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02nd October, 2017: Initiated
02nd June, 2018: Uploaded
15th June, 2018: Added P.S. (Synopsis)
04th July, 2018: Added P.P.S., an email comment from a reader.
The liberal establishment has ceased to represent the issues of people of that (working) class instead representing people who are saying they represent people of that class.
~ From a commentator on Youtube quoting Sir Roger Scruton in a BBC interview in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump
Most philosophers conceive people as they would like them to be and not as they are. Thus, they are not authors of ethics, but satire.
~ Spinoza
This essay is in response to a request to contribute a piece of writing based on the author's experience in development sector. It is an inherently difficult request to meet. For one, an individual's experience is not sufficient ground to formulate a critical point of view. Furthermore, how much of that experience, and reflections based upon it, are of interest to anyone is a matter of speculation. The request thereby creates a natural unease and discomfort.
The second difficulty arises from the reality that all good writing grows out of a nebula of deeply buried sentiments and that it pre-supposes skillful interrogation of the self. For those well-versed in the craft of writing, there is an overflowing store of sentiments of a refined nature on which intelligent discussions are to be had. For the rest, the activity places (or should place) great demands on their limited capacities to reflect and express. Inertia, therefore, is a close-at-hand temptation.
There are occassions though which offer opportunities for the 'pretenders'. These arise in times of pervasive fads. Fads, for those who care to confront them, leave behind a clinging feeling of something being out of place, and an urge to rid oneself off them. Moreover, fads sometimes provide spaces where subjective experiences hold meaning beyond the individual. A particular fad within the development sector serves, then, as an excuse for this essay.
For the reader who will last the length, four attitudes are permissible: dismissal (an ill-conceived piece of crap), cynicism (makes sense in part but impractical on the whole), nostalgia (makes sense and wish it were true today), and finally, pessimistic hope (makes sense, difficult to convince others of its value, but nonetheless, worth putting in practice myself). The ideal response, if the essay must not fail its test, is the last one. Or, as Bertrand Russell would say: an attitude of melancholic optimism.
It however is highly unlikely that this essay will find its way in its given form to a third-party platform: for reasons of length, style of writing, and the polemical undertones impatiently lurking within the text.
A finer meaning of scale
This essay's title is borne of a convenience. Conveniences generally suffer a distinct advantage: they hide more than they choose to reveal, and they indulge a habit of quiet complicity rather than persistent confrontation. The discourse on technology is one instance of this indulgence of ours: what the seepage of digital technology in our daily life entails is as disturbing as the frothy excitement its use generates.
Conveniences are also most manifest in our use of words in ordinary conversations; implying least caution when it comes to the most critical faculty we happen to possess. Discourse on development is inherently a layered one. It is no surprise, therefore, that it is bound to be beset with words that fit this bill. One such word 'scale', and its companion 'scalable', find frequent and honourable insertions in midst of many conversations on development, with the most common refrain being the uncritical monotone around the phrase 'GDP growth'.
The use of the term scale in our common speech brings before us images of expansion, abundance, and even saturation. More worringly though, it creates hope for a future which is there for all to chase after, but never near enough to possess and enjoy at leisure today. In other words, if we take a fancy to scale it can affix us to a permanent state of dissatisfaction suffering the anxiety bound to accompany it.
When a particular term is used frequently, loosely, and in a variety of contexts, few things happen. It may be deployed because others are using it and one feels compelled to use it. Or, because it has sunk so deep into our sub-conscious that it becomes simply a manner of speaking and thinking, without our being alert to the effects of its ill-mannered use.
There was a famous song by a famous American alternative rock band, R.E.M., titled 'Losing my religion'. Many thought it was about atheism. It turned out to be about love. The phrase, 'losing my religion', is part of the local speech in the Southern states of the U.S.A., where it happens to find fruitful use on as banal an occassion as an unexpected downpour. It emerges thus that it is used less to renounce one's faith in the transcendental than to express frustration at the agonies inflicted by our more immediate and mundane circumstances.
Over consuming a particular term, therefore, can give rise to strange inferences, awkward conversations, and to use that most convenient of phrases, unintended consequences. Fortunately, when immersed in a particular manner of speech, we are occassionally raised to consciousness when we hear different, and contrasting, terms.
One such phrase the author recollects hearing is the phrase a 'fine intervention', spoken of by a lady Gandhian economist from Ahmedabad, while describing a particular developmental intervention.
The term 'fine' evokes a certain pleasurable sentiment and the reasons are not hard to come by. Some of our most foundational of natural phenomena are built atop processes which are very very fine: the unceasing division of cells symptomatic of life and evolution; or the secrets interred between the lines of a text of quantum mechanics.
Processes like these seem to derive their power on account of sheer repetition of the same phenomenon over an unimaginable scale of time. If we paint them in our minds, we can intuit that every miniscule repetition builds upon the previous one, and opens the possibility for the next one to arise. This series of self-construction is nothing but the process of creation, and in context of this essay, development, in and of itself. Within our lives, we are habituated to living out this intuition, often unknowingly, and not always for the most noblest of our endeavours.
For instance, for those financially intoxicated, this intuition is already at their door-step: relentlessly harnessing the law of compounding to its fullest measure, aided by a healthy dose of good fortune, to generate wealth at phenomenal scale as reflected by the success of Berkshire Hathway. In popular culture, what is called the butterfly effect -- how the flap of a butterfly wing can result in a hurricane in a distant location -- performs a similar trick.
Indeed, it is inescapable to not feel there is a quality of magic about such powerful phenomena; and that things we as humans have traditionally held in the highest esteem, revealed to us during our own moments of sober reflections, all have this magical charm. It is a magic, and wonder, which in final analysis, is mirrored in our individual ability to be creative, and spiritual.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the more accessible versions of secrets of nature revealed by processes of this nature find expression in some of the Vedic hymns, the early layers of the Quran, the Biblical tale of creation, the skill of development of the mind described at length in the Buddhist cannons, or the numerous folk-lores which constitute the corpus of mythology. All of these, in some tangential way, pay homage to the expanse and scale that ordinary natural phenomena seem to give rise to.
