CSR in India has a lot of catching up to do

The first ever Asian CSR Congress, hosted by the Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership in Mumbai, has proven to be a bit of a disappointment.  Maybe I was just coming off my high from the Khemka Forum for Social Entrepreneurship (which also looked to be disappointing until a couple of dynamically interactive late sessions), or maybe I’m noticing a starker difference between the social innovation crowd and the corporate crowd than I used to… but I have a feeling it’s more because in India, corporate social responsibility is still in a very early stage with a lot of catching up to do.

The event started by getting my hopes up with two of its pieces of distributed literature – the first CSR rating of Indian corporates, by Karmayog, which boosts companies’ rankings if CSR embedded in their business operations; and an announcement of the upcoming global tour (including India) by the purported father of CSR 2.0, Dr. Wayne Visser of CSR International.

However, it then proceeded to dash those hopes with a painfully prepubescent viewpoint of CSR expressed by many of the delegates.  Case studies by the corporate foundations that dominated the conference were embarrassingly blatant in valuing brand building over strategic CSR (really, you’re building another set of schools and hospitals to slap your name on?  That’s, like, so last decade).  The peanut gallery of CSR heads of major corporations made a field day of bashing efforts to improve profits through sustainable business strategy – when one speaker tried to discuss the difference between “CSR” and “sustainability” in his company’s efforts, an audience member termed them something like “doing good for good's sake, vs. making money off of doing good.”  As if the second option was some slimy, underhanded workaround, rather than just good business.  For real?

Even my excitement about the 25 case studies on CSR in Indian companies in CSRL’s publication “CSR Excellence,” was destroyed when I heard a rumor (unconfirmed)* that the cases aren't picked from independent research - companies PAY to write their own case studies and have them published.  To the tune of $1000 a pop.

I don’t want to rub salt in the wound by blasting the facilitation of the conference, but…  people cutting each other off, speakers refusing to let delegates finish their questions and telling them they “are free to not listen to what I’m saying,” sessions lasting an hour into the lunch break – is this really what happens when you let the corporates play in the social sandbox, or vice versa?  I thought this fusion of the two sectors was supposed to be the new age, not the way to back track to petty, last-generation arguments?

I’m still holding out hope that this is just a small, biased crowd among a larger movement towards strategic CSR that will keep up with the global tidal wave.  But in my first foray into the Indian CSR community, it’s not the promising scene I had imagined.


*Please note that this has been modified from its original posting - I originally claimed that I had learned this as a fact.  Rather, it is a rumor I heard from a delegate at the conference, and I am still in the process of verifying.

But where do the women do their business?

Every morning, like a silent, stolid army, the fisherman families and slum residents living on the beach come down to the breakers to take their morning toilet run.  A trove of squatters spots the landscape, some relieving themselves quickly and rushing off to work, some taking their time, staring out at the horizon like it’s a good bathroom reader.  As I run along I dodge as many turd piles as trash pieces.  It’s one way to get a rough gauge for the amount of diarrhea in the community.

I noticed this morning that while seemingly all the men and most of the children (male and female) participate unashamedly in this ritual, the women are entirely absent.  Where do they do their business in the morning?  How do they get rid of it? And more importantly, if there’s a way for them to use the toilet without using the ocean turning the beach into what is surely every public health professional’s nightmare, why couldn’t the men and children do the same?

The much-acclaimed World Toilet Organization is tackling some of these issues.  It sees the “toilet taboo” as one of the biggest barriers to improving sanitation, and seeks to popularize the work of building and maintaining toilets for the 2.5bn people it estimates lack them, through such kitchy marketing campaigns as World Toilet Day and The Big Squat.  There’s also the World Toilet College for toilet design and maintenance capacity development, and the annual World Toilet Summit & Expo.  It seems to be working – they’ve gotten a ton of press and a number of avid followers – but these things take time.

Without much knowledge of the subject, my guess is that the biggest issue is the social one – convincing people that they need toilets, that open defecation is unsanitary and will lead to disease.  Is there some opportunity here in the disparity between women’s and men’s pooping routines?  I guess it depends on where the women really go, and whether their methods are any more sanitary than the beach.  Until then my neighboring slums will continue to use the ocean as their toilet-cum-garbage can, and I will continue to dodge the turds.

The magical formula to becoming an entrepreneur

I finally broke through months of procrastination and started posting to the India Development Blog, my organization's unofficial blog on India, development, microfinance, and whatever else pops into our researchers' heads - which happens to get about 200 hits/day.  Re-posted below, and original post can be found here.




I have a gripe with all this buzz on entrepreneurship.

