Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category
Simply Fly: Chapter 3
Devyani Srinivasan continues her analysis of the book “Simply Fly” by Air Deccan founder, Captain Gopinath. Over a series of blog posts Srinivasan has been exploring the lessons Gopinath’s story holds for social enterprises looking to work with the BOP.
In my blog post on Chapter 2, I mentioned that Gopinath attributes his decision to leave the army to a spiritual-emotional crisis, but gives few details on what this crisis is. In this chapter, what spirituality means for Gopinath becomes clearer.
Throughout the book so far, the reader is aware of Gopinath’s love of nature. In Chapter 2, he narrates being awestruck at the mountains of the Indo-Tibetan border, that he saw on his long range patrols when in the army. He says that, “I saw the most spectacular scenes, of gushing waterfalls, snow-capped mountain peaks, and winding rivers. I was immersed in Tagore’s poetry at the time and the entire experience was deeply spiritual.” In Chapter 1 Gopinath describes the Western Ghats, and his village, with love, including the agriculture (coconut groves, areca plantations, betel-leaf creepers, paddy fields, mango orchards and coffee estates), and the dense, pristine rainforests. Yet, the bulk of his descriptions are reserved for the Hemavathy and Yagachi rivers, and in Chapter 3 he confirms that for him, rivers are sacred.
While by Chapter 2 the reader already suspects that there is a close tie between spirituality and nature for Gopinath, this is elaborated upon in Chapter 3. He states:
…My struggle with farming lent my life a spiritual dimension. I sensed within me a sense of oneness with the environment. In one breath I took in the mystic aura of the early morning sunrise; the sweet fragrance rising from freshly churned earth as I walked across the fields. I was in search of a natural method of understanding the crops, the seasons, and the soil.
For example, coconuts are central to Gopinath’s farm. Again drawing from a religious reference, he says that, “in the scriptures, the coconut tree is called kalpavriksha, the tree that lives a long, long time and grants all wishes.” Gopinath believes that if he nurses the saplings for seven or eight years they will keep him going for a hundred years, and therefore the success or failure of his farm will be decided in the time that it takes the coconut palms to grow.
Initially, when termites attack the coconut trees, he uses benzene hexachloride to get rid of them. When it rains this spray washes down into the soil and nearby stream, carrying the residual chemicals with it, and polluting the soil, the stream, the ponds, and the groundwater. Gopinath quickly realizes that by removing all the twigs, branches and dead organisms from the soil, the termites are left with no nourishment, and therefore attack the coconut trees. Once Gopinath instructs the workers not to remove anything from the coconut grove, the termites stop attacking the trees.
While the farm is the focus of Gopinath’s activities in this chapter, he also begins a silkworm business, stock-brokerage, a hotel business, a motor-cycle dealership, and an agricultural consultancy. The silkworm business is particularly worth mentioning, as Gopinath replaces bamboo stems and branches with paddy straw as the cocooning sites for silk worms. He does this to, “save millions of bamboos from felling, and simultaneously eliminate the repeated use of disinfectant on the generally reused bamboo montages.” In addition, he experiments with integrating rain-water harvesting and impounding in ponds, managing weeds, moisture retention in the soil, discreet ploughing, and selective biological pest control. Gopinath’s silkworm business wins the Rolex Award for Enterprise, which he sees as helping to spread environmental awareness and eco-friendly ways of farming.
However, in this chapter Gopinath also seems to be developing an interest in entrepreneurship for its own sake, regardless of the social benefits it does or does not bring. Some examples serve to illustrate this. In the first, Gopinath says that from farming he learnt that:
…If something is not ecologically sound, it is not economically viable. This is a simple law that I think applies to every aspect of life. For a business to be viable, entrepreneurs need to create the right ecology for business and for the interactions it entails. That seed of my future low-cost airline and other businesses was sowed here.
However, in this quote, Gopinath is modifying the meaning of the world “ecology” drastically from its environmental context. In fact there is a contradiction between Gopinath’s love of nature and the environment, and his decision to start an airline business. Another example is of his future helicopter business that Gopinath also refers to in this chapter. While Gopinath refuses to accept dowry at his own wedding, again in a seeming contradiction, he acknowledges that it is dowry that enables his customers to hire helicopters for wedding celebrations.
