Here’s an article I wrote for the 13th World Business Dialogue’s corporate weblog called Brainforum. The original entry can be found here

I remember reading a comprehension passage during my school years titled “A billion strong or weak” which in a Rashomon-esque manner illustrated how we can look at India either as a billion mouths to feed or as 2 billion powerful hands that can be put to work.

Idealistic in many ways, it emphasized on a very important part which I only realized after coming to college.

The economy has to ensure that there’s inclusive growth. This isn’t a rant against capitalism, neither is it a cry for pity. Over the last 2 years I have immersed myself to learn more about the developmental sector and the problems that face our nation. A talk with an eminent social entrepreneur (and one of the first Oxfam GB trustees from a developing nation) made me realize that most models of capitalism don’t benefit the poor because of the way they are structured. The poor end up having no savings because they are caught in a vicious cycle of loans and debt out of which there is no escape. This isn’t to say that capitalism in itself is wrong, in fact I believe that market based approaches to alleviating poverty are in fact very essential for progress. But the form of capitalism that I subscribe to should be inclusive in nature.

I am increasingly getting attracted to localized businesses where profits are generated by not mass production but through production by masses. Ventures that employ an entire community to meet their demands, using local technology, tweaking it to optimize it and increasing productivity. This is why I was so impressed by the work the Honeybee Network was doing along with Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network. It was born out of the need for an institutional framework that would provide handholding support to the rural innovators and link them to the formal systems of technical, financial and marketing services. The idea being that of survival entrepreneurship. Given the dire condition of our villages, innovation is but a necessity rather than a marketing strategy. Some of these village technologies really need that extra push to help them becoming marketable products for the masses.  There is already a lot of talk of adopting locally generated and decentralized energy to equip communities to take care of their own energy requirements. For example Bihar based Husk Power systems which uses Rice husk to generate locally produced energy for the bottom of the pyramid. I believe a lot of grassroots innovations are sustainable and just need mentoring to make their processes more efficient rather introduce completely new technologies, most of which might be inappropriate for that region. More investments in such businesses will indeed be a step in the right direction for emerging economies, economies in transition such as India as well as the least developed nations.

In Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, Mehta says that Mumbai’s average population per square kilometer in some areas is 15000 persons per square kilometers. Think about that for a second. Berlin has 2000. He further adds that Mumbai faces a lot of problems such as power shortages and water issues. But he then adds saying that most of the people who come to Mumbai come from the villages which face the same problems. Fixing some of our villages problems will in turn fix the cities problems.

Traders play with money with little or no accountability and finally its the investors and entrepreneurs that suffer. Actually, let me rephrase, its the citizens that have to suffer, which the billions at the bottom of the pyramid that suffer the most. The recession isn’t something inevitable and as long as the development isn’t sustainable and the goals aren’t created for the long term future, there are always going to be these cycles of economic downturn.

Rishabh Kaul is a rising economics undergraduate at BITS Pilani. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

A recurring theme in romantic novels and movies is that you travel all over the world to finally find what you were searching for, right where you began. Could it be that the answer to malnutrition and self sustaining communities be a plant which has been growing in their back yard for all this time? This might be the case with Moringa Oleifera, often dubbed as the Miracle Tree, often discussed as being a savior of vulnerable communities especially in Africa and South Asia.

The plant, which grows in dry soils in tropical lands, is known primarily for the exceptional nutritional value of its leaves. Lowell Fuglie who has been researching abut the uses of Moringa for over a decade (and used to work for the Church World Service) says ”Gram for gram, Moringa leaves contain three times the iron of spinach, four times the vitamin A of carrots, seven times the Vitamin C of oranges, three times the potassium of bananas, and four times the calcium and twice the protein of milk” (a much larger list can be obtained here). “Nutritionally, you can’t beat it.” he adds.

But it doesn’t end here; Moringa Oleifera is known to be a really good water purifier, plant growth enhancer, biofuel (abstract only), and has plenty of medicinal uses. These address some of the most pressing issues faced at the BoP today: Enegry, water scarcity & agricultural yield and most importantly malnutrition. All this being said, one would expect entrepreneurs to jump at this opportunity and capitalize upon it. A Moringa-based idea submitted to the Ashoka’s Nutrition Competition was even adjudged as an early winner. However, we don’t see any major players trying to create an industry based on this wonder plant. Why so?

The opportunities and challenges in the commercialization of Moringa have been summed up well by in a paper written by J P Sutherland, who was involved with a biotech startup called Optima Environment SA based in Switzerland. He cites lack of extensive research, skepticism from the scientific community, barriers to entry in the form of government regulations as well as poor marketing as some of the factors which constraint the commercialization of Moringa products such as oil, water coagulants and packaged food. He emphasizes that if entrepreneurs can find a way to improve the extraction process, moringa oil has a potential to become a useful source of fuel (both industrial as well as domestic) in the years to come. However, it’s also up to the venture capitalists in the agro-health sector to realize it’s importance as a life saving plant and encourage investments in this domain.

