THE WORST OF THE WORST OF THE WORST
By Ajit Chaudhuri
In this time of ‘India Shining’, it is possibly a politically incorrect time to draw attention to the absolutely worst parts of our country. However, many of us do spend time thinking about which these places are, and why, and what can be done about it. The Planning Commission brings out a ‘Worst 100 Districts’ listing (last in 1997) to remind policy makers of the existence of parts of the country. Some, but not many, aid agencies use the need of the area as a criteria for where they should target their resources – I remember, for example, the British charity Actionaid first undertaking such an exercise in the early 1990s, more than twenty years after they had begun working in India, to the deep distress of the NGOs they supported in the non-BIMAROU states.
An article entitled ‘India’s Worst’ by Shankar Aiyar in the India Today issue of 25th August 2003 touches upon this issue in some detail. It describes a report by two well-known economists, Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari, entitled ‘District-Level Deprivation in the New Millennium’ that lists out 69 of the worst districts in this country. A listing, for information, is appended.
The listing has a few, but not many, surprises. Most of the worst districts lie in, no prizes for guessing, Bihar (26 of the state’s 37 districts), Jharkhand (10 of 22) and Orissa (10 of 30). UP (13 of 70) and MP (6 of 45) are the other noteworthy contributors to the list, signifying a socio-economic fault line just east of Kanpur running south east across the country. There are two outliers, one district in the southern state of Karnataka (Gulbarga) and three in the northeastern corner of Arunachal Pradesh.
A word on the methodology! Debroy and Bhandari take the official statistics for six different indicators; percent population below the poverty line, percent of households going hungry, infant mortality rate, percent children getting complete immunization, literacy rate and gross enrolment ratio at the elementary level, and then rank all India’s districts for each indicator. They then address scale and scope issues for identifying the worst districts, for example, to what extent should it be among the worst in any indicator (bottom half, bottom quarter, bottom five percent?), and in how many indicators should it be among the worst. A listing of 437 districts were identified with the criteria defined as being in the bottom half of at least two indicators, and only 2 with the most stringent criteria of being in the bottom five percent in at least four indicators. Finally, the authors decided that a criteria of being in the bottom quarter in at least four indicators would lead to a sensible number of 69 districts, and they have thus selected this criteria. The attached table denotes the number of districts that each setting of criteria brings about.
Lowest __ percent of districts
Minimum number of heads under which district is deprived
2 3 4 5 6
5
38
11
2
0
0
10
80
27
8
0
0
25
245
145
69
14
0
33
308
211
129
44
2
50
437
334
234
149
42
The two obvious weaknesses in methodology are a) several of the indicators measure the same thing and b) government data collection, especially in the remote, backward districts, is open to question on the issue of rigour. This does not, however, take away from the most useful part of the work - the listing of the worst districts. The rest of the report, an analysis of why, comes across as academic and rather obvious.
For the developmentally inclined, some matters that come to mind from the report are –
Plotting the worst districts onto a map of India reveals that, in addition to the socio-economic fault line east of Kanpur, worst districts appear to come in clusters. Gaps in the clusters are usually districts that are bad but not in the worst 69. Poor governance, undeveloped institutions, poor economic resources, poor communications, and recurrent disasters such as floods (but not drought, except in some outlier districts) come across as major factors in the causes column. Political leadership is another matter, with many of these districts being VIP constituencies. MP’s CM Uma Bharati is from Tikamgarh, Laloo Prasad, who is from Gopalganj, traditionally slugs it out with Sharad Yadav in Madhepura, George Fernandes has made a habit out of winning from Muzaffarpur without visiting the district, etc, etc. Nonentities represent others. Common to the VIPs and the nonentities is their inability to address the very serious issues that cause backwardness and poverty in these regions. Whether they want to is a separate issue.
Much of MP’s Bundelkhand region comes into this listing (Tikamgarh, Chatarpur, Panna), while none of UP’s Bundelkhand districts are there. This was surprising considering the bad press Banda, Mauranipur, Chitrakoot, etc. receive, but was borne out by me during a visit to the region earlier this year, when a clear distinction between UP’s and MP’s Bundelkhand regions could be observed on the road from Jhansi to Panna that criss-crosses the two states – the UP Bundelkhand was a hub of activity while MP was a barren and remote landscape. People here agreed with the listing and said that the main reason could be the UP Bundelkhand’s participation in the national freedom struggle and the subsequent flourishing of civil society institutions in the region. MP’s Bundelkhand, they said, was under Indian rulers who did not let civil society prosper with immense consequences for the region – there are few institutions, people are largely unaware of their rights and responsibilities as citizens, and all the resources are appropriated by a very small minority entirely consisting of the ex-ruling class.
Many of the districts, especially those in Orissa and Jharkhand, face the additional problem of insurgency within. Whether this is a cause of their presence on the list or a consequence of it is debatable. Doing something about addressing the problems becomes a much more difficult task once insurgency spreads in a district, for the administration, for business, for NGOs.
Finally, the listing had me wondering how much of my work was being undertaken in India’s worst districts. The answer, apart from the developmentally sexy KBK belt in Orissa and the tribal districts in MP that adjoin Gujarat, is – not much. Getting there is annoying, staying there is unpleasant, and traveling within is difficult. What about you?