At his motor-cycle dealership Gopinath decides to hire children, but here the issue is more complicated. He reasons that by hiring boys as young as 8-10 years old, he can train them to become mechanics and open their own garages. Gopinath also displays sensitivity in trying to ensure that the boys are not ill-treated.
One lesson from this chapter for entrepreneurs is that help can often come from unexpected sources, and therefore it is important not to alienate anyone, as far as possible. Even when his farm is ransacked by the previous farmers of the land allotted by the government to Gopinath, he offers to help them to receive title to the land remaining. It is perhaps due to this attitude that Manje Gowda, a neighboring farmer and friend, offers to guarantee Gopinath’s bank loan when none of his other friends and relatives would. Of course, Gopinath is at an advantage over other farmers in the first place because he was previously an army officer, and this seems to interest one bank manager, after several failed attempts, in his loan application.
Chapter 3 begins with the quote, “All that matters is Love and Work”, and ends with Gopinath lamenting that, “People do not love what they do, but do it nonetheless for the money it brings.” While it is clear that Gopinath has a love for agriculture, and perhaps a budding love for his other business interests, the reader hears little of his personal life in this autobiography so far. In this chapter he gets married, and some sections describe the marriage and his subsequent life with his wife. Gopinath’s wife evokes interest because she insists on marrying him although at the time he is a farmer in debt. However, in other respects the marriage seems quite traditional. Gopinath is attracted to her because she can sing, is pretty, and will cook for him, and after marriage she seems to unequivocally support him without voicing any opinions of her own. Gopinath also has two daughters, but they receive only passing mention in this chapter.
Unconvention 2010: Where Path Breakers Meet Path Makers
On December 3rd and 4th, Villgro held the second edition of its 4-in-1 conference, Unconvention 2010. The event brough together over 250 practioners, innovators, investors and entrepreneurs in Chennai for four distinct events – a social entrepreneurship summit, a business plan competition, an innovation fair and an investor forum. Bharath Varshney, a Villgro Fellow presents an overview of the two-day event here.
In an effort to create a viable eco-system for fostering innovation in the social sector, Villgro Innovations Foundation held our second edition of Unconvention in Chennai, India from the 2nd to 4th Dec, 2010. Over 200 delegates gathered for three days of experience-sharing, panels, break-out consultancy sessions, and networking.
The annual platform that celebrates social entrepreneurship had five distinct parts – Wantrapreneur (a business plan competition for startups), Innohub (a showcase of innovators and their product and service innovation), The Summit (a knowledge sharing platform with panel discussions and workshops), for the first time an Investor Forum (medium to directly connect entrepreneurs with investors) and Villgro Awards, which identifies and felicitates the entrepreneurs and enterprises that have made significant contributions to society and the sector.
The spirit of Unconvention was put forward by Paul Basil, CEO and Founder of Villgro: “Where path breakers meet path makers is a platform to foster dialogues for the social innovators to develop sustainable environment for strong partnership and networking,” he said. Further, the event had participation from socially relevant businesses and individual innovators showcasing and deliberating their plans for change in rural India.
The Summit
The first day of the Summit was designed with panel discussions while on the second day was a mix of workshops and entrepreneur sharing sessions. The discussions were focused on brainstorming ideas that have social impact. Moreover, three parallel workshops on different topics: Making yourself ready for investments, Law & Social Entrepreneurship and Applying new tools to Measuring Impact-were conducted as part of the summit on the second day.
Innohub
The other major attraction of the Unconvention was Innohub – an Innovation fair showcasing highly market-worthy innovations- both products and technologies handpicked by Villgro. Innohub also facilitated face-to-face meetings to forge partnerships between entrepreneurs and innovators. Exhibitors at Innohub included Villgro Stores, a Villgro initiative that provides last mile connectivity for agricultural products; Neurosynaptics, a weather monitoring system development unit; Skymet, a weather forecasting technology unit; Arogyam Foods, organic products developed by rural farmers; Network of Indian Agri-Business Incubators (NIABI), and Masuta, a tasar yarn producers company.
