Small Voices Matter: Social Change at the Margins

Small Voices aka Soloprenuers are an important pivot in making our communities more vibrant as group think is avoided and their risk appetite in curating a world towards normative ends is greater. Scale as a narrative is over hyped. We, in the private sector are driven by the animal spirits of growth ensconced in the ever evolving construct of modernity. The growth narrative is hinged on scale; big numbers and steep percentages and the media seems to be enchanted with them, rarely questioning the real impact in the ground.

Community activists are often a lone breed. They are driven by by a passion which chars them. The small, feeble voices which they echo, is often ridiculed by fellow members as spending personal resources on activist causes which might not bear fruit. The apt example is of the migration NGO’s in Singapore and Malaysia, or even the initiatives focused on transient domestic workers in India, who travel from one end of the country to the other to eek out a living.  These social ventures are focused on empowerment, advocacy and giving a voice which shatter mainstream media narratives such as Bangladeshi construction worker poets in Singapore. But, the focus population is transient, and help from these community activists might be a measure of last resort to the target community. These community activists are often hidden, silently toiling away at the margins helping these subaltern communities. Where does the impact assessment paradigm of grants based funding help in improving the ecosystem, as most soloprenuers  are self or crowd funded, and often do not have the bandwidth to even apply for grants such as a young Singaporean woman trying to help women Rohingya refugees with skills training in Malaysia or couple of friends trying to light up villages in North East India . Institution building takes resources, and a dedicated team. Small voices often work with volunteer consultants and well wishers who dedicate their time and money behind a cause in the form of an event or two, but a protracted conversation on social change needs a distinct fire in the belly which these small voices have, often banging their heads against a wall. But, they still continue working with every new member of their partner community such as Mr AKM Mohsin of Banglar Kantha-Dibashram in Singapore, working with Bangladeshi blue collared migrants for over two decades.

These community activists work in marginalized communities on specific issues, and depend on social media as a free loud speaker to bring these important voices whether the auto driver or the house help in Delhi or the Baul practitioner in rural Bengal. This however, does not discount the materiality of the requirements of running a program on social change, only that scale is often not the solution and that resources are an aid, not a silver bullet.

Impact is catalyzed one conversation at a time, and does not need a grant application to be written. 

Conversations with Cabbies: Delhi Edition

Just met a super courteous elderly Sikh man Sukhdev Singhji in Nehru Place after our biannual health screening, who drove us home. He broke bread with Sir Ben Kingsley during the making of Gandhi and Satyajit Ray during ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ as he worked for the producer of these films. He drove for 8.5 years on behalf of the Embassy of Western Sahara. We were discussing Polisario Movement and Magrebi Colonial Politics driven by phosphorus during the 15 minute drive. Some days do make me wonder about the sheer wealth of understanding academic life outside the ivory tower of Commercialization. 13912303_10209515296546991_5143950716427599829_n

Bhatt on Bollywood

Mahesh Bhatt to Karan Thapar in an India Today TV Interview: ‘We make two kinds of films; to comfort the jolted, and to jolt the comforted- for the jolted it is an ice pack and painkiller, and for the rich, pain is an aphrodisiac’ in response to a question on whether cinema is for changing the world.

And

‘We are not in the truth peddling business, we are in the illusion manufacturing business’

No one articulates it better than Mr Bhatt; the provocateur exemplar.

Reimagining Azadi: Making it matter

Happy Azadi Day India. May we reimagine the way we look after marginalized communities from Bastar to Bombay as we turn 70. It seems too many folks are squeezed in the middle and on the margins. The business of democracy is an imperfect transaction, and we seem to be operating on an auto pilot mode, the energy to change the drift of the discourse on inclusive growth and buy in is missing big time. The nationalist rhetoric has to move from the Times Now Studios to the actual project delivery in the micro politics of everyday life. Let’s talk more with humility with our community members to improve livelihoods wherever we are.

The future does not lie in a utopian city overseas for the middle class, or the urban centre for the poor, it lies where we are. Aspirations need to be actualized in order for a real Idea of India to matter from the text to experience. Let India be prosperous and peaceful for the year ahead from Imphal to Anantnag. Bharat Mata Ki Jai!

