Harish Hande On The True Way Of Running A Social Enterprise & The Opportunity Of Decentralisation

Dr.-Harish-Hande,-Chief-Executive-Officer,-SELCO-Foundation-lr.jpeg

Harish Hande is an engineer and renewable energy entrepreneur with over 23 years of grassroots experience in meeting requirements of underserved communities. He is the co-founder of SELCO Solar Light Pvt Ltd and is presently the CEO of SELCO Foundation. Today SELCO’s interventions have impacted more than 500,000 poor households across 6 Indian states, while focusing on Innovation and Ecosystem building, for which Harish was awarded the Magsaysay Award in 2011.

Harish, a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and a Masters and PhD from University of Massachusetts, US. He co-founded SELCO in 1994-95 after experiencing benefits of solar energy in rural areas of Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka. Harish is recognised as a pioneer of rural energy service across the globe. He and his company have received many national and international awards including the reputed Zayed Future Energy Prize in 2018 and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship – 2018.

Harish discusses The Response of Indian Social Enterprises to The Covid-19 Threat, And The Key Differences Between Financial and Intellectual Poverty.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - Harish, I would love to learn a little bit more today about your background, and what led you to your passion in social enterprise, poverty eradication and sustainable energy.

[Harish Hande] - I started this in a time when there was no coinage of the words social enterprise. This was in 1993-94, but at that time I was like an ideal youngster, in that time it was more about sustainable energy and seeing how it can actually lead to betterment of people's lives. I guess more so as I dipped into the rural areas of India and Sri Lanka, I felt that there was no the difference between enterprise, a private enterprise, an NGO, or something that you actually needed to do if you truly looked at holistic sustainability.

To me it is enterprises and anti-enterprises. It's not about enterprises and social enterprise. Every enterprise should be a part of society. I think the people inspired me in terms of the street vendor or a cobbler or a local blacksmith.

Everybody was running an enterprise that was socially sustainable, and so why not create more that used solar panels?

Absolutely, and would you agree then Harish that the term social enterprise should just simply be business?

No, a business is just a semantic that we use in any language. Whether it's an enterprise, whether it's an NGO, all the legal forms that different countries have, is it respecting all three parts?

That is on two parts definitely the social sustainability, and the second is environmental sustainability. The third is somewhere that needs to be linked to financial sustainability, and financial sustainability could be at a project level, could be at the program level or could be at a state level. For example, health and education.

I believe the financial sustainability of health and education should be at the state and federal level. As long as the loop is closed at the social sustainability level per se, then any form of organisation should be able to do that.

It's a great point there Harish. Tell us a little bit more about your work. You're CEO of the SELCO Foundation. What is SELCO's purpose, and tell us a little bit about the work you do?

The SELCO Foundation's work is to create an ecosystem in a manner that uses sustainable energy as a catalyst to democratise the delivery of health, education, livelihoods, and other essential services for the poor and by the poor.

The whole philosophy of SELCO Foundation is, "is it truly grassroots level, in a manner that's completely decentralised, and do we believe that decentralised energies like solar can do it?"

What I mean by an ecosystem is, are we truly democratising it? In fact, today what happens is we centralise grids, hospitals, and make everything central, and we force the poor to become employees. We only use their hard labour.

What we are trying to do is make sure that we utilise the intellectual potential of the poor, and use sustainable energy to harness that. Why can't there be an Einstein or a Madame Curie from the poor? Why? Because we do not create that ecosystem where a poor kid in Orisa, or Tanzania or in Brazil does not have an equal opportunity that you and I have. Because we confuse between intellectual poverty and financial poverty, and that is SELCO Foundation's [purpose]; to destroy those myths and say ‘let's equalise it.’

Is it more of, ‘how do you create an ecosystem that is inclusive?’ It [seems to be] very much taking a systemic approach in understanding some of the deeper root causes of those issues and looking to tackle those as well.

Yes. Today, what happens is, and I still believe when you look at the global South, we have replaced colonialism with intellectual colonialism in the sense of, we have replaced it with financial colonialism. In a country like India, we have replaced the British colonialism with middle class colonialism. It's like my kid’s maid servant has to be my main considerance. But it's about, ‘can there be equal opportunity for the maid servants’ kids and the street vendors’ kids?’

That is where it concerns me. How do we break that thinking process and social enterprise of whatever form? Is it an enterprise that kills that thinking and creates organisations that transcend the whole social structures of any society?

They’re really interesting observations. I'm curious to hear then what are your observations of this social enterprise movement in India? How have you seen it grow or change over the previous years and where do you see it heading?

See, my answer is a plus and a minus Tom. The answer is yes there is a big movement and I understand it, but I still think there is what you call a patronising of the poor as well as in terms of romanticising poverty and saying, “I'm going to actually serve the poor by selling goods.” I mean the question is, it's not about selling small solar lights to the poor, that does not make you a social enterprise. If that was the case, then Phillips many years ago who sold torch lights and radios and should be called a social enterprise.

An enterprise is something that respects not only what you're trying to intervene in, and is that value that you're providing greater than what they already have? What is it comparing that value to your values?

If the shareholders of a certain organisation are getting three times the value that the poor get from that same intervention, you are not a social enterprise.

You have kept that disparity of one history. Tom, the issue is you have the end users, you have the technicians, you have the mid management, you have the elbow manager, top management and you have the shareholders. If there is not a straight line between them horizontally, if there is a tilt where the shareholders are getting most of it and then the top management, then it's not a social enterprise. You are part of the same equation that is creating disparities.