Wantrapreneur
Wantrapreneur, the Business Plan Competition, received an impressive 44 applications in the Agriculture, Dairy, Water and Energy categories, of which 10 were short-listed for the finals. While evaluations of the business plans happened on December 2nd, the winners were announced on Day 1. Beating all hurdles, Mr. Inir Pinheiro of Grassroutes, a network of village tourism destinations owned & run by local communities, was awarded the first prize under the start-up category. The award for Early Growth was given to Mr. Kaushalendra & Mr. Anuj Kumar of Samriddhii Green Carts which is working to reinvent the fresh vegetable supply chain.
Investor Forum
The newest addition to the event, based on feedback from last year’s event, was the Investor Forum. This platform provided an opportunity for investors looking for deals in the sector to interact with social entrepreneurs looking for investments. The forum not only opened up investment opportunities but also provided ample learning ground for investors and investees as they interacted directly during the pitches. In total ten investors talked to the entrepreneurs and discussed the best way of making investments in social businesses. Interestingly, more than 40 meetings were requested which will be facilitated by Villgro post-Unconvention. The Investor Forum also hosted a discussion around Community of Practice: Access to finance, was facilitated by Villgro & ABI – ICRISAT with support from Infodev, World Bank.
Villgro Awards
The 2010 Villgro Awards were given out in seven categories to celebrate and recognize individuals and organizations that have influenced society through their work. Mr. Mohammad Haque won the Grassroots Innovator Award for his Paddy Thresher, and SELCO, India won the Best Social Enterprise Award. The Jury included Dr. Ashok Jhunjunwhala, Head-RTBI, Ms. Bindu Ananth, President-IFMR Trust, Mr. Solomon Prakash, Country Director-ASHOKA & Ms. Valerie D’Costa, Program Manager-Infodev, World Bank.
Unconvention’10 ended with My Story session in which three social entrepreneurs shared with the audience their entrepreneur story. The first story was from Ms. Saloni Malhotra, Founder of Desicrew, who spoke of how she discussed how she sustained through the failures to build a rural BPO. Madhabananda Ray, Founder & Managing Director of Masuta Producers Company Ltd., inspired the audience with his story of how he turned tribal women into successful entrepreneurs by making them the owners of the enterprise that produces tasar silk. Finally, Svati Bhogle, Founder of Sustaintech, talked about her green energy enterprise, and how she made the jump into the for-profit businessworld, having always worked in a non-profit background. The sessions offered participants to hear some of the lesser-known struggles that went into establishing these enterprises. Would-be and fledgling entrepreneurs certainly had a lot of food for thought!
In short, Unconvention’10 was a fine example of bonding between those with a need and those with a solution. Further, it provided a common meeting ground for innovators, social entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers, researchers, and the media. Villgro has already announced the dates for Unconvention 2011. Keep your calendar free 2nd and 3rd December 2011!
What does it take to Disseminate Innovation?
In their article authors Susan Evans and Peter Clarke take a closer look at how innovatin can be disseminated. They rightly suggest that while a lot of attention is given to creating new, innovative products, little is done to disseminate successful ones. Evans and Clarke, in their article “Disseminating Orpah Innovations,” discuss the distinct, sophisticated skill set required to disseminate innovation. This skill set often requires customizing the innovation to new circumstances and not in replication.
Read the entire article here.
Using the Internet to Achieve Scale
Several organizations struggle with the question of how to acheive scale. The answers present themselves in different ways, depending on the intended outcome. A study published by the Monitor Group in June, explores how the Internet can become a powerful tool to scale.
The case study takes a look at the model pioneered by KaBOOM!, a US based non-profit that is dedicated to building playgrounds across the United States. After several years of successful growth, KaBOOM! saw that real growth would come not just by engaging with communities directly, but to take their model online. The internet held the ability to help them build hundreds of thousands of playgrounds across the country. The did this by putting their resources online so that communities could organize themselves and build their own playgrounds using free resources and guidenlines avialable on the KaBOOM! website.
