With 16 years of experience under his belt, Siddhartha Iyer, Sr Manager, CSR, ASK Asset & Wealth Management, shared his views on what CSR programs tend to work (and what do not) across rural India. His earlier experience with United Way of Mumbai, Magic Bus India Foundation & CRISIL Foundation brought much-needed insight to this important discussion with Joel Fernandez, Chief of Partnerships Strategy, TeamLease Foundation.
Sidhartha Iyer’s take on how corporate social responsibility initiatives could be strategically aligned to address the unique challenges and opportunities of India’s rural sector was interesting. After decades spent working in the development sector, his belief is that only when CSR initiatives were finely aligned with what the beneficiaries themselves truly aspire to, by way of improving their own lives, could genuine impact happen.
He noted that when companies went out to ‘change lives’ with preconceived notions, or pre-set corporate mandates - they did improve lives to a certain extent, but not in a long-term, sustainable manner.
Iyer felt that things have changed a lot, for the better. Currently, professionals with deep development sector know-how (from NGOs) are joining the CSR departments of many corporates, so the thinking within companies has also evolved. Long-term change, behavioral changes, uplifting entire communities, and other systemic changes are what companies now aim for.
For strategies to ensure meaningful change in the rural sector, watch HERE
The conversation moved on to how tech and innovation could be deployed in CSR programs across rural India. While both Joel Fernandez and Iyer agreed that technology held a lot of potential to drive change, how it is applied needs to be relevant. Iyer reported that a number of tech-driven initiatives have been attempted, but with limited success.
He noted that even tech developed by IITs, particularly for rural areas, and with support from the government, eventually didn’t prove effective. The main reason could be attributed to a very limited knowledge of what the beneficiary stakeholders actually wanted. Another example recounted by Iyer was tech developed for the agri sector. This too has had limited success. Weather alerts or prompts on when to apply pesticide or fertilizer during a crop cycle, could fail entirely if the local network is so bad that SMSs don’t even reach a farmer’s phone.
Iyer believed that with humans' innate resistance to change, top-down solutions conceived in urban settings and rolled out using sophisticated platforms, algorithms, etc, tended to fail in rural scenarios. But simple, easy-to-adopt machinery designed to lessen the labor of women, for instance, would be quickly adopted and possibly innovated upon by the beneficiaries themselves.
A heartening story Iyer shared was of simple sewing machines being linked to solar-powered generators and batteries. So when a woman used the machine, she was generating power herself, which got stored in the batteries, for later use during a power shut-down. This application of simple (yet relevant) tech, empowered women, improved their livelihood by making them more productive AND used renewable energy.
For the importance of relevant tech deployment in rural areas, watch HERE
When the discussion moved on to the appropriate metrics to assess the success of a rural program, Iyer again reiterated the importance of including the beneficiaries themselves in setting both the quantitative and qualitative goals of any rural program. This ensured that the need being addressed by the CSR initiative is aligned with the aspirations of the beneficiaries. And by making them co-owners of the project, the motivation to meet both quantitative AND qualitative targets was stronger and hence ensured the success of the program.
Iyer pointed out that in the case of addressing livelihood, for instance, mere tracking of quantitative metrics would ensure an RoI on investments to the extent of say, moving from 100 people employed, to 200. But sustainable change, driven by the beneficiaries’ aspirations would lead to behavioral changes. So post employment, the beneficiaries would become financially more literate, engage with the formal banking sector (and avoid bad loans) and in this way, significantly improve their lives.
For the importance of stakeholder participation in formulating metrics, watch HERE
When the conversation veered towards which sectors across rural India presented opportunities for CSR investment, Iyer emphatically championed the cause of rural tourism. He felt that with India’s tremendous cultural diversity, villages offered travelers unimaginable opportunities to soak in the local culture - which could be around cuisine, places of worship, historical practices like weaving traditions, etc.
Investing in helping villages become savvy in attracting sustained tourist traffic by helping them match boarding standards to what tourists are accustomed to (without compromising on their cultural cache or the environment) would go a long way to improve livelihoods in rural India.
For more on the immense scope for rural tourism, watch HERE
This insightful chat wound up on an upbeat note - with Iyer sharing success stories he’s been associated with, or witness to, through his career in the development sector. In a rural area covering multiple villages, when Iyer’s team were asking locals in what way they wanted help to improve their lives, the villagers mentioned saving their local Sacred Grove. These groves, which were earlier seen across the length and breadth of the country, have now been reduced in size due to deforestation, or have completely vanished in the face of urbanization.
Iyer mentioned getting together locals, elders and outside experts to understand what habitat, flora and fauna existed in the region affecting 4- villages, before beginning the process of restoring the grove. He noted that since this was a ‘need’ expressed by the locals, motivation levels to ensure the project succeeded were very high. Iyer concluded that while for most projects to become sustainable and beneficiary-led, it took close to 5 years, in the case of the Sacred Grove (which improved the local ecology), his involvement was only for a year, before the locals took it on wholeheartedly.
For more on the critical importance of stakeholder participation, watch HERE
The talk offered viewers a number of new ideas, success stories and opportunities to plan more innovative CSR initiatives.