Archives
Contribute
| In Conversation With Magsaysay Award Winner Deep Joshi |
Ranjani Saigal
02/26/2013
What motivated you to leave America and go back to India and work in the social sector?
Frankly, the idea of staying back was never on my mind. I had gone to America to get an education and not to build a career there. India is my home, this is where my roots are, my emotions are, and I always intended to return. I recall during my second year at MIT the Watergate scandal broke out and I would watch the Senate hearings without any feeling, as just another TV show. Yet, when the Emergency was declared back home a little later, I was deeply agitated. So, deep down I knew all along I would go home. Mind you, I had adjusted well, enjoyed life, learned a great deal through some 28 odd courses, faced no discrimination and admired—as I still do—many things about America. But somehow I did not think I belonged. May be, the fact that I spent the first 17 years of my life in a remote village and that sort of ‘defined’ me, had something to do with it.
I had not really ‘planned’ to work in the ‘social sector’. I was always attracted to work for some sort of ‘greater good’, something beyond making a living, if you will. In fact, I chose to become a teacher of engineering after I got by first degree in engineering in India even though I would have earned twice as much if I had chosen to work in industry. When I returned I dabbled in policy research and attempted to introduce better systems of management in government, public sector companies and NGOs. My work took me to an NGO working in the field of rural health and that experience literally opened my eyes to new possibilities in life. That is how my work in the social sector began.
What motivated you to start PRADAN?
As I said, I dabbled in public policy work when I came back to India and my first assignment took me to an NGO in Jamkhed in Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra, set up by a doctor couple, the Aroles, both of whom were MDs from the John Hopkins University. The experience of seeing Mabel Arole sitting with village women, engaging with them as if they were her own touched a chord somewhere. A new vista opened of how professionals could engage with the less privileged to help them change their lives. Here was a highly educated doctor; yet the way she interacted with poor, illiterate people was so different from what one normally sees in our country. She identified with them, there was a sense of empathy, a sense of responsibility, a sense of oneness. She didn't behave as if they were poor and therefore she had to "give" them her expertise. Rather, using her knowledge and with palpable belief in their potential, she trained them to be rural health workers. The results were remarkable—the public health parameters in the villages where the Aroles worked were better in 1977 than our national averages today! I could have become another Arole, set up an ashram somewhere and helped, may be, 50 or 100 villages but I wondered if one could not set up an organization that would systematically help bring more ‘Aroles’—people with ‘head’ and ‘heart’—to work in villages. That's how PRADAN was conceived. It was borne out of the belief that that the best and the brightest must engage with the weakest, the least privileged, that the cause of modernizing India is served as well when educated Indians work in villages as when they work in cities in businesses and industry.
You have won so many awards including the Ramon Magsaysay award. What do these awards mean to you?
Awards seek to glorify individuals but nothing worthwhile is achieved through solo efforts. Institutions like PRADAN certainly are not built by one individual alone. The biggest challenge facing the Indian society today is dehumanizing poverty and gross inequalities and PRADAN is doing its bit to change that picture. So, while the awards may bear my name, they are really for the people who leave materially more profitable avenues to join organizations like PRADAN to create a more just and fair society, to help the apparently weak discover their true strength. The awards thus celebrate the hard work of my PRADAN colleagues. Hopefully they will encourage more educated people to come and work in villages!
What would you consider as the three major accomplishments of Pradan?
a) PRADAN has institutionalised the idea of the brightest working with the poorest: Next to the government, PRADAN has more trained professionals working in villages in the field of rural development than any other organisation in the country. PRADAN’s pioneering contribution has been in inducting educated and socially inspired youth, grooming them through a structured programme and placing them directly in villages to facilitate change. Over 80% of the 1,500 development professionals trained by PRADAN, including those who have moved on to other organizations or set up new NGOs, continue to be engaged in eradicating poverty.
b) Innovations that transform communities: Developing and piloting innovative development models and mainstreaming these in partnership with the government and civil society organisations at the national, state and local levels has been core to PRADAN’s work. Using its field experience, PRADAN has designed prototypes that work for the rural poor and can be scaled up. Our work on Self Help Groups is one such example. Another example is tasar silk, where disease-free moths are reared by people to make silk. Earlier, government used to supply moth eggs to rearers free but the quality was often poor and supplies uncertain. We felt this is an economic activity so why should key inputs be free? People buy seed, farming implements—why not moth eggs? So we trained young people in villages to use a microscope and separate the diseased eggs from the rest and to become entrepreneurs, producing and selling disease free eggs of the silk moth. This simple innovation removed the key bottleneck in the growth of the sector. Today, this enterprise produces one-fourth of India’s tasar silk!
c) Change at Scale: PRADAN works directly with over 270,000 families across seven of India’s poorest states today. It also supports 70 NGOs spread the innovations developed by PRADAN. Our direct livelihoods promotion efforts today generate a gross yearly output of over $80 million. Through its direct work, PRADAN today mobilises investments of $26 million yearly to build productive assets for poor communities and develop their capabilities. For example, the poultry cooperatives set up by us now have more than 7,000 women members and are the largest supplier in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.