However, it is neither popular, nor natural, to think of scale at this level of discernment because it appears so diminutive, submerged, incremental, and demanding of time. Indeed it lends itself an easy prey to be glossed over. Most of us are attuned to think of scale in terms of largeness, breadth, number of beneficiaries, geographic spread, and not to mention speed. Effectively, in terms that are easy to communicate, and in the miasma of today's statistical and quantitative fetish, compute.
Nonetheless, scale at this finer level harbours serious implications for our neighourbhoods and communities. It is instructive to imagine what the North Korean threat of unleashing the very fine process of nuclear fission does to its relationship with the U.S.A., and by extension, to the rest of the world.
It is far more kosher, though, to attend to the kinder of our achievements. Aesthetics hides within its shell the throbbings of a very much scalable heart. The coming together of notes of a musical scale in a certain order progressively leads to ever longer, complex yet delightful classical compositions, in a manner which suggests that these notes have been given a free rein governed solely by the laws of physics and how our minds and bodies react to sound.
Not too unlike the artful stiching together of the complex tapestry of mathematics over the ages. The French mathematician, Henri Poincare, in his book, Science and Hypotheses, convincingly demonstrates how mathematics starts with definitions and conventions (e.g. 1+1=2) and manufactures, through a type of reasoning termed mathematical induction, a self-contained yet complete language to express the most complex of natural phenomena.
Music and mathematics emerged as such over a stretched period of time building heedfully upon conventions, convictions, persistence and wisdom of what came before. In doing so, they acquired an institutional character, and for lack of a better word, a certain moral resilience. They also signify the obvious: that human endeavours of a genuinely meaningful scale find their living footprints in the development of our social traditions, customs, and most emphatically our social institutions constructed through participation of many; a participation neither planned for nor explicitly codified.
Looking back, it is not wholly unreasonable to allow for an 'invisible hand' guiding this process of collective construction leaving behind widely practised habits of thinking and behaviour. Humility is thereby a watchword which attaches itself to any conversation around scale. We all remain intimate with one manifestation of this kind of a process: the institution of marriage and its pervasiveness across all kinds of cultures. In the Indian context, some would argue with reason that caste too is such a social institution which evolved and solidified and then spread over a due course in time.
It is deemed out of fashion, though, to dwell on supposedly restrictive and retrograde social institutions. Rather, there lies an unspoken agreement that our creative energies are best spent on concepts and solutions largely of an economic character. So, in line with this spirit, one can posit the market too as a kind of social arrangement where individuals can exchange and trade their surplus to mutual advantage. This view of a market, as a social custom and institution, differs markedly from its more prevalent, bare-bones, commercial conception of hyper-competition and a win-at-all costs approach; justified in not a little measure by an idea of natural selection borrowed from the orthodoxy of social Darwinism.
The former, some would say a more cultured, conception of a market requires that there be a level playing field, a certain fair-mindedness that participants bring to the field, and that the institution of a market meets a genuine social need and does not simply exist to encourage consumption for consumption's sake; where it is very easy to see, and relate to, how someone earning a surplus can actually lead to a more mutually wholesome and stable economic relationship. These are the very conditions which a true lover of 'free market as a social institution' will find it difficult to discern from the headlines of business newspapers today, and dare we say, from established business practices.
So what do these disjointed examples make us aware of with regard to scale? They inform us that scale can have, indeed has, a very different connotation from the way we are used to thinking about it. It is very much tenable to construe scale as a side-effect which accrues over time; implying a considerable temporal aspect to it which, unless we happen to be alert, is prone to slip by our wayside, and indeed very often does.
Moreover, these examples also imply a deeply conservative sentiment which necessarily attaches itself to such processes. This sentiment cautions us that in our efforts to improve upon, or dismantle, practices built up through this gradual accumulation, the underlying equilibrium may stand to be violated with long-standing irreversible and grievous consequences.
This caution echoes well in the words of the English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton: "Civil society can be killed from above but it grows from below. It grows through the associative impulse of human beings who create. The work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating. The work of creation slow, laborious and dull. That is the lesson of the 20th century."
Sir Roger Scruton was referring to, amongst other lessons, the conflicts that came to characterize the politics and society of the 20th century and the kind of impulse which gave rise to them --- it is the impulse to substantially alter, forcefully align, deliberately destory (some times under the pretext of creative destruction) and arrogantly dismiss the settled ways of the past.
This impulse really comes to fruition when this manner of conducting our affairs ceases to suit the temper and sensibility of our times; or it interferes with the desires and understandings of those in positions of power and influence, or those who would like to acquire them; or, simply, that it actually causes harm to many.
Attachment to ideas
Not too long ago, there existed the most scalable of phenomenon man-kind had had a chance to experience --- a phenomenon that, today, would be the envy of every individual enamoured by the chimera of scale; the one pointedly expressed by Dostoevesky in his novel, 'The Brothers Karamazov' : You know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the 18th century who declared: S'il n'existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer.. (if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him). And what's strange, what is so marvellous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man.
Today, though, we live in virulently secular times. So while God is somewhat on the retreat, we still need a replacement. So in its lieu we have socio-political theories which find a welcome home in politically-minded organisations. Specifically, the cadre based organisations such as the RSS and those on the political Left provide a case study on how to nurture an even more powerful dogma than that of God at a non-trivial scale. Some of the dogmas wrap themselves cosily within the language of religion, while some revel in setting themselves free of it.
Power of such dogmas derives from a kind of intellectual attachment they induce. This attachment can command the same conviction and fervour that the more extreme elements within a given religion commanded not too long ago. It takes root partly because it caters to an innate need of the mind (at least in some of us) to have a fixed theory, a model, an explanation of the world that we find ourselves in; a sort of fulcrum on which to settle and heal our misplaced desires, anger, anxieties and restlessness.
Since we have broached open the topic of addiction, it is worth recollecting that we also happen to live in a time of human history where to manufacture and distribute addiction does not demand concerted effort. The only pre-requisite is that your friend too should be addicted. Evidently we are talking about Facebook, and posssibly, one of the numerous gadgets from the highly fertile stable of Apple.