References:
Aiyar, Shankar, “India’s Worst”, India Today issue of 25th August 2003
Debroy, Bibek and Bhandari, Laveesh, “District-Level Deprivation in the New Millennium” brought out by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies
The Worst 69
Changlang Ar.P
Lohit
Tirap
Araria Bihar
Banka
Begusarai
Darbhanga
Gopalganj
Jamui
Kaimur (Bhabhua)
Khagaria
Kishanganj
Lakhisarai
Madhepura
Muzaffarpur
Nalanda
Nawada
East Champaran
West Champaran
Purnia
Saharsa
Samastipur
Saran
Sheikhpura
Sheohar Bihar
Sitamarhi
Siwan
Supaul
Vaishali
Chatra Jharkhand
Dumka
Garhwa
Giridih
Godda
Gumla
Kodarma
Palamu
West Singhbhum
Sahebganj
Gulbarga Karnataka
Chatarpur M.P
Damoh
Dhar
Jhabua
Panna
Tikamgarh
Bolangir Orissa
Gajapati
Kalahandi
Kandhamal
Koraput
Mayurbhanj
Nabarangapur
Naupada
Rayagada
Sundargarh
Barabank U.P
Basti
Bijnor
Budaun
Fatehpur
Jyotiba Phule Nagar
Maharajganj
Moradabad
Pilibhit
Rae Bareli
Sant Kabir Nagar
Sitapur
Unnao
Acronyms, Jargon watch
BIMAROU Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Orissa and UP
CM Chief Minister
KBK Koraput, Bolangir, Kalahandi
MP Madhya Pradesh
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
UP Uttar Pradesh
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
WOMEN, WORK AND WOE
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
Tucked away in a corner of my local library, vying for my attention with “What is Sustainable Development” in Environment and “Be Her Ultimate Sex Toy: No Batteries Required” in Men’s Health, was an article entitled “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success” in the Harvard Business Review. And somewhere in the Internet was an article entitled “French Enlightenment: The 35-Hour Working Week”. And finally, some weeks ago I read about the formation of a feminist political party in Sweden. To paraphrase James Bond - Once is an incident! Twice is coincidence! And finding three articles on career issues of highly qualified women, while not quite enemy action, points to something churning on this rather different subject. Different because these women are not traditional fodder for gender writing – nobody is beating or trafficking them, they have the right to vote, they are not being raped by landlords while toiling in the fields – nothing pathetic about these ladies. And different because, while the settings are in the US of A, France and Sweden respectively, the points made could well have been about my home and, I am sure, yours. Please read on!
The HBR article identifies it as the ‘opt-out revolution’ and the ‘new brain-drain’, i.e. the phenomenon of large numbers of highly-qualified women (HQW, and the acronym is due to my reluctance to repeatedly type the words and not an attempt by HBR to typify them) dropping out of mainstream careers. It says that snippets of data on this have been available for some time – that 57 percent of the women graduates of Stanford University’s Class of 1981 have left the workforce, and that one in three white women with MBAs is not working full-time, compared with one in twenty men, but that there is no systematic data on this exodus until now. It uses a Center for Work-Life Policy multi-year research to look into what proportion of HQW opt out (go off-ramp), whether they are pushed or pulled, which sectors of the economy are the most affected by this, how many years do HQW spend off-ramp, how easy is it to return on-ramp, and what policies and practices help HQW return to work. It takes a stand that companies that tap into their female talent pool over the long haul will enjoy a substantial competitive advantage, but provides no information as to whether this is actually the case and why it should be so.
And they do opt out - 37 percent of them have voluntarily left work at some point of time in their careers (women with children – 43 percent, men – 24 percent and the reasons are different). The pull factors were caring for children, then for a parent or someone else in the family, and then personal health issues. Off-ramping is higher among the ‘sandwich generation’, women with growing children and elderly parents. Men, by contrast, off-ramp to reposition their careers – to switch careers, to go for additional training or further studies, or to start a business. And, ahem, 40 percent of HQW with spouses “felt that their husbands create more work around the house than they perform”.
Among push factors – 17 percent left because the job was not satisfying or meaningful. These and the lack of opportunity were larger problems than overwork or the job being too demanding. Push factors were particularly powerful in the business sector. And most HQW dealt with a combination of push and pull factors, those hemmed in by rigid policies or a glass ceiling were more likely to respond to the pull of the family.
About 93 percent of HQW currently off-ramp want to get back on. Financial reasons are the main ones – the difficulties of shortfalls in family incomes, the need for an independent source of income, the discomfort at having to ask their spouses for money. But also, to regain the enjoyment and satisfaction they enjoy from their careers, to regain “power and status” in their professions, and to contribute back to society. Professional identities remain primary identities for off-ramp HQW.
Going off-ramp is one thing, getting back on quite another – only 74 percent wanting to do so manage to do it, and most underestimated how hard it would be at the time of going off-ramp. HQW lose 18 percent of their earning power by taking an off-ramp, in the business sector it is 28 percent, and when it is three or more years, it is 37 percent.
Most HQW do not follow the conventional career strategy long established by successful men – of a steep gradient in the 30s and steady progress thereafter. Work-life strategies for HQW include telecommuting, working part-time, and working exclusively or partly from home. When looking back over their careers, 36 percent HQW say they have worked part time to balance professional and personal lives. 25 percent have reduced their work hours in a fulltime job. 16 percent have declined promotion. 38 percent have deliberately chosen a position with fewer responsibilities and lower compensation than they were qualified for because of responsibilities at home.
This is about where the article itself goes off-ramp. The section on reversing the brain drain says all the usual trite stuff – ‘employers can no longer pretend that treating women as men in skirts will fix the retention problem”, etc. It says that employers should create reduced hour jobs, provide flexibility in the day, provide flexibility in the ‘career arc’ (have a ramp-up ramp-down approach and not the up-or-out one currently in vogue), and remove the stigma attached to non-standard work arrangements.
This is where the second article becomes relevant. The French are different from the Anglo-Saxons and combine the world’s best health care, a robust education system, the longest vacations, the highest birth rate in Europe (after Ireland) and, last but not least, the world’s highest per capita wine consumption with the highest GDP per worker (after the US) and more multinational companies in the world’s top 200 than any other European country. French HQW, too, are different – almost all (97 percent) work, most (88 percent) work full time and a majority have several children (68 percent of HQW over 30 years have an average of 2.2 children). Most cite professional success as their top priority. The disadvantages they face are the usual ones. They typically spend a few years balancing work and babies, and when they return to refocus on their careers, organizations have already identified the high-potentials and distributed the plum jobs and the important developmental opportunities. Their careers are thus effectively derailed. And French statistics on women at the top of the professional hierarchy are similar to other European countries, not very good.