Don't get me wrong - I love it.  As a closet wannabe social entrepreneur, I follow the blogs, read the articles and attend the conferences when I can find an excuse.  The latest was today’s IFMR entrepreneurship summit, Strides (shameless plug), which featured panels on starting up and sustaining enterprises, plus a rousing presentation by Manish Tripathi of the Mumbai Dabbawalas.  What I’ve noticed in these forums is that, in a commendable effort to be inspiring, the stories of successful entrepreneurs tend to glaze over the challenges and obstacles associated with starting a venture.  The profiles present such a glowing picture: all you have to do is be walking along minding your own business, have  a defining moment where you discover some great gap in society, put your mind to filling the gap, develop an innovative solution, and voila: you’re showered with capital, partnerships, technical support and awards.  Sure, there’s the requisite list of ways to avoid the pitfalls: believe in yourself, think outside the box, take risks, persevere through the rough spots, and the ubiquitous 'every failure is a stepping stone to success.'  But beyond these vague conceptual insights, it is very difficult to discern what exactly makes Steve Jobs or Ratan Tata succeed while thousands of others try and fail.

These stories get everyone pumped up, but my hunch is that they gloss over some components of what it really takes to be successful as a start-up.  How much of it involves natural networking capability and charisma, or extraordinarily hard work, or simply being in the right place at the right time?  Are the examples replicable, or unique to the person and situation?  This line of thinking leads to the question business schools have been trying to answer for decades: can entrepreneurship be taught?

One potential consequence of these inspiring but potentially oversimplified examples is the kind of message they send to aspiring entrepreneurs. Bill Gates didn’t graduate from high school – does that encourage people to drop out in the hopes of following in his footsteps?  The Mumbai Dabbawalas built an empire despite being largely illiterate, and their founder wasn’t educated past class 2 – great, but does that mean they didn’t have some other innate ability that enabled them to succeed?  On the one hand these images say 'it's possible to do it even without education,' but on the other they say 'don’t bother with school, you don’t need it.'  It almost seems like a modern 'get rich quick' scheme.  Sure, it works for the precious, lucky, talented few, but what about the rest of us mere mortals?

It would be great to see an emphasis on the hard parts of climbing the ladder alongside the motivational stories.  If everyone experiences rough patches, what specifically have these entrepreneurs done to overcome them?  What makes these stories different from all the stories of failure?  How much of it is really just up to chance?  This reality check might help set expectations and remind the next generation of entrepreneurs that while there are outliers, for most of us entrepreneurship is hard.  It takes more than a bright idea and a little diligence to become a successful entrepreneur.

Kenya’s corruption and what it means for India

I recently got my hands on a book that is being referred to as “Kenya’s Watergate” (by Chris Blattman, at least), banned in the nation according to some accounts: It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong, former Africa correspondent for the FT.  The book names and shames members of the current administration and brings to light some interesting (though not totally new) insights about the state of corruption in Kenya.  Since said administration’s election shenanigans got me evacuated from the country last year, needless to say, I was fascinated. 

I also recently chatted with an Indian acquaintance who used to work in western and central Africa about the differences between corruption in daily life in India vs. Africa (disclaimer – I hate generalizing issues about “Africa” as if the whole continent is one homogeneous country.  That said, the similarities in corruption attitude among different African countries are often shockingly close).  His impression was that Indian corruption is a little less blatant, a little more under the table - something unusual for a culture known for its bluntness.  He also asserted that Indians tend to be more “content” with the level of corruption in their lives – because, for example, the fees for paying off a cop are usually lower than the official fines for petty offenses (as argued here).  In Africa, on the other hand, corruption is much more over the table.  And when people get fed up with it, they riot.

Of course, the rioting rarely produces solutions.  I certainly wouldn’t advocate it as the appropriate strategy for India.  But in both countries, I wonder what can be done to make people madder about the everday corruption they face.  Mad enough that they will do something about it, and do that thing consistently.  In both countries you see the momentum behind anti-corruption flare up now and again, just to subside as quickly as it erupted.  Take the aftermath of 26/11: I remember seeing Indian citizens, particularly the youth, stepping up to combat the corruption and security issues that had led to the tragedy, through mediums from Facebook to traditional media to business plan competitions!  Today, as we approach the first anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, I wonder where that outrage and drive to action disappeared to.  And I wonder how to bring it back.

Chief hippie?