The KaBOOM! example holds lessons for other social businesses too, particularly those focused on delivering a service. Read the entire case study here.
Are Social Entrepreneurs Crazy?
In his piece in The Washington Post, NYU Wagner School of Business’s Paul Light asks the question “Are Social Entrepreneurs Crazy?” Light’s thought is lead by the fact that social entrepreneurs globally seem to be solving the problems that the world is tired of – poverty, hunger, inequality and disease. Given the scale of the problems they are trying to solve, labeling them ‘crazy’ does not appear to be inappropriate.
The notion also stems from the fact that these entrepreneurs are few and far between – perhaps as low as one in every 10 million he says. Light cites John Hopkins’ University Professor John D. Garter who points to the term “hypomania” with reference to business entrepreneurship. Those with “hypomania,” Garter suggests are “brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas. They think, talk, move, and make decisions quickly…. Hypomanics are not crazy, but ‘normal’ is not the first word that comes to mind when describing them.”
This notion however is not new. Light points to how Bill Drayton of Ashoka, set out more than 30 years ago to look for entrepreneurs who were possessed with an idea. The difference in practical terms is that being possessed isn’t necessarily being hypomanic. It is more akin to intense “purpose rooted in the belief that the world must change.”
Light’s article goes on to describe this purpose through examples of various enterprises. Read the entire article here.
Power to the People
In this post, Robert Moore takes a closer look at the recently published IFMR Report “Power to the People,” and the challenges raised.
The IFMR Trust recently released a report along with the World Resources Institute on clean energy options for the base of the pyramid in India. A previous Villgro post described the impact this report should have on energy entrepreneurs and investors but the general BOP practitioner can learn a lot from this new research as well. The document starts from a Macro level view of the market potential and then goes into more detail about specific issues that certain companies face. All of the information paints a highly valuable picture of challenges at the BOP that we all can learn from.
One of the first things to note was the surprising variations in market size. Of the $2.11 billion estimated aggregate potential market for the four sectors studied in the report more than 96% of it was for Decentralized Renewable Energy Sources leaving only 1.2% for solar home systems ($27.39 million), 0.8% for Solar Lanterns ($18.58 million), and 1.1% for Energy-Efficient Cook stoves ($24.13 million). While every report’s numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, seeing these low numbers should prompt BOP practitioners to try and understand the total market size potential for their own industry so as not to be blindsided by limited growth opportunities or high competition crowding that, if this report is correct, one can imagine will happen in this one.
Another benefit of this document is that it paints a picture of several businesses and the immediate challenges that they face. For example, one of the challenges discussed is the charitable distribution schemes that distort the local market. A real life example of this is how the free kerosene stoves and televisions promised by the Tamil Nadu has made the citizens there assume that the energy efficient cook stoves should be given to them for free as well creating a hard market for the energy efficient cook stove companies to enter as most of their customers are reluctant to pay for the product. This report is chalk full of other ideas like this that can quickly educate someone about what issues to look out for in the BOP.
A relevant issue that is pointed out in the document relates to incorrect assumptions that can be easily made in impact assessment and market acceptance. This particular situation reveals that some BOP energy companies might look more beneficial and feasible on the surface because they state their impact based on the assumed value of the fuel their clients are saving. You would figure there is no problem with this but while an energy efficient stove might have a significant reduction in the amount of fuel needed, it can’t automatically be assumed that it will be of value to the end user. This is because in many cases they get their fuel for free by just gathering biomass and burning it. When simple situations like these are illustrated throughout this document it becomes easier for one to imagine where there are incorrect assumptions about their own impact or market.
The rest of the report includes an overall introduction to India’s rural BOP clean energy market, the specific systems and products in place, and the roles of different players like NGOs and Governments. It is a great primer for their intended audience but also has a lot of insight that can be utilized across many sectors utilizing social innovation in India. You can view a copy of it here.