A recent French innovation was the introduction of a 35-hour workweek (in 1998, became applicable in January 2000) to deal with unemployment, labour market rigidity and low productivity. It is unclear whether it has addressed these issues, and there is already a move to withdraw it on the logic that those who want to work more and earn more should be able to do so. But what the 35-hour workweek has done is help dual career couples balance their lives – women manage to do a full time job and undertake their additional responsibilities, and men have much more time to help with these responsibilities. Thus, both can be committed, full time workers and involved, egalitarian parents. And, most importantly, the 35-hour workweek levels the career playing field for women – men cannot work more hours, do more, earn more and rise faster.
The article then indulges in a bit of French Rah! Rah! Rah! The Anglo-Saxon model, it says, promotes equality between men and women by ignoring the fact that women have children. And Germany is still stuck in the kinder kirsche kuche (children, church, kitchen) model with no claims to equality, to the dismay of all the highly accomplished women from the other side of the wall who discovered the downsides of freedom. It is not enough to get women into the building and expect that some will eventually clamber into the corner office – we need new buildings, new models and new architects. And the 35-hour workweek is a new model. And finally, the article advises Europe against importing the 500 million workers it needs over the next decade and suggests that, before doing this, a glance could be cast “at the talent on the other side of the kitchen table.” The Swedish article merely adds the point that these issues require political expression, and that a political party was formed in Sweden for expressly this purpose.
I have no data on the Indian situation, and no conclusions to draw. We would be fooling ourselves if we took the attitude that this is a western phenomenon, or that these women are from the elite strata of society and thus their problems do not require our thought. This juggling of many conflicting demands, these derailed careers and this huge unrealized potential is in our own homes. What are we going to do about it?
References:
1. “French Enlightenment: The 35-Hour Working Week” by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in www.ebfonline.com/main_feat/trends/trends.asp?id=558
2. “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce in Harvard Business Review of March 2005.
3. “Sweden’s New Women’s Party”, The Economist of 14th April 2005.
Acronyms / Jargon watch
EBF European Business Forum
HBR Harvard Business Review
HQW Highly Qualified Women
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
Tucked away in a corner of my local library, vying for my attention with “What is Sustainable Development” in Environment and “Be Her Ultimate Sex Toy: No Batteries Required” in Men’s Health, was an article entitled “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success” in the Harvard Business Review. And somewhere in the Internet was an article entitled “French Enlightenment: The 35-Hour Working Week”. And finally, some weeks ago I read about the formation of a feminist political party in Sweden. To paraphrase James Bond - Once is an incident! Twice is coincidence! And finding three articles on career issues of highly qualified women, while not quite enemy action, points to something churning on this rather different subject. Different because these women are not traditional fodder for gender writing – nobody is beating or trafficking them, they have the right to vote, they are not being raped by landlords while toiling in the fields – nothing pathetic about these ladies. And different because, while the settings are in the US of A, France and Sweden respectively, the points made could well have been about my home and, I am sure, yours. Please read on!
The HBR article identifies it as the ‘opt-out revolution’ and the ‘new brain-drain’, i.e. the phenomenon of large numbers of highly-qualified women (HQW, and the acronym is due to my reluctance to repeatedly type the words and not an attempt by HBR to typify them) dropping out of mainstream careers. It says that snippets of data on this have been available for some time – that 57 percent of the women graduates of Stanford University’s Class of 1981 have left the workforce, and that one in three white women with MBAs is not working full-time, compared with one in twenty men, but that there is no systematic data on this exodus until now. It uses a Center for Work-Life Policy multi-year research to look into what proportion of HQW opt out (go off-ramp), whether they are pushed or pulled, which sectors of the economy are the most affected by this, how many years do HQW spend off-ramp, how easy is it to return on-ramp, and what policies and practices help HQW return to work. It takes a stand that companies that tap into their female talent pool over the long haul will enjoy a substantial competitive advantage, but provides no information as to whether this is actually the case and why it should be so.
And they do opt out - 37 percent of them have voluntarily left work at some point of time in their careers (women with children – 43 percent, men – 24 percent and the reasons are different). The pull factors were caring for children, then for a parent or someone else in the family, and then personal health issues. Off-ramping is higher among the ‘sandwich generation’, women with growing children and elderly parents. Men, by contrast, off-ramp to reposition their careers – to switch careers, to go for additional training or further studies, or to start a business. And, ahem, 40 percent of HQW with spouses “felt that their husbands create more work around the house than they perform”.
Among push factors – 17 percent left because the job was not satisfying or meaningful. These and the lack of opportunity were larger problems than overwork or the job being too demanding. Push factors were particularly powerful in the business sector. And most HQW dealt with a combination of push and pull factors, those hemmed in by rigid policies or a glass ceiling were more likely to respond to the pull of the family.
About 93 percent of HQW currently off-ramp want to get back on. Financial reasons are the main ones – the difficulties of shortfalls in family incomes, the need for an independent source of income, the discomfort at having to ask their spouses for money. But also, to regain the enjoyment and satisfaction they enjoy from their careers, to regain “power and status” in their professions, and to contribute back to society. Professional identities remain primary identities for off-ramp HQW.
Going off-ramp is one thing, getting back on quite another – only 74 percent wanting to do so manage to do it, and most underestimated how hard it would be at the time of going off-ramp. HQW lose 18 percent of their earning power by taking an off-ramp, in the business sector it is 28 percent, and when it is three or more years, it is 37 percent.
Most HQW do not follow the conventional career strategy long established by successful men – of a steep gradient in the 30s and steady progress thereafter. Work-life strategies for HQW include telecommuting, working part-time, and working exclusively or partly from home. When looking back over their careers, 36 percent HQW say they have worked part time to balance professional and personal lives. 25 percent have reduced their work hours in a fulltime job. 16 percent have declined promotion. 38 percent have deliberately chosen a position with fewer responsibilities and lower compensation than they were qualified for because of responsibilities at home.
This is about where the article itself goes off-ramp. The section on reversing the brain drain says all the usual trite stuff – ‘employers can no longer pretend that treating women as men in skirts will fix the retention problem”, etc. It says that employers should create reduced hour jobs, provide flexibility in the day, provide flexibility in the ‘career arc’ (have a ramp-up ramp-down approach and not the up-or-out one currently in vogue), and remove the stigma attached to non-standard work arrangements.