The culture of consumerism has shown, if anything, exemplary vigour in its ability to scale, aided handsomely by the methods of marketing. In the process it has altered the notions of success, wealth, and contentment, somewhat expectedly. Indeed, it could be said that for most individuals for whom neither philosophy, nor arts, nor the pretensions of science, or the more fulfilling and simple grind of daily life seems to provide the necessary fulcrum, consumerism is the gift from the heavens as it scarcely requires much exertion apart from a pair of eager hands ready to exchange.
The consumptive mind-set --- borne of a compulsive habit of objectification to order our own lives --- also paves way for how we deal with ideas. If we do indeed succumb to this mind-set then we are necessarily conscripted to enter a slightly trickier chamber. Here we find ideas which at first glance seem somewhat benign but when put next to each other present an irresistible allure of scale. For lack of a better phrase, let us call them compound constructs. As an example, what happens when you combine education with commercial considerations which go beyond the acceptable need to cover costs? In other words, what is one to make of what may be called as market-based models or solutions to education?
There is often an assumption which underlies the wrapping of the vocabulary of enterprise around education. It is that the force of markets can expand the reach of education. This assumption stands on reasonably firm grounds, given what we know of how markets operate today. But there is a catch: it can also, in the process, change the meaning of the term education. In the extreme case, though we are yet to reach that extreme case, the meaning of education can start tending towards vocational skills and employability. This does no good to the original and traditional conception of education: a way to transmit knowledge and learning, to develop proper habits of mind, and to really nurture a civilisation. Naturally, a question poses itself before us: pursuit of scale is possible but at what cost?
This alteration of the very meaning of certain traditional notions, collectively built up over time and passed on through generations, is a question which prods us for our earnest attention. This aspect does come to the notice of not a few, and even manages to bother some continuously; but a surprising number of times it confronts pre-packaged rationalisations that deftly slide it into the background.
One such rationalisation asserts that the scale of the problems confronting India is very large -- too many people being under-nourished, too many children dropping out of primary school. Take any social question of any import today and this mould of arguing remains unchanged. Part of the reason is that in a population of the magnitude of India, any half-decent problem will always appear overwhelming. As a result, the instinctive response would also be to demand solutions that can overcome, counteract, or diminish that state of being overwhelmed.
But it is worth asking ourselves why is the instinctive response also turning out to be a 'natural', consensual response projected often as the appropriate, and, in some cases vehemently encouraged and exhorted, as the only legitimate recourse at hand? Perhaps, because, that is how we are trained to think.
When you are enclosed in a certain paradigm, and are a creature of that paradigm, it is near impossible, psychologically speaking, to weigh heavily against that paradigm. Especially, when it means benefiting (not in any wicked sense) from material comfort, wealth and fame that very naturally accrue from a continued social consensus around that paradigm.
Making this argument is hardly out of place. Today, it is not so difficult to ascertain how accomplishment of certain level of scale defines success in an organisational context, and how success of this nature, in turn, is linked closely to being a good leader. In other words, the notions of scale start to leave the realm of necessity and start acquiring hues of being a value in and of itself. Scale, in its contemporary usage then, starts becoming a cultural construct like quite a few other social mores.
This virtue called scale, thus, owes its importance not to reason alone but also to its companionship of history, aided by convenience, conviction and the legitimate opportunistic instinct of academics, professionals and a few others along the way. The net effect remains that compliance to the notion of scale is bonded to the need to conform to what is most prominent on the public stage today. To use that old saying of the wise, a means essential and fruitful in some cases becomes an end in almost all of them.
Once we are ready to acknowledge this, even to a partial degree, the inevitability of giving undue importance to scalable models and scalable solutions stands somewhat diminished. However, our curiosity cannot be easily be quenched by simply stating that it, scale, is a cultural construct. It is still important to ask what kind of thinking and circumstance puts it on such a high pedestal, compared to say, focusing on more longer-term, slower-moving, micro-contextual, and natural, conceptions of developmental interventions.
The allopathy of management
Within the developmental sector, if we do look at the forms of models which get talked about, we are struck by a certain pattern: many such models, on paper at least, emphasize an element of standardisation, and what can be termed as a boxed approach to building models. Just like our model of education mentioned above, a boxed approach to model construction involves putting together an assembly of concepts, much as a software developer puts together a set of modules to build a larger and a more complex software architecture.
In a well-constructed piece of software it is reasonable to expect that this assembly is carried out with some measure of success because the interfaces between different parts can be adequately defined and tested. But when a similar mind-set starts permeating developmental interventions (or for that matter political intrusions), the question does certainly arise that has the interface between, say, education and market been anywhere close to being reasonably well-defined? When one considers the fact that several conversations which involve design of developmental models today, are dominated by the language of finance, economics, management, and social sciences, do those attempting model building have all the necessary intellectual conceptions to define these inter-relationships?
If we are to be more forthright, we have to inquire has anyone in position of influence managed to vociferously ask, and answer, what exactly is the relationship between education and market-based approaches? What happens when they are combined together? In the final analysis, does society really benefit? The nature of these questions reveals that they will not be satisfied with a definitive response. More importantly, when one takes into account notions of cultural context, the claims to a universal model of, say scalable education, stand further impaired.
The more fundamental reason these questions are difficult to address is because they are inherently of a philosophical disposition. These (questions) have to be discovered through a process of deliberation, similar to how social conventions evolved over a period of time through participation and contestations of several individuals. In not too distant past, questions of importance to society at large were often discussed on the platform which media constructed. Today, that platform is sparing no trick in the book to become a caricature of its own chequered but nonetheless a somewhat dignified past.
What further suspends this process of 'deliberation of the commons' is when a subject matter is taken and framed as a 'model' to be documented, designed, and developed by a pool of professionals, entrepreneurs and those who deploy capital in one form or another. To come back to our present example, it really is remarkable how little deliberation there is in ordinary conversations amongst ordinary persons what education should really be about, and how readily are educated parents willing to accept notions that get passed around under the guise of education, layered with ever more exotic (or toxic, take your pick) sounding labels of foreign affiliations.