What is your current area of interest?
Rural development, what else? Modernizing India’s villages remains my only passion and I express it in various ways. I continue to work towards mainstreaming development practice as a profession. I remain engaged with young people seeking to work in villages and enabling them to find opportunities to realize their vision. I am deeply involved in the design of a Graduate Program in Development Practice at the Ambedkar University of Delhi, a state university in Delhi. I chair the Board of the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) which trains rural managers and we plan to expand the size of the graduating class and introduce another graduate program that would focus on development practice. I also chair the Board of the National Foundation for India which, among other things, supports an internship in the field of development for university graduates. I am engaged with the National Advisory Council of the Government of India that advises the government on social sector policies. I serve on the board of BASIX, a new generation livelihoods promoting institution. And of course, I continue to be an advisor and sounding-board to my friends in PRADAN.
How do you sell PRADAN to talented youngsters who have opportunities to pursue alternate materially successful careers?
For people with the finest education, there are few intellectual challenges more worthy than addressing rural poverty. There are no easy answers and no two villages or two communities are identical. Development work is thus intellectually as challenging as high science, modern finance, or diplomacy.
We have a structured, year-long apprenticeship for university graduates where they learn the practice of grassroots work, guided by an experienced mentor. We recruit them from over 60 campuses across the country through a careful process. We showcase our work to graduating students and the transformation it has triggered in the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor people. Apprenticeship includes living in the home of a poor family in a village, observing, reflecting and practicing what they learn from their guides and others. An apprentice is free to leave any time during the year without any obligation, even though they are paid a stipend. The idea is that one must not only learn the nitty-gritty of grassroots work but also make an informed choice—“I want to do it because it is challenging and meaningful work it touches a chordâ€. They should stay only if the work inspires them. In all these years in PRADAN, among the thousands of young people who have engaged with us, I have not met one soul—whether they stay or leave—who is not touched by what we do. Goodness is all around us; every one of us is capable of sparing a thought for ‘the other’.
It is not necessary that one spends an entire work life in PRADAN or in the kind of work we do. But if one spends even four or five years, one can trigger meaningful, measurable changes. And in the process, one is deeply enriched. One learns to deal with complex human processes. One discovers how people cope with so little. One deals with technology, markets, the play of power. One learns to work in teams. One learns to negotiate … So, one gains so much by sharing a little, and young people figure that out. That PRADAN is a flat and caring organisation helps, as does the fact that career opportunities for people with rural experience are now expanding.
What can NRIs do to support your efforts?
Very large number of people in India would continue to live in villages for at least a couple of generations. I imagine an India where vibrant, prosperous villages would co-exist with bustling cities, in harmony, in synergy, contributing to each other’s growth and stability. Those who live in villages would be as happy as those who live in cities. I believe we can build such an India in our lifetime. PRADAN is doing its part to build such an India. We plan to fan out to the 100 poorest districts from 43 presently, in the next 5 years. We cannot do it alone. So, I say to my NRI friends, JOIN US in our journey to create a prosperous India and ensure that all Indians lead a life of dignity, meaning and purpose. Tell five of your friends our story. Contribute your unique skills to our cause. Support one professional in PRADAN who would change the lives of 1,500 rural poor families.
The cost of one professional to engage with about 1,000 families supporting them to emerge from poverty and live a life of dignity overa 5 year period is $60,000. That comes to just $12/year to help a family emerge out of poverty.
PRADAN means giving in the sense of sharing—I received, so I give back a bit, I share. We started with the notion that we must do our bit in return for what we received from society. In a way, all of us came from villages—one, two, three generations ago. Let each one of us do our bit to change those villages, our roots. Join us in the spirit of PRADAN, of sharing … for more information, please visit us at http://30.pradan.net.
|
You may also access this article through our web-site http://www.lokvani.com/
Desh Deshpande, Deep Joshi, Anish Kumar, Gretchen Phillips