This is where the second article becomes relevant. The French are different from the Anglo-Saxons and combine the world’s best health care, a robust education system, the longest vacations, the highest birth rate in Europe (after Ireland) and, last but not least, the world’s highest per capita wine consumption with the highest GDP per worker (after the US) and more multinational companies in the world’s top 200 than any other European country. French HQW, too, are different – almost all (97 percent) work, most (88 percent) work full time and a majority have several children (68 percent of HQW over 30 years have an average of 2.2 children). Most cite professional success as their top priority. The disadvantages they face are the usual ones. They typically spend a few years balancing work and babies, and when they return to refocus on their careers, organizations have already identified the high-potentials and distributed the plum jobs and the important developmental opportunities. Their careers are thus effectively derailed. And French statistics on women at the top of the professional hierarchy are similar to other European countries, not very good.
A recent French innovation was the introduction of a 35-hour workweek (in 1998, became applicable in January 2000) to deal with unemployment, labour market rigidity and low productivity. It is unclear whether it has addressed these issues, and there is already a move to withdraw it on the logic that those who want to work more and earn more should be able to do so. But what the 35-hour workweek has done is help dual career couples balance their lives – women manage to do a full time job and undertake their additional responsibilities, and men have much more time to help with these responsibilities. Thus, both can be committed, full time workers and involved, egalitarian parents. And, most importantly, the 35-hour workweek levels the career playing field for women – men cannot work more hours, do more, earn more and rise faster.
The article then indulges in a bit of French Rah! Rah! Rah! The Anglo-Saxon model, it says, promotes equality between men and women by ignoring the fact that women have children. And Germany is still stuck in the kinder kirsche kuche (children, church, kitchen) model with no claims to equality, to the dismay of all the highly accomplished women from the other side of the wall who discovered the downsides of freedom. It is not enough to get women into the building and expect that some will eventually clamber into the corner office – we need new buildings, new models and new architects. And the 35-hour workweek is a new model. And finally, the article advises Europe against importing the 500 million workers it needs over the next decade and suggests that, before doing this, a glance could be cast “at the talent on the other side of the kitchen table.” The Swedish article merely adds the point that these issues require political expression, and that a political party was formed in Sweden for expressly this purpose.
I have no data on the Indian situation, and no conclusions to draw. We would be fooling ourselves if we took the attitude that this is a western phenomenon, or that these women are from the elite strata of society and thus their problems do not require our thought. This juggling of many conflicting demands, these derailed careers and this huge unrealized potential is in our own homes. What are we going to do about it?
References:
1. “French Enlightenment: The 35-Hour Working Week” by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in www.ebfonline.com/main_feat/trends/trends.asp?id=558
2. “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce in Harvard Business Review of March 2005.
3. “Sweden’s New Women’s Party”, The Economist of 14th April 2005.
Acronyms / Jargon watch
EBF European Business Forum
HBR Harvard Business Review
HQW Highly Qualified Women
WELCOME, FRESHERS!!
“S/he who follows another’s footsteps leaves no footprints”*
Despite not (yet) having achieved gurudom, I am occasionally asked for advice about joining the development sector. Most of those enquiring can be slotted into two categories. The first are well-spoken but mediocre people who are getting nowhere in their chosen professions and have (therefore?) developed a social conscience. Their impression of the sector is as a place where the effort to returns ratio is second only to the spirituality business. The second are those whose short-term career objective is to join Kofi Annan in New York, and their impression of the sector is as a place where one hops on to intercontinental flights with the same regularity that you and I used the local public transport system in our student days. But occasionally, very occasionally, some young person approaches me with intent in his or her eyes, not knowing what ‘development’ is, with this vague idea of working with people in some faraway place and dirtying their hands, firm only about using their good qualifications and skills to do something different. I never know what to tell the former types – whether to play up their fantasies or to give them a reality check. As to the latter, this is what I have to say.
First, to address the basic questions:
Is there scope for good people here? The development sector needs bright people coming in as much, if not more, than other sectors of the economy. The array of problems that the sector addresses is mind-boggling in its variety, intensity and complexity and, should you decide to make a career here, you will require all the skills and drive that you think you possess. The sector also offers the opportunity to make one’s mark, and leave one’s footprints, in ways that are not possible elsewhere. So please rid yourself of the notion that this is a sinecure for the mediocre, the retired, the idle rich and the infirm.
Is long-term financial survival possible here? All of us have nightmares about being middle-aged, washed out and broke. Whether this sector provides more scope for such a turn of events than others is debatable. Most people here, as elsewhere, manage to get by, build their houses, educate their children, etc., etc. It is possible, and quite easy if you are good, to move to more lucrative segments within the development sector at some stage in your career. But – you will have to deal with the ass kissing, red tape and white domination that often go with the money. Anyway, by that time you will be aware of the pros and cons of the decisions you take. If money is important in the short term, however, then forget about coming here – you will be better off peddling soap or consulting or doing whatever it is that you are alternatively qualified to do.
What to do? Where to go? You need to figure out some basic questions before you start looking, such as rural or urban setting, in which part of the country, in an activist or a welfarist set up, and how close to the community you want to work. Finding organizations to work in that suit these settings is fairly simple after that, and good organizations are always looking for good people. Donor organizations are good places to enquire about these matters.
And now for my personal advice on what you should do:
Start out doing a field job – one that involves living and working directly with a community. The community consists of a large number of people who don’t have to say yes sir or yes ma’am to you and don’t care which fancy institution you did your post-graduation from – you have to earn your spurs from scratch, throw management theory out of the window and prepare to be surprised and tested every single day. You will discover that the class 5 pass man working with you is much better at the job than you will ever be, or that the supposedly pathetic women your activities are directed towards have much more guts than the modern, educated babes back home. Doing something here involves stress, fun and serious learning, and it is this part of your life that will stay on with you wherever you go. Spend a good amount of time here, ensure that you are not stuck with the report and proposal writing jobs and ayah-duty (i.e. escorting funding agency wallahs into the field) that you will be passed on because of your English-speaking skills, and see that you leave something intangible behind when you go. Later in life, when you are dealing with NGOs from a funding or consulting perspective, you will have plenty of NGO-wallahs giving you the what-would-you-know-you-city-asshole vibes – watch their tunes change once you let slip that you were once in their position.
