This is where I save my columns published by the Business Standard newspaper.
(to see all of them, click on the tab 'Garage Gigs' above this page)
Jyoti Pande Lavakare: Teaching for Bharat
(to see all of them, click on the tab 'Garage Gigs' above this page)
Jyoti Pande Lavakare: Teaching for Bharat
A project aimed at educational equity is engaging young minds turning them into leaders in the process
Jyoti Pande Lavakare / September 24, 2011, 0:39 IST
I recently discovered that my hyper-intelligent, uber-cool 21-year-old nephew who has been in lifelong training to become a full-time hedonist is actually a closet idealist. He just returned from an uncomfortably hot, intense summer, learning innovative ways to teach underprivileged children to bring them to beyond grade-level literacy. He now teaches 34 third-graders between ages seven-11, full-time, at an under-resourced municipal school in Delhi, where one of his earliest challenges has been to get one of the little girls to stop biting his hand every day. His bigger challenge remains his goal to make education interesting and fun for these children, awaken their curiosity, ambition and sense of possibility, and put them on an entirely different life trajectory. And oh, he’s committed two years of his life to this.
Of course, he’s not doing this randomly or in isolation. In two years, Dhruva will pass the baton to another brilliant, enthusiastic cohort, and so on, until these 34 kids graduate from school. And elsewhere, others of his tribe are doing the same, some 250 of them this year and growing. If all goes well, by year 2015, there will be 2,000 of them, all part of a movement called Teach for India (unrelated to Teach India, an initiative begun by a media house recently), a project of the non-profit Teach to Lead.
Led by serial social-entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow Shaheen Mistri, a group of young leaders seeking to find innovative solutions to India’s educational inequity has managed to tap the idealistic streak of dynamic young people like Dhruva and put them to work to build that critical “structure of excellence,” necessary to create “transformational change” in our society.
The first time I heard these words in relation to education were from another social entrepreneur, Wendy Kopp. Her talk, part of the Stanford University Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar series, focused on her “mission” to help children beat the odds and “do whatever it takes” to transform their lives. Kopp founded Teach for America in 1990, inspiring Ivy League graduates to teach disadvantaged children for two years.
In 2001, a McKinsey study concluded that the circumstances into which a child is born are a major factor in determining academic success and found that the most effective solution for such educational disadvantage was excellent teachers. Brett Wigdortz, who had worked on the study, put this idea into practice in 2002, and Teach First was born. Its mission: to address educational disadvantage by transforming exceptional graduates into effective, inspirational teachers and leaders in all fields.
So if the US and the UK have disadvantaged children with huge achievement and accessibility gaps, can you imagine the size of those gaps in India? Mistri already had — which is why she’d founded Akanksha, a non-profit, in 1991 to make high-quality education accessible to children from low-income communities in Mumbai and Pune. A few years ago, a TFA volunteer at Akanksha helped connect the dots, and Mistri and Kopp met. A McKinsey feasibility report on adapting these models to India catalysed Teach for India (www.teachforindia.org) — and a movement was born.
But wait, this isn’t just about transplanting an innovative idea to the Indian context. This is about creating a meaningful movement that today’s privileged Indian youth can identify with and participate in. More than anything else, what Mistri has done is given our brightest youth an authentic cause to work for, a formidable reason to stay on in India or come back to the homeland. And above all, she has done the near-impossible — made teaching a really cool thing to do. The 250 TFI Fellows this year were chosen from over 5,000 applicants, and applications for 2012 are pouring in ahead of the October-16 deadline.
Her team has captured the imagination of the young and is making their inherent idealism work for the country, instead of letting it burn out into the empty activism of lighting candles at India Gate. In the process it hopes to create a generation of advocates for educational equity; idealistic thinkers and doers in whichever field they ultimately end up in. Because it’s not just schools TFI wants to transform; it’s the entire educational system, policies and their implementation.
“We need a new generation of leaders... to think differently. And we have to create that generation.” Mistri tells me in a cramped cafe in Delhi between a million meetings crammed into her schedule. At the end of two years, these young professionals and college students will get embedded in leadership roles in every field.
“The leadership lessons that come out of this form of teaching are compelling,” Mistri says. “There will be an exponential impact when they graduate from the fellowships and become our ambassadors in organisations.” Infiltrate and fight for the mission from within, she says, making it sound like a jehad. “The experience of teaching at these schools is so transformational that it motivates the young and converts them to our mission,” Mistri says.
