Indians For Collective Action

India Currents Article on Indians For Collective Action:  http://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/2011/10/01/power-community

My father, and first mentor, impacted me greatly. He gave to not only me, but to the people of Gujarat, India through  the immeasurable daily gifts of knowledge and social uplifting. He gave to me the lasting gift of courage to follow my passion instead of a “corporate mirage.” He was the first hero in my life. His wisdom led me to my other mentor, and hero, Indians For Collective Actions (ICA) which is a hero in the form of an organization. With its mission to “empower anyone’s passion for social change in India and their loca community” it has built a movement for nonviolent transformation of society in India.  The story of such heroes should be told during their lifetime, so that others in the society are naturally motivated to serve society unselfishly.

India’s anti-corruption movement, led by Anna Hazare, has engaged youths of India and rest of world like no one else in recent times; some call it a second freedom act.  ICA is building bridges to current India Against Corruption (IAC) movement and several other past movements like “Rejuvenate India, Communal harmony in Gujarat and Anti-Corruption movement” for decades.  ICA is pioneer in supporting many of the social activists in an early phase.  If you see the last 43 years of ICA’s history, it almost seems that one small organization has created many ripples by supporting different powerful movements in India and gave birth to powerful NGOs like ASHA for Education and Foundation For Excellence (FFE).   ICA has also supported and honored many young social activists in their early phase: Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, D. R. Mehta, and Inderjeet Khurana.  Many of ICA’s past executives, like SR Hiremath, Ravi Chopra, Sandeep Pandey, Srikanth Nadhamuni, and Raju Rajagopal, (and list can go on) have gone back to India and started people’s movements or organizations.

On Oct 15, 2011, ICA is honoring the “India Against Corruption, Team Anna”.  ICA is proud to say that last year we honored Dr. Kiran Bediji, and 4 years ago Arivind Kejriwal, a Right To Information (RTI) author and an architect of IAC. This year a leader of IAC and one of the authors of the Jan Lok Pal Bill, Prashant Bhushan, will definitely be coming to US on Oct 14.  While Anna Hazare has confirmed his intention to join us several times, we have to recognize that he may not be able to come in person, given the volatile situation in India.  In the event that he cannot join us, ICA will do it’s best to video cast his live message.   ICA is working to create a coalition of likeminded US based organizations to support the goals of the IAC movement.  The primary objective is to create a platform that can support an effective mobilization for a movement.  The second objective is to create an effective communication and education of movement for US based Non Resident Indians and US residents.  The third objective would be to provide the right set of inputs to the IAC team for sustaining the current movement.   The roadmap for each will be presented to Prashant Bhushan during his visit to US.

Thanks to the vision of Professor P K Mehta and several other founders, ICA continues to deliver on this vision today, albeit adapting to what the new world needs today.  Back in 2007, I was fortunate to be part of a young group of students lead by ICA’s partner, InSPIRE, in Ahmedabad.   For several years, I have been pondering the wisdom, value, and practical impact of  my own involvement in technology and management to society, just to come up empty.   Since then, I have also been wondering, “what if we use the same skills to empower the economics of global poverty?” Thus not fully convinced with the value of my personal impact on technology and management efforts, I decided to say good-bye to the corporate world in 2010.

Having realized that there is no alternative to working with people who would be using the solution most, I decided to take a month long journey to India.  I was also fortunate to visit SEWA Rural, a unique health care delivery provider for 1,71,000  tribal people.  Working with them, other institutions, and their members, my understanding of the fundamental role of an aid organization from foreign soil changed.   To develop the most effective solution an individual or organization must integrate themselves in the community to build a profound solution.  Taking this to heart, ICA has built three pillars:

Services to a local community: ICA supports any local organization that has a passion for social change. In recent history, ICA was approached by various organizations seeking support for different social change missions.  One such example is, new local community volunteer group Pallium-India-USA. Last year some of us in ICA met Dr. Jerina Kapoor, a pediatrician who is passionate about providing culturally sensitive care to  those who need palliative care in the Indian community.   ICA helped extend their base to define a mission, goal, structure, non-profit status, as well as commit some of their volunteers to expand and grow their mission.  Today, this is a thriving organization, expanding ever since meeting need of the community with an eventual goal of expanding across the US and supporting the mission in India of the father of palliative care, Dr. Rajagopal from Kerala, who has been doing an amazing service for millions of poor in India.