The Bad and Good News About Evaluation
In this post Devyani Srinivasan writes about the usefulness of evaluation methodologies in understanding the usefulness of the work of social businesses. This post was first published on Devyani’s blog, Devyani Writes.
In an earlier post, I had critiqued the research methodologies of 2 surveys of social entrepreneurs, by Ashoka and Intellecap. Most of my suggestions for improvement were directed towards helping Ashoka and Intellecap better answer the question, “How representative are my results of a larger community (the universe) of social entrepreneurs?” However, at the end of the post I had also mentioned the concept of causation. Causation is important when trying to answer a different question, which is, “How likely is it that my results were caused by a particular intervention, rather than by something else?”
From the 25th to the 28th of October I attended the Evaluation Conclave 2010 in Delhi, where I had the chance to explore these issues further. In an evaluation context, it’s often the word attribution, rather than causation, that is used. Attribution is an issue at many levels. I’ll try to illustrate this using a hypothetical example of a social enterprise.
This social enterprise produces insecticide-treated bed nets. Orders for the bed nets are placed through a microfinance institution, and the bed nets are delivered to customers through kirana stores (corner shops). The social enterprise requires funds for its social marketing campaigns, to cover costs until it reaches break-even, and to develop talent within the organization. It is able to find donors to meet each of these needs.
An evaluation is conducted of the social enterprise, and it is found that incidences of malaria have decreased in the households in which customers have bought bed nets. The donor that funded the talent development program wants to know how its money contributed to the reduction in malaria. However, it is not possible to isolate talent development from the rest of the organization, as the people developed through this program contribute to social marketing, production and all other aspects of the enterprise.
What all three donors can agree on is that they want to know to what extent the reduction in malaria can be attributed to the bed nets. While it’s easy to assume that bed nets resulted in a reduction in malaria, this may not be the case. For example, the government could have embarked on a mosquito eradication program, and sprayed the villages in which the bed nets were also sold.
How do we find out the extent to which the reduction in malaria can be attributed to the bed nets? The strongest evaluation designs that answer this question should have two characteristics. The first is that they should include both the project group, and comparison (non-equivalent control) group. The second is that both groups should be “observed” at both the start and end of the project. If time and budget permit, both groups can also be “observed” during implementation of the project and after it has been operating for some time.
What is it about these evaluation designs that make them appropriate for the social enterprise in the example?
- The project group is “observed” both at the start and at the end of the project. In our example, the project group is households that have bought bed nets. A figure for the incidence of malaria at the end of the project is meaningless if we do not know what the incidence of malaria was at the beginning. The only exception is if the incidence of malaria is 0. However, since this would require all the bed nets sold to be in perfect condition, to be used all the time, and by all members of the family, this is highly unlikely to be the case.
- There is a comparison (non-equivalent control) group, which is also “observed” at the start and end of the project. Even if the incidence of malaria has reduced in our project group, how do we know that this was due to the bed nets and not other factors? The answer is by selecting a comparison (non-equivalent control) group. This group should comprise of households that did not buy the bed nets, but are as similar as possible to the households which bought bed nets. This will enable the evaluator to compare whether malaria declined at a similar rate in the project group and comparison group. If it did, then it is likely that malaria declined due to factors other than the bed nets.
The bad news about evaluation is that it can be quite complicated to successfully meet the criteria for a strong evaluation design. The good news is that between strong and weak evaluation designs, there are a range of options that are frequently adequate. These options are summarized in this overview of Real World Evaluation, a book by Michael Bamberger, Jim Rugh and Linda Mabry. I was lucky enough to attend a workshop that spanned two days, and was facilitated by Jim Rugh, at the Conclave. Based on what I learned at the workshop, I’m going to propose my own design to evaluate the social enterprise in my example above.
If you remember, orders for the bed nets are placed through a microfinance institution (MFI). The social enterprise is still building its distribution network, and has only reached the kirana shops in one geographical area. However, it asks the MFI to aggregate orders from all of the geographical areas in which it has a presence. The customers who have ordered the bed nets, but whom the social enterprise’s distribution network has not reached as yet, will serve as the comparison group.
