Story link: http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Magazine/story/dhan
Among the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management that were commissioned in the 1960s, the one at Ahmedabad [IIMA] has always been perceived to be the most exclusive. Perhaps its paternity [the Harvard Business School], its charismatic founder [Dr Vikram Sarabhai], its dazzling architecture [Louis Khan's] and the rigour of its admission process combined to gain IIMA that reputation.
For four decades now, its graduates have been plucked off by great business corporations in India and abroad at salaries princes might envy. Surely personalities that go through the institution must have grit and brilliance. Surely too, they must be originals. Otherwise, every now and then, a graduate of IIMA would not do the unconventional.
Like M P Vasimalai, who evaded all campus recruiters in 1983 and opted for an opening to help manage the lands donated to the Bhoodhan movement founded by Acharya Vinobha Bhave.
Another era, just 50 years ago:
The story of how Vasi [pronounced 'Vaasi'] as he is referred to by everybody, came to mould the DHAN Foundation can wait till later. Let us just note for now, that DHAN currently has 400 professionals working in 6,000 villages of 6 states in India, trying to revive rural economies. A survey of the times he grew up in, will help to lead us to the DHAN story.
When he was born in 1956, he was named after Vasimalayan [pron. 'Vaasi-malayaan'], the presiding deity of his village, Ezhumalai near Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Those times -a mere half a century ago- are eye opening. True, child mortality was high. Just five of his parents' ten children survived. But on the other hand, their extended family of 20 people could support themselves, and prosper on just 8 acres of land by natural, accustomed labour. Vasi's father presided over the large brood; he was stern, reserved and assertive but also took total responsibility.
He physically laboured well into his seventies. He had seven sisters who lived with their husbands in the house. The husbands worked as labourers for others to plough land, harvest crops, build houses,ferry produce to market and so on. They were frugal men, incurring minimal boarding expense in the large house; and they were gone in a few years, having bought small parcels of land from their savings. There were cattle and carts to care for, sheep and chicken to raise, and grains, vegetables, fruits and oil seeds to harvest. Oh, yes they were sturdy men of the soil.
The land was generous too. Water was available in the village's numerous wells at barely ten feet depth. They irrigated and farmed with animal power and produced plenty. Going to school was no excuse for not working. Vasi had to feed the animals before school and go directly to the fields after it. Once he had turned in his contribution with muscle, he was left alone to play with his mates or read the hundreds of Tamil books from the school library.
Then the times changed.
Oh, what a revolution:
In the late 1960s, the Green Revolution arrived in south India's villages. The only external output in farming so far had been some diesel for pumps' engines. Now chemical fertilisers, pesticides and exotic, high yielding seeds were arriving. There were unbelievable bumper crops that called for little effort. The land was worked round the year. The pumps ran non-stop. Everyone was rich overnight. "The memory of my schooldays is of all round boom," says Vasimalai.
Just when everyone thought the party would never end, water in the once perennial wells began to go down. By 1970, drillers were roaring into the village to insert tube wells inside open ones. Submersible pumps were needed to pump water from great depths. Yields dropped, input costs rose, profits vanished. Farmers were getting into debt. By late eighties, in under two decades of the revolution, bankruptcies began. Large land holders became itinerant labourers in towns. Mercifully, Vasi's father had died in 1984, some years just before total bust. They sold their cattle and carts; they gave up on farming.
Disconnections had occurred everywhere: between man and his habitat; seasons and sowing; extraction and replenishment of water and nutrients; in the connection between animals and land; in the culture of saving some grain as seed; in the economics and advantages of collective living in large families; and in the notion of living well off the land instead of running it like some factory.
All this was happening as Vasi was growing up to be a young man. None of the trends were registering on him then, he recalls. "I had seen a boom and a bust; I didn't understand what caused them." He was in the stream of an educational system where only examinations mattered and learning if any, was accidental. And he was a good student, excelling especially in mathematics. He took a bachelors course in agriculture. The whole thing was bookish, looking at agriculture as chemistry and economics of maximization. "In the final year a group of students were given a half acre of land and was asked to produce a crop," says Vasi. "That was it. We passed and swarmed out to manage India's agriculture as bureaucrats, bankers and inputs marketers."
