National Conference on Social Innovation (NCSI) 2017
17/11/2017
This year’s conference continued with the Urban, Tribal, and Rural while featuring several new innovation at the same time. This year saw us working even more closely with innovators to help them scale up and trying to provide a closer fit with various funding sources and requirements. The programme grew to 5 new states, received almost double the applications of the last year, saw 35+ leading CSR departments, impact investor participate in the day-long conference.
For the innovators, the programme continued to Day 2, where they were given sessions on benefitting from CSR, on legal aspects of Social Enterprises, and the importance of book-keeping and quantitative data.
Launch of Mentor Programme
The gains of Day 2, were consolidated with the launch of a legal, tax and audit helpline that is be free to innovators. A Pune-based law firm that specialises in social enterprise structures has provided its services at a subsidised rate for this initiative. Simultaneously, mentorship programme, anchored by voluntary efforts of PIC members also started and of the 17 innovators who presented, 10 are part of this programme and are receiving mentorship, advice, and support to help them evolve, and grow.
Prof. Gupta’s book ‘Grassroots Innovation: Minds on the Margin are Not Marginal Minds’ was formally released in the programme. Prof. Gupta talked about the importance of nurturing an eco-system that supports women innovators.
He talked about the ability of women to convert their action into reflection as they have the biggest pool of traditional knowledge and wisdom, which can be a solid foundation for many social innovations.
You may view the photos and video of the lecture on the below links:
Shri Jayant Sinha is the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, a Member of Indian Parliament and formerly the Minister of State for Finance. Since he took charge as the Minister on 6th July 2016, the Aviation sector saw a strong growth of 20% per year.
Mr. Sinha has also been an investment fund manager and has been associated with various firms in India and abroad which include Omidyar Network, Courage Capital. His prior business experience also includes 12 years with McKinsey & Company as a partner in the Boston and Delhi offices.
Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar, Padma Vibhushan is the President of PIC and a globally renowned scientist. Also known as the Dangerous Optimist, he has transformed the world’s largest chain of laboratories – CSIR, pioneered ‘Gandhian Engineering – More from less for more people’, has been honored with 36 doctorates, and is on the board of leading Indian companies.
Inspired by the book – ‘Reinventing India’ authored by Dr. Mashelkar, PIC started a lecture series back in 2011 under its umbrella.
The lecture by Shri Jayant Sinha is an addition to this series.
Social Innovation Forum lecture by Ms. Nileema Mishra
09/06/2017
A lecture by Ms. Nileema Mishra was organised on the topic ‘Scaling-Up Social Enterprise’. Nileema Mishra is a social worker from Maharashtra and the Ramon Magsaysay Award winner for Emergent Leadership in 2011. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2013 for her social work.
The Programme was chaired by Mr. Prakash Apte, Chairman Sygenta India Ltd. and the Q & A session was facilitated by Mr. Pradeep Lokhande. Ms. Mishra spoke about her own journey and the driving force behind her work, the challenges faced and how aspiring innovators can take those challenges head-on. She also shared her views on ‘scaling-up’ of social enterprise and spoke at length on the rationale behind scaling-up.
Social Innovation Forum Inaugural Lecture by Mr. Anshu Gupta
20/03/2017
PIC, in collaboration with the Venture Center, Janwani, BHAU Institute, Mahratta Chambers of Commerce (MCCIA) and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Park (STEP), launched the Social Innovation Forum (SIF) on 20th March 2017. The inaugural lecture was delivered by Mr. Anshu Gupta, Founder of the NGO, Goonj and the programme was chaired by Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar.
Set under the massive canopy of the ancient Bodhi Tree at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE), the SIF came alive with beautiful lighting and the cheerful presence of the crowd. Mr. Gupta began his talk by introducing the audience to Goonj and the work done by the organisation. Established in 1999, Goonj has been working relentlessly to promote development through clothing in about 22 states of India. The organisation has 12 offices, around 600 workers and they deal with approximately 3000 tonnes of material every year. Logistics form the backbone of Goonj.
Addressing a common myth about Goonj, he clarified that Goonj is not about collecting clothes and distributing them to the poor, but rather about engaging the poor as labour and providing them clothes in return. When a disaster occurs, human storage capacity is directly affected and we are left without any extra clothing. More people die due to a lack of clothing in winter, than due to a natural calamity. In spite of this, lack of clothing has never been considered as an ‘issue’ and it is the dismissal of such real issues as “non-issues” that has hampered our development consistently.
Mr. Gupta questioned the definition and rationale of development work. “If development is a scale of 0 to 10, then 0 stands for the most basic things such as food, 3 square meals a day and perhaps primary education until the 5th grade”, he said. He pointed out that there are people working on a segment of the population that falls in the minus category, wherein bringing them to zero would mean survival and not development or progress. “On landing at Mumbai or Bangalore airport, if we feel we have arrived as a nation, then there is something fundamentally wrong in our thinking”, he opined.
Mr. Gupta focused on the difference between charity and development. Charity and development have an inversely proportional ratio. Charity is not a sustainable solution and must therefore be eliminated from our society. A society that engages in charity will never develop or progress.
There exist today a lot of models for development and scale-up and we often debate on which is better. “An ‘either-or’ model is not what this country needs though”, said Mr. Gupta. If we want to work on a massive scale, then we must be able to see through the lens of the people for whom we want to work and use their wisdom and skills to solve their problems. Efforts must be collaborative and our benchmarking as a nation must really improve.