Enable agents of social change: The SEWA Rural experience taught me that my idea of a normalized rural healthcare delivery system and reality were way far apart.  Unless, you meet rural/tribal people needing services, unless you understand pain and immense gaps of services to those who need them the most, you cannot design a program or serve effectively from thousands of miles away.  To enhance this experience, ICA has built two unique programs. First, ICA’s partner InSPIRE has been conducting coordinated programs for ages 18-22 for several years.  InSPIRE takes groups of youths to NGOs focused on different sectors of integrated development such as education, rural development, environment, youth and leadership. These programs provide a hands-on understanding of economics and development of marginalized poor, which no four year college program can.  Second is the ICA Ambassador program, a self-paced program for anyone  looking for an opportunity to connect on a deeper level. We had over 10 ICA Ambassadors, age 12-75, who visited various NGOs and returned from India with life changing experiences.  I highly recommend you to read their life changing experiences on the ICA website. ICA provides a financial scholarships to selected candidate to InSPIRE and the ICA Ambassador program.

Build bridges to high impact social “last mile” issues: India’s growth during the last decade has resulted in an acute skill gap at the management level of most NGOs and social enterprises. In recent times, their roles have become lot more complex and demand more knowledge and experience in better design, technology and management practices including experience of working with market based practices.  Western countries, including the US, are fertile ground with professionals experienced in some of these fields who can offer their recognized expertise to fill this challenge.   I see a need to fill this unique gap by extending our ICA Ambassador program for professionals to create practical solutions. We call this an ICA Knowledge Network.

The first pilot for our ICA Knowledge network is SEWA, an woman based organization of 1.3 million. When I sat with 20+ women leaders in their Ahmedabad office to discuss key challenges where ICA can provide professional support, I was able to identify 4 areas: a design improvement for a solar lantern, design improvement and product roadmap for smokeless Chula, replacing diesel engines with alternative technology, and improved performance of a membership database.  Since then, ICA has been supporting their need remotely. However, working from remote has its own limitations. To meet this challenge, four ICA professionals will travel and work with SEWA Hariyali staff with a goal of fully understanding the gap and scope, and resolve addressable gaps as necessary.

ICA hopes to replicate this experience in many more domains with your help. Some of the ideas being pursued are building eco-system of social partners and regular lecture series on India’s social entrepreneurs and development.  India is becoming the largest factory of social entrepreneurs at the bottom of pyramid and bringing unique opportunities to integrate corporate models eventually on a scale necessary for a social change.  ICA invites you to take the  plunge into this rich experience of building bridges using socially innovative solutions and in the process solve one the most difficult challenge, a balanced development for all.

Author Unmesh Sheth is the president of ICA (http://icaonline.org). He left corporate world last year to build network of social entrepreneurs and build a social enterprise.

Empower anyone’s passion for social

change in India and their local community.

invite you to

A Special Presentation by
Team Anna’s

Prashant Bhushan

Sunday, October 16, 2011
4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

*The Karl Anatol Center

California State University, Long Beach

Join us in honoring this exceptional individual for his dedication and commitment to helping underserved communities.

Admission is free, but seating is limited.

 
Parking is $5.00/car, available at lots 6 and 7.  Anatol Center is located in the AS Building.  Please access a campus map of CSULB and freeway instructions at http://daf.csulb.edu/maps/parking/index.html#

Meet Prashant Bhushan, leading the fight to stop

corruption and to restore people’s rights in India.

Prashant Bhushan, an eminent supreme court lawyer and social activist in India, has fought over 500 Public Interest Litigation cases without charging any money, including the recent 2G Scam, appointment of P.J. Thomas as Chief Vigilance Officer for India, Doon Valley case, Bhopal gas tragedy litigation, Narmada dam case, and many more to protect the environment. He has pledged to defend the rights of indigenous people, and to fight rampant corruption in the government and the judiciary. He represents the conscience of the Indian judiciary system.

Prashant Bhushan has been defending democratic and people’s rights in India all his adult life, starting with fighting against the emergency declared in 1976, and in 1978, at age 21, he authored a related book, Case That Shook India. Subsequently in 1990, he focused on the issue of corruption in government and authored the book, Bofors: The Selling of a Nation. He was recently appointed as a member of the committee constituted in April 2011 for drafting the Jan Lokpal bill. He has been leading the fight to stop corruption and to restore people’s democratic rights.

Celebrating Democracy and People Power: A Dialogue on Team Anna’s anti-corruption crusade in India

Wednesday, Oct 13th, 7pm to 9pm

A Dialogue on Team Anna’s anti-corruption crusade in India.This event is in partnership with ALF and ICA and is a free community event however registration is required. To learn more about this event, speakers, panelists and to register please visit us.