Vasi got into IIMA in almost a fit of absent-mindedness. He had done his masters, served the government briefly and was working as a researcher. A friend mentioned IIMA and its entrance test. "I was tempted because it gave me a reason to visit Madras [now, Chennai] and a temple near there," he laughs. He wrote the Common Admission Test [CAT] and found it numerically biased. Being a math natural, he answered it effortlessly. He then forgot about it.
About a week before his family-arranged marriage to a girl from a nearby village, he learnt of his admission. And that was how, M P Vasimalai, who grew up working the fields, studying in village schools in Tamil, who saw a city -Madurai- briefly when he was ten, arrived, in 1981 at a cutting-edge institution of learning, housed in an awesome Louis Kahn designed campus in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Real education begins:
Those two years changed him - twice. First, here was true education at last. They were made to read 200-300 pages a day, analyse, quantify, conclude and present. Nothing could be learnt by rote. Interacting with bright students and faculty, this country boy thrived, amidst a high drop-out rate. At last his mathematical and inquiring skills were presented with challenges. He loved it there.
Then in the second year, he was changed again. "There was a maverick professor called S R Ganesh who made me realise what I should be doing with my life," says Vasi. Ganesh ran a course called "Internal Change Agent" that forced students to commune with themselves, facing questions like: who am I; how might my obituary read, if written today; what are my real strengths and talents; what'd I do if I had ten years left and so on. The crowning act was a report they had to write on their life's work standing at a point in the future. Vasi's life came together that moment and all his experiences fell in place. Life as a series of examinations to pass, was over. He had to work on the material he had been made a part of: primacy of rural India, the boom and the bust of rural economies and the wreckages they left behind in the form of depleted soil, penury and hopelessness of rural people. He decided that he was not meant for the corporate world.
As happens often, chance arranged for him to spot a brochure his classmate Trilochan Sastry, had brought back from his travels. It was of the Association for Sarva SEva Farms [ASSEFA] headed by S Loganathan. He wrote to ASSEFA. Shortly, Vijay Mahajan arrived to meet him. Mahajan is one of India's innovative development thinkers, a pioneer in micro finance. He was an IIT and IIMA alumnus and was working with ASSEFA in Bihar. He, Deep Joshi [then with the Ford Foundation], Aloysius Fernandes [an ordained priest who had quit the cloth] and a few others, proposed to form Professional Assistance for Development Action [PRADAN]. Its mission was to attact managemnt professional to assist NGOs. Vasimalai joined as founding staff member.
He arrived in Chennai deputed by PRADAN to work with ASSSFA. He was given a pay of Rs.1,800, less than a third of what the corporate world might have offered him. And the lifestyle was far removed too.
ASSeFa is one of those organisations that you wouldn't suspect existed, nor would you guess its origins. It is the keeper of lands handed over to Acharya Vinobha Bhave's Sarvodaya movement as Bhoodan [gift of land]. Vasi arrived and his rural upbringing at once made him comfortable among the ageing, austere Sarvodaya men. They were simple idealists with great empathy for the salt of the earth, but they were untrained as managers. Vasi as a professional manager took to writing proposals, raising funds, taking donors to villages and so on. He was drilling wells, planning livelihood schemes, working on education, hygiene and every obvious symptom of an unsustainable scene.
During all this time his native village was falling apart. It was in 1987, that the first realisation struck him with a numbing force. Where was the water to sustain things? He had busily biked through hundreds of villages but had barely noticed that traditional water works were being neglected. They had been drilling wells and installing pumps- but there was no water to pump. What was happening to Ezhimalai, his village was happening to all villages all over Tamil Nadu.
Real education begins:
Those two years changed him - twice. First, here was true education at last. They were made to read 200-300 pages a day, analyse, quantify, conclude and present. Nothing could be learnt by rote. Interacting with bright students and faculty, this country boy thrived, amidst a high drop-out rate. At last his mathematical and inquiring skills were presented with challenges. He loved it there.
