Swelling stream of corporate crossovers
Against the backdrop of rising disillusionment of politicians with the bureaucracy which has suddenly popularised public-private partnerships, a growing number of early success professionals are quitting corporate corner offices for NGOs working in squalid urban slum habitats and/ or dusty hinterlands of rural India. Summiya Yasmeen reports
It’s a trickle which would do a world of good if it becomes a flood. On the cusp of the new millennium when (before 9/11) in a flower burst of hope 189 national governments signed the Millennium Declaration which resolved to halve global poverty and attain the Millennium Development Goal of primary school education for all children worldwide by 2015, a handful of high-flying corporate professionals quietly switched streams and slipped into the voluntary sector — not-for-profit, non-government organisations (NGOs). Since then the trickle has become a discernible stream if not as yet a flood as a growing number of early success professionals quit corporate corner offices for far less impressive workplaces of NGOs in squalid urban slum habitats and/ or dusty, forgotten hinterlands of rural India.
During the past decade or so among those who have made the momentous and difficult — because it does involve huge financial and lifestyle sacrifices — crossover from the corporate to the voluntary sector, hitherto the preserve of India’s infamous jholawallahs (Left intellectuals) are: Ajaya Shreshtha, who threw up a high-status job with Time Warner (USA) in February this year to head the anti-child labour unit of the Mumbai-based NGO, Pratham; Shukla Bose, an IIM-Calcutta alumna, who resigned her stratospherically well paid job as chief executive of Resort Condominiums India in 2000 to start Christel House and in 2003 the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a Bangalore-based NGO which runs four schools offering free English-medium education to 627 slum children; Illa Hukku, a successful corporate consultant at Eicher Consultancy Services and the Aditya Birla Group who now heads the strategic planning division of CRY (Child Relief and You), a Mumbai-based child-centric organisation; and Ramesh Ramanathan who quit a dream job with Citibank in the US to successfully kickstart Janagraaha, a citizens’ movement for better governance in Bangalore — an epic crossover story which inspired the hit Hindi movie Swades starring matinee idol Shahrukh Khan.  |
| Gowda: professionalisation lure |
"The liberalisation of the Indian economy has translated into substantially better pay packages and entrepreneurial opportunities for a large number of business professionals who have attained financial security at a young age. But at the same time the economic boom of the past two decades has widened the gap between the rich and poor and urban and rural India. I believe that the stark inequalities of post-liberalisation India has prompted a sizeable number of corporate professionals to crossover to NGOs, to bridge this widening social fissure. Also in the past decade the old model which demanded that social workers lead lives of extreme abnegation and material sacrifice has been replaced by new age NGOs which demand professionalism, funds-raising and project implemen-tation capability rather than pious do-gooding. It is this professionalisation of the voluntary or third sector which is attracting a growing number of successful professionals who aspire to do something more meaningful than chase profit. Moreover with govern-ment spending in the social sector pegged ridiculously low, there is plenty of scope for interventions by private trusts, NGOs and individuals," says Rajeev Gowda, an alumnus of the Wharton Business School and assistant professor of economics and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Indeed intervention by NGOs whose number has swelled to an estimated 100,000 countrywide, is increasingly being welcomed by the Central and state governments who are beginning to become aware of the inability of their huge, sloth-ridden and corrupt bureaucracies to drive or manage social sector, i.e education and health, projects. At the 4th International Society for Third Sector Asia-Pacific Conference held on November 16 in Bangalore, Union minister of state for planning M.V. Rajasekharan acknowledged that the Planning Commission and the Central government departments welcome intervention by civil society groups in the formulation of projects meant for the poor and are "not deciding priorities on their own". With government spending on education and health, 4 percent and a pathetic 1 percent of GDP respectively — and much of it misspent — the swelling crossover of provenly competent professionals with organisation, finance and human resource management skills is being welcomed by India’s post-liberalisation political class which has belatedly become aware of the limitations of the nation’s huge and unwieldy 18 million plus bureaucracy. |
| Ramanathan & wife Swati: institution building lacuna |
According to Ramesh Ramanathan, an alumnus of BITS-Pilani and Yale University and former chief executive of Citibank’s London corporate derivatives office who promoted the Bangalore-based Janagraaha, a citizen’s movement for participatory democracy in 1998, Indian NGOs desperately require the professionalism and institution building skills of the corporate sector. "NGOs are driven by passion, integrity and commitment. But they are handicapped by lack of professional skills and institution building capabilities. This is where corporate professionals can help. They can apply their resource mobilisation and management skills to help NGOs achieve measurable outcomes. In Janagraaha we have managed to effectively implement best corporate practices such as focus, detailed micro-level planning, personnel training, and pilot projects — all of which has contributed to our modest success in engaging citizens with local government," says Ramanathan, who is also helping several microfinance institutions deliver credit to the rural and urban poor, and advises the state governments of Rajasthan and Karnataka on local government financial management.
