Dr. Aditya Dev Sood, Chairman of the new Adianta School for Leadership, does not mince his words when speaking about the education system in India. “We have a situation where everyone knows the system is dysfunctional – yet there is an unreasonable attachment to the system! No one wants to shout out that the emperor has no clothes.”

The Indian school system is well known for its adherence to rote-learning techniques and an exam-based system. This might produce teenagers who can rapidly compute startlingly large sums in their head – but it does not encourage an “innovation society.” Standardized textbooks do not provide room for students to ask “why,” and creative expression often takes a back seat to recitation. In any context, the Adianta School would be novel, but in India, it is nothing short of revolutionary.

The Adianta School for Leadership, located in New Delhi, has designed its curriculum around the three pillars: Innovate, Build, Lead. Each pillar is divided into three categories, creating a 9-unit grid that integrates theory and practicality. The structure of the classes grew organically out of Dr. Sood’s experience with his consulting company, and the immediate, on-the-job training given to new recruits. In these classes, students not only learn the basics of business – how to conduct market research or implement growth strategies – they are immediately exposed to the lifestyle of an entrepreneur through project-based learning. The idea is not to eliminate lectures and seminars, but to drastically reduce the amount of time students spend listening, and increase the amount of time they spend doing.

Students might find themselves tasked with reconstructing the Profit and Loss statement of a street entrepreneur in the informal market. They must speak with these individuals, learn where they sources materials come from, piece out their daily revenue, and work with them to construct this statement. In another class, students compete in teams as potential start-ups and venture capitalists, learning not only the specifics of these fields, but negotiation, as well. Students will also learn the necessity of innovation through ethnographic projects that require them to visit another section of society – rural villages and urban slums – and design, create, and test different prototypes to improve conditions in these areas.

Such projects force students to learn intangible (and crucial) skills such as time management and delegation. Teamwork and competitive cooperation are important learning tools; teachers are not “repositories of knowledge”, they are facilitators and mentors.

Conferences and internships are integrated into the curriculum and provide practical forums to present what they’ve learned and apply it. Adianta has built relationships with companies to ensure its students are able to transfer their classroom experience to the real world.

What is left to be seen is how Adianta can change the tone for education in India at large. For too long education has been thought of as something that happens to us, not something with which we can engage, alter, or experiment, and Adianta offers a new paradigm for learning. In a country with such steep inequalities in education, however, where so few children actually make it to college and beyond, the Adianta model needs to permeate throughout the system. As a formalized postgraduate program, the benefits of this innovative and groundbreaking approach will be enjoyed by a privileged few. It is absolutely crucial, however, for India to adopt these lessons and to regard creativity and innovation as important aspects of an education. Without this shift, India’s youth will not be able to compete with rapidly-changing, technology based markets, or the global entrepreneurs who drive them.

About the Author:

Originally from Boston, Alisha relocated to Mumbai after college to follow her passion for education and work for an NGO in the city. A graduate of Northwestern University, she holds a Bachelors of Science in Social Policy and Creative Writing. Although she loves Mumbai in all of its chaos, she is excited to be leaving soon to pursue a Masters from the London School of Economics.

The views expressed above are those of the author, and not necessarily representative of the views of the Mahindra Group.

Companies are increasingly realizing the importance of going green. The 2011 Carbon Disclosure Project report, prepared for 551 signatory institutional investors representing $71 trillion of assets, shows that the majority of US companies are taking climate change action, despite an absence of mandatory rule. In addition to a desire to be more socially responsible, companies now understand how being seen as green benefits their business.

• A study ”The Value of Green: The Effect of Environmental Rankings on Market Cap”  by N Blumenshine of Middlebury College concluded that “companies with high environmental rankings have higher market cap values than comparable companies with lower rankings”.
• Findings in Australia by Nielsen, the market research firm, found that 68%  of consumers are willing to pay more for products from companies who support worthy causes concerned with the environment
• According to an Ipsos Mori survey, 80% of respondents across 15 developed nations would prefer working for a company that “has a good reputation for environmental responsibility” – the figure was 81% in the U.S.
• A poll on green employment by MonsterTRAK.com, a job website, found that 92% would be more inclined to work for a company that is environmentally friendly.
• Cassandra Walsh, an HR coordinator at an IT company, and Adam Sulkowski, an assistant professor, analyzed 113 companies from the S&P 250 and concluded that ”Employees are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs if they work for a company that’s perceived to be environmentally friendly”.  A firm’s financial performance had no correlation with employee happiness levels, the researchers found.
• HSBC, which employs more than 300,000 staff worldwide, has been running a “climate champion” program since 2007. When HSBC staff were asked how they felt about working at the bank, Mr Thomas says the highest scoring item was the company’s sustainability work. (Financial Times, March 21, 2011)
• Gallup’s surveys suggest Indians are more worried about their environment than are people in rich countries (The Economist, Dec 17-30, 2011)

Reducing carbon emissions and shifting to cleaner technology are long-term and costly solutions. A simple, easy and effective way for a company to go green is to plant trees. Trees provide flowers, fruit, fodder and fuel to communities and living creatures, improve water catchment areas, offer shade to nomads and their livestock, prevent soil erosion and give shelter to birds and animals and benefit posterity while decarbonising the world.