People apply for a TFI Fellowship for different reasons, but whatever it be – patriotic, charitable, maverick – end up being converted to the cause. “Something about this experience pushes your sense of possibilities,” admits Natasha Joshi, a TFI Fellowship recruitment manager. A Fellow will have, in addition to excellent academic qualifications, soft skills that include critical-thinking, perseverance, ambition, respect and humility. And for those who think of this as a resume-building exercise, think again.
Dhruva’s day begins with sweeping his classroom (think grimy, tiled walls, iron barred prison-like windows here), finding creative ways to make it more inviting for his students and constructing lesson plans customised to individual learning. This for kids who can’t speak English and barely have access to education, who have never had the privilege or experienced the pleasure that comes from learning things taught in interesting ways by engaged teachers. For all this, TFI pays him a small monthly stipend.
If there’s anything this is building, it is character and leadership skills.
Every Fellow is the CEO of his classroom start-up — and he has to make it work. His success depends on the outcomes of the children in his class. If he can meet this challenge – essentially make something out of nothing but an idea and an ideal – he’ll be a leader in any field he chooses after two years. And that’s what true entrepreneurial spirit is made of. That is why, if you were wondering, this story is figuring in a column on entrepreneurship – because its canvas is broader than business entrepreneurship
Jyoti Pande Lavakare: Eye on agriculture
Agri-entrepreneurs are finding innovative solutions to increasing crop yield via sustainable farming practices
Jyoti Pande Lavakare / August 27, 2011, 0:43 IST
Imagine getting fresh produce at your table that has been locally and sustainably grown in hygienic, disease-free conditions. Now add to that the knowledge that while you’re eating, you are involuntarily conserving resources, reducing your carbon footprint and participating in ecological farming, perhaps even providing landless women and marginalised farmers with jobs.
Okay, it may not make your palak paneer, pesto or rocket salad taste any sweeter, but if you’re like me, you will be ready to pay more for the privilege of this choice.
And now the best part – suppose you don’t actually have to pay more – all this is available for the same price as your pesticide-ridden, chemically-fertilised produce coming from farms located several hundred miles away? I’d make the switch in a heartbeat — I can’t imagine why others wouldn’t.
This isn’t just an imaginary scenario of a utopian farming commune but something we could see happening around urban pockets, if a couple of agri-entrepreneurs succeed in their attempts to find creative solutions in a sector ignored by policy-makers and educators alike.
Anju Srivastava is a former advertising professional and a first-time entrepreneur with big ideas and a desire to do good. As founder, WinGreens Farms,
she has positioned herself as an ethical intermediary between farmers and retailers, straddling the rural-urban divide with empathy and compassion. And a sharp business model.
Cutting straight through to the essence of what’s troubling the agriculture sector – fragmented land holdings, the controversial land ceiling Act, lower returns on investment, high dependence on monsoons and crop cycles, distorting fertiliser subsidies, lack of education and thus, investment into modern farming techniques – Srivastava has devised an innovative solution for farmers with small land holdings.
Instead of outright buying or even contracting, Srivastava rents land from farmers at higher than their existing revenues. Then, for an additional salary, she hires those same farmers’ families to work the land, thus providing them with not just a rental income, but also a fixed salary. She employs their women as casual labour, which further helps augment family income. By doing all this, she takes the risk away from exactly those people who are at highest risk. And by making them her employees, she makes skilling them acceptable.
But this column is about entrepreneurship, not philanthropy, so what does WinGreens get out of this? Plenty, it appears.
Srivastava is able to explode productivity by introducing high-value, low-water use crops and modern farming techniques. When Srivastava tweaks traditional cropping pattern, swapping jowar and bajra for herbs and salads, converting to drip irrigation to save gallons of water and bring down electricity bills, using composting and other sustainable farming techniques to conserve and improve soil, she gets exponentially higher output of already high-value produce.
“Jab zameen sone ke bhaav hai, to uspe sona ugaana chahiye, na?” (When the land is worth the price of gold, then shouldn’t we grow gold on it?) she says as we sit at a coffee shop in New Delhi, less than 50 miles from the three villages where her pilot project has been functional for the past three years .