Box 1
Stellar corporate crossovers
During the past decade or so a stellar cast of corporate high fliers have quit enviable corner offices and company boardrooms to work in voluntary sector organisations. Among them:Ajaya Shreshtha.
An alumnus of Middlebury College (USA) Shreshtha quit a high potential career with Time Warner (USA) in February this year to take charge of the anti-child labour unit of the Mumbai-based Pratham, India’s most respected education NGO.
Shukla Bose. Once the most well-remunerated woman CEO in India, Bose quit as chief executive of Resort Condominiums India in 2000 to start Christel House, a free school for orphaned and abandoned children in Bangalore. In 2003 she independently promoted the Parikrma Humanity Foundation which runs four schools offering free English-medium education to 627 slum children.Illa Hukku.
Former consultant at Eicher Consultancy Services and the Aditya Birla Group, Hukku heads the strategic planning division of CRY (Child Relief and You).
Ramesh Ramanathan. A former US-based CEO of the derivates division of Citibank, Ramanathan returned to India in 1998 to kickstart Janagraaha, a Bangalore-based citizens’ movement for better governance and participatory democracy.
Madhav Chavan. An alumnus of Ohio State University, Chavan was a reader of physical chemistry in Mumbai University before he promoted Pratham — India’s most active and respected education NGO — in 1994.
Sandeep Pandey. An alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley, Pandey quit his teaching job at IIT-Kanpur to set up Asha, a Lucknow-based grassroots education NGO. In 2002 Pandey was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award in the emergent leadership category.
V. Muralidharan. A senior quality control manager of Tata Consultancy Services, working in his spare time, Muralidharan promoted Sevalaya, a Chennai-based NGO in 1988. Sevalaya runs a free secondary school, medical centre and two orphanages.
Umesh Malhotra. An alumnus of IIT-Madras and Infosys Technologies, Malhotra promoted Bangalore Labs with four college friends in 1999. In 2002 he cashed out and started Hippocampus, a not-for-profit which networks with government schools and community libraries.
Balaji Sampath. An alumnus of IIT-Madras and University of Maryland, Sampath abandoned a promising IT industry career in the US to promote the Chennai-based Association for India’s Development — AID-India — in 1997. In 2002, chandra anil, a IIT-Mumbai, Wipro and HCL alumnus and a. ravishankar, (IIT-Madras, Carnegie Mellon University, IBM, USA) joined Sampath.
Vivek Raju. A business management postgraduate of Toronto University and former marketing manager of Levi Strauss (India), Raju came aboard Parikrma Humanity Foundation, Bangalore in 2003.
Viraf Mehta. A former head of the corporate social responsibility department of the Tata Group, Mehta signed up with Partners in Change, a Delhi-based corporate social responsibility advocacy group in 2002.