Grow-Trees.com gives companies an easy way to go green by allowing them to plant trees with just a few clicks at Rs. 50 per tree. Each tree planted can be gifted out to a recipient through a tree-dedication certificate. Companies are planting trees to celebrate employee birthdays and anniversaries, to honour new and loyal customers, to honour speakers, to recognize dealers and distributors, for new Facebook fans, as part of CSR or to offset emissions.

Grow-Trees has planted over 406,000 trees on public and community lands across India. Over 130 companies such as Thomas Cook, SBI Life Insurance, Panasonic, DHL, Nokia, Franklin Templeton, Kotak Credit Cards and Mahindra Reva have planted trees through Grow-Trees.  Allowing companies to satisfy a private purpose while doing social good by planting trees is a novel way to increase the green cover of the world.

About the Author:

Karan Shah is the co-founder and managing director of grow-trees.com, a social initiative that allows individuals and companies to plant trees to celebrate birthdays, festivals, anniversaries or special occasions.

Karan graduated from Haverford College, USA in 2009 with a BA in Economics. In college, he had co-founded an advertising business that won that won several business plan competitions. He is a keen cricket and squash player and is passionate about Indian politics.

The views expressed above are those of the author, and not necessarily representative of the views of the Mahindra Group.

Radha Utnoor, a 37-year old cook and domestic helper goes to five different homes in Girgaum. A single mother of two, the lady is uneducated and was forced to marry when she was 16. She has often said she feels angry that her parents didn’t let her finish schooling and arranged her marriage very early to a man whom she didn’t know. Radha says her mother’s defence is that they were too poor to take on the burden of three growing girls.

After marriage, Radha moved into an 8-foot room, at a row house in the prime area of Mumbai city, opposite Charni Road station. This line of row houses is just outside Hinduja College, a daily inspiration for Radha to send her children there. Like most migrant labourers, Radha took to the easiest job that she knew—to cook, wash vessels and clean a house—as a domestic worker.

As soon as she got two children, she had resolved to send her children to English medium schools but her family wasn’t in favour. Radha’s estranged husband was, in fact, dead against educating the children. Her husband felt that educating his children was a waste and wanted them to begin work. Radha bravely fought to enrol them in English schools.

Like Radha, there are scores of domestic helpers, cooks and menial paid workers who believe that English education is the tool for progress and betterment. According to Maharashtra government statistics, there are 30 lakh domestic workers the state. There are more than 11,300 domestic workers registered with some union or organisation.  Ghar Kamgar Molkarni Sanghatana leader, Babli, corroborates the fact that domestic workers prefer to enrol their children in English medium schools rather than in Marathi or Hindi schools.

Babli says that over 60 percent of children of domestic workers have been enrolled in English medium schools. Though not many first generation learners pursue higher studies, these families still have a strong belief that English will help their children get better jobs than washing vessels. Babli, on the other hand, believes that this is just the marketing of neo-capitalism.  But apart from aspirations, which all have, the fact that companies prefer English-speaking workers is clearly reflected in the better job profile, higher salary category and better career mobility of these candidates.

Even though parents are unable to teach English at home or even understand it, parents like Radha have stood by their belief. Just because they were deprived of a good education, are their children bound to the same fate? Convent schools play a large role in ensuring this is not the case, promoting a mission of equality and fairness in society.  The fact that many children of domestic workers are enrolled in convent schools seems to be helping.

It is still not easy for domestic workers. Since their children are first generation learners, not all of them live in conducive learning environments. Many women face abuse and often, this violence is endured by children as well. The unions and schools, especially convents, are working to address this issue through constant interaction with parents and by giving special attention to the children.

Domestic workers incur more expenses as they need to hire tuition teachers, but in Mumbai especially, domestic workers are helped by their employers, according to labour unions. Working in good homes obviously helps the workers to aspire for a better life for their children, inculcating the belief that speaking English opens many doors.

One would tend to believe that eventually there will be a time when there won’t be workers doing menial jobs. However, Anjali Kanitkar, Associate Professor at College of Social Work says that will take many more years. There will always be a turnover of domestic workers, as many migrate to cities for a better living. According to the unions in this sector, every month they get enrolments in double digits. There are still immense disparities in India and a formal education, as it is, doesn’t seem yet to be an adequate equalizer.

About the Author:
Neeta Kolhatkar

“My boarding school education had a lot of focus on sports and extra-curricular activities. Sports played a big role in shaping my character and help me deal with many problems and difficulties including the early demise of my father. Since then, sports has stayed with me throughout my life. Though never a real competitive sportsman, I played all sports whenever there was a chance and it helped me make friends, relieve stress, connect to colleagues and peers in a unique manner.”

Project K.H.E.L. (Kids Holistic Education and Life-skills) is among the few initiatives in India that use sports as a medium for empowerment. We caught up with Akshai Abraham, the Founder and Volunteer CEO of the organisation to know more about his idea and Project KHEL.

Project KHEL: The Model

KHEL is a synergistic mix of “Sports for Development” and “Life-skills Education” approaches. A unique program which helps children from disadvantaged backgrounds grow into responsible and contributing members of society.

We partner with organisations working with orphans, street children, slum children, village children, children in shelters and children of migrant and domestic labour. Working with these children does not mean a one-time or short duration interaction. We ensure that it is a bi-weekly interaction, over at least a 4 month period so that children get the full benefit of the programme.

The sessions are based on experiential and activity-based learning models where the children are encouraged to discover and express the learning from the session on their own through a discussion at the end of each session.