Do the above with a good NGO – be careful about this because, though there are many good NGOs, they are still a small proportion of the total number of NGOs around. Good NGOs, in my opinion, are honest, secular and transparent. They formulate their plans and activities on the basis of the needs of the community they work with and are answerable to them for this. So be careful about this – you would not want your CV littered with associations with family businesses, feudal empires, pimping and middlemen set-ups, money laundering operations, touts, donor puppets, crooks, etc., masquerading as NGOs.
Become an expert – by the time you have put in 2-3 years in the field, there should be some topic relating to your work that you know more about than anybody else in the world. This means relating what you do on the ground to the larger picture, to what is happening elsewhere in the world and to the latest academic debate on the subject. Keep up to date, keep writing, and write to publish. This is easier said than done, field people have an innate distaste and little time for serious writing, but it is this that will separate those who will later go on to effect policy from those who will remain community organizers all their lives.
Eschew jargon – people in the development sector, like the IT sector and several others, have a peculiar predilection towards using jargon. The problem with this is that it serves to exclude people whom you would wish to include and include people whom you would probably want to exclude. Words like participatory, empowerment and sustainable, which you will find bandied about like toffees on a domestic flight, actually mean different things to different people and very often don’t mean anything at all. And when an organization wants to recruit dedicated, motivated and committed people, it usually means that they want to pay less for more work and therefore only suckers need apply. So don’t get caught up in this bullshit, learn the art of communicating exactly what you mean in a simple and understandable way.
Be humble and be nice – nothing like these qualities, even if put on, to enable you to get along. Having said that, don’t put up with nonsense beyond a point that even fake humility and pleasantness can’t handle. People and organizations that cross the line should end up spitting out teeth with their blood, so to speak.
Watch your love life – you will find yourself working closely with members of the opposite sex, often in very intense situations, and you will find yourself liking some of them and vice versa. Have your fun! But, my advice is, don’t find yourself marrying and/or having children with anyone you would not have done so with had things been different. The fiery young activist can end up a leach of a middle-aged man, worrying more about what is happening in Red Square than in the well-being of his immediate family and quite happy to leave you with all the responsibilities while he gabs on about revolution. And the passionate free-spirited feminist is unlikely, later in life, to have a hot cup of tea ready for you when you come home after a hard day at the office. And you will be shocked at how easy it is to forget people once they are out of context.
Should you take the plunge into the sector, you will find yourself interacting with a wide variety of people. Watch out for the following types –
People with halos – you will find a number of people claiming to be doing a favour to humanity by working in this sector, especially at the higher echelons. Many of them have active PR machineries supporting their claims to sainthood, and some even believe in their own hype. You can be sure that, like everywhere else, being hardworking, intelligent and capable are not enough to reach and stay at the very top – you also have to be ruthless and slimy. There are no exceptions to this. So, whenever you hear or read the words ‘S/he/I could have been rolling in it in any other line but chose to sacrifice her/him/myself to the cause of the poor/destitute/vulnerable blah, blah, blah” be warned of the existence of yet another hypocrite in the world.
Emperors – they are the lords of all they survey, and don’t distinguish between their personal assets and their organization’s resources, and this usually includes its women employees. Yes, most, but not all, emperors are males.
Pompous employees of donor agencies – donors have an inexplicable penchant for recruiting morons. They do sometimes go wrong, and you find yourself dealing with someone who knows his or her job and who is able to have a positive effect on your and your organization’s work. But you do often have to deal with someone who thinks s/he has arrived because s/he represents the money, and/or someone to whom development is about budgets and utilizations more than people. While there is no known cure for stupidity, sometimes it helps to let the former type know that they have their nice air-conditioned offices and fancy credit cards because people like you are willing to slog in the sun for peanuts. Don’t take crap from them and, much more importantly, don’t become like them if and when you are in their position at some later stage in your life.
Development tourists – these people travel the world to conferences and seminars on money that is meant for the poor. They are the self-appointed spokespersons for India’s (and sometimes the entire third world’s) poor in Geneva, Stockholm and such places. Their slick presentations, that have audiences thanking God for having created them in this tumultuous world, invariably disguise the fact that they last did something on the ground about twenty years ago – they have since been too busy traveling. Don’t make the mistake of getting impressed by these parasites. And don’t join them expecting to see the world; you will be lucky to have more than a Bangladesh visa stamped on your passport.
If you are still planning to join the sector – a very hearty welcome to you!
* A Confucian saying after having undergone a gender audit
“S/he who follows another’s footsteps leaves no footprints”*
Despite not (yet) having achieved gurudom, I am occasionally asked for advice about joining the development sector. Most of those enquiring can be slotted into two categories. The first are well-spoken but mediocre people who are getting nowhere in their chosen professions and have (therefore?) developed a social conscience. Their impression of the sector is as a place where the effort to returns ratio is second only to the spirituality business. The second are those whose short-term career objective is to join Kofi Annan in New York, and their impression of the sector is as a place where one hops on to intercontinental flights with the same regularity that you and I used the local public transport system in our student days. But occasionally, very occasionally, some young person approaches me with intent in his or her eyes, not knowing what ‘development’ is, with this vague idea of working with people in some faraway place and dirtying their hands, firm only about using their good qualifications and skills to do something different. I never know what to tell the former types – whether to play up their fantasies or to give them a reality check. As to the latter, this is what I have to say.
First, to address the basic questions:
Is there scope for good people here? The development sector needs bright people coming in as much, if not more, than other sectors of the economy. The array of problems that the sector addresses is mind-boggling in its variety, intensity and complexity and, should you decide to make a career here, you will require all the skills and drive that you think you possess. The sector also offers the opportunity to make one’s mark, and leave one’s footprints, in ways that are not possible elsewhere. So please rid yourself of the notion that this is a sinecure for the mediocre, the retired, the idle rich and the infirm.