The same could be said for the privatisation and escalating prices of basic healthcare not only for the poor, but even those termed the middle-classes. Or, for that matter, the overuse of glass in construction of commercial buildings in some of the metros of India and what it reveals of the general decline in the sense of architecture and urban planning which seems to tolerate this, or perhaps even connive in it.
This relatively uncontested capture of the discourse by a small fraction of individuals on issues which prevail over large members of any society is one side of the problem. It is not a problem unique to our times. The other side lies unnoticed in the fact that models get conceptualised in a certain manner because it also makes them amenable and convenient to a certain manner of funding.
Over the years, the ticket-size of funding within development sector, and outside of it, has inched upwards and it comes with several caveats attached, including, and especially, the pressure to demonstrate impact at scale and/or sustainability, with the tendency being to gravitate towards the and.
The larger the funding disbursed, the greater is the pressure on receipient programmes to absorb this quantum of funding and demonstrate substantive results. It is temperamentally difficult to give large quantum of grants or investments and sit on the sidelines mindfully watching the underlying 'finer processes' unravel. The natural human tendency will be to twitch, itch and fret about how it all is being spent, whether results are starting to show in a reasonable but not too drawn out time-frame, and importantly, whether these results can grow in a non-linear fashion.
So what has caused a gradual expansion in the ticket-size of funding? Availability of greater amount of monies in hands of a few individuals or large transnational institutions of course; along with the truth in that old joke. Question: What will liberalisation of economy bring to India? Answer: India will move from a low-cost to a high-cost nation. The inflation in wages, establishment costs (pre-paid operative expenses) and operating expenses is a visible hindrance to set-up and sustain smaller, well-circumscribed and independent-minded pieces of operations today.
But if we probe further, we also uncover an accompanying belief: that it indeed is possible to deploy larger sums of money in a compressed time-frame, effectively, and without causing unnatural disturbances. This conviction flows from the availability of management techniques which enable organisations to absorb capital at scale. This brings us back to an earlier assertion we made: one about standardisation.
That standardisation is a good thing in most (if not all) cases is universally acknowledged, and a hegemonic value in itself, like the notion of the necessity of scale. And the fact that technology enables one to do it very well (or if not very well, then very conveniently for sure) also makes it very tempting, and somewhat foolish, not to do it. Once you have standardisation as a gospel truth, it is very difficult to not move forward to the next logical conclusion: that scale is achievable and indeed needs to be achieved.
What transpires next in such a scenario? Continuing with our earlier example of education, it means that the fulcrum of attention shifts from the meaning and purpose of education and settles onto the method of delivery of education. The deliberation increasingly becomes about costs, intelligent use of technology, efficiency, and measurement of impact. And when anything is envisaged at scale, controlling matters of perception, i.e. marketing, assume a hitherto unknown share of the mind.
In short, a range of technicalities overwhelm the entire subject matter. Even creativity starts flowing towards how to combine technology with development, and not about whether the direction of development is in itself the correct one or not. This shift indeed has happened and is easy to verify in our own lived lives. What gets sacrificed in the process, as far as a developmental intervention is concerned, are cultural differences and nuances, ability to micro-contextualise and design highly flexible and adaptive interventions in a bottom-up manner.
It is easy to visualise how the paradigm of standardisation and efficiency can hollow out the meaning of the very activity which is being standardised and made efficient. When this manner of thinking is taken to an extreme, it results in blunt-edged mega-scale interventions of the kind exemplified through Aadhar, demonetisation, and the mechanics of roll-out of GST.
These interventions signify the ability of a few to impact those who are not part of those few, which is pretty much everybody else. The fact that a conversation on privacy should emerge and be half-seriously deliberated once Aadhar has pervaded the ordinary life of all ordinary persons provides a visceral example of what we are attempting to convey in the above paragraphs.
In exploring the interpretations of scale, we have thus waded through an entire range: from the notion of finesse to the notion of a bottom-up construction of traditions to a more top-down conception of scale-by-assembly-of-parts and ending in its brute force imposition, sometimes in guise of policies, from the very top. Such an interpretative exercise seems an over-kill when the real issue at hand is to study the role of scale in developmental interventions.
That thing formerly called ...
However, there is a specific reason why we need to regress all the way to the level of subtle natural processes and that reason is aesthetics. There is a remarkable difference between what is gross and what is fine precisely because they represent two very different aesthetics; or, in other words, manner of conducting our lives; or more accurately, the qualities of our mind which we would like to nourish.
Within the context of management and organisations, this preference for a certain kind of aesthetic and sensibility is perceptible in the manner in which decisions get forged, or dictated. To the uninitiated, talking of texture, tonality and sensitivity of decisions sounds as romantic as the crude violence instrinsic to demonetisation appears obvious to some others.
This has a particular resonance within development sector. There is a perspective of development as charity and as aid. It is a legitimate proposition and needs pursuit. There is, however, another perspective around development: that of finding a social equilibrium which ensures that relationships between different, and often times competing, interests are not too unequal or unjust, and that all the groups partake fairly of the limited natural and institutional resources.
Civil society organisations when viewed through this prism of development assume a different meaning. It per force mandates them to talk about specific communities at a particular point and space in time. In such a case it seems a little out of turn to talk pre-dominantly in terms of scale, standardisation, replication and impact measurement.
The difference between a person and a company manufacturing cars is that the person has the ability to think through the situation and change his role, opinions, and behaviour at a given point in time. There certainly are standards of behaviour but that stands apart from standardisation of behaviour. It is worth asking ourselves that if we start framing civil society organisations within the mould of focus, standardisation and scale what kind of tensions it creates as opposed to treating them as independent-minded persons whose role is defined by the context they happen to find themselves in?
If we do take the former view, are we in some ways reducing all civil society organisations to useful instruments, but instruments nonetheless? What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? Similarly, what are the implications of the latter view? The answer to these questions depends on what is one's own personal view of the notion of development. This issue, like the one on education, starts dabbling outside the realm of a philosophical discussion.
