Jul 21 2014 : Mirror (Mumbai)
Jumping right to it!
MUDAR PATHERYA
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ALAPSED SPORTS WRITER WHO'S FOUND FAITH IN INDIA'S CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY Century Plyboard has an interesting CSR model. It doesn't just give an NGO a cheque, but helps it with planning and a process-driven management outlook
The general CSR approach in India is for someone in the senior management to sign CSR cheques and employee teams to address community issues.At the Kolkata-based Century Plyboards, arguably the country's largest plywood manufacturer, the reverse is true. The chairman of the company, Sajjan Bhajanka, has largely divested the cheque-signing function to executives so that he can drive the CSR function virtually single-handedly. He holds posts in six public welfare organizations, investing no less than 120 days annually to public philanthropy, which is equivalent to the time he spends in businesses that generate no less than Rs 200 crore in annual cash profits.
One of the organisations with which Bhajanka is actively associated is Friends of Tribal Society -funding, navigating and implementing strategy with the express objective to address the cause of tribal education, a space largely overlooked by planners and NGOs. The cause is in the numbers: about 8 crore tribals in 100,000 villages (North East India, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan) suffer a literacy rate of only 12 per cent against the national average of 65 per cent.
FTS is unique for some good reasons. One, FTS has extended to the rural; almost 99 per cent of its schools are 75-100 km from the nearest rural centre and therefore usually unconnected to a motorable road; the locations suffer deep subsistence issues with per capita income not more than Rs 15 per day (I almost refuse to believe it) and where the living standards are much like people have lived for the last few hundred years, no difference.
Bhajanka could have been the usual chequewriting type; on the contrary, he is someone who selected to tour remote rural India to introduce himself to nitty-gritty before he wrote that first big cheque. The result became a multi-decadal engagement during which Bhajanka has visited dozens of tribal homes to be able to report firsthand the guilt on his temperature-controlled existence and the stark tribal reality the locals being so poor that women in the family need to share clothes in turns if someone like him dropped in; people who would think they had a good day if they managed one square meal; his own experience of breaking bread (no bread really) over a husked wheat meal that he found challenging to masticate.
Bhajanka could have disengaged and moved to the next CSR preoccupation; he stuck on with the subject of free tribal education because of the vastness of problem at one end and smallness of the collective national initiative at the other; because a contribution by his company (among others) could improve the life of thousands; because he was convinced that the effort required to make this change was not significant (low hanging fruit); because FTS had finally cracked a model that was practical, economical and scalable, needing only companies like Century to back it; because FTS' intervention extended from education to healthcare services and agricultural training.
What makes the FTS model effective is its `one teacher school' concept; the teacher needs to be a local resident; the school is run under trees or a room provided by villagers; the education covers three years following which the student is mainstreamed into a government school; its assetlight educational approach costs no more than Rs 20,000 per school per year (lower than the monthly salary of an urban teacher); its multitiered operational architecture makes it possible for responsibility and authority to be delegated downwards so that the organizational apex can then focus on quicker school rollout.
The result: what started off as a pilot project has grown to 46,966 villages and more than 51,000 schools educating 13,35,078 tribal children (December 2012) across 25 states. FTS teaches 15,00,000 children at any moment, has graduated 25,00,000 students in its existence and takes in no less than 600,000 students each year. One would have relaxed after having set this furious pace; instead, FTS intends to establish 100,000 Ekal Vidyalayas throughout the country's tribal belt by 2014-15.
Century's association represents an interesting CSR model whereby the company has selected not to reinvent any wheel, prefers working with existing NGOs or institutions, would rather get in on the planning, bring its process-driven management outlook to the NGO's table and leverage the value of its association across similar wellwishers to mobilise funds.
The validation of this strategy lies in the numbers: Century puts down Rs 1.5 cr annually in helping FTS launch 1,000 schools annually on its own account (among other expenditures). An equivalent but standalone spending by Century could at best have helped build one school in urban India; by selecting to associate with an ongoing movement, the hydraulic impact has translated into what is possibly the largest educational movement anywhere in the world. Likedhated his column! write to Mudar Patherya at mirrorfeedback@timesgroup.com
One of the organisations with which Bhajanka is actively associated is Friends of Tribal Society -funding, navigating and implementing strategy with the express objective to address the cause of tribal education, a space largely overlooked by planners and NGOs. The cause is in the numbers: about 8 crore tribals in 100,000 villages (North East India, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan) suffer a literacy rate of only 12 per cent against the national average of 65 per cent.
FTS is unique for some good reasons. One, FTS has extended to the rural; almost 99 per cent of its schools are 75-100 km from the nearest rural centre and therefore usually unconnected to a motorable road; the locations suffer deep subsistence issues with per capita income not more than Rs 15 per day (I almost refuse to believe it) and where the living standards are much like people have lived for the last few hundred years, no difference.
Bhajanka could have been the usual chequewriting type; on the contrary, he is someone who selected to tour remote rural India to introduce himself to nitty-gritty before he wrote that first big cheque. The result became a multi-decadal engagement during which Bhajanka has visited dozens of tribal homes to be able to report firsthand the guilt on his temperature-controlled existence and the stark tribal reality the locals being so poor that women in the family need to share clothes in turns if someone like him dropped in; people who would think they had a good day if they managed one square meal; his own experience of breaking bread (no bread really) over a husked wheat meal that he found challenging to masticate.
Bhajanka could have disengaged and moved to the next CSR preoccupation; he stuck on with the subject of free tribal education because of the vastness of problem at one end and smallness of the collective national initiative at the other; because a contribution by his company (among others) could improve the life of thousands; because he was convinced that the effort required to make this change was not significant (low hanging fruit); because FTS had finally cracked a model that was practical, economical and scalable, needing only companies like Century to back it; because FTS' intervention extended from education to healthcare services and agricultural training.
What makes the FTS model effective is its `one teacher school' concept; the teacher needs to be a local resident; the school is run under trees or a room provided by villagers; the education covers three years following which the student is mainstreamed into a government school; its assetlight educational approach costs no more than Rs 20,000 per school per year (lower than the monthly salary of an urban teacher); its multitiered operational architecture makes it possible for responsibility and authority to be delegated downwards so that the organizational apex can then focus on quicker school rollout.
The result: what started off as a pilot project has grown to 46,966 villages and more than 51,000 schools educating 13,35,078 tribal children (December 2012) across 25 states. FTS teaches 15,00,000 children at any moment, has graduated 25,00,000 students in its existence and takes in no less than 600,000 students each year. One would have relaxed after having set this furious pace; instead, FTS intends to establish 100,000 Ekal Vidyalayas throughout the country's tribal belt by 2014-15.
Century's association represents an interesting CSR model whereby the company has selected not to reinvent any wheel, prefers working with existing NGOs or institutions, would rather get in on the planning, bring its process-driven management outlook to the NGO's table and leverage the value of its association across similar wellwishers to mobilise funds.
The validation of this strategy lies in the numbers: Century puts down Rs 1.5 cr annually in helping FTS launch 1,000 schools annually on its own account (among other expenditures). An equivalent but standalone spending by Century could at best have helped build one school in urban India; by selecting to associate with an ongoing movement, the hydraulic impact has translated into what is possibly the largest educational movement anywhere in the world. Likedhated his column! write to Mudar Patherya at mirrorfeedback@timesgroup.com
