Indian Philanthropy and Social Development

I have been researching the education sector in India on-and-off since I came here two years ago.  The last few weeks, I’ve been spending a good deal of time on it.  Education for all is one of those things that I have a soft spot for in my heart.  Healthcare is right up there as well with my shift towards “ed”, and higher ed specifically, happening over the past few years.

India is going through massive changes, as we all know.  This is true in every area of life.  The transition to the knowledge economy, however, is stunted by the fact that India does not have the skilled workforce it requires.  In fact, there is a dearth of talent.  Students graduating from college are not equipped with the skills the industry is demanding.  Because of such a high growth trajectory the past few years, what has also happened is that the young are promoted to ever-increasing managerial responsibilities while not having the experience or training to meet the requirements of the new position.

There is a need to dramatically reform all levels of education – from primary to college.  Freshers (students who have just graduated with their Bachelor’s) are in need for improved learning as part of their education.  Young professionals require training.  There’s a lot that needs to be done.  I’m not talking about going from good to great.  I’m talking about bare bones necessity to a moderate level of functioning in most cases.

Along those lines, I have been scratching to start a new business providing education and training services.  I initially thought about doing it as a nonprofit (the specific services I’m talking about are generally seen as falling into that sector) because it has many advantages that come with it. The problem is that those advantages may be flipped on its rear-end here in India because of the country’s general stance and lack of interest in philanthropy.  Take a look at this article by Dean Nelson in the UK Telegraph.  It hits the issue on its head.  Indians donate but only to religion.  They do not donate to the social development sector.

Because of the general negative view of philanthropic donations to nonprofits in India (not that it doesn’t come with some good historical reasons), I thought about setting up my business as a for profit entity.  In India, you require about two years to get a business off the ground.  In the US, the general recommendation is to have 6 months to 9 months, maybe a year, of expenses saved up.  The gestation period in India is longer unfortunately.  Because I fear an unlimited (2 plus year) time frame before I can earn a good deal, I have not ventured out into starting the business.  My preliminary research and discussions with potential clients, not to mention a study of the state of the country and industry, convinces me the market is there if I get started.  I might need to do a little selling to a few folks as far as paying for it (which is another reason I want to do it as a nonprofit, I think it’s more likely to work).

While researching and reading, I came across the issue of Indian philanthropy.  It’s indeed a sad fact that in a country with such great needs, an increasingly well-to-do middle class, and many with large amounts of disposable money, regular giving is foreign to people.  I’ve been giving since I was a fresher in the US, much longer than many of my much older family members have done here.  It’s just something you did growing up.  In fact, the academic and professional world considers volunteering and community service a critical piece of the selection process for each subsequent step.  Those who have done it get selected and those who haven’t don’t.

That leads me to another aspect of giving back, whether in the form of philanthropy or the notion of civic service.  There is a huge amount of apathy towards community service.  People do not volunteer.  No one does it.  Students don’t do it in high school or college.  They’d rather do awaragaddi (basically goof around).  Professionals do not do it either.  The community service that does happen usually has to do again with religion or perhaps something like an alumni association of a person’s university.    The goal is to achieve recognition in the community or to get a post in the leadership of the alumni group.  The goal is not service to the people who really need it.  I guess that’s not so different than in the States but it just feels different.  Maybe it’s because of the lack of it here and the prevalence of it there.  I’m not so young or naive to say, as perhaps I did years ago, that some level of self-interest is not acceptable.  Too much is not good and this is where we are in India today as far as civic engagement is concerned.

Update on September 5, 2009:

It’s nice to see prominent people in India take active steps towards social change that needs to happen.  I was reading today’s Mint newspaper and saw a Joy of Giving Week has been planned in the country!  Good stuff!  Jai Ho!

Ted Kennedy – Family, Life, and Lessons – Part 4

The article in my last post was the introduction to the Newsweek series.  You can get to all the sub-articles through that.  Here’s my next citation.