An example
A point of entry to these questions can best emerge from observing interactions of civil society organisations with other stakeholders. In his role as a management consultant, the author has a frequent chance to observe these interactions at close hand along with the added comfort of thinking through them. A particular sequence of events has always stayed with him and influenced a great deal of his outlook and approach. Back in 2012, he happened to be invited to a meeting at a not-for-profit that had individuals from the not-for-profit and a venture-capital firm which invested in social enterprises. The not-for-profit had started an enterprise to work with salt farmers to address two concerns of a typical salt farmer's life: his inability to realise better price for his produce (i.e. salt) and ways to reduce his cost of production.
The initiative, launched in 2009, was still in a very nascent stage. It was operating within a geography which was characterised by extreme climatic conditions and the community was not a social group which really was in anyone's list of priorities back then; though this fact has undergone a material change as of 2018. Over a course of three years the organisation had seriously experimented with development of a solar pump, dabbled somewhat in designing a workable retail marketing solution and instituted an organisational ownership model wherein the members of the community would own shares in the private limited structure which housed the enterprise.
At the above-mentioned meeting, it was agreed to design a business model and develop a plan to identify whether or not there was a case for investment by the venture capital firm. There of course was a history to how the venture capital firm and the not-for-profit happened to share the same room. When the ticket-size of investment does increase, potential ideas and organisational candidates are few and far between. As a result, there are many people with money chasing a limited set of organisations (or ideas on paper) which are usually discovered through a number of platforms which do an admirable job of match-making. At times, these platforms conjoin additional features such as capacity building of civil society organisations to make the bride attractive to the groom. Marriage as an institution is hardly in danger of extinction. It is thriving, and thriving it is with a lot of money.
After a few months, one more meeting was convened to now discuss the business plan developed by an external consultant. The business plan was expectedly appreciated but a question was raised as to the competency of the individuals in the current team and their ability to execute such a model. If the author's recollection is correct, something on the lines of the following was mentioned: a bunch of do-gooders is not enough to build a social enterprise and it needs a set of professionals who understand the intricacies of managing business operations to deliver a hockey-stick type non-linear growth.
To the credit of the not-for-profit it agreed to go through the motions to on-board a professional executive with a background in the corporate sector. The venture capital firm happily paid for the search and three months of salary of this executive. The mandate was to now develop a more robust business plan which could be positioned to attract a larger quantum of funding. However, the larger quantum of funding did not materialise along with the fact that the professional executive left.
In hindsight, it is clear that the fault was neither the venture capital firm nor the not-for-profit. It was a marriage proposition that was unlikely to materialise. During the brief courtship, however, an important change transpired within the organisation: the professional executive who entered naturally entered with a set of ideas and a certain discontentment towards how things worked at the not-for-profit. This discontentment left behind certain permament marks on the culture of the organisation which took a long time to bring back to its original norm.
And just like in the case of any uneven courtship, both parties parted with a bitterness which was uncalled for. In effect, it was a clash of two sensibilities: a sensibility which demanded precision, a rigid structure, and a relaxation of ethical stndards to capture business opportunity; and a different sensibility which refused to leave the confines of thinking of development as being about people and environment, not creating sharp and sudden changes, and of being comfortable with ambiguity.
So what was the end result? In the final analysis, the same bunch of 'do-gooders' are still at this initiative having made some important decisions along the way. The first was to exit the retail marketing venture. The second was to doggedly increase the number of solar pump installations from 2 in 2011-12 to 10 in 2013-14 to 35 by 2015-16 to around 90 by 2017-18. The third decision was to actually close the social enterprise legal structure and merge it with another legal concern that the not-for-profit had.
It is important to note that along the way there were three serious tailwinds: the government with its itchy hand to introduce subsidy in anything that remotely smells like renewable. This in turn invites a horde of many 'entrepreneurs' who are known more for innovations in financial engineering than actually delivering tangible value on the ground. The second issue was the entry of a larger not-for-profit in the same area with more financial resouces and muscle power. The third, of course, was demonetisation.
All these three issues mattered because the model being incrementally designed and executed by the not-for-profit was actually a purely free-market model. There was a strict understanding that there will be no relenting on the price: even if there is competition or government subsidy the organisation will maintain its price point because it firmly believed it had designed a product at the lowest possible price point which engineering and availability of local parts could produce. The second was that the initiative will focus on directly selling only to the salt farmer and not to a trader. Doing so would go against the genesis of the idea itself: to help the farmer reduce his dependence on borrowing from the trader for purchase of diesel used to power water-pumping engines that the solar pump was trying to substitute. The intent was not to grow at any cost, but in a certain well-circumscribed manner. When a couple of instances were discovered where the trader had indirectly purchased the pump through fronting a farmer, it was decided to strengthen the due diligence process.
The third characteristic of the approach was that the intention was always to not work in isolation but to work with another not-for-profit which had a deeper understanding of the cultural context of the area. The role of the social enterprise would be to provide pumps but the identification and screening on whom to give a pump to would require the explicit approval of the partner --- more specifically, the local committee of salt farmers set up to appraise each application. The fourth aspect was that the salt farmer had to pay his way through to have the machine which cost anywhere between 1.5 to 3 lakhs depending on the horse-power of the pump. This meant that there had to some mechanism to offer credit to the salt farmer wherein he offered an initial down-payment to the extent of 20% and the remaining financed through some form of revolving grant funds. As a result, the pace of growth, over time, was determined largely by the ability of the organisation to raise grant funds.
In summary there were three variables which had to lock-in together at the same time: the availability of revolving funds, the willingness of farmers and the engineering stability of the solar pump to withstand harsh-climatic conditions. All three situations identified above: goverment subsidy, competition and demonetisation --- disturbed one or another of these variables. In particular, demonetisation was a situation where one was confused whether to entertain a sense of black humour at the situation or to enact a tragedy. There was ample money sitting in the bank account, the pump had gaind reputation as a sturdy device, the farmer was willing but not able.