Where farmers were able to get a revenue of '20,000 per acre per annum, Srivastava, through these techniques, has managed to get '12 lakh per acre per annum, thus creating wealth. “My farmer’s family incomes have gone up from '20,000 to '3 lakh per annum,” for every acre of land they continue to own, Srivastava says, pride in her voice. And in the process, she ends up educating her farmer-employees, teaching by demonstration.
But because she is a newbie to farming, Srivastava has been circumspect in her growth. She has limited herself to renting 4 acres in Haryana, experimenting with inter-cropping high-value plants like garlic and turmeric with traditional crops, focusing on improving yields. But come November and she will have another 20 acres under her belt and ready to produce winter vegetables such as carrot, cauliflower and bok choy.
“We’re on the verge of take-off. Our aim is to minimise food miles and supply the freshest, ethical and traceable produce. And we want this model to be replicable in all parts of India,” Srivastava says. She will limit herself to 50 acres over the next three years, but believes that other farmers will be inspired as they learn how to improve yields, and hundreds of acres of farmland will begin to be cultivated more efficiently.
But breaking into traditional cropping patterns requires patience. Embedded inefficiencies become part of the farmer’s DNA, and inertia won’t let him switch to new crops. And change seems too risky.
“We found an innovative way of taking risk away from the farmer,” says Srivastava. With the help of one of the world’s largest irrigation companies, Jain Irrigation Systems, Srivastava is helping farms switch to drip irrigation, which waters only the root of plants. This has cut her water and electricity use by almost half. And a 90 per cent subsidy on drip irrigation that the Haryana government offers makes this even more profitable.
But what’s really practical is the forward linkage she has created with large retailers — Spencers, Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar and Bharti-Walmart’s Easy Day. Currently, she supplies edible greens as well as oxy-generators in garden pots through rented branded kiosk space. And has recently expanded to set up live counters to demonstrate preparation and test-marketing of chutneys, dips and pestos from her farm-grown fresh produce while she waits for various government licenses that will allow her to stock her processed produce on retail shelves.
Srivastava is pulling in all the weight of her past-life corporate networks and personal contacts as she plans her business strategy. Mentor-friends like Technopak’s Arvind Singhal have been helping her. Coincidentally, he, too, is experimenting with his own farm-to-market initiative in Uttarakhand — Amrylis Farmworks, currently being handled by son, Aditya.
“We’ve bought 20 acres in Uttarakhand and are experimenting with 30 different fruit and vegetables, as well as exotic flowers, trying to find the right crop mix,” says the 26-year old.”Once our project becomes viable, we’ll transfer all the technology and know-how to local farmers, free of charge,” Singhal tells me over a very strong double espressso.
Singhal is also experimenting with sustainable techniques. Amrylis uses greenhouses or polyhouses, which the government subsidises, to increase yields. “Output has increased 10-20 times,” he says.
Both these entrepreneurs are taking risks in a sector that’s never been considered exciting. Ideas such as Srivastava’s are brilliant in their simplicity — doing well by doing good? C K Prahalad would approve!
Jyoti Pande Lavakare: Eye on agriculture
Agri-entrepreneurs are finding innovative solutions to increasing crop yield via sustainable farming practices
Jyoti Pande Lavakare / August 27, 2011, 0:43 IST
Imagine getting fresh produce at your table that has been locally and sustainably grown in hygienic, disease-free conditions. Now add to that the knowledge that while you’re eating, you are involuntarily conserving resources, reducing your carbon footprint and participating in ecological farming, perhaps even providing landless women and marginalised farmers with jobs.
Okay, it may not make your palak paneer, pesto or rocket salad taste any sweeter, but if you’re like me, you will be ready to pay more for the privilege of this choice.
And now the best part – suppose you don’t actually have to pay more – all this is available for the same price as your pesticide-ridden, chemically-fertilised produce coming from farms located several hundred miles away? I’d make the switch in a heartbeat — I can’t imagine why others wouldn’t.
This isn’t just an imaginary scenario of a utopian farming commune but something we could see happening around urban pockets, if a couple of agri-entrepreneurs succeed in their attempts to find creative solutions in a sector ignored by policy-makers and educators alike.
Anju Srivastava is a former advertising professional and a first-time entrepreneur with big ideas and a desire to do good. As founder, WinGreens Farms,
she has positioned herself as an ethical intermediary between farmers and retailers, straddling the rural-urban divide with empathy and compassion. And a sharp business model.