It is important for the evaluation design that the comparison group also comprises of clients of the MFI. This is because it is likely that MFI clients are more enterprising than other members of their communities. It is possible that even without bed nets, they have devised other solutions to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes. Therefore, in order to understand whether it is bed nets that have made the difference, the households where bed nets were bought must be compared to other enterprising households, and not to the average population.
The “observation” of the project and comparison groups at the start of the project can come in part from the MFI’s records, as they are likely to have already collected a lot of data on their clients. Any additional data that needs to be collected can be done at the time that orders for the bed nets are placed, before they have been bought and have had the chance to have an effect.
The Real World Evaluation book uses terms such as during, upon completion of, and after the project. In the case of a social enterprise, it is more likely that the evaluation will be of an ongoing business, than of a project that has a start, middle and end. However, as one of Paul Polak’s principles of Designing for the Other 90 Percent is that the design should pay for itself in the first year, one year may be a suitable duration to designate as the project period.
Of course, in this case I have chosen the business model of the social enterprise so that it lends itself to a strong evaluation design. Designing evaluations for actual social enterprises will be less easy. However, I hope my example demonstrates that while difficult, designing a strong, or at least adequate, evaluation is not impossible, and that practical solutions can be found to real world constraints.
Finally, there are some instances in which attribution may either not be possible or not necessary. As I discussed earlier, it may not be possible to attribute the effects of a talent development program within a social enterprise to a reduction in malaria. One example of where attribution may not be necessary is in the evaluation of a sector. Returning to our example, let us assume that an epidemic hits the Asian continent. The government is not prepared for this epidemic. Therefore, in the year the epidemic hits, while all of the government’s planned health programs are successful, the health of the population decreases overall.
In such an event, the overall trend in the health of the population may not be discovered through evaluations of individual interventions or organizations. In a sectoral review, positing an entire nation as a project group and another nation as a comparison group may not be meaningful.
While the example of the epidemic may seem dramatic and unlikely, at the Conclave there was an interesting exchange between a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Asian Development Bank on whether donors should, in addition to evaluating the interventions that they fund, evaluate whole sectors as well. However, sectoral evaluations are likely to be quite expensive, complicated, and therefore rare. For the vast majority of evaluations, issues of attribution and comparison will remain important.
Addressing the Needs of Rural Populations
In this paper, Joseph Thomas, Chief Technology Officer at Villgro discusses some of the challenges of early-stage technology development for BoP markets.
Rural development endeavours have gone through many changes over the past 40 years. The first of these were the appropriate technology groups that believed in the use of local resources and skills to build sustainable technology solutions for problems faced by rural communities. The number of institutions in the world operating under the rubric of “appropriate technology” grew from a handful in the early 1970s, to over five hundred by 1977, to an estimated one thousand by 1980. In the 1980s there was a convergence of the approaches of the AT movement and participatory technology assessment.
Many practitioners of Appropriate Technology tried to establish dissemination models for innovations without enterprises. Enterprises where viewed with suspicion as their mandate was not one of social good but of profit. However these practitioners held a belief that demonstrating a successful innovation in a small locality would be sufficient. They further believed that there would be immediate adoption across geographies and governments. When these adoptions did not take place, these practitioners created small enterprises under the banner of “income generating technologies”. It was quickly realized that these had very positive local impacts but did/could not scale. Often the local enterprise succeeded due to the passion of one person.
In this paper we will discuss those problems and some of the technologies that are at the laboratory stage that have the potential to solve them. The sectors of digital infrastructure (IT), energy, healthcare, enterprise, and natural resource management will be covered here.
Read the entire article here.
Simply Fly: Chapter 2
Devyani Srinivasan continues her review of “Simply Fly,” by Captain Gopinath, the founder of Air Deccan, India’s first low-cost airline. The book promises to hold some interesting lessons for social enterprises looking to work with the BOP. This month Devyani presents a review of Chapter 2.