The sessions help children develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, build their sense of personal worth and agency, and teach them to interact with others constructively and effectively. In addition, we also conduct special thematic sessions on issues such as health, sanitation, substance abuse, personal hygiene, civic sense, and sexual abuse.

Project KHEL: The vision

Since July 2012, we have worked with over 400 children with 6 partner organisations in Lucknow and nearby villages. The vision is to expand operations across Uttar Pradesh (initially) moving into rural areas and then across India. This would give us a huge network of beneficiaries and KHEL can then become a platform for various development messages targeted for children and youth.

I believe in the power of collaboration and working with the strengths of others. Already, Project KHEL works with partners for its programme instead of duplicating efforts. After scaling the programme we would have a huge number of children enrolled and interacting with us regularly so if, for example, an organization wants to reach out to adolescent girls for awareness on personal hygiene – we would be able to provide that platform of target beneficiaries.

Project KHEL thus goes beyond sports to achieve goals in health, education, gender equality, child protection, vocational training and life skills.

Volunteering at Project KHEL

I have been a volunteer for varied causes and believe that it really adds value to one’s growth and life experiences. At KHEL, we have only 2 full time employees but several part-time and volunteer coordinators, coaches and founder members.

For a young organisation, we get quite a few requests for volunteering. An important part of KHEL is establishing a relationship between coordinators and children. Our volunteers are part of the KHEL family – they are featured on our website, we do events together, we go out for movies, meals etc.

As Franziska Litwinski (or Franky didi as she is fondly called by the children), a German student who volunteered with us for 5 months says “we shared moments of uncontrolled laughter, of long conversations, of comfortable silences, but also faced difficulties, misunderstandings, bad moods, uncertainty – only to make up again. I learnt a lot, especially crucial things about myself, mostly things I am yet to implement and work on.”

You can read our volunteer’s blog posts at projectkhel.com/blog.

Anyone looking for an extremely fun and fulfilling volunteering opportunity (just a few hours per week but long term commitment – at least 4-6 months) is most welcome. Our volunteers learn a lot about themselves while interacting with children in a totally fun manner.

Crowdfunding

As a start-up with less than one year of operations, we are constantly struggling for funds. However, in the absence of institutional funding, our work seems to speak for itself and we have a lot of support from individuals who identify with what we do. Crowdfunding is a concept which we have embraced not just as a medium to raise funds but also as a means to involve more people in our cause and make us accountable to them. We have also found that many think that their small contributions will not be enough, but in fact, people have donated amounts as small as Rs.100 or 200 and we are appreciative of all the small contributions as they all add up. At present, we are coming to the end of a campaign on an Indian crowdfunding platform (www.wishberry.in/Join-the-KHEL-15933). With just about 10 days left, we are hopeful to achieve our target as it is in the last few days of the campaign that people see their contributions making the gap between “amount raised” and “target” smaller.

If you are in Lucknow, we recommend you visit Project KHEL and the amazing work they are doing; but remotely you can also help by spreading awareness about their work; engaging on their facebook page and raising funds through their crowd-funding campaign at Wishberry. 

Akshai Abraham

Akshai is an MBA from the prestigious Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal. He has over 7 years of experience including 6 years in the social sector in the areas of research, program development, project management and organization building and also a year’s international experience as a cultural exchange intern in Austria. Akshai has also worked as a Consultant with AMS Consulting, where he was primarily involved with social sector studies commissioned by international agencies such as the World Bank, USAID, UNICEF, etc. and also with Aide-et-Action, an international NGO where he worked in fund-raising and education development programmes. A keen sportsman and enthusiast, and a committed non-profit professional, Akshai’s vision is to impact the lives of underprivileged children and youth of India through KHEL.

The views expressed above are those of the author, and not necessarily representative of the views of the Mahindra Group.

Usha Rajagopalan and the team at the Puttenhalli Neighborhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT) are passionate about protecting this public open space in their backyard in Bangalore and people know it.  Galvanizing the community is one of their strengths and this is exactly how they came to be recognized as Grand Finalists in last year’s Season 1 of Spark the Rise.  It makes us very proud to see the efforts of this dedicated team rewarded once again with the Namma Bengaluru Award.  Below is Usha’s narrative of the winning of the award.

In its fourth edition, with a record 61,000 nominations for nine categories in the prestigious Namma Bengaluru Award, 2012 (NBA) which recognizes the “unsung heroes; ordinary people who do extraordinary things so that the city can move forth in to the future” the odds of winning were stacked against everybody.

We had been shortlisted last year and the excitement continued this year as well. However, with a great deal of work yet to be done to make the lake ready for the monsoon, we tried not to think too much about the NBA. Our lake was in no condition to receive visitors but the organizers sent someone over to do a due diligence of PNLIT’s work. Before we could meet him, he had already quizzed the two groups of men who were working at the lake. One group was digging a trench for the diversion channel to harvest rain water from the road and another was enabling a system by which we could draw water from the lake for the plants. We chatted and he left without taking a single note. More work is the best way to stop worrying or thinking of things beyond our control.

We were not the only busy ones; the Namma Bengaluru Foundation was following their own timeline. The Award function was on 16th March and the countdown must have begun to sift through the 53 short listed nominees and make their final selection.

It was the Award Day at last and we reached the venue well in time.

