A couple weeks ago at an internal strategy meeting at Madura we were talking about the connotations of the word ‘transformation’. Transformation meant change that was dramatic and rapid, not slow and gradual. To transform, we agreed, required taking bold risks, a leap of faith. How do we say this in Tamil? I asked. We work largely in the South Indian State of Tamil Nadu and the room had at least 25 native Tamil speakers. There was a moment of silence and then arguments erupted, online dictionaries were consulted. There was no equivalent word in Tamil for transformation. No equivalent word for risk. No comparable idiom to a leap of faith. It took several sentences to explain each word.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Evaluating Social Impact
(As posted on YourStory.in)
For people engaged in the social entrepreneurship space, one of the most difficult questions is how to measure the positive social impact you make. How do you know you’re doing net social good?
What we typically do is assume that our product has intrinsic positive social value and so simply measure how many people have used our product or service. Then we make grand statements like ‘We have positively touched a million lives’. For some products this might be all it takes. Take d.light, for instance, a solar alternative to kerosene lamps that is cheaper, brighter and healthier. A simple count of product sales would be a pretty good indicator. For many other products and services though it is far more ambiguous. Microfinance, pharmaceuticals, health services, education. All of these have great potential for good but also for abuse, misuse or mistakes. Each instance of use is not always a net positive; a borrower who drinks away a loan, a person who commits suicide with an overdose of painkiler, a person who gets wrong medical advice resulting in a worsening of their condition. In some cases, the net positive impact is highly debated. Are people really better off if they took a loan? If they underwent a particular treatment? Took a particular course?
For people engaged in the social entrepreneurship space, one of the most difficult questions is how to measure the positive social impact you make. How do you know you’re doing net social good?
What we typically do is assume that our product has intrinsic positive social value and so simply measure how many people have used our product or service. Then we make grand statements like ‘We have positively touched a million lives’. For some products this might be all it takes. Take d.light, for instance, a solar alternative to kerosene lamps that is cheaper, brighter and healthier. A simple count of product sales would be a pretty good indicator. For many other products and services though it is far more ambiguous. Microfinance, pharmaceuticals, health services, education. All of these have great potential for good but also for abuse, misuse or mistakes. Each instance of use is not always a net positive; a borrower who drinks away a loan, a person who commits suicide with an overdose of painkiler, a person who gets wrong medical advice resulting in a worsening of their condition. In some cases, the net positive impact is highly debated. Are people really better off if they took a loan? If they underwent a particular treatment? Took a particular course?
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Social Entrepreneurship? Really?
(As on YourStory.in)
Social Entrepreneurship is the new buzz word in India and marks a shift in thinking away from non-profit models to market based solutions that can operate at large scale and therefore create social value more systemically.
But what puts the ‘social’ in social entrepreneurship? We all have a notion that it means starting a business that does good for less fortunate folk. So we commonly think of a social entrepreneur as someone who is addressing a low income market with a product that can raise standard of living, either by providing greater opportunity or convenience. However, as I have discovered over the past five years, simply product and market are not sufficient.
Social Entrepreneurship is the new buzz word in India and marks a shift in thinking away from non-profit models to market based solutions that can operate at large scale and therefore create social value more systemically.
But what puts the ‘social’ in social entrepreneurship? We all have a notion that it means starting a business that does good for less fortunate folk. So we commonly think of a social entrepreneur as someone who is addressing a low income market with a product that can raise standard of living, either by providing greater opportunity or convenience. However, as I have discovered over the past five years, simply product and market are not sufficient.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Caps, Drugs and Microfinance
(as posted on YourStory.in)
Of all the arguments I have heard in support of rapidly scaling microfinance the one I have heard the most is that there is huge demand for money among the poor. Of course there is huge demand. The less you have of it, the more desperately you need it – to tide over the pain and struggle of every day. The next meal, school fees, doctor fees, a pair of shoes, a movie to escape from reality, a drink or two to forget. It’s a painkiller.
When you’re in severe pain, you need a painkiller. What you care about is relieving the pain now. Today. When you are in desperate need of money you don’t have, and it is dangled in front of you, you will take it. But painkillers are insidious.