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| Shreshtha: horrible plight |
Likewise the call of the mother country and particularly the cruel deprivation of educational opportunities to the children of the poor at the base of India’s inequitous social pyramid, prompted Ajaya Shreshtha, an economics graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont (USA) to put in his papers at HBO, a division of media conglomerate Time Warner, to address the social evil of ubiquitous child labour in India. "While at HBO I accidentally came across a movie titled
The Selling of Innocents detailing the horrible plight of girl children held captive in the brothels of Mumbai. Some elementary investigations indicated that the city is home to perhaps the largest force of working children worldwide. I quit my job in the US early this year, moved to Mumbai and after a recce of several NGOs, signed up with Pratham’s anti-child labour unit. Currently we run classes for 4,000 working children in their workplaces across the country. Our objective is to make provision for quality education for every child. Admittedly this is a huge challenge. But the reason I joined Pratham is that it’s an organisation that takes on massive challenges with hope and confidence," says Shreshtha.
Pratham, which in the decade since the start of its operations in the slums of Mumbai in 1994 has reached over 200,000 children across the country through pre-school, in-school and out-of-school programmes, seems to be a favourite choice of corporate professionals crossing over to the third sector. On average this education NGO inducts seven to eight corporate professionals annually. Indeed Pratham’s founder and chief executive Madhav Chavan is himself a crossover from academia. An alumnus of Ohio State University, Chavan was a reader of physical chemistry in Mumbai University until 1994, when he put in his papers to promote Pratham. "As citizens of India each individual has a responsibility to work towards an equitable, efficient and effective social order. My voluntary work in the slums of Mumbai in the early 1990s made me aware that the best way to attain this objective is to ensure every child receives quality education. Hence Pratham and its mission: ‘Every child in school... and learning well’," says the Mumbai-based Chavan.
A similar passion to set right historic wrongs and do her bit for children nobody looks out for — least of all the elected representatives of the people — persuaded Shukla Bose to put in her papers at Resort Condominiums India (RCI, the company which introduced the concept of holiday timeshare villas and apartments to India) and offer high quality educational opportunities to slum children in Bangalore. Following a three year stint as director of the Christel House school in the garden city, Bose quit in 2003 and in record time promoted four schools for the Parikrma Humanity Foundation (PHF). Parikrma schools offer free English-medium education to 627 slum children. "Bangalore has 1.5 million people who live in more than 800 slums. Their children are born into poverty and don’t have the education to break out of the poverty-illiteracy-poverty cycle. By providing these children equal access to quality English medium schooling which thus far has been the privilege of the rich, Parikrma hopes to help them break this cycle and transform them into valuable contributing members of society," she says.
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| Bose (centre): poverty-illiteracy-poverty cycle |
Putting her corporate sector experience to brilliant use, Bose has fashioned PHF into perhaps the first education NGO in the country administered professionally like a corporate enterprise with clearly defined targets and marketing plans. This is an important factor in the sustainability of its operations because all Parikrma learning centres provide completely free tuition, uniforms, stationery, textbooks and nutritive meals and diet supplements to their students. This requires an annual revenue mobilisation effort estimated at Rs.1.25 crore (Rs.15,000 per child) — not a small order in a society which accords rock bottom priority to quality education for the poor. Parikrma’s marketing team led by Vivek Raju, a business management graduate of Toronto University and former marketing manager of Levi Strauss (and another corporate crossover to education) has built an impressive database of corporates, charitable trusts/ foundations and has persuaded 4,000 individuals to donate half-a-day’s salary annually towards building Parikrma’s corpus fund. (For more on PHF see EW feature ‘Educating slum children: Shukla Bose shows the way’, July 2005).
Quite obviously the watershed economic liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991 did more than release the long-suppressed entrepreneurial spirits of India’s brightest and best — it also unleashed their best instincts of liberal philanthropy.
Like Bose, a successful business-woman who experienced a Pauline conversion to the cause of helping India’s deprived child citizens at almost the same time, was another IIM-Calcutta alumna, Illa Hukku who quit a promising career at Eicher Consultancy to take charge of the strategic planning division of CRY (Child Relief and You), one of India’s largest child-centric NGOs which provides resource mobilization and consultancy services to 157 partner voluntary organisations countrywide. "Working towards securing the rights of at least some of India’s 200 million children who are denied the very basics — education, health, food and shelter — has given me the opportunity to engage with the larger issues of democracy, equality and social justice," says Hukku.