Malleswaram ground. What did it look like normally? Certainly not as it looked that evening. Colouful pandal, lights, volunteers, music, stalls, vigilant policemen and people streaming inside. The next few hours were surreal. We simply didn’t know where to look! We saw the dancers, the VIPs entering, the huge stage brightly lit (with Raghu Dixit’s drums in silhouette), speed artist Vilas Nayak who won as much applause for hailing from Malleswaram as for his swift but dramatic creation of Kempe Gowda 1, bearing a shield and sword of “Bangarada Manushya” Dr. Raj Kumar.

The stage was set for announcing the winner in each category. Fellow trustees Nupur Jain and O.P. Ramaswamy sitting on either side of me were a study in contrast. Nupur was on the edge of the seat, clearly unable to control her tension. OPR was his usual calm and composed self. Beyond him sat Prasanna in deep conversation with PNLIT well wisher Jagadeesh Maiya who had come to cheer us just in case we won. Unable to join us in person, trustee Arathi Manay watched the webcast in Mumbai biting her nails perhaps! She had the presence of mind, however, to forward the link to the PNLIT e-group, several of whom watched the live streaming as well.

The winners in several categories had been announced. All individuals. What if we won? Would all of us go up to receive the award? What would we do afterwards? There were only 11 chairs for the winners on the dais. We have to give a speech? Oh, oh. Questions, mumbled answers, rising tension as the nominees in our category “Citizen Groups/NGO” were named.

Eleven names, the maximum in any category. Each one highly deserving of The Award. Who was going to be the lucky one? Show host Vasanthi Hariprakash invited a dignitary to announce the winner. We were far too tensed to remember his name but we needed to hear only the first word from his lips to cheer and jump from our seats! When we went up to the dais, it was in a daze, not hearing the applause, not seeing anyone but the Chief Guest, Professor G Venkatasubbaiah, all of 100 years, renowned Kannada lexicographer who handed over the trophy, replica of Kempe Gowda’s tower (which had marked the four boundaries of the city) and an envelope. A battery of photographers captured that moment, a milestone for PNLIT.

As Chairperson, I delivered a speech which was short but, after the really brief ones by earlier winners, I seemed to speak forever! I’d like to repeat the thought with which I concluded – A Big Thank you to the Environment Cell, BBMP and to each individual who helped us along the way. Their names are too many to be listed here but we are so grateful to them and to all our volunteers and donors who are helping us transform the lake and finally to our families for tolerating our madness, our obsession with lake restoration.
We relived the excitement the next morning with our volunteers who’d come to work at the lake. The award belongs as much to them as to PNLIT.

For a more objective account of the NBA award function, please visit:  http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/5021-bescom-md-p-manivannan-is-namma-bengalurean-of-the-year-namma-bengaluru-awards

About the Author: 

Usha Rajagopalan is a creative writer, translator by choice and lake activist by accident. She has authored four books in different genres and edited one non-fiction. She got into conservation after shifting to Bengaluru and seeing how lakes were misused and dying. Her Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust is the first citizens’ group in the city to officially maintain a lake with public participation. It has encouraged several resident groups across the city to follow suit and fight for their neighbourhood lake.

This article was originally published here.

The views expressed above are those of the author, and not necessarily representative of the views of the Mahindra Group.

Last year’s demonstrations in Chile and Colombia are a cause for major concern for their respective governments. At the center of the debate there is a very simple question for which there is not an easy answer: who is supposed to pay for the provision of education for the inhabitants of a country? The citizens themselves and their families, or the state? Is a direct subsidy to the students the best approach, or should institutions be subsidized in order to make education more affordable?

In both the Chilean and Colombian cases, there have been in somewhat different paths taken in matters related to the development of their respective higher-education systems, but both are experiencing similar situations in terms of strikes and public student demonstrations, which make not only their respective governments nervous but also those from neighboring countries.

In the case of Chile, massive liberalization of the higher-education system in recent years with limited public investment has led to impressive growth of the national higher-education infrastructure and to a significant increase in the number of Chileans having access to higher education (currently, 51 percent of college-age inhabitants), mostly due to the increased offerings by private institutions. In order to support such growth, the government has allowed higher-education institutions to charge high tuition and fees while establishing a public/private financial-aid mechanism in order to make education affordable to the majority of students. At the same time, the government kept a selective merit-based full tuition waiver scholarship for students having the highest scores in a national standardized admission test. In addition, the government maintained a subsidy scheme to a small group of public and private institutions who were members of the Council of Rectors (CRUCH for its acronym in Spanish).

Despite these efforts, growth in Chilean higher education has not been exempt from problems. A prominent issue that has emerged is that the great majority of Chileans having access to higher education finish their studies with significant debt, while the generous tuition-waiver scholarship tends to benefit students who come from better-off families who previously attended private high schools. In other words, it seems like taxpayer resources are used to subsidize those in less need, while the majority of Chileans assume a proportionally higher burden in order to pursue university studies. Finally, in recent years a variety of for-profit higher-education institutions have emerged. Although these institutions are properly accredited and offer an educational quality similar to other universities, they have become a natural target of demonstrators.

