lighting up with witty memes around the pandemic. Bumbling politicians have been prime targets, and especially President Donald Trump. “Calm down, everyone,” reads one meme, “A six-time bankrupted reality TV star is handling the situation.”

But that is the US, where comics can get away with a lot, without political backlash. Where in fact, politicians themselves can create the humour.

In 1985, I was lucky to be a reporter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where former President Gerald Ford hosted a three-day conference on ‘Humour in the Presidency’. Ironically, Ford was hardly known for his sense of humour. When asked why he had hosted a conference where he himself might be the butt of many jokes, he disarmingly said, “I thought a look at the lighter side of politics may help us to realise that perhaps sometimes we take ourselves too seriously.”

This is the crux of the issue, then and now. When politicians take themselves too seriously, and when the public takes its politicians too seriously, unintended yet harmful consequences can emerge. Imagine if more people had laughed outright at the self-important demagogues of the past century. Could that have prevented some from taking their own absurd and dangerous ideas to fruition? We don’t know; but it is worth thinking about.

The Ford conference was a refreshing change after the humourless years of the Nixon presidency, where America had perforce to look into the dark soul of its politics and its president. There was a steady stream of jokes about US presidents, with Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and John F Kennedy as the favourites. Conference speakers remarked on how the smarter politicians would make self-deprecating jokes before others could mock them.

President Kennedy had the best flair for it. Criticised for bankrolling his campaign with his father’s money – he retorted, “I just had a telegram from my famous Daddy: Dear Jack. Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.” Similarly, Reagan was very skilled at winning over crowds and critics with his jocular manner. “I’m not worried about the deficit,” he famously said. “It’s big enough to take care of itself.”

In today’s India, perhaps we need more humour in our public life. Are our politicians able to joke about themselves? Or do they mainly use ridicule? And what about us? Do we lack a political funny bone?

India has had a long, strong history of political satire. The kingdoms of India appointed court jesters or vidushaks to lighten the atmosphere. They would take pot shots at the public, at visitors and sometimes at the king himself. Remember the stories of Tenali Ramkrishna, Birbal, Gopal Bhar and Gonu Jha? Their job was to bring wit and humour to expose oppression and injustice.

Through India’s freedom struggle too, there were many lighter moments. Sarojini Naidu’s descriptions of the Mahatma as Mickey Mouse and Little Man did not anger him. Instead, he signed off as Little Man in his letters to her.

Today, too, we have a burgeoning number of stand-up comics, especially in Hindi. At increasing personal risk, they take sure-fire aim at our politicians, who manage routinely to generate great material for satire. But in India, this is still a cottage enterprise compared to the full-fledged industry in the US, now in full spate through Trump’s term.

Arguably, today, there has been a chilling effect on our humorists. Cases of sedition have been initiated on cartoonists and others, for criticising the government or the ruling party. Intensive trolling and threats have inundated those who raise important issues in jest. Certainly, today’s humorists have to be braver than their profession should require them to be.

As citizens, we should renew our understanding of why political humour is critical to society. Historically, too much power and secrecy has often coincided with a lack of tolerance for satire, leading to a breakdown of trust between the public and the government. Humour can provide a safety valve when social pressures are building. It can inform us about social relations.

Concentrated power without feedback loops is dangerous. We all know the story of the emperor’s new clothes. When they mock elites, humorists can hold leaders accountable. They create safe space for us to think through things, to question our beliefs and to change our minds.

That’s precisely why governments and politicians don’t like humorists. They hate to be challenged. But it is also why the samaj must support humorists. We need mirrors held up to us; we need new ways to refract reality.

Of course, there is a Laxman Rekha that is crossed at great peril to both humorists and society. Comics need to practice both restraint and sophistication. They need sensitivity to local histories and culture. But offence is taken, not given. Even if some humour makes people in power uncomfortable, it may simply be because the truth sometimes hurts.

The best example often comes from the top. At the White House, when Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt was asked where the President was, she said, “Where the laughter is.”

Would that we could say the same, here, and soon.

Times of India

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This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s conversation with Gopal Sankaranarayanan, as part of the Casual Conversations with Citizens series. Rohini shares her experiences of life and encounters with the law, rights, and most importantly, her ideas of justice.

I grew up in a fairly middle class household in Mumbai, and my parents wanted the best for my sisters and I. My mother was from a land-owning feudal setup but wanted us to have a liberal, convent education and be independent. The stories we were told, and the values we were taught said that wealth does not come from possessions or money, but a good education and how it is applied.

My grandparents inspired me a lot as well. My grandfather, Babasaheb Soman, was from the Belgaum-Khanapur area. Despite being in the legal profession, he spent most of his time trying to convince his clients not to go to court, which in turn meant that he did not earn much money. My grandmother, on the other hand, came from Gwalior as a young second bride to Babasahed Soman. Her father was an ambassador to the court, so she came from palatial surroundings to my grandfather’s relatively humble home.  