What’s really fascinating about this plant is that it is locally available in areas that need it most. The tropical nations provide the temperature and soil requirements that is suitable for its growth.  Every part of the plant, be it the stems, the leaves, the pods are useful in one way or the other. Even if it takes time to commercialize it on a large scale, I can see this as a useful community run venture to meet the nutrient needs of villages that are struggling to meet their requirements.

Originally posted on Nextbillion

Rishabh Kaul is a rising economics undergraduate at BITS Pilani. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

If something isn’t broken, do we still fix it? This is something one hears quite often and it’s importance in Base of the Pyramid contexts is often neglected. A recent talk at BITS Pilani by (Retired) Brigadier P. Ganeshan, Andhra Pradesh head of Honeybee (we have earlier covered Honeybee here), focused on just that. In a nutshell, Honeybee is a digitized compendium of rural innovations and local practices implemented by rural communities in Indian villages. It currently houses over 100,000 innovations from all over India. Talk about an idea pool huh?

The crux of his talk was the need for knowledge-based growth. Despite India being a knowledge-based economy, he said, it is surprising to see how the knowledge possessed by BoP populations is being neglected and not given the attention it deserves. He stressed that many social entrepreneurs, though willing to spend vast amounts of time lending an ear to the problems of villages, aren’t as willing to accept that these villages have come up with solutions to their own problems. The critical part, he believes, is optimizing these solutions to maximize their output.

He spoke of how India’s farmers usually follow 30-35 farming practices, but no initiative is in place to optimize these practices and introduce appropriate technologies. According to him, villages are the oldest and most natural and form of open source knowledge, with potential to be further improved for the benefit of the entire nation.

The best thing social entrepreneurs could do is understand local technologies already being used and optimize them with local knowledge gathered from the insight of their users. Local solutions in the villages are often the most eco-friendly and sustainable, and they are also locally made, cutting down on operation costs.

The pic is a washing machine cum exercising machine which was invented by Remya, young girl from Kerala and is now patented.

Moses Lee highlighted the notion behind the above in a previous post, calling it “survival entrepreneurship”. Similarly, Fast Company has referred to the overarching trend as “trickling-up innovations”. The sheer simplicity of this particular example amazed me. It doesn’t require any electricity, it is sustainable and, hey, it even keeps one fit. Ganeshan added that for a nation like India, it is production by the masses and notmass production which will alleviate poverty. Hence it’s critical to involve the community from where the idea is taken in the manufacturing of a product. This would ensure inclusive growth.

What about the innovators themselves? This question led Prof. Anil Gupta, founder of the Honeybee Network, went on to found the National Innovation Foundation, which then started the Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN). GIAN allows entrepreneurs to take ownership of technologies, commercialize products and scale production. As far as innovators are concerned, some want to simply be compensated for the technology while others are more entrepreneurial and desire venture funding. More about that can be read in their Business Opportunities section (North, West).

It’ll be interesting to see how entrepreneurs can utilize this goldmine. There’s huge potential for the knowledge of informal sectors to be leveraged and introduced into the formal economy. Once entrepreneurs and investors start realizing this and giving it due recognition, I’m confident that we’ll see India’s villages achieve growth at a much faster rates.

published originally at Nextbillion.net

Rishabh Kaul is a rising economics undergraduate at BITS Pilani. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Image: Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barefootcollege/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Originally published at Project Survival Media day before yesterday

There has been a lot of discussion about the magnitude of the fund that will be set aside for the developing countries to cope up with climate change. Bangladesh has already made it clear that they deserve 15% of whatever the amount is decided upon. Other nations might have similar demands.But while the size of the pie is an important issue, I am more interested in how this pie will be eaten, meaning, where will the money be invested and in what technologies.

Well, Larry Lohmann seems to think he has an answer and he elaborates on it in his very interesting paper called Climate as an Investment where he says that the future of the world lies in locally produced energy using sustainable methods.

So what does that mean? It means that our notion of industrialization has to completely change, which in turn means that we must move further and further away from fossil fuels as well as fossil fuel substitutes such as agrofuels. Why agrofuels you might ask, two reasons: Firstly, the massive impact they will have on food productivity since they will end up eating a lot of our land (yes the pun was intended) and secondly (and more importantly), they provide security to the fossil fuel infrastructure which many view as a crucial hindrance to our future.

His idea might seem radical to many but this practice isn’t something new. In fact it has been put to practice for over 2 decades in a tiny village in rural Rajasthan called Tilonia in an establishment called the Barefoot College. Barefoot college and it’s founder Bunker Roy have received immense praise for the work they have been doing. Apart from a college for the poorest of the poor, it’s a self sufficient community which produces its own energy using the ample sunlight that it receives. It maintains its own water supply through their rain water harvesting which is stored in hundreds of underground tanks and recycles its own waste to create fodder. The 100,000 people who are taking part in this probably don’t realize that they are leading by example for the whole world to see.

This is a stunning example for 2 reasons:

Firstly, the place where it is being done isn’t paradise, at least not in the conventional sense. When they first started out, it was a wasteland, a desert. And now through their practices they are getting some of the green cover back.