Celebrating Democracy and People Power: A Dialogue on Team Anna’s anti-corruption crusade in India

Event Date:

Wednesday, October 13, 2011

Event Location:

India Community Center

525 Los Coches St.
Milpitas, CA 95035

Speaker/Panelists

Moderator: Anu Natarajan

Democracy perspective: Chris Block, American Leadership Forum (ALF)

Team Anna – Activist Perspective: Abhay Bhushan, Indians for Collective Action (ICA)

Team Anna – Political Perspective: Pran Kurup, Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association (SIPA)

TBD- Non Violence Perspective: Prof. Clayborne Carson, Stanford University

Host: Tanuja Bahal, India Community Center

Register Now!

Panalists Bios

Pran Kurup is an entrepreuner and former President of the Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association (SIPA). He has published three technical books and has a broad range of interests including Current Events, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Non-profit, and Politics, among other topics. He often writes for Economic Times.

Clayborne Carson is Professor of American History and Director of Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford university. He has devoted his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the movements King inspired. During his undergraduate years at UCLA, Dr. Carson participated in civil rights and antiwar protests, and is intimately familiar with grassroots political activity.Dr. Carson has lectured throughout the United States on King, SNCC, Malcolm X, and affirmative action. He has appeared on many national radio and television shows, including Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and Fresh Air.

Abhay K. Bhushan is President, IIT Kanpur Foundation and Past President, Indians for Collective Action. He was an internet pioneer (author of FTP and early email), an environmentalist (former manager Environmental Leadership for Xerox Corp), and development and social activist (former director at Institute of Engineering and Rural Technology, India). He is also an entrepreneur (co-founder of YieldUP and Portola Communication) who mentors business and social entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Thanks,

Unmesh Sheth

Facebook | LinkedIn | ICA Facebook | ICA Webpage |Blog

Phone: 510-226-8535(H) | 510-676-9502 (C)

Sneha Thomas

05/2011

Though I have read about many cases where an individual or a small group has created an impact in someone else’s life, I never thought I would be able to witness this in my real life. The work of SEWA Rural is just an inexplicable example where a small group of individuals made a difference in the society and led to the upbringing of the community itself. Although SEWA Rural Hospital is faced with many obstacles due to the lack of resources, new and innovative technology used in medicine, and financial burdens, they are still focused on the end goal which is to provide health services to as many people as possible, even if it only means giving a prescription for pain management instead of taking an MRI or CT scan.

In any event, I was able to learn so much in a month about medicine and global public health because of many amazing personalities at SEWA Rural Hospital. I was able to spend as much time as I wanted in the hospital with various doctors in the OPD, the Operation Theater, general and gynecology wards, and in the Sonography rooms. This was an incredible experience for me as a pre-medical student because I got to see all the procedures and the practice of medicine even before entering medical school; this was indeed a phenomenal and rare experience in my life.  Moreover, the doctors, nurses, and staff at the hospital took the time and effort to explain different procedures even while they were under a tight schedule. Taking the blood pressure and pulse manually, listening to the fetal heart sounds, calculating the expected delivery date (EDD) using LMD, estimating the age of the baby by looking at the size of the uterus are some of the procedures I was able to do with my limited medical training.

Considering the fact I did not speak neither Guajarati nor Hindi, I was extremely worried that language was ultimately going to be barrier for my learning. However I was astound once I reached Jhagadia and started talking to people. Everyone was so kind and willing to help. As long as I said couple of words they knew, people were willing to teach me more words and make me feel at home. Though there were times when people came to me and started talking in Gujarati for 10-15 minutes without realizing I did not understand most of the things they said, I was able to communicate with most people using universal expressions and the few Guajarati phrases I knew. By the end of the month, I did not even want to come back to the U.S. since I made numerous friends at SEWA.

In summation, my trip to the SEWA Rural hospital was a life changing experience for me. I was able to learn so much in a short period of time; the learning experience was astronomical compared to my expectations.  Above all,  I am hoping to go back to Jhagadia in a couple of months. I am sure no matter how many times I go, there will still be plenty to learn and the experience will be as amazing as it has been in the past.

ICA’s social entrepreneur group is leading an initiative to build a replicable and scalable framework that assists non-profits and Social Entrepreneurs like ‘ARMMAN’ and ‘Pallium India’ in creating effective and efficient organizational structures (i.e. funding, operations, leadership development, management, services delivery).