The Colombian case is somewhat different: a smaller and even more selective higher-education system has not grown at the same pace as the nation’s demographic trends, and every year there are about 600,000 students graduating high school out of which only a small portion advances to the higher-education system. Concerned with such a challenge, the government decided to embrace a major reform aimed at massively increasing the number of students in higher education from 37 percent to an ambitious 50 percent enrollment of college-age students by the year 2014. In order to finance such growth, the government of President Santos initially entertained the idea of allowing the presence of private, for-profit providers. However, due to pressure from different sectors concerned with the implications of privatization of higher education, the government decided to drop the idea from a proposed law being discussed by the national Congress.

For some sectors of our societies the answer is simple: education is a basic human right – therefore governments (and taxpayers) should bear the cost of the provision of higher education while offering it at minimum or no cost to students regardless of their socio-economic status. Also, many argue that admission policies should become more flexible and that massive public investment should be dedicated to finance infrastructure and operations in public higher-education institutions. On the contrary, other sectors consider that such an approach is just not sustainable in the long run, and that rather than directly subsidizing institutions, governments should make available scholarships and loans directly to the students based on a combination of economic need and academic merit. Also they argue that participation of private providers of education–including for-profit entities–should be permitted to foster competition and improve efficiency, assuming that they are properly regulated.

Those are some of the issues being debated not only in Chile and Colombia, but also in many other countries. As my colleague Dewayne Matthews of the Lumina Foundation tells me, the challenge faced by many countries is how to provide quality education to much larger numbers of students knowing that increasing institutional capacity is not something that can be achieved quickly, especially in a time of finite financial resources. In these cases, governments investing in education may be required to de-invest in other equally important priorities. Also, it is becoming clear that implementing reforms will necessarily affect the status-quo in higher education systems. In summary, we face a complex reality for which no simple solutions exist.

At the end of the day, the social unrest experienced in Chile and Colombia brings the discussion to the fundamental question that societies face in today’s world: Is higher education a public or a private good? Consequently, who should pay for it? La moneda está en el aire.

This article was originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education at the following URL: http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/who-should-pay-for-education/28784

Francisco Marmolejo is the Executive Director of the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC), a network of more than 130 colleges and universities primarily from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Francisco also serves as Assistant Vice President for Western Hemispheric Programs at the University of Arizona and has taught at several universities and has published extensively on administration and internationalization. Marmolejo has consulted for universities and governments in different parts of the world, and has been part of OECD and World Bank peer review teams conducting evaluations of higher education in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Mahindra Rise and Ashoka India jointly organised a three-hour global Tweetchat on Water Sustainability – A Key to our Future, on Thursday March 7 2013. Panelists included Paul Polak and Team (@OutofPoverty), Naandi Foundation(@naandi_india) and  Zenrainman @Zenrainman. The Twitter conference was conducted under the hashtag #SparkTheRise.

The Tweetchat kicked off with Naandi Foundation talking about the work they have done in India to ensure safe drinking water. They take a holistic approach towards reduction of poverty, and highlighted the work they have done to achieve this:

• Education:100,000 children across 1,800 government schools
• Livelihoods: Worked with 20,000 coffee farmers in Araku, largest tribal co-operative producing coffee
• Water:Providing sustainable, affordable, drinking water solutions, impacting 600,000 people
• Health:Initiated the country’s first large-scale malnutrition survey, capturing 100,000 voices
• Midday Meal: 1.2 million kids fed through 25 centralized kitchens across 5 states

Some interesting debates came up in this session. Naandi Foundation works closely with the government in its initiatives, to achieve scale and to reach remote areas of India. This is a model that many NGOs and funding agencies are now looking at to scale development solutions. However the systemic issues with working within the government system are well known, and are a huge challenge to overcome. The near future, however, does call for greater integration between civil society organisations and government systems, if we are to truly achieve scale in any realm of development.

Naandi’s Safe Drinking Water programme ensures drinking water through the installation of community drinking water Reverse Osmosis plants. Their immediate goal is to touch 5 million lives across 2,000 villages in India through various interventions. More specifically, they aim to get safe, affordable drinking water to 2 million people by 2018. They also want to mainstream their service delivery model for others to replicate. Naandi Foundation believes that community mobilisation is crucial for the successful implementation of any programme focused on WASH, and only begins their work in villages once community trust is gained.

The government can play a significant role in bettering the quality of water in rural India. There are several government-backed rainwater harvesting projects in India too, in states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka  and Gujarat, according to Zenrainman, the second panelist for the Tweetchat. Another potential way to improve basic access to water, is for the government to encourage and empower communities to revive traditional water harvesting structures and systems. Ancient wisdom from centuries past was very effective in conserving water sustainably, much before the dawn of technology and engineering solutions. Today, this wisdom becomes even more relevant in the face of the growing water scarcity we are seeing everywhere around us.

The second session with @Zenrainman kicked off with a discussion on what people need to know about rainwater harvesting, and whether there are any specific things to keep in mind. Zenrainman who is an expert on rainwater harvesting and water issues in India, maintains that common sense is key: it’s as simple as catching rooftop water, filtering it and storing or recharging it. A question from the audience was that if it was this simple, then what exactly was stopping people from employing it? To which Zenrainman’s answer was that initial capital cost is a big obstacle, along with government assurances of piped water supply. People end up waiting for this indefinitely, as is the case in Bangalore with the BWSSB’s Cauvery project. This should not be the case – citizens should take matters into their own hands and do their bit to conserve water.