Secondly, they did it out of necessity. As Seth Godin says, today being innovative isn’t a luxury, its a necessity. And that’s what Bunker Roy has been doing for the last thirty years. He didn’t wait for the government to help him. He took matters in his own hands for his community’s survival depended on it.

So while such a project can work in developing nations and small communities, for a city things become quite different mostly because of the difference in ideology of the governments and the corporates (read big oil et al)

So what is the problem, you ask?

As Lohmann puts it:

That can only happen through a process that involves ‘taking over the City’. These include campaigns to reduce the overwhelming influence of Wall Street in Washington; increase workers’ and farmers’ participation in management; disallow banks’ claims about the value of the ‘toxic’ assets they hold; roll back limited corporate liability; challenge shareholder primacy; halt public handouts for CCS and nuclear development; force the World Bank to obey its review panel’s recommendations to stop investing in fossil fuels

I am not saying that this is the solution to the climate change problem, but what I am saying is that with more and more nuclear reactors being set up (and that waste isn’t going to get disposed on its own), with more and more people and less land at our disposal, with Big Oil working overtime to ensure that the laws wont be giving them a raw deal, with geo engineering suggesting that we send sulphur packed rockets every now and then to prevent global warming, we need to start having more discussions and weigh our options and figure out if our leaders’ plan for our future is really going to make it better, for our survival depends on it. Perhaps investing our time in what some communities have already been doing to support themselves might be answer to some of the developing worlds’ climate problems.

Rishabh Kaul is a rising economics undergraduate at BITS Pilani. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Written a couple of days after the World Toilet Day, however this remained in the draft for a while, so without further delay, publishing it now

If you had been to the Chowpatty beach in Mumbai on 19th November, you would have found a group of people squatting. In fact you would also have found a couple of portable toilets in the vicinity. If you didn’t check the papers in the morning, you would think that it were a ritual of some bizarre cult. These people instead, were doing it to show support for the 2.5 billion people all over the world who lack basic sanitary facilities. And they weren’t the only ones. People all over the world were celebrating the “World Toilet Day” by taking part in “The Big Squat“. (click here for pictures from all over the world)

If there are five people in each family, then we require 500 million household toilets. Then, we require another 500 million away-from-home toilets – in the workplace, in schools, in religious places, in the marketplace, in transport centers. So in this market, we need 1 billion toilets.

says Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organization (WTO) (which conceptualized the World Toilet Day) in a interview with Beyond Profit.

The oft-avoided topic is becoming a major cause of worry for developing countries. According to a paper written by Rowshan Nantaz (Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engg, BUET), Dhaka City Corporation runs only 69 public toilets for a city whose population is beyond 10 million. And this isn’t half as bad as the condition in Nigeria (est 2008 pop:151.3 million), where reports suggest that there are less than 500 public toilets.

In a recent article by Reuters Sim was quoted saying “You see it long enough, and there is a basic acceptance that dirt is normal. But being repulsed by dirt, it’s smell and sight is a natural defence against disease”. He estimates that the sanitation market is in excess of 1 trillion USD (just for the sake of comparison, this also happens to be India’s GDP). Yet, it’s interesting to note there have been times in the past where investors have hesitated to invest in this sector. Case in point being Saraplast, which is one of the fastest growing portable public toilets company in India today. They had a tough time attracting investors despite having made record profits for the last three years. Aavishkar finally saw sense in the business and bought a 21% stake for an undisclosed amount this August. Saraplast will be tying up with the New Delhi municipality for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi next year.

Ecotact is another interesting organization working in the sanitation industry which has received a lot of media publicity off late. It’s Ikotoilet brand works on the build-operate transfer principle of public-private partnership and plans to open another 200 facilities in Kenya in the near future. An interesting variation to the standard pay per use toilet model here is that it complements the toilet facility with additional service such as shoe shining, soft drinks and newspapers, which apart from keeping the customers occupied also bring in additional revenue.

The Pee Poo bag, made by a Swedish architect provides an effective solution to the problem for its low cost, biodegradable and since its lined with urea, it sanitizes the feces and doubles up as fertilizer when buried. However, such solutions can at best be a short term measure to a problem which is closely related to the water and sewage industry.

In a lot of rural areas, the sanitation is suffering due to the poor state of the water works and the high costs involved as an initial investment. Also, once the public toilets are setup, the major challenge then becomes to maintain the establishment. Issues such as keeping the toilet dry, ensuring there is adequate water supply and that the flush is working become issues of prime importance. An interesting idea that I came across which could be implemented in public toilets was the concept of a tap which could be operated using one’s foot. By pressing a lever somewhere, one could obtain the water. Having seen the condition of public toilets at least in India, I marveled at this simple solution which could help in preventing a lot of diseases.

A Nextbillion article sometime back emphasized on the need to provide (and where applicable improve upon) sanitation, while covering the Clinton Global Initiative 2008. Do check that out as well.

Crossposted on the Nextbillion blog with a few minor edits

Rishabh Kaul is a rising economics undergraduate at BITS Pilani. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com