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| Hukku: larger opportunity |
Although the great majority of the new genre of crossover professionals in the newly christened third sector tend to have ambivalent attitudes towards economic liberalisation and integration of the Indian and global economies which they believe has widened social divides in the country, there’s no denying that liberalisation has enabled them to follow their hearts into the voluntary sector. In particular the extraordinary growth of the $22 billion IT software and services industry has spawned a new generation of yuppie millionaires who after having struck gold have cashed out and turned their attention to righting social wrongs and inequities. A case in point is Umesh Malhotra (35) an IIT-Madras, Infosys Technologies alumnus who sold Bangalore Labs — an IT firm started with four friends in 1999 for an undisclosed sum estimated at millions of dollars to a Singapore-based company.  |
| Malhotra: public libraries initiative |
Impressed by the public library system in the US, Malhotra promoted Hippocampus, a trust which has started two libraries in Bangalore and one in Chennai. Together they provide access to 16,000 books for 1,500 paying child members (Rs.200 per month) below 14 years of age. "These fees cross-subsidise Hippocampus services to 38 libraries run by NGOs and government schools in Bangalore where we provide books, offer guidelines on how to stock and circulate books. In these 38 libraries catering to 8,500 slum children, we also conduct learning activities to improve reading and comprehension skills," says Malhotra.
A similar desire to lend a helping hand to people at the bottom of the pile who seem to have no prospect of upward mobility, prompted Balaji Sampath, an alumnus of IIT-Madras and University of Maryland (USA) to ditch a promising career in the IT industry in the US to start the Association for India’s Development (AID-India) in Chennai in 1997. Since then AID-India has established ten chapters across the country, serviced by 1,000 volunteers. AID-India designs and implements education, women and children’s health, rural development and community programmes in 300 villages countrywide. Obviously impressed by Sampath’s can-do organisation development skills, in 2002, Chandra Anil, a IIT-Mumbai alumnus who was working with Wipro Corporation and A. Ravishankar, a graduate of IIT-Madras and Carnegie Mellon University employed with IBM (USA) also signed up with AID-India swelling the corporate crossover stream (see box).
Box 2
The AID-India story
When the Association for India’s Development (AID), a volunteer movement committed to promoting sustainable development of India was promoted in Maryland, USA in 1991 by a group of Indian students, its volunteer base grew rapidly. In 1994, Balaji Sampath, a graduate of IIT-Madras who was pursuing his Ph D in the University of Maryland, volunteered for the movement. As the volunteer base and chapters in the US grew (there are 40 chapters currently), Sampath returned to India in 1997 to establish AID-India modelled after AID, USA but run as an independent NGO.
Today AID-India has ten chapters across the country and 1,000 direct volunteers who participate in the NGO’s education, women and children’s health, rural development programmes, and technology and agriculture initiatives in 300 villages. It also works with partner NGOs in around 1,000 villages providing training, materials and field level support to improve the quality of education in government schools and balwadis.
"While a volunteer in the US, I was very impressed with the philosophy of AID. I knew I could make a big difference in India if AID started its operations here," says 32-year old Sampath, who adds that several of his highly qualified colleagues in the Chennai chapter including Chandra Anil, A Ravishankar, Banu Chander, Prabha Balaraman and Smita Kalyani besides full time volunteers in the Bangalore chapter have quit corporate careers to work with AID-India.
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| (From left): Sampath, Anil, Chander & Ravishankar |
The cheerful young, trio — Balaji Sampath (32), Chandra Anil (31) and A Ravishankar (30) — are very satisfied with their new jobs. Chandra Anil graduated from BITS-Pilani in 1995, worked with Wipro and HCL in Chennai for four years and after a short teaching stint at IIT-Bombay, currently heads AID-India’s primary school initiatives.
A. Ravishankar (IIT-Madras and Carnegie Mellon and IBM) and until recently assistant professor of IIT-Madras, crossed over from academia to head AID-India’s secondary school education programme.