Some interesting case studies on rainwater harvesting were shared in this session:

• Gansu Institute’s work in rainwater harvesting is one of the best examples of rainwater harvesting at scale. Their goal was to create 2.5 million RWH structures in Gansu Province, China, an area that gets just 250 mm of annual rainfall.
• A video on how rooftop rainwater is harvested in a rural setting
• A government programme in Karnataka called Sachetana is helping 10,000 families access fluoride-free water
• In Bangalore, the mother of all Rain Barrels
• Harvesting has been traditional in Jaisalmer /Jodhpur in Rajasthan, which gets just 150 mm of annual rainfall.

One participant made an interesting comment that it was surprising that people do not seem to calculate the return on investment for rainwater harvesting, when they do for solar heaters. Could this be because the water crisis hasn’t become as severe as the power crisis? This behaviour might change once water shortages become a reality in urban India.

Naandi Foundation recommends implementing large-scale, community-based water recharge programmes, if an institution has the capacity to do so. They also suggest re-working intensive farming policies to avoid polluting groundwater resources, and to encourage integrated watershed management. This is the need of the hour in managing water resources sustainably.

It wasn’t surprising to see some audience members asking about rainwater harvesting ín urban areas, given that most Twitter users are Internet-savvy, and hence urban citizens. One user assumed that it was easy to go for rain water harvesting in rural areas, but wanted to know more about how to implement it in cities and urban areas. Another participant mentioned that rainwater harvesting in Delhi was made compulsory more than a decade ago ago, but the move was largely a failure. Yet another participant asked if it was possible to take advantage of rainfall in urban agglomerations, like in high-rise apartment clusters in cities like Mumbai. Zenrainman’s response was that with 120 rainy days in a year, even one day’s storage should help a lot in urban high rise complexes.

A great suggestion that was retweeted by several participants, was that incentives must be created for builders to conserve water and implement rainwater harvesting. City officials should use rainfall storage in urban areas, in order to make water cheaper and more accessible for all. Similarly, communities are willing to help themselves, provided that they are offered the incentives to do so. A wonderful suggestion from a participant in response to this, was the possibility of offering tax credit for rainwater harvesters, to reward those who have done it and encourage others to take it up. The flip side to this arguement is that good clean water should be incentive enough; why should we wait for it to run out before we act? However, in an ideal world this would be a great achievement, but in the real world, many participants maintained that most Indian companies and cities would need incentives. One participant, @rakeshmani however tweeted that this was a rather ironic suggestion, and its practicability was questionable: “We’re in India. We used to steal electricity.” However the topic ended on a hopeful note with many participants agreeing with the basic premise: “We have to believe, be stringent for [the] first few years and keep on pushing via awareness. It’s not impossible.” Rakesh Mani tweeted, “There’s irrationality in hope. But yes, to some extent this should work.”

Water management in India is a complex topic. Especially with regard to domestic water, we are a groundwater civilisation. This is where a water management framework is desperately needed in India. In the meanwhile, people and communities are best placed to manage their own water systems. India has a long and diverse history of traditional wisdom around rainwater harvesting, dating back centuries. The need of the hour is to empower communities to tap into that wisdom.

But do costs make this unsustainable? Zenrainman is quite clear that helping people to help themselves is the answer. While this solution is high on capital cost, it is very low on operation and maintenance costs. We need to adopt a lifecycle cost approach. Zenrainman was firmly of the opinion that incentives and subsidies must be done away with, and that people who can afford to pay the price of water must pay it.

Rainwater, surface water and groundwater interfaces need holistic management, which is unfortunately currently missing in India. We have reached a point where we simply cannot impose a limit of 150 litres per capita per day and 55 litres per capita per day in rural areas, irrespective of water availability. The true cost of water has to be recovered, in order to make service delivery sustainable while still ensuring the basic lifeline right to water for the marginalised and poor.

Anyone can start conserving water by doing something small; Zenrainman’s advice was to not stop at knowing, and to avoid intellectual paralysis. Install a system and learn from it. Ashoka India suggested helping a government school harvest rainwater, while teaching and learning with students and teachers at the same time. Another participant tagged Teach for India in this comment, saying it was a great idea for them to think about.

Whatever the solution, the fact remains that India is a groundwater civilisation, and moreover a groundwater-dependant country. From Kalibangan (3000 B.C.) and Dholavira-Lothal to today with more than 20 million borewells, we are extracting groundwater much faster than we are putting it back in the ground. Another option in a basket of possible solutions is new-age waterless innovations, which could be the way forward for India to achieve sustainability in access to water for all.

The third session with Paul Polak kicked off with participants asking what he thought about safe drinking water as a business. His response was that governments give reasonable regulations and safe drinking water to people who do not have access to the market, thus ensuring a basic lifeline water supply. There is also the very real fear that priced water could go the micro-finance way without any regulatory framework in place, which is why Paul Polak’s team does disciplined water testing at each point in the last mile supply chain of their work.

One myth about poverty eradication that Paul Polak found through his work in India, was the idea you can donate people out of poverty. Yet again, the concept of people doing things for themselves was raised, highlighting the importance of building the capacity of communities to find their own solutions. India has to move from a welfare state to a state the empowers its citizens to find solutions for themselves.

Paul’s advice to new entrepreneurs venturing into uncharted regions like water supply and service delivery, was to find initial funding from family, friends, angel investors and social venture capital funds. A suggestion from Shyamal Dave was that crowdfunding could also go a long way in helping new entrepreneurs venture into this space, if properly structured and implemented. Paul added a note of caution to this suggestion, that in order for crowd funding to be successful, thorough preparation was required.