If the focus is purely on the increase in the number of pumps from 2 to say 90, the progress seems natural but slow. But if the focus is on the underlying process, against the circumstances in which it has developed, who has developed it, and the way it is developed; there is much to be learnt and appreciated. In particular, the stance taken by the not-for-profit cannot be faulted for its business and ethical merits. At no point is the stand diluted that this is about making money by giving a genuinely useful product to the individuals who need it without causing antagonism to other stakeholders in that area. It is about building relationships with other not-for-profits and being known as an enterprise which stands for values.
Secondly, the entire exercise was literally boot-strapped with use of minimal internal funds. There was little luxury available to relax the discipline of cost-consciousness. Having said that, at times, a couple of mistakes were also made when there were engineering faults. The not-for-profit was clear that the farmer had to be compensated out of its own internal funds. Thirdly, there was a perspective that the number of pumps was a very restricted manner of looking at the initiative. The fact that the organisation was slowly inculcating an awareness of the importance of use of technology in salt production and developing the right set of incentives amongst farmers (i.e. a fair-priced market mechanism, a formal credit-culture) meant that it was developing a market. The added fact that farmers had increased their profits -- noticeable in their increased consumption of white goods -- was a comforting thought.
Development as building of institutions
What should the not-for-profit do now? There is an instinct in fashion which proclaims (somewhat menacingly) that one should grow as if doing the same thing over and over again is violating the norm. The most appropriate answer of course is that the not-for-profit should do what is sensible for itself: to continue to develop and further the initiative in a manner that is beneficial to itself as well as the salt farmer. If this means it must chase rapid growth in a short time frame then so be it. On other other hand, the situation demands that it should focus on gradual and organic pace of expansion it should act accordingly.
This may be bit of an heresy if you are a donor. But it is precisely the point we are trying to make: if one were to treat a civil society organisation as a person, like any person, it has a choice in the beneficial course of action to pursue. It does not exist to design and implement a programme, it exists because it is part of the social fabric of the context it happens to find itself in and contributes to that context by acting in line with its own choices. And by repeatedly making a set of ethical, fair-minded and consistent choices it becomes one of the factors to the change of that context.
For the funder, donor and investor this is a dilemma: what exactly are they really supporting in this case? Not just a programme, but the building of an institution in & of itself; provided of course that the institution meets certain norms of conduct and has an instrinsic ability to create socially useful value without misallocating and mismanaging capital.
The word scale is the investor's best friend today. But any investor worth his salt would know that money is really made through the process of compounding: when the present adds onto the past and the process continues ad infinitum. If you apply this to the context of organisations, it means that scale is really about testing the ability of an organisation to compound its actions. The present action has to build on the previous one and not negate or dilute it. And to do this really well, requires experience, persistence and just sheer time.
The bunch of do-gooders are still there after so many years while individuals who spoke of scale have all but left in a span of time before you can spell the word 'scale'. It takes little intelligence to see the irony of the situation. This example is not important for this reason alone. It is important because, in some way, it represents the situation of many small and local not-for-profits doing similar work across a range of issues and cultural contexts. Many of these same organisations have gained a certain discernment about the context they are in and have an ability to imbue significant influence in their contexts over an extended period of time.
This is such a fundamental point that it is worth once again pressing the pause button on this. Consider a puzzle: is it possible to create USD 1.9 million dollars over a course of 47 years out of 104,408 dollars accumulated through a monthly contribution of 83.33 dollars over that same time frame? Apparently, the answer is yes as shown in here by Paul Merriman (refer to the figures at the bottom right-most corner of the page).
Imagine if someone were to execute such a programme starting in 1970? What would she be thinking? Certainly not about USD 1.9 million as that is anyone's guess. But she would certainly be thinking about USD 83.33 per month, about being disciplined, about not reacting and pulling out her money when the market really crashed but rather staying put. What would make her stay put is a firm belief that as long as capitalism has a future, her chances of doing well are high. It has nothing to do with any grand financial theory but everything about possessing a set of attitudes, right temper and conviction.
When a donor funds, she really is investing in a similar ability of organisations. One wants to identify organisations that have honed this ability, irrespective of whether they work on issues small or large. Indeed, the more we think about this, the more we realise that funders do not even want scale: what they really want is impact. In physics, impact is usually defined at a point in time, while scale is really a matter of both space and time.
Impact implies a sense of hurry, a kind of insensitivity, impertinence, and in the worst case, sheer carelessness to some of the cultural and philosophical nuances which go into nurturing a social context. This push towards impact often presents choices in binaries. At the end of the day if the choice is between a small but committed not-for-profit working at a natural pace versus talk of creating impact at scale, we all know what our conservative common-sense would say.
Unfortunately, not all of us have the training to frame choices this way. Funders and investors have an additional concern that their money is spent honestly, transparently, and without leakage. But that concern sits apart from the insistence that money be directed towards sustainable-sounding and scalable-looking models. The first is easy to accomplish without forcefully bethroting it to the second. If one was not so gentlemanly, one would be forced to remark that it hardly behooves liberals, of all the people, to behave in a forceful and high-minded way.
In some ways then, we are trying to shift the notion of scale from a programme and intervention to the action of investing in the 'finer' process of institution building. As far as the development sector is concerned, scale is not about delivering 1 million houses to 1 million families. It is about building 1 million organisations that are permanently embedded in their societies. Their cumulative interactions with their respective social milieus is likely to provide a richer, intricate and firmer fulcrum on which to achieve some semblance of social harmony, equilibrium, and if we are all fortunate, material scale.
At the end of the day it is useful to remember the phrase: there is only so much that can be done. The more we hurry, the more we sacrifice discernment. The more we sacrifice discernment in the present, the greater a disorder we leave behind for posterity to resolve. Accepting our fallibility and recognising our limitations and restricting and restraining the speculative tendencies of our mind is in fact the greatest developmental gift we can leave behind for the next generation.