Today’s leading NGOs and social enterprises focusing on Bottom Of Pyramid (BOP) challenges, such as the creation of sustainable energy programs with effective distribution (e.g. SEWA) and new services- and technology-based sustainable social enterprises for healthcare (Pallium and ARMMAN) .  All three organizations can benefit from the technology and management skills of experienced professionals from the U.S.

ICA is currently working in a very hands-on approach on few key initiatives  in partnership with SEWA, Pallium and ARMMAN. SEWA’s 1.3 million member base presents a unique opportunity whereby they can benefit from creating a ‘strategic program for a sustainable energy.’   This entails the technical evaluation of various key challenges faced by women who could use basic lifestyle improvements regarding, for example, the purchase or replacement of various products/technologies. i.e. smokeless chulas, solar lanterns, and replacing diesel with alternative technology for salt workers. ICA is currently working with SEWA in a hands-on manner to engage the ‘global knowledge network’ as well as by providing in-house consultation to evaluate products for their technical design and use..  ICA would like to launch very similar processes with other social enterprises/NGOs to help contribute to their overall success.

ICA invites U.S.-based professionals to give back to society by joining its unique network, as well as calls on young social entrepreneurs to join and collaborate with other like-minded individuals and entrepreneurs like themselves. If you are interested in joining such a network please email: Unmesh Sheth.

Indians for Collective Action (ICA) extends a warm welcome to TiECon 2011 attendees. ICA has been supporting social entrepreneurs for over four decades by mentoring and providing seed funding.

Many ICA members, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s message, “You must be the change you wish to see,” returned to India to start innovative development projects, and we supported them in their mission.

During the last two decades, ICA has nurtured many organizations in different ways, including their initial founding. Asha for Education and Foundation for Excellence started as entities within ICA, and later burgeoned out as independent non-profits. In 1999, ICA helped launch Rejuvenate India Movement (RIM), a network working for India’s development, with a goal to and strengthen democratic processes toward self-reliant development. In 2001, ICA helped with the initial launch of American India Foundation (AIF) and provided the initial training for the AIF Service Corps Fellowship.

As we look to the next decade, our 50 year mark, we will be expanding our outreach to additional projects in areas that face critical economic and social problems. We have also recently launched several new initiatives, including the ICA Youth program with InSPIRE (India Summer Program Inspiring Reflective Exploration) to educate and engage younger generation in US with South Asian roots, the ICA Women’s Fellowship program to develop women community leaders, and the ICA Social Entrepreneurship. ICA’s social entrepreneur group is solving key challenges facing India through use of technology such as working with SEWA’s 1.3 million base providing strategic and technical help to evaluate products, technical evaluation & design, market approach for Smokeless Chula, Solar Lantern, and replacing diesel with alternative technology for salt workers, with ARMMAN in healthcare focusing emergency response & real-time blood bank integration for a best routing and capacity management, with Pallium-India to scale their palliative care from Kerala to other states., with United Microfinance to provide innovative financing options in rural areas, and is working to create affordable mobile over voice platform with on-demand creation and intelligent voice search and filtration.

Why ICA?

Here are some of the many reasons why ICA is unique and why you should support ICA:

• Broad based development catalyst that nurtures development through innovation
• Over four decades of rich history, including spawning major organizations
• Focus on social entrepreneurship and empowerment of youth and women
• An organization that actively works together towards needed social change
• Allows you to target your contribution to specific projects, project areas and geographies
• Will partner with you to contribute to new projects of your choice, if it meets ICA’s criteria, and ICA will provide guidance and monitor
• Your contributions are highly leveraged for community good and projects and programs become self-sustaining

Please Join Us

We hope you join the growing number of ICA supporters who have been able to realize their vision for Indi’s development through ICA’s help.  Please talk to one of us to find out more about ICA and what you can do to transform India, or visit www.icaonline.org. Thank you,

Abhay Bhushan 650-868-6645, Unmesh Sheth 510-676-9502, Bhupen Mehta 408-396-6240

ICA is a federally tax-exempt organization described in IRS Code Section 501(c)3. Tax ID # 23-7027461

Often working from a foreign soil which often tends to look at the issues in developing country through their market centric eye which can often bring undesired and often negative impact to the society.  I personally witnessed effect and often juggled my evil twin during my month long trip to India.  During my visit, I was very fortunate to meet prominent economist who worked @ planning commission, various leading entrepreneurs and management gurus from leading institutes, and talked to at least 40+ leaders with different background.  I was also fortunate to visit leading healthcare delivery NGO SEWA-RURAL and worked with SEWA (see attached email) to understand some of their key challenges (both organizations not related).  With this summary, I hope to give a very clear & concise snapshot of my learning in a hope that next time you work with a development issue, you have some guideline and  right approach while dealing with social space in India.