AID-India’s education initiatives cover pre-primary, primary and secondary schools. It currently works with 50 corporation schools in Chennai, has introduced science kits in over 300 government schools, owns a mobile science van which tours villages, and has established 1,300 libraries.
"Our focus is on seeding, developing and scaling schools. We have been able to apply corporate management principles to the operations of AID-India especially after Chandra joined us. Starting out as an informal organisation, we now set targets, follow up and systematically review our programmes. We also measure outcomes in a sustained manner," says Sampath.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)
Although the case histories recounted above highlight high-profile crossovers from corporate enterprises into education, it is pertinent also to note that there’s a growing number of business and industry professionals who combine philanthropy and a corporate career by volunteering part-time with NGOs. According to Pratham, AID-India, CRY, Action Aid, etc spokespersons, hundreds in their volunteer databases comprise private sector professionals. Of this growing number, most contribute not only their services but also chip in with financial contributions while holding down nine-five jobs.
One such driven part-timer who is balancing a high-pressure job with a philanthropic venture is Chennai-based V. Muralidharan, head of quality (southern region) of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services and consultancy corporate (revenue: Rs.9,727 crore in 2004-05). For the past 17 years Muralidharan has balanced his high pressure job in TCS with his commitments to Sevalaya, an NGO he promoted way back in 1988. Today Sevalaya is housed on a seven-are campus in Thiruninravur, 42 km from Chennai. It comprises a free secondary school for 650 children; a Kasturba Gandhi Craft Training Centre for village women; a Mahatma Gandhi Medical Centre, the Swami Vivekananda library (8,000 volumes) and the Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa Old Age Home.
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| Muralidharan: composite institution |
Influenced by the poetry of Mahakavi Bharathi (1882-1921) who equated reverence for Saraswati (goddess of learning) with the promotion of education in remote villages and towns, Muralidharan used his first year’s savings at TCS to promote a rudimentary learning centre for poor children in Thiruninravur. "As an employee of TCS I have easy access to people around the world and during my trips abroad, I’m able to spread the message of Sevalaya and raise resources from thousands of IT professionals eager to help. My TCS colleagues and customers have contributed handsomely by way of time and money to the growth of Sevalaya," says Muralidharan, who devotes all his spare time and weekends to this composite welfare institution.
These extraordinary stories of courage, commitment and compassion for the neglected poor scratching out miserable livelihoods at the base of India’s inequitous social pyramid indicate that within the educated middle class made confident by early corporate sector success, there’s a new stirring to deploy organisation management skill-sets for the greater social good. This growing sentiment has given a new lease of life to the philosophy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) which suffered some unpopularity following the exceptional success in the 1980s of In Search of Excellence — a business management bestseller authored by Peters and Waterman which advised corporate managers to "stick to the knitting", i.e specialise in what they do best. |
| Mehta: favourable climate |
Comments Viraf Mehta, chief executive of Partners in Change (PiC), a Delhi-based advocacy group which offers advice to corporates which want to introduce, design and monitor community development programmes: "In the contemporary liberalised and globally integrated economy, intelligent corporate leaders don’t regard social responsibility a burden. They are aware of the contribution of CSR initiatives to business growth and brand development. Therefore a growing number of companies and captains of industry are stepping forward to support education and health initiatives in particular. Hence for people who like to combine corporate careers and social work, the climate is very favourable." A social anthropology postgrad of Delhi University and University College, London, Mehta was head of the social responsibility department of the Tata Group for 14 years, before quitting to take charge of Partners in Change, a not-for-profit in 2002.
Early corporate and business success facilitated by economic liberalisation apart, the swelling tide of crossovers to the third sector has been facilitated by the unapologetic professionalisation of NGOs. Contemporary voluntary organisations in India are no longer the preserve of self-flagellating leftist dropouts with big dreams and minimal plan implementation capability. Within donor communities and within new genre NGOs themselves, there’s deepening awareness that perennially resource-starved third sector organisations need to be even more efficiently managed than business organisations which tend to have more slack. Therefore NGOs are prepared to compete for managerial talent and budget comfortable — if not comparable — pay and perks for professionals. Moreover with Indian and foreign industry as well as individuals more aware of the beneficial fallout of CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives within a booming economy, NGOs have never had it so good. In 2003 Indian NGOs attracted over Rs.5,0461 crore by way of foreign donations.