Some sustainable irrigation models that help farmers ensure that they don’t waste water resources, are affordable low cost drip and sprinkler systems. These are stingy ways to deliver water and improve agricultural yields. This in turn is a way of saving water, by harvesting the water that has not been used. The common man is quite receptive to implementing rain water harvesting measures for himself, but larger schemes require technical assistance and education.

A question from Shrey Goyal, a participant in the Tweetchat, posed to Paul Polak and his team was how to prevent scale and/or commercial money from diluting social motive and impact. Paul’s response was to build social impact into the mission and DNA of a social enterprise from the very beginning. Attractive profits attract global commercial investors, who have more capital available than foundations; these global investors provide the most direct way to achieve scale. So rather than government systems or community empowerment, Paul Polak advocates to make water supply and service delivery a business-minded model in India.

All in all, the panel was very well balanced with all view points fairly represented. We hope that this is the start of a bigger global discussion on water, and the need to manage it sustainably.

This article was originally posted by India Water portal as content partners for the Twitter conference

Thank you for all the support and participation in Spark the Rise. We are blown away by the quality of the entries that have been submitted. After careful deliberation, we are pleased to announce the 19 finalists that will compete for the winner of the 2nd season of Spark the Rise!

Projects: 

Empower Generation Next
Lights for Life
Mentoring destitute girls and urban poor youth
Computer Training for the differently-abled youth
KNOWLEDGE POINT
Agrini – Revolutionizing Anganwadi Education
SELF INNOVATIONS BASED FORMULATIONS FOR AGRICULTUR
Reaching the potential of children with disability
Spreading Smiles Across Rural India (SSARI)
Empower Women, Preserve Crafts, Save Environment
PROPOSAL OF BRAILLE TRANSCRIPTION CENTRE
Help NGOs build their fundraising potential
FUZION CRAFTS INTERNATIONAL 

Ideas:

Eco- friendly and Affordable Sanitary Napkins
India OYE – Public Initiative to end Eve Teasing (Panel 2)
Eco Friendly Shopping Bag substitute of Polythene
Utopia: A vision for self-reliance & social growth
True Republic – Solving Civic Issues Together
Exhaust on the top of the bus

Voting starts 11 March so spread the word!

– Rise Team

“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” – Thomas Edison

At the very core of entrepreneurship is innovation– and in many cases – also failure. The reality is that a journey towards successful innovation, as an entrepreneur or otherwise, is never without trial and error.

In fact, the term innovation itself refers to the notion of doing something differently to create more value. This state of value creation can only be achieved when multiple new ideas – such as products, services, processes or otherwise – are piloted, scrapped and improved upon over a period of time.

Early-stage entrepreneurs can especially benefit by being open to failure because only when solutions are tested, feedback shared and iterations made can true innovation occur. A transparent and collaborative approach to failure promotes adaptive planning and encourages rapid, as well as flexible, responses to change.

If dynamic entrepreneurs can leverage the concept of admitting failure, they can often identify forward-thinking approaches and generate social and commercial success through their startup ventures.

With the above in mind, Ennovent recently spoke with Ashley Good, Founder and CEO of Admitting Failure, and David Damberger, featured TED speaker on the topic of admitting failure and current Strategy Advisor for New Product Development at M-KOPA in Kenya, about why organisations must make admitting failure a priority.

What are the benefits of admitting failure?

Ashley: The idea behind admitting failure is to fail forward. The first benefit is the learning you get. Basically when you do any project, if you fail at it the return on investment is lost so the only return on investment you can gain is a learning return and failing forward is all about maximizing your learning.

Admitting failure also creates space for innovation. Because, to try anything new you need a space where failure where is allowed so that you can push boundaries and be innovative. Otherwise the risks will always outweigh the benefits of trying anything new.

David: While admitting failure is an easy concept to talk about, it is much harder to implement, especially in the development sector for social enterprises and NGOs. For me the key benefit is the learning and feeling of community that comes from accepting mistakes.

It is very hard for individuals to see failures as failures and you often need a community that works together to reflect on areas where they may have been weak so that new ideas and approaches can be shared. Only when this sharing occurs can innovation then take place.

Do you feel enterprises that focus on developing solutions for low-income markets are better placed to address some problems as compared to development agencies?

Ashley: Social enterprises are better placed in two ways. Firstly, they are designed to be financially sustainable and easily bend and adapt to the needs of the market. The progression of their idea therefore becomes easier to scale. Secondly, these enterprises are accountable to their customers, meaning the people who are in need of the innovations. This is compared to NGOs where the donor is the main beneficiary rather than the community the innovation is meant to help.

That saying, NGOs continue to play an important middle role between private companies that primarily innovate for profitability and the government, which often cannot innovate too much or change too rapidly.

David: Yes and No. A social enterprise to me is just like a normal enterprise. The difference being that they are tackling social problems and have patient investors that are ready to accept low returns for a long time in lieu of social impact. Broadly, social enterprises are better placed as they have a market-linked approach and are dependant on the market accepting the solution to succeed. Moreover, they are ready to try multiple things differently and make quick pivots, which is not something you will see many NGOs doing. However, in saying that I do believe that in sectors like health, education and water often a private public partnership works better.

Why do we need an open culture of failing?