Then in the second year, he was changed again. "There was a maverick professor called S R Ganesh who made me realise what I should be doing with my life," says Vasi. Ganesh ran a course called "Internal Change Agent" that forced students to commune with themselves, facing questions like: who am I; how might my obituary read, if written today; what are my real strengths and talents; what'd I do if I had ten years left and so on. The crowning act was a report they had to write on their life's work standing at a point in the future. Vasi's life came together that moment and all his experiences fell in place. Life as a series of examinations to pass, was over. He had to work on the material he had been made a part of: primacy of rural India, the boom and the bust of rural economies and the wreckages they left behind in the form of depleted soil, penury and hopelessness of rural people. He decided that he was not meant for the corporate world.
As happens often, chance arranged for him to spot a brochure his classmate Trilochan Sastry, had brought back from his travels. It was of the Association for Sarva SEva Farms [ASSEFA] headed by S Loganathan. He wrote to ASSEFA. Shortly, Vijay Mahajan arrived to meet him. Mahajan is one of India's innovative development thinkers, a pioneer in micro finance. He was an IIT and IIMA alumnus and was working with ASSEFA in Bihar. He, Deep Joshi [then with the Ford Foundation], Aloysius Fernandes [an ordained priest who had quit the cloth] and a few others, proposed to form Professional Assistance for Development Action [PRADAN]. Its mission was to attact managemnt professional to assist NGOs. Vasimalai joined as founding staff member.
He arrived in Chennai deputed by PRADAN to work with ASSSFA. He was given a pay of Rs.1,800, less than a third of what the corporate world might have offered him. And the lifestyle was far removed too.
ASSeFa is one of those organisations that you wouldn't suspect existed, nor would you guess its origins. It is the keeper of lands handed over to Acharya Vinobha Bhave's Sarvodaya movement as Bhoodan [gift of land]. Vasi arrived and his rural upbringing at once made him comfortable among the ageing, austere Sarvodaya men. They were simple idealists with great empathy for the salt of the earth, but they were untrained as managers. Vasi as a professional manager took to writing proposals, raising funds, taking donors to villages and so on. He was drilling wells, planning livelihood schemes, working on education, hygiene and every obvious symptom of an unsustainable scene.
During all this time his native village was falling apart. It was in 1987, that the first realisation struck him with a numbing force. Where was the water to sustain things? He had busily biked through hundreds of villages but had barely noticed that traditional water works were being neglected. They had been drilling wells and installing pumps- but there was no water to pump. What was happening to Ezhimalai, his village was happening to all villages all over Tamil Nadu.
People are the best capital:
In 1987, the first counter-attack began. Funded by the Ford Foundation, Anna University in Chennai began a study of sustainable schemes for water security. They discovered the obvious: that without recharging villages' water bodies with rain water, capital assets like pumps and irrigation systems have no meaning. Vasi was consulted for his knowledge of villages' social structures, in order to organise people in water harvesting. That was a major turning point. He had been a farm child and yet, it had taken him 32 years to look past 'modern' education to understand sustainable living. [Urban Indians can be forgiven if they take longer. Only, one hopes time will be on their side.]
His eyes began to see villages differently. His ceaseless proposals-writing and fund raising had scaled from Rs.1 crore to Rs.30 crores in his five years with ASSeFa. This had been poured sincerely into villages with no leakages. Yet, from sustainability point of view there were few successes. Most initiatives needed constant re-funding.
PRADAN then became convinced that professionals must themselves become innovators in development and not remain mere managers. Vasi ended his deputation to ASSEFA and returned to PRADAN.
In 1990, PRADAN conceived the Kalanjiam idea ['granary', in Tamil]. It was a micro-finance initiative for women and it became, after two years of field work for an initial breakthrough, a runaway success. Simultaneously, he set up a team to start work on the traditional water bodies at Madurai. In 1992 he took over as the Executive Director of PRADAN and the head office shifted to Madurai. The next five years took him all over the rural heartland of North India in Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan, West Bengal etc to consolidate, strengthen and broaden the scope and depth of the work of PRADAN.
PRADAN was created to 'build people to build more people'. Ideas must be conceived, tested, proven and then scaled to become well-oiled systems- and then left to people themselves to manage. In keeping with that thinking, PRADAN thought it fit to spin off DHAN, by 1997 with Vasimalai as its Executive Director.