Education, one can venture to presume, was after all about teaching each of us this and less about making the mass of man-kind employable in the service of a few, or teaching the selected few tips and tricks to hanker after vague notions of success, along with the ability to rationalise their own actions, however defective or deficient they be. If many are unemployable it says less about the system of education and possibly more about the very model of society we are building.
The discerning reader should by now have distilled the essence: scale does not come about from targeting hard-nosed impact through coherently articulated models; it emerges through recognising flaws in our ways of thinking and correcting those flaws through one gentle (or at times, not so gentle) nudge at a time.
This correction is most likely to occur through a process of participation of many minds and souls. A fruitful way in which professionals can contribute to strengthening this public dialogue is to detach themselves from tempting theories of change and instead attach themselves to continue the building of independent-minded, right-sized, accountable and sensitive institutions. For as the French say: the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Since the French are always right, we can take bold to build on that foundation by affixing a little phrase of our own at the end: ... and powerful theories of change.
In effect, it is not making capital not only demand returns but instead making it work hard to also supply merit-worthy institutions. All the while remembering that just as the devil is always hidden in the details, the revelation too is usually manifest in the God of Small Things. What if Adam had not really partaken of the fruit in the Garden of Eden? A seemingly innocent choice but of such grievous (or delightful, depending on your view of present condition of the species) ramifications for all of us.
The Buddha called it heedfulness. We can invent our own innovative label as long as it serves to remind us that solutions to problems of today do not in themselves translate to problems of tomorrow.
This alerts us: we need a similar discursive dialogue for that sweet little thing called 'innovation'.
P.S.: See Fund of Inclusive Growth, VIKAS and Revitalising strategic funding to development sector.
P.S.: SYNOPSIS
[This essay was priviledged to receive all of but two comments: the first commentator stated, kindly enough, people do not have the ability to read more than 1,000 words today, and by that standard, this essay is long. The second noted that he had lost the habit of writing like this and mourned its loss. Therefore a synoposis was in order: short enough to address concern of the former; and long enough to encourage the other to take up writing. ]
Talking about Scale
Scale has acquired wide currency along-side innovation and sustainability, both as a concept, and one might add, an article of faith. Things have progressed to the extent that these terms no longer descriptive but have become normative. When any concept acquires a cultural prominence, chances of it being used out of context are high. It therefore is incumbent upon us to broach open the question of what are we really talking about when talking about scale.
The places to start looking for an answer are within the disciplines of natural sciences, mathematics, aesthetics, religious philosophies, and how social institutions really take roots. Examination of individual phenomena within these dispersed domains surfaces one striking fact: their respective foundational process exhibit scale of such magnitude to seem magical. Further reflection reveals, almost without exception, these phenomena follow a similar pattern of operation: repetition of the same underlying process over an incredibly long period of time.
We are all familiar with addition, but few of us possess a natural intuition for integration, including those who had had to trudge through the classes on calculus in science and engineering. Addition con-joins, integration con-structs. All the phenomena that truly scale are inherently integrative in nature, including, by definition development. Or at least, it (development) is supposed to be.
Placement of a metro line in the very heart of a city is difficult to qualify as development. Flourishing of a green buffer zone along side may raise its prospects a bit. A design which ensures non-displacement of slum communities might add another feather in its fancy cap. Achieving a marked reduction in vehicular traffic and pollution might take it all the way to the podium. But to achieve this integration demands a bit of foresight, a systems thinking approach to urban planning combined with of political fortitude & patience. A potent alchemy if there ever was one.
All of this is not hard to grasp. Yet we seem to have fallen into a fallacy. Lets come back to addition and integration and re-phrase them. Addition is linear, integration is non-linear. By implication, real scale and scaleability imply the divine presence of non-linearity lurking there somewhere.
Alphabet, Amazon and Appple sure have figured it out. Uber is trying its best, but seems like it may struggle for time to come (maybe a change in name beginning with A might work wonders). Those outside the Valley, meanwhile, are left only with envy and a frustrating search for scale within their own industries.
Problems in real life sure are large; which is bound to be in a population of 1 billion souls where the probability of a decent and convenient material life is contingent upon whom you are borne to; notwithstanding a misplaced undercurrent of libertarian thought and occassional individual stories of exceptional success. When layered on with issues of distributional conflicts and entrenched social hierarchies, an Abhimanyu's Chakravyuh soon develops.
What then is the solution on offer? Since the problem is large, the solution too should scale and match upto the problem, lest it be accused of unmanly diffidence. But isn't that a bit of linear thinking on display? A linear thinking preaching non-linear thinking. Tit-for-tat: what happened to showing the other cheek, a message one may presumptuously take to resonate within development sector.
The net effect thereby is to design scalable programmes, discover scalable models, and demand scalable organisations. Spend 100 dollars and construct 100 homes. That's the Government. Spend 100 dollars and build 150 homes. That's the entrepreneur. We are quick to seek comfort in the facetious embrace of economies of scale since real non-linearity eludes us.
Is there a way around, or rather out of, this? We could start first by asking the question where, if, does non-linearity exist within development? Within design of programmes, the midas touch of the leadership, skillful deployment of technology, a path-breaking idea or strategy, or simply good fortune (read: gaming the system)?
We have a whole set of individuals and institutions that make decisions from their respective stand-points. Those decisions may span the gamut from programme design to securing good fortune. Do these decisions in the aggregate really add up? Advocates of Efficient Market Hypothesis will say yes. Rest will prefer to defer their opinions for another rainy day.
Too many biting sarcasms but where lies the next step? To arrive at it we must accept the principle that development is a process. If we internalize a process-centric approach, a few things happen. Firstly, we calm down and recalibrate our expectations because processes are characterized by sequentiality, rhythm, flow, coherency, intricacy, and on account of all of these, integrity.
We then start to realise that scale really is a side-effect of any process and not its motive force. Finally, processes are also about repetition, boredom, chores, and actual back-breaking grinding work.
This brings us to our earlier set of vintage disciplines and an inescapable conclusion: like all processes possessed of non-linearity, development too has a significant temporality attached to it. These processes must play themselves out and the more skillfully we allow them to, the richer a dividend they will likely yield.