In Chapter 2, Gopinath fights in the Bangladesh Liberation War, is posted on the Sino-Indian border and then in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, South India, and then leaves the army and decides to become a farmer. Gopinath says that he went through an emotional-spiritual crisis while on the Sino-Indian border, that triggered his desire to leave the army. However, the reader is given few details on what this emotional-spiritual crisis is.
For me, Gopinath’s decision to leave the army is related to his resentment and hatred of regimentation, which I mentioned in my last post on Simply Fly. In Chapter 1 Gopinath says that when he first enrolled in the Sainik School he lived in a tent, and that, “the tent became a recurring motif in my later life and I kept going back to tents.” The tent seems to be a symbol of the life free from regimentation that Gopinath desires. At the end of Chapter 2, he makes a decision to try to farm the largely barren land that his father receives from the government, in compensation for the farmland that they were going to lose for a dam. Gopinath says that:
…I unrolled a reed mat in front of the tent and then spread a cotton durree (the thick, home-spun ethnic Indian mat) across it. I lay there in silence that evening, observing the stars in the sky, satisfied that I had at last found my true calling in life. I was exhausted from the travel and the toils of the evening, but at peace with myself.
The second tension that I identified in the first chapter, between equality and hierarchy, is also present throughout Chapter 2. It is vividly described in an incident when a general attends an army dinner in Thiruvananthapuram. According to army tradition, the officers pay for the food and beverages bill of a general, even if they drink expensive liquor. However, Gopinath felt this practice was unfair and, in consultation with his Brigadier, decided that the general would be served Indian whisky and rum, rather than Scotch.
Once Gopinath decides to become a farmer, he again demonstrates his sensitivity to inequality. He makes an agreement with a Dalit boy; Raju that they will take turns farming and cooking equally. Although Gopinath does not make this explicit, it seems that by doing so, he is freeing Raju from the bonded labor that he was trapped in, because his father had borrowed money from a few households in the village.
Shakti Pirakudhu
Shakti Pirakudhu is a feature film my Director Usha Rajeswari, that is the story of a woman in Madurai who seeks success by setting up her own enterprise. The film is based on conversations with self help groups around Madurai, and was originally made as a training manual for an MFI. Robert Moore shares his thoughts on the film, and how it is has been received.
Recently a screening of the film Shakti Pirakudhu was held in Bangalore followed by a chat with the Director Usha Rajeswari.
The creation of the film stemmed from Usha’s experience as a documentary film maker and a request from Madura Microfinance to create a training film for their self help groups. Eventually it was decided that the film would become a feature film instead of just for training.
The impact of this film as a training video seems to meet its mark as the audience of village women recalled a lot of the film from seeing one of the first cuts. Additionally it sounds like the plan is to show the village women only one clip at a time so it will be easier for them to process and utilize the learning in each clip.
The impact of this film outside of a training video will probably be determined by its distribution. There were a lot of BOP professionals at the screening so if more screenings are made available in certain cities and marketed to that demographic it is sure to gain an audience. As a film outside of a villager or BOP professional training video it could strike a chord with a normal audience because even the sound engineer at a screening was driven to tears and was inspired to treat his wife better after seeing the film.
One of the interesting aspects of the film was the types of problems that it addresses and the way they are overcome by the protagonist. As Madura Microfinance describes frequent reasons for their clients’ failure: “It was not that these women lacked intelligence, but rather their aspirations and success were circumscribed by a lack of education and exposure to the world beyond their villages. They were also constrained by a fatalistic mindset.”
The film didn’t just describe the problem but also prescribed a solution, showing how the protagonist started taking things into her own hands after being scolded by the local school teacher of how she can’t blame her failures on the outside world but she has to take responsibility herself. It was also humorous the way the film depicts the villagers’ annoyance with a different character who flaunts the fact that she has an MBA and that she thinks she knows everything about business.
Since this film is intended to train villagers in the Madura Microfinance company one can trust that the scenarios are accurate and relevant to the BOP. Because of this the film can be considered not only a great education for the villagers it was meant to train but also an education for the BOP professionals who want to get a better grasp of the real market issues and how they are being overcome today.