Ashley: Around the world our education systems have trained us into becoming robots that are really good at memorising and accomplishing linear tasks. However, most of the social problems we are facing are complex and non-linear and require thinking that is not process focused. Including failure as an element of our work life is a means of changing the way that we are conditioned to think. To challenge the status quo, failure is required. And ultimately, social enterprises are already challenging the status quo that businesses only exist to make a profit.

David: To be innovative we need to fail. Look at the culture prevalent in the west coast of USA. There, if you are not taking a risk and being innovative people look down on you. That kind of culture came about because a few people stood up and said:“I don’t care what you think, I am going to go ahead and do it anyway.” As those people succeeded, the startup concept got traction and it became cool to take risks and become entrepreneurs. Similarly to make admitting failure an accepted concept we need enough mentors, experts and investors to support entrepreneurs in failing forward and incorporating that learning into the future of that enterprise.

Within the development sector, some publications and bloggers came out saying that “admitting failure” has become the new “green” or “sustainability” fad and it is often more of a PR exercise for companies – what are your thoughts on that?

Ashley: It could be a fad. But does it matter? From what I have seen there is a real need for better learning and innovation within the social and development sector. I see admitting failure as one piece of the puzzle. There are hundreds of people working at creating innovation in the social sector and admitting failure is a new technique that can play a really crucial role in aiding the process of innovation.

David: I agree (laughs). The development sector overall is good at creating fads, take sustainability for example. But, the reason that they are now referred to as ‘fads’ is because of the huge traction it has received from organisations globally and because everyone is doing it. What we need to realise is that all of these are just concepts used to answer the overarching problems.

Similarly admitting failure is just one tool to improve accountability and transparency in an organisation. There is this thinking that an organisation just needs to focus on two or three things like green or sustainability to make a difference and so they become buzzwords. The reality is that these are complex problems and concepts like admitting failure is just the activity you do to help you learn. The ultimate goal here is to learn and innovate.

________________

Admitting failure is a core component of organizational culture. Try new concepts; secure feedback from clients and stakeholders and work to incorporate principles of agile development into your business approach.

Only through continuous experimentation, feedback and failing forward can Ennovent fulfill its mission to Discover, Startup, Finance and Scale the best innovations for sustainability in low-income markets. What steps are you taking in your organisation towards admitting failure? Please share your questions, comments and insights.

Join the Ennovent Network now and connect with entrepreneurs, investors, experts and mentors to accelerate innovations for low-income markets: http://bit.ly/YIe65s

This event is brought to you by Mahindra and Ashoka India.

Like oil in the 20th century, water could well be the essential commodity on which the 21st century will turn. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century (Source: Reuters). India’s huge and growing population is putting a severe strain on all of the country’s natural resources. Most water sources are contaminated by sewage and agricultural runoff. We are attempting to evaluate and determine the ways in which these issues can be contained.

Why don’t more people know about the water crisis and water sustainability solutions? How can we educate the masses about water scarcity and the seriousness of the problem? What are the strategic long term solutions for water sustainability?

Join in on Thursday, 7 March, 2012 18:00 IST (5:30) for the #SparktheRise Twitter conference on ‘Water Sustainability – A Key to Our Future’

In this three-hour global discussion, we invite you to spark ideas, share insights from your work, and pose questions to our expert panel. The conference will be split in three one hour back-to-back sessions, moderated by Ashoka India.

Joining the panel will be:

Paul Polak and Out of Poverty Team (@outofpoverty):

Paul Polak, founder of Colorado-based non-profit International Development Enterprises (IDE)—is dedicated to developing practical solutions that attack poverty at its roots. For the past 25 years, Paul has worked with thousands of farmers in countries around the world — including Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe — to help design and produce low–cost, income–generating products that have already moved 17 million people out of poverty.

Naandi Foundation (@naandi_india)

Naandi, which in Sanskrit means a new beginning; is working to eradicate poverty in India. Founded in 1998, their work focuses on three key sectors: Safe Drinking Water, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Children’s Rights,

Naandi Foundation’s ‘Safe Drinking Water’ programme brings the assurance of certified safe drinking water through the installation of community drinking water plants, that can reliably and in a cost effective way, address the water contamination issues in a village.

Zenrainman (@Zenrainman)

Zenrainman is a pioneer in rainwater harvesting. He is the founder of the Rainwater Club, a Bangalore-based group that promotes and provides information on rainwater harvesting. He has worked in the areas of urban planning, ecological architecture, and water management for the past 25 years.

Ashoka India (@AshokaIndia)

Ashoka India invests and supports change-makers and persons working at the grassroots level. Ashoka India’s Venture and Global fellowship programs have been made richer by the ownership and guidance of Fellows who are now 350 in number.

What is a Twitter conference and how does it work?

A Twitter conference is a real-time, Twitter based discussion. Joining the conversation is easy. Just log on to Twitter at 18:00 IST (GMT +5:30) on Thursday, 7 March, 2012.

Use the #SparktheRise hashtag to make your comments visible in the stream. During the #SparktheRise Twitter conference, use search.twitter.com or an application like Tweetchat (http://tweetchat.com/room/sparktherise) to follow the hashtags to join the conversation. Introduce yourself and share a little about your work or your organization. You could also send your questions to @MahindraRise or @AshokaIndia to have them considered for the conversation.

Note: YourStory, India Water Portal and First post are the content partners of the #SparktheRise Twitter conference.