The skillfulness while participating in the process of development is really to discern that non-linearity exists at the interstices and interfaces (threading) of interactions between stakeholders -- not-for-profits, governments, donors, marginalised communities, institutions of learning, businesses, and the average citizen, including the well-to-do, or even the indifferent one -- and not in the actions of any particular group of individual and institutions, however large and influential they may be, or, think themselves to be.
Some may mistakenly conclude that building platforms is a useful spend of one's time. It is not structured conversations we are talking about but organic dialogic spaces that transpire in the normal course of a day. The dialogue of a field officer with a member of the community; of the leadership of a not-for-profit with an IAS officer; or a donor team visiting the not-for-profit for M&E. The same can be said for organisations within the corporate sector, or the governmental institutions.
It is important for these dialogues to add up, and integrate. Ambedkar said of religion: it is the relationship between man and man. One doubts he would mind if we borrowed his notion to talk about development too. Under the hood, what is happening across these processes is that relationships are being forged, re-defined, or asundered.
Understanding this moves our attention onto the present and the more specific & mundane: what can be done now to that community over there? What is the conversation to have with this individual in front of me? Are my actions going to break the status-quo, and will it be for the better?
It indeed is hard to believe it is the indiscernible, matter-of-course actions that really count. With a billion souls, it is in fact hard to imagine how not provided we find a common language to converse in, and are able to contain, restrain and subdue our pre-conceived frameworks, notions of success, and theories of change -- a task, it seems, inversely proportional in difficulty to the extent of one's formal education, or hubris.
Emergence, collaboration and virtue are not well-meaning words. They are a pre-condition to bring about a real non-linear and scalable change todya: by changing tenor of conversations, and thereby, mode of how society perceives iteslf. One cannot invest in them, or build them, or design for them, or implement them. But one can surely teach them, read about them, see others practice them, and eventually inherit them.
Can a culture submerged in pre-eminence of scale, innovation and material notions of success -- and we have yet to factor in the lethal trinity of technology, standardisation, and efficiency -- lead to such an inheritance? The instinctive response appears to be no, unless we can bring back the value placed on philosophy, religion, aesthetics and straightened common-sense.
Why them? Because they stretch our vocabulary, equip us with a plastic imagination which is in evident decline, and help broaden our mind beyond the entrapments of market forces. They allow us to probe an idea not only for its logic but also deeply for its meaning. More importantly, they make us sensitive to the present in a way it is hard for very many of us to accomplish otherwise in our daily lives.
This sensitivity to the present, in turn, makes it soothingly natural to accept that a person or an institution is not a means to an end but an end in itself. This gives birth to the thought that development is nothing but building of institutions that serve as living carriers of accumulated experiences, traditions, learning, and agents that blend into their environment, and thereby change it and are changed by it.
It is at once a sobering realisation yet with a power to unmoor forever our anxieties birthed by addiction to scale. This perspective enjoys a distinct advantage: it is precisely how our own lives are forged and thereby is second nature to us, and should therefore be easy to action. It however requires a quiet submission to our own common-sense.
Buddha called this way of training of the mind heedfulness involving a deep sense of responsibility, and high degree of mindfulness, alertness and discernment. Islam envelopes it within the practice of Zikr (constant remembrance) of the One. The technique: of looking within and using those learnings without: it seems then, is already present in our ancient philosophical inheritance; provided we stop talking about scale and start digging and making meaning of the minutae of the present.
Where then lies the difficulty in detaching ourselves from scale, and many other like-minded fads, is perhaps the hardest of all questions to fathom.
P.P.S.: Reproduced below is an email comment from a reader.
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Dear Kushagra
I read your essay "A fine intervention" multiple times across the last 2 days. I must admit that initially seeing the length of the essay I baulked a bit, but once I got over the first hurdle of laziness, I became almost compelled to read it. Reading this essay, for me, was like swinging on a hammock on a slow, summer afternoon, reading a book that you cannot put down; your mind wanders, sometimes you doze, sometimes you read a line with such stunning clarity and underlying all of it a sense of stillness, moments of just being alive to every thought and sensation around you. I want to thank you for writing this and also for sharing this with me. I want to read more of you.
The question of scale, impact, development and education has bothered me for a long time and your article resonated with me at many levels. The corner stone of my own reflections on this has been two ideas - one of mindfulness and "being" and the other of 'interactions'.
(My third strong belief rests with my conviction of individuals as empowered beings, with the greatest capacity to act with empathy, rationality as well as with love and compassion). As someone who is becoming more and more attuned to seeing the world through a power and systems lens (systems as in all forms, including political, social, cultural, economic etc) I am more and more convinced that the deliberateness of being mindful, constantly reflective and cautious in how we approach the world, these have become lost in the current flavour of 'doing'. We seem to be in a tremendous hurry constantly; as individuals and organisations. How to develop an awareness of a slow life, a more thoughtful reflective life, could be one of the greatest educational challenges we face. The second, has been my increasing belief that power and influence lies not in actions, but in interactions. It is in the collective discourse, the exchange of ideas, in the creation of communities of practice, communities of individuals and organisations who occupy the development 'space' to invest in each other as much in their 'interventions' that I feel the answer to scale lies. A deep exploration of our fundamental philosophies, temperaments, ideologies must accompany these dialogues and interactions and it is through the reification of such collective conversations that we may bring about the more sustainable sytemic shifts that are needed for change to take place.
I found these two ideas of mine expressed far more eruditely in your essay. I have also been convinced that as individuals working in education or development, a fundamental requirement is for us to not see ourselves as the centre of this world, not place too many impact burdens on ourselves but recast ourselves maybe as individuals who have the capacity to have more difficult conversations, as attempting to be constantly mindful of our actions and be willing to step outside the ego that occupies us to constantly say "I was wrong about that" or "I do not know about this" and allow for the world to unfurl and show us the innate wisdom that it already possesses. Maybe as development professionals in some ways, all we need to do is observe, document, reflect and share - and keep our lines of dialogue constantly open.
Please do keep writing and sharing.
Regards
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