1. Mentoring Key Partners

This is by far the best thing that ICA is doing today.  In fact, we are already building a significant value to  Pallium and ARMMAN in both India and US.  My trip clearly exposed importance of meeting these experts who can clearly have better understanding of public health and out-of-box approach more suitable in Indian market place.  There are couple of organizations that I would like to introduce in this category Jeevan Stem Cell Bank and RADHEE (sent as a separate project proposal).   One area ICA clearly do not have any experience but it would be great if others can take on – “building low cost/low technology health care products for a larger rural market” (See some background here and more please contact me for specifics)

2. Solve key challenges in BOP Products R&D and Distribution:

Through my recent experience at SEWA (with help of friends of Charity Focus), some of the major challenges got exposed in a key BOP product development and distribution side.  I believe that ICA can do a lot of good by initiating and putting together a strategy solve this major challenge.

Successful co-ops/trade union (like SEWA) have a scale and large users to implement many key green/sustainable products like smokeless chula, solar lanterns, replacing diesel tech with alterative for salt workers.  However, this NGOs have historically not been very successful at rolling out large segment of products within their user base.  This is because they primarily come from the mindset that they have a big base and hence they have a capacity to invent the solution. This may have been true the issues becomes more challenging as they enter new age of deploying technical products with varying requirements from their consumer base.   Historically, they are used to deploying customized handmade chulas.  However, these solutions often breakdown in support, operation, and maintenance.  Though it is tempting to tweak their internally homegrown solution, I believe they are not well prepared to support these solution in a long term.   In addition, they do not have enough technical expertise to implement key technical specification both of their sides and vendor sides.  Neither they have a strong strategy of rolling out different types of products for different needs within their larger groups with different needs.   For example, in some cases they can become a distributor of the different products to meet larger need within their large membership.

On the other hand, product vendors simply do not have a scale to do R&D to meet diverse need of large population dominated by different trades, regions, food habits and housing configuration.   Hence, they tend to push the product in a way that doesn’t always meet diverse market segment needs. I propose that we need to court people who already have long experience in rolling out deployments like Yoo Mi/Mark Jacobs and startups like D-REV, Villgro and KickStart, how they are tackling this issue.  Only way to tackle this challenge is by being in a system with the help and blessings of organization like SEWA, who can benefit most. I hope this becomes a base of a long dialogue – and hopefully a solution yet to come.

See more about distribution challenge: http://beyondprofit.com/the-bop-product-distribution-challenge/?dhiti=1

3. Income Generation for Farmers:

After visiting SEWA-Rural and starting to discuss different approaches of social impact and issue one theme that was coming up on top was – “if you want to work on one social issue with deeper impact”, that is “income generation for poor”.  This is an age old problem and I am not the first one to bang head.  Many have used innovative approaches like Paul Polak’s irrigation approach.   However, even that seems to reaching roadblock due to uneven market and lack of agro-information for marginalized farmers. Economist Rohit Shukla has convinced me that this is one approach that is worth solving using new approach– without fear of failing!

At that point I went to a leading agro-ICT expert (B. N. Hiremath) and my friend at DA-IICT (Sanjay Chaudhari) to help me understand this issue and output of our discussion is attached here (concept note). Governments top down approaches have failed, Shakti had limited impact, eChaupal has some success but it works in the limited context, etc.  There are numerous examples still in pipeline even today. You can see traces of some potential solution from our friends at Avaaj De, Labor Voices and UID/Cash Transfer and either trust based currency like Vipani or market based solution (Mobile Bazaar) from Intuit.  Though this is still in early phase, further visits to India will strengthen definition, partnership, and approach.

Though, each area is worthy of its own and it cannot possibly be alone tackled effectively by one organization like ICA.  It requires a collective approach by working with like of Charity Focus, many similarly minded orgs and many other people who have shown an interest in this subject.  I believe that all these major challenges can be tackled in its own way.   If you ask me, I am likely to spend my energy on income generation issue (#3) in a long term, partly because it is a most difficult issue, suits my background and ability to make long term impact.

Thanks,

Unmesh