Message from the President
The period since the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth was founded in January 2008 has been a remarkable time of learning. We have built the Foundation from the ground up – defining our vision and mission, and developing the operating style and strategic plan that will guide our work.
I want to share a few of our experiences in the last few months that have helped to shape our thinking on these issues, and about how we as a Foundation can best work towards our vision of “a world free of poverty in which every individual has the freedom and power to create and sustain a just society in which to live.”
In the Koriya district of Chhattisgarh, we spoke to Kamala, a Community Health Worker known as a Mitanin (“friend” in Chhattisgarhi), who is part of a unique civil society-government health partnership. She spoke with enthusiasm about the ways in which she has been able to persuade her neighbours to initiate breastfeeding of babies within the very first hour of birth, noting with regret that she herself had not known to do so for her firstborn. She spoke with pride about the respect she now enjoys in her community, but she is anxious that her neighbours cannot follow her advice to feed their children roti (flatbread) with oil because they are too poor to buy the oil.
In the Baran district of Rajasthan, we spoke to Shri Kailash Chand Namdeo, the headmaster and math teacher in the government primary school in Dhaturia, Shahabad block. The school has no roof except in one small building, but it has a beautifully constructed ramp for disabled children to enter on motorised wheelchairs. The ramp was of no use and is unlikely ever to be, said Shri Namdeo, since his school children were too poor to afford a motorised wheel chair. And while a roof for the school would be appreciated, Shri Namdeo told us that for the moment the children are able to manage under the nearby tree. His more pressing concern was that his students had no notebooks and no pens since the “government scheme” does not provide for them. He is happy to have been shown a way to teach concepts such as “lowest common multiple” and “highest common factor” to his fifth graders with the help of pebbles. He finally felt like he was getting somewhere with his students and was valued by the community.
Jayakumar is a Wealth Manager (WM) at Pudhuaaru Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services, one of the new generation rural financial services providers that have begun work in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu. His clients are both rich and poor households in Alakudi village in Thanjavur district, all of whom are financially very active and transact often. Tragically one of his female clients, Lakshmi, recently died in a car accident, leaving behind five dependents for whom she was the sole breadwinner. A daily wage earner, she had not taken personal accident insurance. When we spoke to a member of the Pudhuaaru team, we learnt that with the gold jewellery that Lakshmi had pledged for her loan with them, Pudhuaaru would be able to easily and completely recover its dues. However, since they felt that they had not done nearly enough to persuade Lakshmi to take the personal accident insurance being offered, they believed they had not discharged their responsibility as community wealth managers adequately. They saw no choice but to admit their responsibility, waive the loan and return the jewellery to the family.
Learning from these and other conversations, we realised that no single institution working alone can fully address the complexities of these situations. What does it mean to provide better health, without economic improvement? What does it mean to provide better education, without teaching materials? What does it mean to provide access to financial services, so that people can make good financial decisions? How does one prevent exploitation? How does environmental degradation affect everyday living standards?
We concluded that only by drawing on high levels of expertise in several different areas, and harnessing the power of three institutions, namely civil society, government and markets, could we hope to see any answers to questions like these. Instead of trying to answer all the questions at once, we felt it would be best to address each issue individually and in-depth. There are no quick solutions.
Having taken this view, we chose to collaborate with and foster the development of independent organisations with focused expertise in five areas: (i) primary health and (ii) elementary education, which would be financed and delivered to the poor by the government, (iii) financial inclusion through which the poor would be able to harness market forces, (iv) protection of the rights of the poor, driven by civil society at large, and (v) environmental responsibility.
Our mission has become “to create and support strong independent organisations which work towards empowering the poor to participate in and benefit from the Indian growth process.” Having established five independent organisations to work with, our goal over the next year is to find various ways to collaborate with them, to strengthen their ability to make a definitive impact in their respective focus areas and to work jointly towards achieving inclusive growth.
Nachiket Mor
President, ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth.
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