Cutting straight through to the essence of what’s troubling the agriculture sector – fragmented land holdings, the controversial land ceiling Act, lower returns on investment, high dependence on monsoons and crop cycles, distorting fertiliser subsidies, lack of education and thus, investment into modern farming techniques – Srivastava has devised an innovative solution for farmers with small land holdings.
Instead of outright buying or even contracting, Srivastava rents land from farmers at higher than their existing revenues. Then, for an additional salary, she hires those same farmers’ families to work the land, thus providing them with not just a rental income, but also a fixed salary. She employs their women as casual labour, which further helps augment family income. By doing all this, she takes the risk away from exactly those people who are at highest risk. And by making them her employees, she makes skilling them acceptable.
But this column is about entrepreneurship, not philanthropy, so what does WinGreens get out of this? Plenty, it appears.
Srivastava is able to explode productivity by introducing high-value, low-water use crops and modern farming techniques. When Srivastava tweaks traditional cropping pattern, swapping jowar and bajra for herbs and salads, converting to drip irrigation to save gallons of water and bring down electricity bills, using composting and other sustainable farming techniques to conserve and improve soil, she gets exponentially higher output of already high-value produce.
“Jab zameen sone ke bhaav hai, to uspe sona ugaana chahiye, na?” (When the land is worth the price of gold, then shouldn’t we grow gold on it?) she says as we sit at a coffee shop in New Delhi, less than 50 miles from the three villages where her pilot project has been functional for the past three years .
Where farmers were able to get a revenue of '20,000 per acre per annum, Srivastava, through these techniques, has managed to get '12 lakh per acre per annum, thus creating wealth. “My farmer’s family incomes have gone up from '20,000 to '3 lakh per annum,” for every acre of land they continue to own, Srivastava says, pride in her voice. And in the process, she ends up educating her farmer-employees, teaching by demonstration.
But because she is a newbie to farming, Srivastava has been circumspect in her growth. She has limited herself to renting 4 acres in Haryana, experimenting with inter-cropping high-value plants like garlic and turmeric with traditional crops, focusing on improving yields. But come November and she will have another 20 acres under her belt and ready to produce winter vegetables such as carrot, cauliflower and bok choy.
“We’re on the verge of take-off. Our aim is to minimise food miles and supply the freshest, ethical and traceable produce. And we want this model to be replicable in all parts of India,” Srivastava says. She will limit herself to 50 acres over the next three years, but believes that other farmers will be inspired as they learn how to improve yields, and hundreds of acres of farmland will begin to be cultivated more efficiently.
But breaking into traditional cropping patterns requires patience. Embedded inefficiencies become part of the farmer’s DNA, and inertia won’t let him switch to new crops. And change seems too risky.
“We found an innovative way of taking risk away from the farmer,” says Srivastava. With the help of one of the world’s largest irrigation companies, Jain Irrigation Systems, Srivastava is helping farms switch to drip irrigation, which waters only the root of plants. This has cut her water and electricity use by almost half. And a 90 per cent subsidy on drip irrigation that the Haryana government offers makes this even more profitable.
But what’s really practical is the forward linkage she has created with large retailers — Spencers, Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar and Bharti-Walmart’s Easy Day. Currently, she supplies edible greens as well as oxy-generators in garden pots through rented branded kiosk space. And has recently expanded to set up live counters to demonstrate preparation and test-marketing of chutneys, dips and pestos from her farm-grown fresh produce while she waits for various government licenses that will allow her to stock her processed produce on retail shelves.
Srivastava is pulling in all the weight of her past-life corporate networks and personal contacts as she plans her business strategy. Mentor-friends like Technopak’s Arvind Singhal have been helping her. Coincidentally, he, too, is experimenting with his own farm-to-market initiative in Uttarakhand — Amrylis Farmworks, currently being handled by son, Aditya.
“We’ve bought 20 acres in Uttarakhand and are experimenting with 30 different fruit and vegetables, as well as exotic flowers, trying to find the right crop mix,” says the 26-year old.”Once our project becomes viable, we’ll transfer all the technology and know-how to local farmers, free of charge,” Singhal tells me over a very strong double espressso.
Singhal is also experimenting with sustainable techniques. Amrylis uses greenhouses or polyhouses, which the government subsidises, to increase yields. “Output has increased 10-20 times,” he says.
Both these entrepreneurs are taking risks in a sector that’s never been considered exciting. Ideas such as Srivastava’s are brilliant in their simplicity — doing well by doing good? C K Prahalad would approve!
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