What Teddy Can Teach Us, Evan Thomas, Newsweek, August 29, 2009 from the magazine issue dated September 7, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/214247

• He possessed two qualities rarely found in our elected representatives: he did not hog the limelight and, and he was never petty.
• Part of just showing up for Kennedy was presiding as paterfamilias at endless family graduations, weddings, and funerals.
• Kennedy devoured briefing books – huge binders stuffed with mind numbing research – the way most people read novels, recalls Jim Manley, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
• Kennedy could posture and yell on the Senate floor, but he managed to make his foes into friends.
• Kennedy could be harsh in debate, but he was careful to make amends.  He never let himself get too offended by others.  After Sen. Strom Thurmond would rail against him at labor-committee hearings, recalls Kennedy’s longtime aide Melody Miller, “he would amble over to Thurmond and throw his arm over his shoulders and laughingly say, ‘Now, Strom, don’t get too upset. Come on over to Judiciary and I’ll give you some judges!’ “
• Kennedy was at this best – at his most genuine – when other people were in trouble and feeling abandoned.
• Kennedy thought a lot about things, he recalled, and began reading all the books he hadn’t read in college, his family joked.  Maybe it was his Catholic faith, deepened by tragedy and redemption.

Hogging the limelight has a big affect on getting things done.  Those two things can be directly opposite most of the time.  If you want to get results, you cannot worry about the limelight.  You just have to know you’re doing what you’re doing to achieve your goal.  If you’re around decent people, you’ll get the limelight you deserve.  Heck, if you stick around long enough, you’ll get it even with not-so-decent people around you.

It’s not as simple as that, of course.  I used to believe that you shouldn’t worry about credit, just do your job and that’s what matters.  I didn’t even know you should look for credit.  For years, I was turned-off by what I saw as the American capitalist notion of self-promotion and the Hindu value of humility.  I was torn between the two with a definite skew towards humility.  I thought self-promotion was evil.  Really, I did.  It’s probably because I was humble to a fault.  I still am in many regards and don’t toot my own horn. 

I’ve learned over the years, though, that telling people of what you’ve done isn’t necessarily bad.  In fact, in many ways, it’s very important to do that, both in your professional and personal life.  People get to know you, your character, how you think, and your priorities by the things you tell them.  If those things happen to give you credit, then that is what they do.  My thinking on the evilness of self-promotion has turned around to the point it doesn’t turn me off when I see it.  You cannot tell everyone but you do need to tell the people that matter – your spouse, your family, your boss.  Who you deem important to know is important.

I consider being petty just plain-ol bad.  There is little reason to be small-minded about things.  I know people who fall into that category.  If they’re people I hardly meet, it doesn’t really bother me.  I’ve also been in situations where it’s been with people I interact with regularly.  Now, that’s when it gets annoying.  That’s when you remember that breathing deeply helps keep you calm!

One of the things Ted Kennedy apparently did really well was reading, i.e., preparation.  Many of his colleagues and family members mentioned that during his funeral.  I am always reading news online or trade magazines.  I also enjoy reading the latest in management books.  There’s so much to know and understand and it doesn’t happen overnight.  You need to keep up with this stuff continuously.  Still I think I can improve on this.  I need to read more targeted trade literature.

One of the things I found the funniest was when people said Ted Kennedy would yell and scream and vigorously debate on the Senate floor and then turn around and put his arm around you and ask something like “How did I do?”.  I think this is so critical.  I was like this and still am with many people but I do need to do more of it.  Because of a tough situation as a twenty-something adult, I was repeatedly in situations where cutting things off was the best thing to do.  In hindsight, I have realized that cutting things off became too much a part of me.  I need to re-acquire Ted’s ability.

Since a difficult relationship with one of my paternal aunts, I have thought about the things that makes people tick.  It is interesting to me.  People are interesting to me.  Why do they behave the way they do?  Why do they think the way they do?  I ask a lot of probing questions because I like to get down to the root of things.  I’m very curious about people, behaviors, and attitudes.

