Non Profits serve a critical role in running society’s delicate machinery of services. They are the part most loathed and least respected for everyone expects people in the Non Profit Sector to do charity. I remember an Old Communist Joke in Russia in this regard; that a supervisor asks the worker, ‘why is’nt he working?’ The worker replies to the supervisor ‘You pretend to pay our salaries, in the same light i pretend to work’ !.  As in the case for all workers, money matters as everyone has got bills to pay at the end of the month. The question which I have raised in the heading of this article is a textbook question for folks following the not for profit space, should we target scale for cost effectiveness and economies of scale or should one stay niche and concentrate on metrics of quality, in other words should a NPO/Social Enterprise stay a boutique investment fund or go public and venture into retail services to borrow a financial services analogy.

I would suggest that the Business Model for Non Profits should meet its end purpose. It has to driven by its impact and the number of lives it can change. Of course values and altruistic motivations are the catalyst for the founding team of the Non Profit, but the mundane biting realities of daily operations lead people to think about ‘commercial’  jargons such as quantifying impact of the donor dollar and fundraising dilute the soul of the activist within the social entrepreneur. It does not really matter if the non profit is on grant money or its selling some variety of services to break even. If it serves the need of the community which it serves, then it has done a decent job.

In Business Academia, there is a lot of hue and cry about the nature of the Business Model, but a true entrepreneur considers his venture a work in progress and ideas or models in business literature do not hold much weight as the end should justify which ever means he uses.  Whether it is a Gawad Kalinga or a Grameen or a Community Enterprise in our area, it is the impact which matters ultimately. Scale is Sexy for the media to cover, but we have SKS fiasco to ponder upon whenever we think of Scale.

Yesterday, I had two unique individuals who drove me to a client meeting and back in the ‘Town’ area of Mumbai yesterday. I normally find cab drivers extremely informative and entertaining people to meet. But these two individuals are a writers delight to carve a story out of. The first individual was an Urdu speaking native from the chawls of Mumbai, claimed to be a school mate of ‘World Don- Dawood’ and seemed to eulogize him in many a way. His knowledge of the town area in Mumbai was intense; he took me on a guided journey from showing the oldest shopping centre in Mumbai to Lata Mangeshkar’s Apartment Block and Mukesh Ambani’s one billion dollar home.  He also spoke Arabic as he was a driver in Saudi Arabia for a long time including the 1990 Gulf War. The most surprising aspect was that he was questioning the authenticity of the findings of the 26/11 murder of Hemant Karkare by showing me Cama Hospital. Many other surprising anecdotes such as the a premier padmini taxi in 1978 was priced at Rs 28000! He had to pay Rs 2000 as a bribe to the RTO to get it on road, so Licence Raj!

The second individual was an encyclopedic insight in Sugar cane belt politics in Maharashtra. He analysed Sharad Pawar Saheb’s response in the aftermath of the 1992 bomb blasts quite innovatively. He seemed to support political corruption as a cost for development. The development of the suburbs and satellite townships around Mumbai were according to him a foresight of Pawar Saheb. It was the total legitimization of the Politician-Builder nexus. This is the DNA of Maharashtra politics in my regard.

After two splendid conversations, I realized that we have to learn from the School of Life rather than paper academic qualifications. The examination of life is the real exam. Let learning be unschooled, through cinema, conversations and other forms of art.

The premise of this article is based on a brilliantly made film ‘Shanghai’ by Dibakar Banerjee  on the Politician, Builder and Civil Society nexus that has fueled the rhetoric behind ‘Development and Growth’. What constitutes Development, is a vital question which has many nuanced shades. What might be development to one might be dis-entitlement to another. Development in the present narrative in the urban context is the establishment of Special Economic Zones, uprooting farmers in favor of Industry and disposing off old homes in exchange for Shopping Malls. Civil Society is also a strand of the elite, an activist professor who is magnetic and teaches social movements at Ivy League school earning USD 120K salary is nothing but reeks of champagne socialism. The Bureaucracy is a supporter of the capitalist class, with vested interests was observed by the good old Marx 150 years back. The Civil Servant and the Activist are bumped off or Purchased in return of an election ticket/overseas posting. Any resistance against ‘Development’ is seen as treason.

This paradigm was accelerated by the Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization discourse  since 1991. Singur, Nandigram and Noida are all classic cases of Land Acquisition gone awry. There needs to be a balance between Development Fundamentalism and Welfare. This murky scene will continue and the poor will suffer at the hands of the powerful. We need to find a solution before social unrest like Singur erupts all over, especially when Red Terror is institutionalized in 1/3rd of India. Think Dantewada and Bastar?

Education is utilized as a social elevator by communities all over the world and education has thus resulted in education creating attractive resumes than carving thinking minds. Every era has a flavor for social elevation. It was engineering 40 years back, moved to IT about a decade and a half ago and now it is the era of the grad school business degree. I am talking from a south asian/south east asian pragmatic perspective. Any degree not marketable to an employer is not worth time being ‘invested’. The present World Bank President’s father was a Korean Scientist who asked his son, what does he want to do and he said that he wishes to major in Political Science or Sociology in College and thus came the stark reply that he want his son not only to have the ability to think but also to do. This sentiment is shared by most parents across the developing world.

I started writing when I was a teenager in whichever small platforms i had access to, and wanted to major in history. The proposal was shot down in favor of a more ‘workable’ alternative. I majored in engineering and went on to be an environmental engineer, but have pursued grad school research in sociology and public policy as well. The World Bank President is a Medical Anthropologist with a PhD in Social Anthropology and and is a trained medical doctor. Pragmatism and Passion can go hand in hand.

The rush for grad school is insanity in India, everyone is an MBA degree aspirant or holder. I cannot meet a full techie anymore. IT is more knowledge based service economy oriented. All Engineers can be a beeline for Business School to get a pay hike. Some attend B School fresh out of undergrad. Many of whom i have spoken to, do not understand the fundamental nuances of business and simply wish to join the ‘bandwagon’ through group-think.  A MBA degree is not a panacea, it is a platform for networking and connections as other other grad school option is. A MBA for the sake of a MBA is not smart.

Starting and Managing a non profit will teach one more business skills than an MBA. Most of the MBA text book knowledge can be learnt via business literature. I have not attended B School but have learnt my accounting and corporate finance on my own. Innovation is my pet research area. I dont need a MBA to run my job, i would probably require it more for connections to scale up than for its content. In an emerging growth story with ‘Breakout Nations’ as Ruchir Sharma conveys, we need more hard skills of an engineer, architect and operations guys than media planners and market researchers. We are not a service economy yet, the agri based sector is still our backbone. Real value still comes from Brick and Mortar industries. It  is manufacturing which creates jobs and wealth, the service sector reduces net jobs.

In a recession the fluff economy guys are shown the pink slip first. Lets get our Educational priorities right. Do things that create value and make sense, and not to join the rat race.