Their stories were told a lot. I didn’t meet my grandfather –  he worked with Gandhi during Champaran, and died just before Independence. But his stories are alive in our family. My grandmother, who I did meet, showed me how to really live. Having gone from wealth to humble living, she decided to go into severe austerity for the last 20 years of her life by living in one single room. So it was quite a journey.

I met Nandan in December 1977, when he was at IIT and I was at Elphinstone College in Mumbai. At the time we were young and free and trying to be radical, and not thinking about wealth. Even 10 years into Infosys, nobody thought we would come into this kind of unprecedented wealth.

Law and the Power of Knowledge 

​​As a journalist you get to see people encountering the law, because you write their stories. I remember as a cub reporter, I had to report on a murder, for which I had to think about issues of justice, policing, and crime. I think as a reporter you are constantly doing stories that involve jurisprudence in some form, but otherwise journalists don’t really encounter the law. In fact, we’re quite privileged in that regard. A good example of this is when I was covering a protest against a dowry-related act of violence that had taken place. Some people had killed a woman, so we were outside that house, and I had my camera and my notebook with me. When the police came, all those people got arrested, but I didn’t because I was also reporting. Which is to say, when you’re reporting, it’s a very different privilege.

Later, when I went to see how a high court functions, I was quite appalled because nobody could hear the judge. The audio system was poor and the crowd was too big, there was so much confusion. I saw a lot of people outside. One fellow was actually crying when I was talking to him, saying, “This is the 30th time I’ve come, and my case has been adjourned. My life is falling apart”. It really bothered me that something as simple as decent and competent access to a court is not a reality for most people. 

So I’ve always been interested, both as a journalist and writer and because my grandfather was also in the legal profession, about the issues of law in society. How does the law interface with society? Who learns from whom? It’s a two-way conversation, but often not discussed enough in the public domain. It seems to be hiding behind black robes sometimes, but it should be out in the public domain because law is about society. And so those issues are really important to put out into many languages, into casual conversations on the streets and in our homes, and that’s what made me suggest the idea of a portal that makes the law easy to understand for ordinary people. 

We still need to find ways to make lawmaking more transparent. In this, civil society plays a big role. I think we are also to blame as voters. I’ve said this before – we don’t realize that lawmaking is a very critical function of the legislators we elect and then expect to solve our personal problems individually. If we also took the time to understand that making good laws is a significant part of the work that legislators must do, then they can have a conversation with us to say, “Okay we are thinking of such a law, do you even have an opinion on it, then we can represent you when those laws are being framed.” I think that needs to start happening and it’s a two-way conversation, we must use our legislators. We can have civil-society organizations step in, so there is a much broader democratic consultation before laws are made.  

There is also an issue with the regulation of laws. There is no law that says, for example, that people can go and dump effluents in Vrishabhavathi river in Bangalore. Nothing allows you to do that. But people wait for everybody else to be asleep and go and do it. So, how many policemen, how many people do we need to watch over other people’s bad intent from being practiced? We need our governance institutions to step up and say, “Look, this pollution is going to affect all of us together.” So, we definitely have deficits of governance and regulation. We have deficits in terms of how laws are framed. And this is a wonderful time for more people to get involved with these issues of law and society and do all they can to improve the discourse, at least. Everyone can be a part of that and reduce some of the polarization in thinking. How can we do much more preventive work like mediation outside the courts? How can we think of ways where people can do much more peacemaking and prevention before things even reach the courts? So, I think there’s a role for a lot of people to get engaged with these questions.

We need to give first-time legislators a primer on how to go ahead with lawmaking. The work that PRS Legislative Research and Vidhi Center for Legal Policy are doing are good examples. Vidhi is trying to help legislators and parliamentary committees make laws that are more clear, contemporary, and within the frame of the constitution. PRS Legislative Research, on the other hand, is helping legislators and parliamentarians understand what laws are on the table, how to make better votes happen around them, and how to have better debates. 

Finally, when it comes to the judicial academy, it should be similar to medical education where you have continuing education to retain your license to practice. Given that change is happening at a dizzying speed, especially because of technology, this is the right time for it, because otherwise how are judges supposed to keep up? 

Gender is a Cross-Cutting Theme 

I’m not a career woman in the conventional sense of the term. As a journalist I only worked for a few years, after which I did a lot of freelancing. I gave up my job when my daughter was born because I found it hard to juggle both. But I was in a privileged position to be able to do so, and to take six years off from work to dedicate to my children because Nandan was very busy at the time. Additionally, my profession allowed me to write articles and do simple things on the side, so I was able to take advantage of that.

In that way, I did have the struggles that other working women have. All the things that women have to balance can be very tough. The demands keep changing and you have to make many sacrifices, because it is impossible to do it all, no matter what people say. Something has to give. If you’re lucky, you have a support system around you. Which is why it is so necessary that we work with men and boys, so that we can enable them to become the support system that women need. 