Such great reflections there. I think many of us would absolutely agree with that and hopefully it will challenge a lot of our audience to think in that way as well, Harish.

We're living in an extraordinary time, smack bang in the middle of COVID-19 and it's August 2020. This has obviously brought out a lot of struggles for many people around the world, but given these added impacts of COVID-19, where do you see key gaps and opportunities to tackle poverty in India? Has it changed anything at all?

I think it has changed in the thinking process. In a sense for many years, people were saying, "how do we do reverse migration?" Now that migration has happened, we don't know what to do with the reverse migration. How do we create opportunities for people who suddenly move back the attention on agriculture, which is good?

Secondly, it was also put into perspective saying that the centralisation of economics like urbanisation or big factories, but somewhere there was a big fault that led to the very first day where millions of people asked to leave and they had to walk kilometres.

That means our safety nets were not there. The economy might be booming at 7% plus, but there was a clear-cut case in COVID-19 that the economy and many of the millions of people were not part of that economy.

I think on a positive note, it has shown this stark reality number one. Number two, is many of us in the civil society have also woken up I think, saying that [I don't blame the government frankly speaking Tom], but "what has happened to the two and a half decades of civil society work where nobody created enough safety nets for this to happen?" We do not have a single example, and so the question for me was, was this also a true reflection of philanthropic capital, as well as social enterprises of what are they coming up with? New options or new business models or new transaction models. This is when we'll show who are the true social enterprises.

I think the opportunity in India is to look at the decentralisation of anything.
How do we create 100-200 kilometre bubbles where agriculture, local economy, local production, and local consumption [thrive], and you no longer need to convince people that's the way to go because that's the only hope to get the economy back?

It's such a great point, and I think that point and many others will very likely be discussed at this year's Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF), where you're a speaker, Harish. It's the first year that the forum is fully online thanks to COVID-19. There's planned to be over 3,500 entrepreneurs that are expected to attend. I'm curious to hear what are you most looking forward to about this forum, and what do you think are some of the key things that just must be discussed and debated, amongst the entrepreneurs that attend?

I think just as I had mentioned at the last forum, which was held in Ethiopia, I think it's also time for the entrepreneurs in the social enterprise space to reflect upon themselves.

Many times, what happens is that the social entrepreneurs and enterprises always think it's a holier than thou, like we are better, and the other enterprises are bad, and they are doing this and it's all about complaints and how everybody else is inefficient.

I think it's also a reflection we need to do ourselves, saying, "what is a true way of running a social enterprise? How do you look at the transaction costs? Are we truly what we are saying? How much are we holding back [forget the numbers]?

Even though you've reached 300,000 or 400,000. Does it matter to a Brazilian kid? The Brazilian kid would say, "how you did it is more important than how many numbers you reached."

I would also request a lot of the youngsters and social enterprises to not come to a forum like this where you are representing many of the voiceless in terms of voiceless entrepreneurs, voiceless enterprises, and voiceless people. You're not representing your organisations once you're speaking at SEWF.

You are speaking on behalf of the sector and this is where I want everybody to be reflective. Are we truly efficient to be called a social enterprise? If many of us reflect back, that would be greater value to the sector, also less great value for leveraging a lot of the soft monies that all of us bring to the table.

In talking about those social enterprises, which enterprises do you find truly inspiring in the way that they work with that systemic approach? Are there any particular initiatives that you've come across, which you believe are just creating some amazing, positive social change?

If you at a very small-scale look, any street vendor is classically a good social enterprise, because a street vendor provides the products at the most affordable price to the poor at the doorstep. It's sustainable over a period of 20-25, even 30 years. You hardly ever hear about a street vendor going out of business.

But on a little larger level for example, the Self Employed Women's Association, which was started in the 1970’s as a labour movement by Ela Bhatt in Ahmedabad. They basically looked at it very holistically. They needed to create livelihoods, they created SEWA Rural, and then they had to create a linkage to market the creative trade facility. They said, ‘what happens to children who come when the women work in central production?’ The critics say, ‘what about childcare?’

It was building those blocks of sustainability. What is required inward and outward looking and completely owned by the women? The interest and you can take a loan from the saver bank and you get it. But it's an extra to be sharing a bit of the bank. Truly, there's no difference between the Managing Director's salary and the dividends that are actually paid to the poor street vendor who is part of the shareholding of the bank itself.

That's an enterprise that pushed equality, and I would say one of the best. The other social enterprise which has both for-profit and not-for-profit structures but are completely in a manner that is holistic and inclusive, is Aravind Eye Care in Madurai. It's another enterprise which actually balances health care and how it provides services to the poor and rich by the main operation theatre which is equal for everybody.

It's the pre and the post with a little bit of a difference here and there. But the quality of health and eye cataract operations is absolutely the same doctors in the same theatre table for the poor and the rich. I think those are two that really stand out in terms of social enterprises at a name level, but the thousands of street vendors and all are enterprises in their own way are social, in terms of providing affordable, customised, vegetables to the place that they're selling.

To finish up then, books and resources, are there any particular gems there that you'd recommend to our listeners?

I would say one is by Palagummi Sainath who wrote Everybody Loves a Good Drought. It's a book on how the poor get marginalised, and the other is Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful. It shows the negative side and the positive side, and what can be done. Especially Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful, it's two days’ work. It's what we need on the post COVID-19 scenario.

Harish, it's going to be an absolute pleasure to see you this year at SEWF Digital. I'd like to thank you for your insights, your time and your long dedication to helping eradicate poverty and helping grow the social enterprise movement.