When you go through a tough period, something so severe that it causes post-traumatic stress disorder (see the “Diagnosis” section) or whatever is the appropriate term, there is a compassion switch that gets turned on in you.  You relate to those who suffer.  It can create a deep desire to bond with people and to help people.  Sometimes, that is not so good but that is what happens with severe traumatic situations.  Your brain gets rewired.  The death of Ted’s brothers had the affect of rewiring his brain!

Ted Kennedy – Family, Life, and Lessons – Part 3

Turns out that Newsweek has a whole series on Ted Kennedy.  A few of the other sites I’ve visited – Time and CNN, for example – have sporadic coverage.  Here’s a third article.

Understanding Teddy Kennedy, Jon Meacham, Newsweek, August 29, 2009 from the magazine issue dated September 7, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/214246

• To cast him in a sentimental warm light (the left) or to demonize him (the right) are equally inadequate to capturing his character…
• …when you think about it, the challenges he faced and the sins he committed were less about life on an American Mount Olympus and more in line with what ordinary mortals face.
• He was a man, not a monument, and the fact that he managed to accomplish monumental things is all the more inspiring given his all too human flaws.
• Ted actually vindicated a more mundane truism: that half (or maybe as much as 90 percent) of success in life is just showing up.
• Ted Kennedy essentially embodied liberal orthodoxy, but he was not a purist.  He believed in getting things done and never let he perfect be the enemy of the good.

People are complicated even when they want things in black or white.  Life is also complicated and full of gray areas.  Many people struggle in life just because they don’t understand that fact.  Knowing the reason someone does something cannot be easily understood, especially in India, where people don’t talk directly.  It’s not the case in the States where people tend to be more transparent.  I am generalizing, of course.  You’ll find all kinds of people and situations everywhere.  Still, cultural differences are pronounced between the East and the West.

Ted Kennedy’s life was a mix of celebrity, great successes, and tragic failures.  His life was like most people’s, though.  The key difference is that Ted was a public figure from a high profile family.  His problems were public and were larger-than-life because of it.  Other than that, his issues were not unique to him.

Ted did two things very well, apparently.  He was highly persistent.  He knew his chance would come so he kept at it.  He was also the ideal Boy Scout – always prepared.  These two behaviors kept him in the ball game.  More than anything, he kept showing up, day after day.  Showing up over and over again is absolutely key.  The tide does eventually change.

Ted also had a philosophy that it’s important not to pass up a good opportunity waiting for the perfect one.  Who is to say the next opportunity will be the better or worse than the current one?  If it’s good enough, go for it.  The question, of course, is what is good enough?  That can be tough to decide on.  But you have to know that is how it works – that you have to accept a good pitch and swing.

Ted Kennedy – Family, Life, and Lessons – Part 2

Here’s another article for you to read on Ted Kennedy.  This one is much shorter but relays a few points I’d like to talk about.

How Kennedy Learned to Care, Adam Clymer, Newsweek Web Exclusive, August 26, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213741

• Up in the Fitzgerald’s suite in the old Bellevue Hotel on Beacon Hill, Teddy would listen as Honey Fitz called people on the phone, asking how they were, offering condolences in the case of death or illness.
• When they went downstairs to have lunch, the ex-mayor made a point of going through the kitchen, saying hello to everyone working there, an instinctive political touch his grandson would adopt.
• After lunch, Honey Fitz would take Teddy around his beloved Boston, walking the glory of its history.
• Being a good Irish storyteller is a gift you hone.

Teddy Kennedy’s grandfather was the mayor of Boston.  They called him “Honey Fitz” – short for John F. Fitzgerald.  From his grandpa is where Teddy got his sense of community service early on, something his father, Joe P. Kennedy, cemented in him in his early years.