I can’t decide my take on this “chief guru of life change” executive naming trend.  Some of the most exciting emerging social ventures seem to enjoy coming up with creative yet somewhat ridiculous-sounding titles for the people who run their companies. This was brought to light by a somewhat recent McKinsey interview of Adam Werbach, who seems to know a lot about this stuff.  He highlighted two cool sustainability-focused for-profits, method and Seventh Generation.  Seventh Generation’s founder calls himself the “chief inspired protagonist” (seriously?), and method’s is the “chief greenskeeper” (seriously.).  These guys are arguably two of the major players in the triple bottom line/social venture/sustainability space, and this is what they call themselves?  I know they’re run out of San Francisco and Vermont and all, but really.  I’m trying to figure out what the next guy down gets called – vice inspired protagonist?  Semi-inspired protagonist?  Chief inspired realist?  The hierarchy could get really confusing.

In an industry like social enterprise that is trying to be more professional, more respected and a bigger player, I would expect this kind of stunt to be laughed off stage.  What kind of private sector CEO would call herself a chief inspiration nurturer?  What kind of investor would give his money to the chief flowerchild?  It makes me angry because it seems that some of the best emerging social ventures are making light of the space and encouraging mockery at best, reinforcement of a flaky and poorly managed sector image at worst.

But then, despite myself, there’s something I unwittingly like about this fad.  (Don’t tell my future investors.)  There’s something Google-esque about it.  It implies a work environment where incredibly bright minds come up with groundbreaking ideas over fooseball and beanbag chairs.  (Perhaps this has its own challenges, but it seems to have worked for tech.)  And maybe that’s what attracts the bright minds to the social sector – the idea of business without business as usual.

Socially responsible business, India, and the long view

I’m starting a research project on socially responsible business strategies, so a blog post seemed like a good way to dive in.  In talking to people about the concept of companies in India going “beyond corporate social responsibility,” I’ve gotten a few different responses – on one hand those who feel that there is a huge class divide and the elite of India pay little attention to the poor; on the other those who think India has huge potential to be a leader in sustainable business.  With Ramalinga Rajus (of Satyam fame) and Nandan Nilekanis (of Infosys, Imagining India and now Universal ID project fame) in the same country, it’s understandable that people would have varying perspectives.

I can also see the appeal of either approach.  India’s non-inclusive growth over the past decade is well known, and the elite have gotten fabulously rich through the information revolution, while the poor have stayed poor and/or gotten poorer.  But poverty is blatant here, slums intermingled with posh neighborhoods, garbage littering the streets – surely people have motivation to develop the country as a whole?  Besides, India is a young economy, free to build businesses with better strategies and learn from the mistakes of the West?  Maybe this is a naïve viewpoint, but I have hard time getting away from it.  In the states we joke about finishing our food because there are starving kids in developing countries.  Here, we can just go outside and give it to them.

Regardless of motivation, there is a debate raging in the international community over the responsibilities of the corporate sector, how and why companies should contribute to society, and whether social values detract from or enhance the profitability and sustainability of a company.  Do Indian companies take the long term view more often or less often than their foreign counterparts?  Can social and environmental practices really contribute to the bottom line?  Did the financial crisis expose a need for more sustainable business practices, or just make everyone tighten their purses and revert to conservative thinking?  I don’t know, but I hope to find out.

Linguistics

Where better to start a new blog than with a boring commentary on lexicon?


This whole social venture space seems to have some real issues with standardizing its terminology.  Is it social enterprise, social entrepreneurship, social ventures, social business, earned income, socially responsible business, corporate social responsibility...?  Oh and my favorite - "nonprofit entrepreneur."  Isn't that an oxymoron?


What's the difference between any of these terms?  Fine, it's a new field, but we really ought to be clear on what we're talking about - I have enough trouble explaining this stuff to my mother without a constantly changing lexicon.


Jerr Boschee at the Institute for Social Entrepreneurs actually tried.  I won't say I agree with all his definitions, but I commend the effort.  And his "five essential concepts" aren't bad:

"Dependency":  The traditional business model for nonprofits, in which they depend solely or almost entirely on charitable contributions and public sector subsidies, with earned income either non-existent or minimal

"Sustainability":  The ability to fund the future of a nonprofit through a mixed revenue stream -- a  combination of earned income, charitable contributions and public sector subsidies

"Self-sufficiency":  The ability to fund the future of a nonprofit through earned income alone

"Social entrepreneur":  Any person, in any sector, who runs a social enterprise

"Social enterprise":  Any organization, in any sector, that uses earned income strategies to pursue a double or triple bottom line, either alone (as a social sector business) or as part of a mixed revenue stream that includes charitable contributions and public sector subsidies

Full 80-term glossary available here - let's hope he continues to update it.