The stories of a village boy studying under the streetlight to a highflier with his own fleet of cars are overdone; however, none of them returned to the same village from where they once started. Khan did
As a child, Mehmood Khan, the son of a farmer in Nai Nangla, would trudge a few kilometers everyday to get to school. When it rained, he would fold his clothes in a neat bundle and wade through the water carrying the school uniform on his head just to make sure it did not get wet.
Taking off
Khan: Instead of we giving a formula of what needs to be done, in spring of 2005 we did a stakeholder meeting. We invited villagers and divided them into syndicate groups. We followed a process like we do in Unilever or any other company – of filtering issues coming from the people. But people had their doubts about how illiterate people can do this? How can they articulate sensibly what their problems are? But in two days, we got a large output with four big issues at the helm – education, unemployment, health and hygiene, and water! Next we did action planning – about who will do what. And surprise surprise! The people took upon themselves nearly 80percent of the action!
If You Can’t Get Through It, Get Around It
Khan: There are some things that are simply unacceptable: for instance, you can't have a ratio of 1:100 for teachers and students. I took upon myself all such things. So for the appointment of teachers specifically, I leveraged my IIM networks and approached the education secretary of Haryana who happens to be an IIM grad. He empowered the local sarpanch and the deputy commissioner so that they can appoint teachers in cases where the teacher-student ratio is so badly skewed. This was an inherently new model wherein they didn't have to go to Chandigarh for every approval. So if there were 40 or more students, the sarpanch could appoint a local teacher. If the appointed teachers didn't perform well in six months, they would be sacked. So in the last two years, they have appointed 4000-5000 teachers in Mewat! In contrast, the whole of Haryana had merely 15,000 appointments.
Ushering change through women
Khan: Women are change agents. We have to make them responsible so that they can charge of their lives and their families. In Mewat the average fertility is eight children per woman. In fact, one woman in Mewat has the record for the highest number of children in India – 23 children! My point is that women, in general, make better entrepreneurs and responsible citizens. If you educate a woman, you educate the family.
Impressing the Academia
The experiment in Mewat has started to spark off interest amongst academic researchers worldwide. Dr Pierangela Morlacchi, a lecturer in Science and Technology Policy Research at UK's Sussex University, is following this as an action research project. Prof Shai Vyakarnam, Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Cambridge University's Judge Business School is writing a white paper for the World Economic Forum and he has taken this project as an example. Louise Koch, an anthropologist, has started working on a project for Copenhagen Business School on the collaboration and co-creation aspects of this initiative. Channel 4's James Johnson and Rajesh Vyakarnam have made a documentary film on this, titled 'The Challenge and the Hope'.
The Hurdles
Getting this project off the ground was far from easy. Apart from the usual suspects- local politics and failed promises, the group had to deal with a social disconnect as well
Local politics:
"While democracy is working in India, there are too many goons in Mewat who have a vested interest in the region. They and push their limited agenda and try to disrupt larger community cause."
Disconnect between promises and reality:
"There is a gap between what the Central Government says and what the ground realities really are. For instance, we are still struggling to get a broadband connection to the village despite the government promising to get it for us."
Finding people committed to the cause:
"It isn't easy to find people willing to be part of this project to undertake development work in backward places like Mewat."
Winning people's trust:
"People in such areas are used to hear false promises from government agencies. We had to deliver results to be credible."