Box 3
Asha alternative model
Sandeep Pandey was writing his Ph D thesis in 1991 in control theory at the University of California, Berkeley when he made an unhappy discovery. "My area of research was closely tied to the US defence research programme. Till then I had regarded academics as something very noble but that idea was completely shattered," he says. So great was Pandey’s disappointment that he changed his area of research to alternative energy. Simultaneously this technology graduate of Baneras Hindu University hit upon the idea of setting up Asha (‘hope’) with two friends. "I read a report prepared by MIT which indicated that more than 50 percent of India’s children remain totally uneducated and never go to school. Together with two of my colleagues I resolved to do something to bring some hope in the lives of such neglected children. That’s when Asha — our voluntary organisation — was born," recalls Pandey. |
| Sandeep Pandey |
Pandey describes Asha as "a grassroots education foundation for an alternative society with a just social order, where material needs and spiritual consciousness will live with each other in a relationship of happiness."
Following a short teaching stint with IIT-Kanpur, in 1993 Pandey, traded academia for working full time for Asha. "My only regret is that I didn’t move out of academics earlier," he says.
Asha’s focus area is the economically backward, Dalit community (all India literacy rate 29.6 percent) dominated Lalpur village on the edge of Lucknow. There Asha is working towards building a self-sustaining and socially responsible community of 81 households.
However Pandey is critical of incremental corporatisation of the social services sector. "This is one sector which cannot be corporatised. You come into this field with a sense of mission, not to earn a fat salary or to make a career. If one isn’t driven by dedication to society and spirit of service, there will be no connection with the grassroots. I am totally against the new NGOs which receive huge funding from either foreign donors and/ or the government. Asha’s resources are raised through voluntary efforts. We work with low budgets and no overheads. It is a sense of commitment that makes all the difference in this sector," says Pandey who received the Ramon Magsasay Award in 2002 in the emergent leadership category.
Vidya Pandit
(Lucknow)"NGOs are not what they used to be ten years ago. It is possible today for a person to leave a private sector job and join an NGO without becoming pauperised. With corporates like Citibank, Infosys, TCS and numerous blue chip corporates besides individuals like Bill Gates pumping money into NGOs, well-paid jobs for people who are committed and qualified are plenty, and easily available. So for professionals who want to work for a cause and yet maintain a reasonable standard of living, a job with an NGO is a good option. Moreover there is an increased acceptance within the NGO community that corporate professionals are valuable and can help them run their organisations more efficiently and transparently," says Sanjay Bapat, the Mumbai-based chief executive of IndianNGOs.com, a web portal which disseminates information and news about third sector initiatives countrywide. A business management postgraduate of Welingkar’s Institute (Mumbai), Bapat himself crossed over from the advertising world to start Indian NGOs.com in 2000.
Adds Madan Paul, professor of social sciences at Delhi’s high profile Jawaharlal Nehru University: "India is a country where suffering and deprivation meets the eye everywhere. A growing number of high achievers within the new class of educated high-end earners is troubled by these socio-economic disparities and wants to do its bit. As more individuals become prosperous within the new liberalised economy, the number of professionals opting to help out in the social sector through the promotion of public-private partnerships is certain to increase."
Against the backdrop of rising disillusionment of politicians with the bureaucracy which has suddenly popularised public-private partnerships, a favourable confluence of factors is prompting a growing number of corporate professionals to cross the rubicon into voluntary sector organisations. With government bureaucracies having proved them-selves unequal to the task of delivering education and health services in particular to the neglected majority scratching out precarious livelihoods at the base of the inequitous social pyramid, this swelling crossover tide is good news to all right thinking people. But it will be a while before this trickle becomes a flood
With Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore); Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai); Vidya Pandit (Lucknow); Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai); Neeta Lal & Autar Nehru (Delhi)