Is long-term financial survival possible here? All of us have nightmares about being middle-aged, washed out and broke. Whether this sector provides more scope for such a turn of events than others is debatable. Most people here, as elsewhere, manage to get by, build their houses, educate their children, etc., etc. It is possible, and quite easy if you are good, to move to more lucrative segments within the development sector at some stage in your career. But – you will have to deal with the ass kissing, red tape and white domination that often go with the money. Anyway, by that time you will be aware of the pros and cons of the decisions you take. If money is important in the short term, however, then forget about coming here – you will be better off peddling soap or consulting or doing whatever it is that you are alternatively qualified to do.
What to do? Where to go? You need to figure out some basic questions before you start looking, such as rural or urban setting, in which part of the country, in an activist or a welfarist set up, and how close to the community you want to work. Finding organizations to work in that suit these settings is fairly simple after that, and good organizations are always looking for good people. Donor organizations are good places to enquire about these matters.
And now for my personal advice on what you should do:
Start out doing a field job – one that involves living and working directly with a community. The community consists of a large number of people who don’t have to say yes sir or yes ma’am to you and don’t care which fancy institution you did your post-graduation from – you have to earn your spurs from scratch, throw management theory out of the window and prepare to be surprised and tested every single day. You will discover that the class 5 pass man working with you is much better at the job than you will ever be, or that the supposedly pathetic women your activities are directed towards have much more guts than the modern, educated babes back home. Doing something here involves stress, fun and serious learning, and it is this part of your life that will stay on with you wherever you go. Spend a good amount of time here, ensure that you are not stuck with the report and proposal writing jobs and ayah-duty (i.e. escorting funding agency wallahs into the field) that you will be passed on because of your English-speaking skills, and see that you leave something intangible behind when you go. Later in life, when you are dealing with NGOs from a funding or consulting perspective, you will have plenty of NGO-wallahs giving you the what-would-you-know-you-city-asshole vibes – watch their tunes change once you let slip that you were once in their position.
Do the above with a good NGO – be careful about this because, though there are many good NGOs, they are still a small proportion of the total number of NGOs around. Good NGOs, in my opinion, are honest, secular and transparent. They formulate their plans and activities on the basis of the needs of the community they work with and are answerable to them for this. So be careful about this – you would not want your CV littered with associations with family businesses, feudal empires, pimping and middlemen set-ups, money laundering operations, touts, donor puppets, crooks, etc., masquerading as NGOs.
Become an expert – by the time you have put in 2-3 years in the field, there should be some topic relating to your work that you know more about than anybody else in the world. This means relating what you do on the ground to the larger picture, to what is happening elsewhere in the world and to the latest academic debate on the subject. Keep up to date, keep writing, and write to publish. This is easier said than done, field people have an innate distaste and little time for serious writing, but it is this that will separate those who will later go on to effect policy from those who will remain community organizers all their lives.
Eschew jargon – people in the development sector, like the IT sector and several others, have a peculiar predilection towards using jargon. The problem with this is that it serves to exclude people whom you would wish to include and include people whom you would probably want to exclude. Words like participatory, empowerment and sustainable, which you will find bandied about like toffees on a domestic flight, actually mean different things to different people and very often don’t mean anything at all. And when an organization wants to recruit dedicated, motivated and committed people, it usually means that they want to pay less for more work and therefore only suckers need apply. So don’t get caught up in this bullshit, learn the art of communicating exactly what you mean in a simple and understandable way.
Be humble and be nice – nothing like these qualities, even if put on, to enable you to get along. Having said that, don’t put up with nonsense beyond a point that even fake humility and pleasantness can’t handle. People and organizations that cross the line should end up spitting out teeth with their blood, so to speak.
Watch your love life – you will find yourself working closely with members of the opposite sex, often in very intense situations, and you will find yourself liking some of them and vice versa. Have your fun! But, my advice is, don’t find yourself marrying and/or having children with anyone you would not have done so with had things been different. The fiery young activist can end up a leach of a middle-aged man, worrying more about what is happening in Red Square than in the well-being of his immediate family and quite happy to leave you with all the responsibilities while he gabs on about revolution. And the passionate free-spirited feminist is unlikely, later in life, to have a hot cup of tea ready for you when you come home after a hard day at the office. And you will be shocked at how easy it is to forget people once they are out of context.
Should you take the plunge into the sector, you will find yourself interacting with a wide variety of people. Watch out for the following types –
People with halos – you will find a number of people claiming to be doing a favour to humanity by working in this sector, especially at the higher echelons. Many of them have active PR machineries supporting their claims to sainthood, and some even believe in their own hype. You can be sure that, like everywhere else, being hardworking, intelligent and capable are not enough to reach and stay at the very top – you also have to be ruthless and slimy. There are no exceptions to this. So, whenever you hear or read the words ‘S/he/I could have been rolling in it in any other line but chose to sacrifice her/him/myself to the cause of the poor/destitute/vulnerable blah, blah, blah” be warned of the existence of yet another hypocrite in the world.
Emperors – they are the lords of all they survey, and don’t distinguish between their personal assets and their organization’s resources, and this usually includes its women employees. Yes, most, but not all, emperors are males.
Pompous employees of donor agencies – donors have an inexplicable penchant for recruiting morons. They do sometimes go wrong, and you find yourself dealing with someone who knows his or her job and who is able to have a positive effect on your and your organization’s work. But you do often have to deal with someone who thinks s/he has arrived because s/he represents the money, and/or someone to whom development is about budgets and utilizations more than people. While there is no known cure for stupidity, sometimes it helps to let the former type know that they have their nice air-conditioned offices and fancy credit cards because people like you are willing to slog in the sun for peanuts. Don’t take crap from them and, much more importantly, don’t become like them if and when you are in their position at some later stage in your life.
Development tourists – these people travel the world to conferences and seminars on money that is meant for the poor. They are the self-appointed spokespersons for India’s (and sometimes the entire third world’s) poor in Geneva, Stockholm and such places. Their slick presentations, that have audiences thanking God for having created them in this tumultuous world, invariably disguise the fact that they last did something on the ground about twenty years ago – they have since been too busy traveling. Don’t make the mistake of getting impressed by these parasites. And don’t join them expecting to see the world; you will be lucky to have more than a Bangladesh visa stamped on your passport.