After proving the workability of thrift groups managed by barely literate women, DHAN began to scale up Kalanjiam. Avoiding a pyramid, they kept federating small sized self-help groups [SHG]. These autonomous federations are affiliated to DHAN for mutual consultation and idea generation. Soon the Kalanjaiam movement was self-reliant enough to be spun off from DHAN; the Kalanjiam Foundation [KF] is today an autonomous body in the DHAN Collective.
And now, Micro-Insurance:
Mayiladumparai- what a lovely name! In Tamil, it translates as 'rock on which peacocks dance'. But when the first Kalanajiam began there 1994, it was a remote block of Theni District which was sinking in poverty. Men took to drink or buses to nearby Kerala. Young children were sent away to far Andhra to work and feed themselves. Once a wooded country, over-grazing had turned it into near desert. Usurers completed the ravaged scene.
Today, the Kalanjiam Federation there -Kadamalai Kalanjia Vattara Sangam [KKVS]- consists of 270 Kalanjiams with over 4,000 women members in 81 villages. They have a saved capital of Rs.180 lakhs. That money -plus much larger leveraged loans through banks- has seeded many income generation activities.
Women there have turned out to be unstoppable innovators. In 1997, KKVS launched the first version of its life insurance scheme. For a premium of Rs.100 a year, a member and her husband ,if they were under 55 years, were covered for life and assured for Rs.10,000. The idea was an instant hit in an area where heath services are notorious. 1,000 members signed up.
By 2000, 1,500 members had signed up. KKVS now extended cover for hospitalization expenses, unless it was a chronic illness. Hospital expenses up to Rs.10,000, for the whole family including unmarried children, was covered under a premium of Rs.150.
There are insurance committees at local Kalanjiams and at the federation level. These are tough businesswomen. They tied up with a few hospitals in nearby Kadamalaikundu and Theni, after bargaining for the best deal. Patients are admitted without any advance payment, KKVS's credit worthiness being sound. Members also get a 20% discount.
For the intrepid innovators of KKVS, even this was not the end. In 2004, after working out the economics of their insurance as a business, they built a small hospital next to their office, and hired a full-time doctor: members can avail medical services using their membership cards and paying just 25% of the cost. And then they closed the circle: it is now mandatory for all members to join the insurance programme, if they were seeking credit from Kalanjiams.
In just four years, these nearly illiterate women have shown their innovation and management skills. Their books are audited internally and externally. The business has shown a surplus for every year since inception. Health and hygiene levels have risen, along with confidence levels. The entire programme was evolved by rural women, with an occasional nudge and input by DHAN.
They have driven big insurance companies out of town. In any case, pressured by the insurance regulator, IRDA, these companies were practicing tokenism, to claim they covered poor people as well. KKVS has made them redundant. No longer do people need to fill the papers that corporations want; nor do they need to beg their claims to be processed. Deaths or illnesses are verified by members for faking. Bills are settled immediately without elaborate paper processes. Significantly, all the premia stay within the local economy instead of gathering in some high-rise office in a far city.
Today there are 18,000 Kalanjiams in 6,000 villages spread across seven states of India. They have an accumulated capital of Rs.80 crores that is circulated among 3,00,000 families of its members.It is a highly credit-rated brand and a darling of bankers looking to lend safe credit; a Kalanjiam's repayment guarantee is enough for banks to lend up to a few lakhs to a member. The DHAN success has catalysed even more SHGs by other NGOs. The DHAN initiative has given mobility and confidence to poor women, redefined their importance in society, ended usury, improved health and education of children, combated social evils like dowry, female foeticide and domestic violence. State government have realised that it is this ground-up transformation that can be sustained, and they have extended support with the least intrusion.
Revisiting water:
DHAN picks up a theme and works on it intensively for a period of time and then spins it off as an autonomous institution which can upscale and deepen the theme's work. DHAN is transforming into the DHAN Collective of institutions that have a shared purpose, value and culture
The Kalanjiam wildfire was lit by young, educated Indians from humble social backgrounds. Their idealism and commitment to what they quickly realised as a nation-building activity, prompted DHAN to seek more of them. The Tata Dhan Academy was born five years ago, to mould young graduates into committed field workers among disadvantaged Indians. It is not an employment scheme but a formal place to give direction to young, educated people with temperaments suited for grassroots development work.