I don’t have many regrets in life.  If I need to do something, I do it.  If I need to say sorry, to something big or small, I do it as soon as possible.  I do not let time go by.  I do not wait for the right time.  There is no such thing.  One of the things I do regret, though not due to my negligence or error, is a closeness with my grandparents.  I never got to know them.  When we were young, my brother and I went to boarding school.  Immediately after that, we shipped off to the States. 

My parents didn’t encourage me to keep in touch with my grandparents through phone calls or letters after we moved to the States and I never did.  I didn’t know as a kid that I should do that.  I didn’t have much connection to them growing up that would have made me wanted to call them because I hadn’t spend much time with them.  This is something I wish today was not the case.  My brother and sister both got the affection of my grandparents after they moved to India.  My grandfather also constantly stayed in touch with my brother through letters while we were in the States, as I accidentally learned just a few weeks ago when I saw a stack of them in a bunch of my brother’s stuff sitting in my room.  I was hurt.  Why didn’t my grandfather write to me?  (I suspect the reason he was in touch with my brother is because he was the elder grandson.  Given that my dad wasn’t going to return to India to run the family business, my grandfather probably wanted my brother to do that.  It’s as much as what happened after my father passed away.)

More importantly, though, I didn’t get to see my grandfather in his day-to-day world.  I didn’t learn from him any of his attitudes, behaviors, or tricks of the trade.  I knew he had many contacts.  How did he keep in touch with them?  What kind of a personality was he?  Besides being commanding with his immediate family, how was he outside of it?  How did he cultivate those relationships?  I know little of it all.

Another thing I miss, at a more pragmatic level, is being introduced to all the folks that he knew.  My gramps did well in his life after Partition.  He was a supplier to the Indian army.  This meant he got to know people who later were well-connected themselves.  Now that I’m in India, even though the country has changed and the opportunities available are plentiful and different, I don’t know any of the folks my grandfather knew.

The article talks about how Teddy’s grandpa would take him around Boston so he could learn about the city and its history.  They didn’t do the rounds as tourists.  They went to the same place over and over again.  Having lived in Cambridge myself, I can tell you the region is really something.  It is history of a couple of hundred years old right in front of you in the present.  Even more so, it has character.  It has charm.  I absolutely loved it there. 

I still remember the first time I saw a sign for the city of Cambridge.  It was much smaller than the road signs you see in California and so I missed it for quite some time after moving to the city.  California signs are large and on poles at least 10 feet high.  Road signs in Boston are small and on poles equivalent to the size of tall midgets.  I bet they’re relics of the days when bullock carts and horse-driven carriages roamed those streets and when cars were slow and people walked.  Heck, if you’ve driven in Boston, you know city driving directions are given by landmark.  Go to the Dunkin’ Donuts and make a left.  When you hit the church, turn right.  No one tells you street names because they don’t exist or if they exist no one knows them (again, you can’t see the street signs).  This is probably how it was when Henry Ford’s Model T first got on the roads. 

Welcome to Cambridge

The “Wecome to Cambridge” sign is outside the main entrance to MIT, just a few feet before the steps leading up to the building.  The Charles River separates Cambridge from Boston and the university building is the first one on the Cambridge side.  I would drive the bridge connecting those two cities all the time.  It’s only about half a mile to 3/4 of a mile long.

The first time I saw the Cambridge welcome sign, I remember getting goosebumps even though I had already been there for a few months (actually, I got goosebumps on many an occasion as I toured the city).  I was in Cambridge!  I was in Boston!  This is where it all started!  The country’s history originated from here.  California was awesome with it’s weather, it’s people, it’s vastness, it’s attitude.  As much as I loved the West Coast for it’s innovation culture, I had long dreamed about visiting Boston and it’s ivy-covered brick walls and it’s history.  When I finally had an opportunity to live there, I have to say I absolutely loved it.  I can remember walking around with a smile on my face (not literally!) as I was thrilled at something historic I just saw.  If I could make it work, I could live there my entire life.  (Or, I should say, if I want to live there, I should make it work!)