The National Conference on Social Innovation (NCSI)-2016 Report was then released by Mr. Gupta and Dr. Mashelkar. Mr. Krishna Thiruvengadam, an Innovator who made a presentation at the NCSI-2016 also shared his story with the audience and thanked the organisations for supporting him. In his concluding remarks, Dr. Mashelkar said that India has a lot of potential energy and it must now be translated into kinetic energy. Speed, scale and sustainability are the challenges for India and we must face them head-on.
Over the last few decades, the world of sports has seen tremendous transformations globally and especially in India. Based on this backdrop Mr. Sundar Raman, former COO of IPL and CEO of Reliance Sports talked about the opportunities and challenges of Sports in India, on 17th March 2017. The Programme was chaired by Dr. Vijay Kelkar. The programme opened with an interesting quiz, conducted by Mr. Harish Kumar of ‘Choose to Thinq’ and the audience participated enthusiastically.
Mr. Raman began his talk by using the example of Jamaica, a country not bigger than Pune City, but which has won 33 gold medals in the last 3 years. “It doesn’t matter how big a nation you are from, how rich or poor you are, what matters is how big your ambition is”, said Mr. Raman
The size of the world sports industry is 600 billion dollars and India is a 6.5 billion industry. The challenge is to harness the power of the 1.25 billion people. 50% of India’s population is 24 years old or below and Mr. Raman emphasised that we have the highest base of commercialization in terms of opportunity. Conducting a revenue comparison between other countries and India, he mentioned that India is still just about scratching the surface. “So what can we do?” he inquired.
Mr. Raman recommended that we begin with focusing on improving our governance and infrastructure for Sports. A PPP model should be adopted, CSRs of companies must be encouraged to support sports initiatives, laws should be created to support athletes and federations should be equipped for commercialization. The longest impact is possible only if we start building a culture for sports, even at the grassroot level.
Elite athlete support must also be provided consistently over a period of time to players and athletes. Identifying focus sports, is an aspect he threw much light upon. Citing the example of the UK as a country that excels in ‘seated’ sports such as rowing, cycling, equestrian, etc. he revealed the prudent strategy adopted by the UK to focus on ‘seated sports’ and how their National Lottery helped fund their endeavours.
The Best in class facilities must also be extended to athletes and we must enable them to participate in international tournaments. Speaking about the Indian Premier League (IPL), Mr. Raman elaborated on how the IPL brought in a wave of pro leagues for other sports in India. The Indian Super League (ISL) for instance, was the third highest attended football league globally, just behind the Bundesliga and the Premier League. The unique achievement of the IPL was the creation of a unified sporting entity, wherein people rivaled with each other based on the team they were supporting but at the same time, they came together for the sport.
Mr. Raman further talked about the sacrifices made by players to attain their goals and how logistical hindrances often dictate the fate of such dreams. Lastly, he highlighted Khelo India, Mission eleven Million and the efforts of the Reliance Foundation to promote Sports and change its landscape in the country.
Book Launch of “When Crime Pays: Money & Muscle in Indian Politics”
16/02/2017
On 16th February, Dr. Milan Vaishnav’s book When Crime Pays: Money & Muscle in Indian Politics was launched at Yashada, Pune and the programme was chaired by eminent professor and political commentator Dr. Suhas Palshikar.
Dr. Vaishnav began by giving the audience a flavor of the book. Displaying a map of India broken into its 543 parliamentary constituencies, he revealed that roughly one-third of MPs face at least one on-going case and one-fifth are named in a serious case such as extortion or murder. Narrating the case of Pappu Yadav, a politician from Bihar with a significant criminal history and considerable time spent behind bars, he then explained the dynamics of voting as a process and the psyche of the voters.
Dr. Vaishnav mentioned that the book is about understanding a central paradox – how can the nexus between crime and politics survive and indeed, thrive, in a democracy? “Politics functions a bit like the market, in that there is a supply and a demand”, he said. The research for the book was conducted by triangulating data from the 70,000 affidavits submitted by MLA and MP candidates from 2003 to 2014, the qualitative field work and the surveys.
Throwing light on the motivations of parties behind absorbing such criminals, he mentioned that money has a large role to play in it. As the costs of elections have exploded, parties have started favoring self-financing candidates. Criminal candidates have deep pockets and are hence capable of covering their own campaign costs, making them a very lucrative choice for parties. They also have access to resources and the incentives to deploy them.
In certain contexts in India, criminality actually signals the ability to ‘get things done’. Statistically speaking, a candidate with one case against him/her has a 22% chance of winning, as compared to the 7% chance of a candidate with no case. The public attaches much credibility to criminality as they feel the criminals can protect their interests through redistribution of benefits, coercion of law and order, enforcement of social insurance and quick dispute resolution. Dr. Vaishnav emphasised that voters should not be underestimated and transparency is hence of paramount importance.
In his concluding remarks, Prof. Palshikar spoke of the difference between the politics of 1980s and the politics of current times – earlier politicians used to take help from criminals and now criminals themselves have become politicians. He highlighted the role of money in politics by talking about the transformation of party workers to paid campaign workers and stated that democracy is ‘messy’ in its very essence and India is not the only democracy to portray that quality.