Since 1987, Vasi has been aware of the centrality of water for developing communities' prosperity. DHAN discovered, from Anna University's work, that there are 39,000 water bodies in Tamil Nadu, meant to save rain water. Most villages had historically assigned spaces for three kinds of water bodies: for humans ['oorani'], cattle and for fields['kanmai']. These lay in disrepair, with encroached watersheds and flow channels, silted beds and broken bunds, with virtually no one accountable for their upkeep. Most lethally, people had abdicated participative practices in favour of somnolent government departments. They needed to be motivated to organise themselves as water users. Thus was born the initiative that DHAN called, Vayalagam ['living fields'].
The purpose of Vayalagam is not to replace government's own work in reviving these bodies. The scale of funding required or executive action required to vacate powerful encroachers are possible only by governments. On the other hand, governments are very poor in motivating common people. Block development by babus has just not worked. There was no feedback from people. Unless people are given the right and the means to maintain ponds and tanks, civil works will remain achievements on paper. It is here DHAN's Vayalagam is playing a role.
They have Vayalagams in place in 1,100 villages to discuss and evolve action on water and farming related issues. Soon they realised that meaningful development for water security has to go beyond local tanks, to a network of tanks in a water shed. Thus the Gundar Riven Basin [GRB] restoration that Vayalagams are involved in. These are crucial links in getting the ultimate beneficiaries involved. GRB spans 5 districts of Tamil Nadu. 2000 tanks are targeted for revival. Work will go on for a decade more and cost Rs.1,000 crores.
But not all public works need government funding or support. Time has come for the burgeoning middle class and the Indian diaspora to step into the shoes of merchants and princes of yore who endowed many public works. Huge salaries make no sense if there is no introspection accompanying them. In fact a new trend is discernible. GoodNewsIndia often hears from well-intentioned Indians looking for credible organisations that would spend their money wisely. DHAN is one of a handful of organisations that can ensure delivery with minimal overheads. It can be the often missing link between a donor and recipients. DHAN has a nascent Centre for Facilitating Philanthropy, which will short-list projects open for funding. Using an Internet website to list projects looking for funds, to acknowledge donors and to report to them will just be the transparency that many donors look for. DHAN will soon identify ten 'ooranis' [drinking water tanks saving rain water] in Tamil Nadu and invite donor participation.
DHAN is also looking at livelihoods opportunities in information technology and arid land development. An exciting and original theme they are exploring is in truly democratizing elected village panchayats. "Yes, panchayats are functioning as Constitutional bodies," admits Vasi. "But where is true debate in them? Where is the equivalent of the state Assemblies or the Parliament at Delhi? Today panchayats are implementors of government schemes. They must begin to have these one-size-fits-all schemes to be discussed locally and adapted."
DHAN has great experience in that line of work. It's an organisation that thrives on consultations and equality in decision making. In the last week of every year, the whole DHAN clan gathers for an annual retreat. Today they number more than 400. Everyone who has completed an year has to mandatorily attend. Some weeks before that, everyone has to send in a report listing his year's achievements, plans and difficulties. These self-evaluations are compiled into a book and issued at the retreat. For over three days they sit collectively and in groups to rethink their and DHAN's work. Receptionists and cooks, vehicle drivers and technical staff, sit in on meetings to comprehend what their roles are in the overall picture. Retreats ruthlessly flatten hierarchies. "We revisit and revise our mission statement every 3 or 4 years after discussing it," says Vasimalai. And, they recombine.
...
We are walking towards the station to catch a train. He, a large man, has an unfashionable little suitcase in his hands. Crowds are thick and in flow all around us. He speaks softly, his deep voice filled with a quiet excitement: "Our human resource potential stuns me every time I consider it. Look these people around us. Take almost anyone of them, and show him or her the way, give opportunities, present challenges. And they will excel," he says. "Never underestimate an Indian because he looks soft or is self-effacing."
M P Vasimalai, the country boy who graduated from our best B-School, might have been talking about himself.
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DHAN Foundation
18 Pillayar Koil Street, S S Colony,
Madurai- 625 010, TN
Phones: +91 [452] 2610794, 2610805; Fax: 2602247;
email: ;
Additional information here; The DHAN website is currently under redesign.
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September, 2005