If you are still planning to join the sector – a very hearty welcome to you!
* A Confucian saying after having undergone a gender audit
THE SHIT SANDWICH
“Life is a big shit sandwich – bite into it, or starve!!”[i]
A 2-pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
In an era of evanescent buzzwords, the concept of a ‘long tail’ may prove to be of long-term interest. The term has traditionally been used in statistics to refer to a feature of power-law distributions such as the frequency with which different words are used in the English language – a few common words used a lot and a long tail of obscure words used less often – and was brought into the limelight by Chris Anderson in 2005 in an article in Wired[ii] magazine that looked into business possibilities in the Internet age.
He says that the Internet makes previously unprofitable transactions profitable, and this enables a shift from mass to niche markets. For example, book sales! There are a small number of very popular books and a long tail of less popular ones. A real world shop can stock only so many titles, so it holds only those most likely to sell, i.e. at the head of the curve. But the money made from the sale of one book is about the same, whether it is popular or not. An on-line store with unlimited shelf space can offer a far wider range and open up new markets further down the long tail. B&N[iii] carries only 130,000 titles, and a third of Amazon’s[iv] sales are from outside its top 130,000 titles. The collective demand for obscure items is large, is growing, and can be aggregated over the Internet so that selling obscure movies, books and CDs could prove just as lucrative as selling hits.
This has implications on business and popular culture. Opening up previously unexplored niches will increase aggregate demand and shift demand away from hits. Content providers can be less discriminating – instead of guessing what people want, they can put it all out there and discover unanticipated demand. Collaborative filtering (a chain of ‘if you liked this, you could try one of these’, or ‘people who liked this also liked these’) can enable people to find content they want that is buried down the tail. Hits will be less important – companies that prosper will be those that switch out of the lowest common denominator model and figure out how to address niches. Goodbye, Britney Spears!
The Economist, in a subsequent article[v], pointed out that, though useful, the concept might not be able to break beyond books, movies, CDs and related items. I am not so sure, and feel that understanding this would be useful in spheres beyond the obvious.
In the development business in India, those of us working to support local NGOs face a few well-funded, well-managed and effective NGOs (or various combinations of these attributes) and a (very) long tail of NGOs that exist, but do not do very much. From a funding perspective, dealing with the fat cats has its advantages – they can talk and write reports in donorspeak[vi], they can absorb larger quantities of money and thereby enable you to have a smaller portfolio for the same bucks, and they can say all the right things when your bosses come visiting. But – they are few, and you and everybody else with money to hand out is running behind them. And the places in which they are operational tend to be slightly better (because of them?), with a semblance of civil society institutions, law and order and connectivity. If you are committed to working in areas of extreme backwardness, chances are that you will have to deal with the long tail.
Who are the NGOs in the long tail? A recent visit to Latehar, Garhwa and Palamu districts of Jharkhand with Satish Girija of NBJK[vii], wherein we met many of the better local NGOs, was an eye-opener for me. My notes from the visit reveal –
· Though many NGOs came up from student agitations in the 1970s, they seem to have lost their purpose and fire with age. The NGOs I met had no agenda of their own, and their main ambition was to be development contractors at the lowest end of the chain.
· Corruption levels are high. There is considerable tolerance for small-time dishonesty, which is seen as normal. Funding from the state is obtainable only upon paying bribes, and cooking up accounts (over-invoicing, paying for events such as trainings, meetings, etc., which have not happened) is seen as necessary to recoup these costs.
· NGOs are poorly governed. One person (Managing Trustee, Secretary) typically controls everything, and friends and relatives are in positions of power. Systems and structures are weak. Professionalism is absent. Staff members are insecure and unmotivated – few have employment letters formalizing their status within the organization, salaries are meager and irregular, and basic benefits non-existent.
· The boss spends most of his/her time attending meetings and trainings organized at state or district headquarters, and very little in the field with the community.
· Most NGOs are upper class/caste entities (as are their staff). They thereby have a paternalistic approach to the tribals and lower castes that they are working for/with.
· The difference between the good and bad organizations here is in the levels rather than the existence and non-existence of the above qualities.
I can hear you say ‘Well, then don’t work with them!’ But is that the answer? All three districts fall into the ‘worst-districts’ category – they are poor, they are backward, land distribution and access to whatever facilities exist are extremely skewed, food is scarce. Khurki block of Garhwa district is famous for the feudal lord having the right to the first night with the bride in all weddings within his fiefdom, a practice that was stopped only with the advent of the Maoist Communist Center. If we don’t work here, where should we work? Delhi and Mumbai? And if we work here, it has to be with these organizations.
My employers[viii] have policies in keeping with their (and my) values. We will work only with ‘good’ organizations – those that are honest and have self-formulated and implemented policies on openness and transparency. That define what they want to do based on the needs of their operational areas and their own skills and preferences, and then do it. That deal with donors as equal partners in the development process. Fine thoughts! But such organizations do not exist in Khurki, or Manika, or Daltonganj.
How do other donor-types work in these regions? My observations during the visit were –
· They eschew direct relationships with implementing NGOs and prefer to sub-contract out the jobs of identification, monitoring, training and reporting to nodal NGOs at the block/district/state levels. There are therefore usually several layers between the implementer and the donor, and also substantial expenditure on these layers.
· Programmes are centrally formulated and sharply defined. There is no space for the skills and preferences of the individual implementing NGO or the specific situation of the area in which it operates.
· There is tolerance for bad practices up to a certain level.
· The relationships between donors, nodal NGOs and implementers are not equal.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is my shit sandwich. Do we change our policies (and values) and work with the long tail, or do we stick to them and restrict ourselves to the head of the curve. I have no answers! Do you have any advice?