Scale or Intellectual Independence: the funding holy grail for non profits

It is a well known fact that non profits and policy thinks alike generate funding from corporate sources to influence the discourse on ideas rather than the normative objective of independent research, which is often spewed about with zero conviction. Nothing is independent if the staffer bills are not paid and the rentals are due. Both the stakeholders are cannot claim to hold the moral ground than consultants and lobbyists.

The reputational capital is compromised; so why maintain the charade?

Fund raising always has strings attached. ‘Please read the T&C carefully’ one does not have to read The New York Times reportage  to be aware of this funder- grantee conflict of interest tangle. Just read out a grant call aloud to understand the politics of development. Oh yes, a grant needs to be filed to study it right?

The only way to retain independence is to self generate revenue or be self funded. The scale is then impacted. Impact should be an outcome and not an indicator. The moral entrepreneurs are no better than the real estate agent around your block.

Madaari : An Anti Corruption Narrative

Madaari is a cerebral masterclass directed by Nishikant Kamath on the helplessness of the average educated Indian Middle Class to voice out their grievances apart from the elections which at the most is a nominal democracy. This film follows the usual underdog vigilante justice route, but has some gems when the character of the eight year old kidnapped boy threatens the assailant as the son of the home minister, that the language of power is understood by a kid. The film explores themes such as overpopulation, inter religious marriage, migration and single parenting with the simplicity which reminded me of ‘Lunch Box’.

The ‘HIdden Business of Indian Democracy’ with all it’s shenanigans such as fundraising through bad infra deals which crash. Irrfan aces his role with a solid presence on the screen. Such political activist cinema comes rarely, reminds me of ‘Rang De Basanti’ in terms of solid cinema. The illusion of Indian Politics is laid bare through fiction of cinema. The anti corruption narrative gets a voice as the Lokpal gets institutionalised.‪

Keep Knocking, Keep Building

Criticizing is an intellectually lazy activity. Building a project or a product which has impact is the hard part. The outlier will be considered not cool. Keep knocking and you will certainly build something of worth, if not a unicorn or any other measure of success. Build a community paper and a cultural space on the lines of Mohsin Malhar da of Banglar Kantha Singapore or take up projects which no one wants to touch.

Business Development for Independent Writers: A Primer

I love self publishing, because I write on topics of impact in the tenor and grammar in which it is to be delivered. The IoT era, is the content centric era, as distribution is democratic. Thought Leadership is about social and intellectual capital and with the medium of the internet on smart phones, the independent voice gets amplified.

Self Publishing gets demonized by professional writers as they suggest that they write for their supper and that self publishing destroys the market for content. I contend that if one writes well and has a niche to cater, writing assignments will come your alley. After all, a writer is a creative entrepreneur where how one sells, is as vital to getting oneself paid.

Writing brings in the network as ideas get a life of their own as ideas achieve resonance with the target audience that the idea has in triggering a dialogue. Speaking and Training assignments are more important from a revenue stand point than a 100 dollars per a 800 word article, which is the standard rate. At this rate, it would be very complicated to meet ends leave alone invest in experiential and textual resources  to up the game.

One more aspect, i want to bring to ones notice in this post, is to resist the temptation to hard sell. Relationship building is more vital, as  ‘Waasta’ the Arabic word for connections, is girded with the notion of trust. If the client trusts the content, it is easier to up sell.

Lastly, write visions and voices and not dry data, and connect to the audience. The ROI comes much later.

 

 

 

Cities have to livable, not smart

With recent urban floods in the so called Indian Silicon Valley and The ‘Sahara Mall NH10’ City, I wonder if the narrative will move to climate governance in cities from being technologically smart in design, and rather dysfunctional on the ground. The notion of sociotechnical resilience as I wrote in a January 2013 conference paper in a planning commission conference in Vadodara for Climate Change Governance in Urban India really needs to be looked in to from a livability perspective. Social Anthropologist Amitav Ghosh with his latest work on Climate Change titled the ‘The Great Derangement’ sounds off a precinct warning with the chapter on Mumbai.