I digress from the points in the article, but I don’t think it’s by much so I’ll continue.  During the few years I was in Beantown, I visited many of the historic sites around town.  I would round up a few of my friends whenever I wanted to check something out and a few would always be game.  I didn’t do it as much as I should have, I have to admit.  (In fact, I’ve thought that since I live in New Delhi, I should see as much of this city as I can also.  There’s so much to history here.)

My grandparents weren’t showing me around town in Boston like Teddy’s grandpa but I’m sure they would have if we had lived there or if we’d have stayed in Calcutta growing up.  If you’re reading this and you still have your grandparents around, talk to them and ask them about how things were years ago.  In fact, I’ve thought it myself to ask a bunch of my older aunts and uncles the same thing.  I missed out on the story-telling.  I didn’t even know my father all that well, to be honest, nor the kinds of things my family used to do back then.  I wanted to take the opportunity to do that now.  If I wasn’t afraid of meeting relatives regularly because of the chaos that seems to always ensue from those get-togethers, I would love to spend time with them and listen to stories.

By the way, before I close this post out, I have to mention something heart-warming I came across.  I have been watching the Ted Kennedy funeral ceremonies on ABC News Now on Yahoo!  They stream live.  I’ve also been reading a lot of articles, as you know.  Quite a few times I came across people commenting how Ted would spontaneously burst out singing “Sweet Adeline“.  Nieces and nephews mentioned him doing this.  His colleagues also talked about it.  Well, guess what?  I looked up Honey Fitz on Wiki as I started this post.  Guess where Ted learned the song and probably got the singing bug from?  Even more, Ted, the surrogate father to John and Bobby’s kids and grandfather to his nieces and nephews’ kids used to take the whole young Kennedy clan all around town on historical trips.  I guess he did what his brothers may have done if they were around.  Or maybe he did what Honey Fitz had done.  Clearly, Ted understood the importance and role of parents and grandparents!

Ted Kennedy – Family, Life, and Lessons – Part 1

I’d like to share a few heart-warming, inspirational, historical, poignant, and just funny articles on Ted Kennedy.  Here is the first.

The Liberal Lion, Neal Gabler, Newsweek, August 27, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213869/output/print

• On JFK’s death on Bobby Kennedy: “…his brother’s death had such a profound effect on him that it seemed to radicalize his politics.  It was if he had suffered some deep, irreparable wound that suddenly connected him to everyone else who was also suffering.  His liberalism was a function of that empathy – of his own tortured soul and the feeling that it was his job to represent the afflicted and powerless.
• In effect, the Kennedy family was a small welfare state, supported by the father’s tremendous wealth but bound by a powerful sense of community in which each member was responsible for every other member.
• But the Republicans found success by flogging their own version of America, one that saw the country not as a community but as a collection of self-interested individualists.

I can relate to each of these statements, which is (duh!) the reason that I have quoted them specifically.  One point to clarify: I don’t have the riches of my parents.  The rest is accurate. 

While I believe each individual must pull their own weight – learn, put forth effort, sacrifice, contribute, and achieve – my values agree with those of the Kennedy family and I deny the notion of self-interested individualists in a country (or a family).  Unfortunately, as I learned by interacting with each member one at a time, my family seems to be people who are by all intents and purposes individualists.  This seems to come as innately to them as the opposite comes to me.  This disagreement on the definition of a family’s core identity has also contributed to some of the problems we’ve had.  At various times in our lives, that’s an understatement.

The reason for this, I believe, has to do with the migration of our family from India to the United States.  Our age and state of maturity when we moved and our openness to the new life led to us picking up different parts of American culture.  This does not mean we were not all open, we probably were, but because of multiple reasons we were open to different kinds of things.  Each person’s personality undoubtedly played a part in it as well.