[i] Graffiti in the SRCC hostel toilet in the early 1980s
[ii] “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, issue 12.10 of Wired on October 2004, www.wired.com
[iii] Barnes and Noble, a popular bookstore chain
[iv] A popular internet bookstore
[v] ‘Profiting from Obscurity’, the Economist of 5th May 2005
[vi] The development business’ equivalent of bureacratese
[vii] Navbharat Jagriti Kendra, a large Hazaribagh-based NGO
[viii] The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, a UK based donor organization
“Life is a big shit sandwich – bite into it, or starve!!”[i]
A 2-pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
In an era of evanescent buzzwords, the concept of a ‘long tail’ may prove to be of long-term interest. The term has traditionally been used in statistics to refer to a feature of power-law distributions such as the frequency with which different words are used in the English language – a few common words used a lot and a long tail of obscure words used less often – and was brought into the limelight by Chris Anderson in 2005 in an article in Wired[ii] magazine that looked into business possibilities in the Internet age.
He says that the Internet makes previously unprofitable transactions profitable, and this enables a shift from mass to niche markets. For example, book sales! There are a small number of very popular books and a long tail of less popular ones. A real world shop can stock only so many titles, so it holds only those most likely to sell, i.e. at the head of the curve. But the money made from the sale of one book is about the same, whether it is popular or not. An on-line store with unlimited shelf space can offer a far wider range and open up new markets further down the long tail. B&N[iii] carries only 130,000 titles, and a third of Amazon’s[iv] sales are from outside its top 130,000 titles. The collective demand for obscure items is large, is growing, and can be aggregated over the Internet so that selling obscure movies, books and CDs could prove just as lucrative as selling hits.
This has implications on business and popular culture. Opening up previously unexplored niches will increase aggregate demand and shift demand away from hits. Content providers can be less discriminating – instead of guessing what people want, they can put it all out there and discover unanticipated demand. Collaborative filtering (a chain of ‘if you liked this, you could try one of these’, or ‘people who liked this also liked these’) can enable people to find content they want that is buried down the tail. Hits will be less important – companies that prosper will be those that switch out of the lowest common denominator model and figure out how to address niches. Goodbye, Britney Spears!
The Economist, in a subsequent article[v], pointed out that, though useful, the concept might not be able to break beyond books, movies, CDs and related items. I am not so sure, and feel that understanding this would be useful in spheres beyond the obvious.
In the development business in India, those of us working to support local NGOs face a few well-funded, well-managed and effective NGOs (or various combinations of these attributes) and a (very) long tail of NGOs that exist, but do not do very much. From a funding perspective, dealing with the fat cats has its advantages – they can talk and write reports in donorspeak[vi], they can absorb larger quantities of money and thereby enable you to have a smaller portfolio for the same bucks, and they can say all the right things when your bosses come visiting. But – they are few, and you and everybody else with money to hand out is running behind them. And the places in which they are operational tend to be slightly better (because of them?), with a semblance of civil society institutions, law and order and connectivity. If you are committed to working in areas of extreme backwardness, chances are that you will have to deal with the long tail.
Who are the NGOs in the long tail? A recent visit to Latehar, Garhwa and Palamu districts of Jharkhand with Satish Girija of NBJK[vii], wherein we met many of the better local NGOs, was an eye-opener for me. My notes from the visit reveal –
· Though many NGOs came up from student agitations in the 1970s, they seem to have lost their purpose and fire with age. The NGOs I met had no agenda of their own, and their main ambition was to be development contractors at the lowest end of the chain.
· Corruption levels are high. There is considerable tolerance for small-time dishonesty, which is seen as normal. Funding from the state is obtainable only upon paying bribes, and cooking up accounts (over-invoicing, paying for events such as trainings, meetings, etc., which have not happened) is seen as necessary to recoup these costs.
· NGOs are poorly governed. One person (Managing Trustee, Secretary) typically controls everything, and friends and relatives are in positions of power. Systems and structures are weak. Professionalism is absent. Staff members are insecure and unmotivated – few have employment letters formalizing their status within the organization, salaries are meager and irregular, and basic benefits non-existent.
· The boss spends most of his/her time attending meetings and trainings organized at state or district headquarters, and very little in the field with the community.
· Most NGOs are upper class/caste entities (as are their staff). They thereby have a paternalistic approach to the tribals and lower castes that they are working for/with.
· The difference between the good and bad organizations here is in the levels rather than the existence and non-existence of the above qualities.
I can hear you say ‘Well, then don’t work with them!’ But is that the answer? All three districts fall into the ‘worst-districts’ category – they are poor, they are backward, land distribution and access to whatever facilities exist are extremely skewed, food is scarce. Khurki block of Garhwa district is famous for the feudal lord having the right to the first night with the bride in all weddings within his fiefdom, a practice that was stopped only with the advent of the Maoist Communist Center. If we don’t work here, where should we work? Delhi and Mumbai? And if we work here, it has to be with these organizations.
My employers[viii] have policies in keeping with their (and my) values. We will work only with ‘good’ organizations – those that are honest and have self-formulated and implemented policies on openness and transparency. That define what they want to do based on the needs of their operational areas and their own skills and preferences, and then do it. That deal with donors as equal partners in the development process. Fine thoughts! But such organizations do not exist in Khurki, or Manika, or Daltonganj.
How do other donor-types work in these regions? My observations during the visit were –
· They eschew direct relationships with implementing NGOs and prefer to sub-contract out the jobs of identification, monitoring, training and reporting to nodal NGOs at the block/district/state levels. There are therefore usually several layers between the implementer and the donor, and also substantial expenditure on these layers.
· Programmes are centrally formulated and sharply defined. There is no space for the skills and preferences of the individual implementing NGO or the specific situation of the area in which it operates.
· There is tolerance for bad practices up to a certain level.
· The relationships between donors, nodal NGOs and implementers are not equal.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is my shit sandwich. Do we change our policies (and values) and work with the long tail, or do we stick to them and restrict ourselves to the head of the curve. I have no answers! Do you have any advice?
[i] Graffiti in the SRCC hostel toilet in the early 1980s
[ii] “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, issue 12.10 of Wired on October 2004, www.wired.com
[iii] Barnes and Noble, a popular bookstore chain
[iv] A popular internet bookstore
[v] ‘Profiting from Obscurity’, the Economist of 5th May 2005
[vi] The development business’ equivalent of bureacratese
[vii] Navbharat Jagriti Kendra, a large Hazaribagh-based NGO
[viii] The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, a UK based donor organization
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