We were happy to have teamed up as a media partner with Professor Madhukar Shukla and XLRI Jamshedpur for their 2nd National Working Conference on Social Entrepreneurship. Vikram Balakrishna of Sattva, a new social enterprise in the business of creating and sharing knowledge aimed at social development through research, media, and consulting, shares his thoughts on the conference.
There is plenty of activity in the Indian developmental sector – but many individuals and organizations are operating in silos. The 2nd National Working Conference on Social Entrepreneurship at XLRI in Jamshedpur, India enabled people working towards a common theme to get out of the flat, panel-centric model and into working groups to truly dissect issues. Professor Madhukar Shukla and his team deserve thanks for conceptualizing and successfully executing a “thinking man’s conference,” which encouraged intensive discussion and the sharing of stories in order to create collaborative solutions.
The working groups focused on employment and livelihood, grassroots innovations, financial inclusion, education, market linkages, health and hygiene, and access to technology. In the session on grassroots innovation, focused on rural entrepreneurship, the discussion gave rise to a concrete (and very interesting) definition of a “grassroot entrepreneur” – one who can identify the gap in the existing system and bridge the gap with innovative ideas that will add value to society by leveraging the many available skill sets in rural areas. Why was this particularly interesting? This definition, which was so close to the existing definition, arose through the collective thinking of conference participants, many of whom had no experience in the field. Seems they were headed in the right direction!
A few examples of successful grassroots entrepreneurs in attendance were:
Pradan: Their Tussar silk project and broiler poultry farming work are demonstrations of the power of persistence. Tussar is a variety of a wild silkworm and is only partly domesticated. It is largely reared in the forest areas of Bihar and Jharkhand. Pradan has supported Tussar silkworm rearing through trainings and innovations, for example, providing improved measures to promote Disease Free Laying (DFL) of these worms.
Desicrew: This commendable rural outsourcing project is an example and proof that the capability of villagers is not to be underestimated. Desicrew has reached out to rural areas and trained under employed people in data entry, data validation, GIS based mapping services, and other localization services. Thereby, they are preventing migration from rural areas, and, in fact, they are seeing increased reverse migration back to rural areas.
Kalamandir: This organization’s initiatives with the tribals in Jharkhand to support, nurture, and disseminate a finer aesthetic sense among individuals, communities, organizations, and social groups serves as a bridge between the producers and the consumers.
Nidan: They have been successful in creating cooperatives amongst hawkers, vendors, home-based workers, and manual laborers to name a few. Some of these have made such a significant impact that Nidan has been able to establish a profit-making organization run by rag pickers who have grown to be part of their management team as well.
There are so many unsung models, like these, in India.
It was also encouraging to learn that the government is playing an integral role in encouraging rural entrepreneurship. The participation of villagers in government projects has drawn the attention of officials and various departments have been established to nurture rural entrepreneurship. The Department of Science and Technology, through their National Innovation Foundation that was set up in 2000, and the National Agency for Grassroots Innovations both have numerous offerings for the development of technopreneurs and have laid out several schemes for inclusive development.
Over the course of the conference, two successful models for spurring rural entrepreneurship became visible. In the first case, multiple grassroots entrepreneurs can emerge out of a single large entrepreneur. In the second case, an entrepreneur can spur development by emphasizing training, mentoring, and disseminating information. Now, it is time to access and identify specific capabilities and a plethora of unique skills to generate large scale employment opportunities.