Of all the arguments I have heard in support of rapidly scaling microfinance the one I have heard the most is that there is huge demand for money among the poor. Of course there is huge demand. The less you have of it, the more desperately you need it – to tide over the pain and struggle of every day. The next meal, school fees, doctor fees, a pair of shoes, a movie to escape from reality, a drink or two to forget. It’s a painkiller.
When you’re in severe pain, you need a painkiller. What you care about is relieving the pain now. Today. When you are in desperate need of money you don’t have, and it is dangled in front of you, you will take it. But painkillers are insidious.
Monday, January 17, 2011
A Culture of Progress?
(As posted on YourStory.in, adapted from my earlier post 'Culture and Progress')
As I write this column Pongal is being celebrated with fervour around Chennai. Pongal is a giving of thanks for the harvest, a celebration of the cow and a renewal of hope. For most of India this is not an abstract symbolism of a bygone way of life but anchored in a day to day reality. Yet I wonder about the joy of Pongal when crop yields are among the lowest in the world, our milk yields lag most Asian countries and farmer suicides are constantly in the news.
Where does the hope come from? On the first day of Pongal – Bhogi Pongal - it comes from worshiping Indira in the hope that it will bring good rains in the next year. The second day it comes from the worship of Surya for an abundance of crop and the third day is a dedication to the cow that gives so much of itself. And then of course let’s not forget the hope of the free Pongal bags and bonuses given out by the State government. After thousands of years of these prayers, and decades of government freebies, it appears to me that altogether this strategy is just not working.
As I write this column Pongal is being celebrated with fervour around Chennai. Pongal is a giving of thanks for the harvest, a celebration of the cow and a renewal of hope. For most of India this is not an abstract symbolism of a bygone way of life but anchored in a day to day reality. Yet I wonder about the joy of Pongal when crop yields are among the lowest in the world, our milk yields lag most Asian countries and farmer suicides are constantly in the news.
Where does the hope come from? On the first day of Pongal – Bhogi Pongal - it comes from worshiping Indira in the hope that it will bring good rains in the next year. The second day it comes from the worship of Surya for an abundance of crop and the third day is a dedication to the cow that gives so much of itself. And then of course let’s not forget the hope of the free Pongal bags and bonuses given out by the State government. After thousands of years of these prayers, and decades of government freebies, it appears to me that altogether this strategy is just not working.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Go on. Innovate!
(as posted at YourStory.in)
You’d think that with almost a billion people out there in the rural areas that there would be amazing innovations to be found there every day. But there aren’t. Search as we might innovation is hard to come by. Implicit in the definition of innovation is change, but the village ethos is about tradition. It’s about holding on to age old practices. Walk into a village and life looks almost the way it did hundreds of years ago. In my column last week I talked about celebrating human innovation. Why is there so little of it? Take a look at what India looks like from the sky, ask people a few questions and the answer is quite obvious really.
You’d think that with almost a billion people out there in the rural areas that there would be amazing innovations to be found there every day. But there aren’t. Search as we might innovation is hard to come by. Implicit in the definition of innovation is change, but the village ethos is about tradition. It’s about holding on to age old practices. Walk into a village and life looks almost the way it did hundreds of years ago. In my column last week I talked about celebrating human innovation. Why is there so little of it? Take a look at what India looks like from the sky, ask people a few questions and the answer is quite obvious really.
Monday, January 3, 2011
The Decade of the Cow
According to the microfinance calendar, the last ten years were the decade of the cow. We celebrated the cow as the path out of poverty. At Madura we even benchmarked the loan amount to the cost of a cow. What good is a loan if it’s not even enough to buy a cow? And so over the last decade the microfinance industry has supported the purchase of millions of cows across the country. Millions of scrawny cows with poor yield it turns out; a hallmark of the inefficiency of microenterprise. I for one am glad to be past the decade of the cow and am excited and hopeful that this decade we will do away with celebrating cows - and pigs and goats and chickens and antiquated sewing machines and cottage industries - and celebrate instead the human being and its capacity for extraordinary innovation.
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