In my three decades of work so far, what I’ve seen is that no matter which area you work in, gender is a cross-cutting theme. Take water, which is an area I have worked on for 15 years now – the burden of water is on women at a household level, and in that way gender is an important part of our work in water, though we do not necessarily call it out. 

At a macro level, as a writer and a reader, when you are looking at what’s happening around us and trying to unpack things, you begin to think about the other side. In this case, that is thinking about who a woman is dealing with – she is dealing with a man on the street, or her husband, or her father, or her son, or somebody who has a different way of looking at women’s empowerment perhaps than she does. That makes her choices very complicated.  

Having thought of this I then began to look at young men, and asked myself where do all these things spring from? What is the root of patriarchal thinking? What do young males think when they are 13 and their hormones are raging? 

It was this line of questioning that made me look at what work was being done in this area, to try to support more of it, and create a whole portfolio across India where young men can safely examine their masculinity and come to terms with who they are. This is very necessary if we want women’s empowerment.

The Need for Collaboration 

In terms of collaboration, there are two kinds of models that we can look at. The first is between philanthropists, and the time has come when philanthropists globally are recognising the need to work together. This is an important point in the journey of The Giving Pledge where if we look at the difference between how much has been promised versus how much has been given, there is a huge gap. People don’t necessarily know how to give money, it’s not so easy. There are many intermediary organizations that are also helping bigger philanthropists, bigger foundations to connect with smaller first time donors. And there are many, many more open spaces for that sharing and discovery. So this is actually a very great time for that. 

In this context, there is a need for all of us to learn from those who have given better and given more. Thankfully, there are many intermediary organizations that are helping the bigger philanthropists and foundations connect with smaller first-time donors. Additionally, there are many open spaces for that sharing and discovery. It’s a great time for cross-learning in the space of philanthropy. 

The second kind of collaboration is between philanthropists and the government. Here, it is especially important to note that the money that even a philanthropist like Bill Gates has is nothing compared to what the government has. However, what philanthropists or people who want to invest in social change do possess is the ability to take some risks with their capital. They can say, “Let’s just try something. And if it fails then we’ll try something else.” This is not a luxury the government has. 

Indian governments, whether at the center, state, Panchayat, or even the municipality level – are usually open to suggestions. From there, it is a journey of co-creation between the government body and the philanthropist. The government body will have ideas, because they have budgets, schemes, or programmes, and as a philanthropist you have to fit into all of that. But you do get the space to innovate and that’s the important thing. 

Take Arghyam as an example. Approximately 10-15 years ago, there were marvelous institutions doing work on groundwater, at a time when there were no groundwater laws. Arghyam, in collaboration with these civil society organizations, came up with something called Participatory Groundwater Management which is now a cornerstone of all government policy on water. Which is to say that it is possible to find space and opportunity to work very well with the government. 

On Successes and Learnings 

When I think about my success, the first success that comes to mind is Pratham books which I co-founded in 2004. When we set it up in Bangalore, our goal was to get a book in every child’s hand. I stayed there for 10 years, and the next team came in and took it on. Over the years, millions of children have been able to get books in their own language, get them free or at very affordable prices, access them across the country, and soon all across the globe, thanks to the Creative Commons platform we created. I think that I consider it a genuine success. 

If we are considering the future of citizens as lawmakers and law abiders, it is especially important to ensure that children learn better. To this end, I have worked with two kinds of organizations. With EkStep, our mission is to increase access to learning opportunities for 200 million children by next year. I think we are on track to do that because we are working very closely with all the governments – approximately 28 or 30 states now want to develop a platform for getting teachers to teach better and access resources. EkStep does not create content. Instead, it supports the whole content creation ecosystem. In that sense, we do not decide what needs to be taught, but we focus on ensuring that whatever is being taught is being taught better, be it in terms of access, ability to discover, or ability to share. In essence, it is a technology enabled platform. 

On the other hand, organizations like Akshara Foundation, which I have been involved with deeply, looked at the importance of teaching values, what the atmosphere in a classroom should be like, and what the relationship between children and teachers should be. Together, I think we are able to engage with different parts of the system. The present is a great time for us to really engage with the whole school system so that children are more curious and connected to issues of future citizenship. 

The other success that comes to mind is Arghyam, where we’ve made some serious inroads in policy when it comes to water. We’ve been able to support dozens of organizations that have been working on the ground for decades. The government has already come out with two massive schemes in water, the thinking for which came from some of Arghyam’s partners. These policies in turn impact millions of people across the country. 

A learning experience that stands out for me was with an organization called Nagarik. I had just lost a very dear friend in a ghastly accident and so we set up this organization for road safety in 1992. We were spectacularly unsuccessful. Though there were amazing people like Sivakumar and Kiran Mazumdar and Jagdish Raja involved, we just didn’t know what to do. We were perhaps a little ahead of our time and we were doing the wrong things and under-investing, and so it did not work. But it taught me that just passion and unstructured use of your time is not going to make any change possible. Knowing what I do today, I would do Nagarik very differently. But that is how we learn – by failing.