Prologue
Realising that the basic tenets of ethicality were built on the fundamentals of transparency and accountability gives me a breezy sense of euphoria as I stand in the dunes of sifting times, dissolving timelines and disappearing physical boundaries. The euphoria that the world is unwittingly moving to a state of ethical society, when the individual greed and ambition is pushing people to the extremes of unethical behaviour is chilling on one side and exhilarating on the other - albeit simultaneously. Whether it is time for people to dump the concepts of ethics and morals in recycle bin and move on unabashedly to pursue their personal goals or to introspect and move around, the signals that the society beams today tell very clearly that time has come for ethical conduct and behaviour, ethical leadership, ethical businesses and ethical strategies. It may not be fashionable as yet, to claim one is ethical and/or moral, but it surely is an in-thing for the youth of the country to claim that a time has come when one can fearlessly practice the same using digital platforms and connected networks of yore.
Realising that the basic tenets of ethicality were built on the fundamentals of transparency and accountability gives me a breezy sense of euphoria as I stand in the dunes of sifting times, dissolving timelines and disappearing physical boundaries. The euphoria that the world is unwittingly moving to a state of ethical society, when the individual greed and ambition is pushing people to the extremes of unethical behaviour is chilling on one side and exhilarating on the other - albeit simultaneously. Whether it is time for people to dump the concepts of ethics and morals in recycle bin and move on unabashedly to pursue their personal goals or to introspect and move around, the signals that the society beams today tell very clearly that time has come for ethical conduct and behaviour, ethical leadership, ethical businesses and ethical strategies. It may not be fashionable as yet, to claim one is ethical and/or moral, but it surely is an in-thing for the youth of the country to claim that a time has come when one can fearlessly practice the same using digital platforms and connected networks of yore.
Move
towards ethical businesses – a social change driven by technology*
India is a conflicting story when it comes
to ethical business conduct; on one side, it grew over traditional family
businesses which devoted their earnings for charity and society’s welfare,
subsequently moving to a voluntary and in the recent times to mandatory
spending on CSR; while on the other side, government as well as corporate
sector increasingly pulled itself into corruption and malpractices.
The emergence of voluntary sector in the
80s was a direct fall-out of the increasing failure of government and corporate
sector from being ethical and responsible entities to deliver their services,
where intervention in education, health, poverty alleviation, supporting the
marginalised sections of the society became their key agenda. Addressing the issues of being
ethical ; committed to a cause and addressing the inequalities, today the NGO sector has become part of the development value chain.
The processes of globalisation led to emergence
of technology driven businesses, especially IT, which, together with the
privatisation of education sector brought a revolution in middle class’
economic mobility and increased connectivity between rural and urban India.
The emergence of information technology brought in revolution in connecting people and offering access
to service delivery in the country. The
promise of IT as a key medium for delivery of Government to citizen (G2C) services led to the emergence
of e-Governance models. The e-governance models led to creation and service of
business delivery models, which, by design, secure people from the clutches of
corruption and servicing of service delivery channels where not necessary, with
almost 1/6th of the villages of this country getting covered.
The IT driven social change – through
G2C; and through a converged social media based networked
information channels – is now catalysing not just social and economic
development issues, but political development of the country too, as
demonstrated by the emergence of Anna Hazare Movement and its political off-shoot
– the AAP in the last few months - to address the increasing need of people for
ethical and responsive forms of civil organisations. This I find the most
potent of all the movements that this 21st century is becoming
mother of, and would change the face of Indian society in the coming periods.
An incomplete timeline of development initiatives - and its relevance to the world
1900-1915s - the early years of the 20th century witnessed the advent of cooperatives in our country, through state intervention and the enactment of the first law on cooperatives. The British India paved way for the establishment of cooperatives as a collective action and organizing them as social organizations with a business intent.
1915-1950s - the famines and collective action to address hunger witnessed the emergence of grain banks in various states of the country, notable among them Maharashtra and Deccan, where people came together to pool food grains and share them across the communities, in different ways and manners that they deemed fit in those circumstances. Formalizing the operations of these collectives lead to some of the note worthy cooperatives such as Paisa Fund Bank in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra and Paddy Grain Banks in Deccan and other parts of the country, which alter transformed as Cooperative Rural Banks.
1950s - 1980s - The independent India witnessed the emergence of primary agricultural coopeatives in various formats and frameworks, basically to meet the rural agricultural credit needs, and some cases, to integrate the agricultural credit with marketing of farm produce. This period also witnessed the cooperatives becoming state subject and laws being framed to govern them by various states, besides the central government re-shaping the central law to address the cooperqative businesses spanning more than one state.
This period also witnessed the emergence of International Cooperative Alliance and several countries, including India recognising the core principles of cooperation as the basis for promoting cooperative movement. 1964, the ICA formally comes into existence and commence its operations to promote cooperative organizations.
The later part of this period also witnessed the proliferation of cooperative businesses in almost every domain of society and business, with varying levels of success, in our country.
1980s - 2000s - this period witnessed the decline of cooperatives - aptly described by Dr. V Kurien as the era of politicisation, beaurocratisation and commercialization of cooperatives, through blatant flouting of cooperative principles, and laws to suit the political and beaurocracy's requirements as well as movements that resisted such abuse. the last decade of the 20th century saw a silent revolution, where new formats of cooperatives emerged under new forms of cooperative laws, supportive business laws on one side and market changes under globalization bringing new sets of challenges in terms of competitive sphere of business. It is also noteworthy to mention here that the period also witnessed the emergence of women's thrift and credit movement under self-help groups, silently paving way for emergence of micro-finance institutions - supporting new age cooperatives as micro-organizations of collective action and enterprise in rural India.
2000 - 2010s - the new found discovery of a term called inclusive growth and a focused term called financial inclusion, where the micro-finance institutions, banks and technology firms coming together to develop new platforms for inclusive growth on one side and developing new business formats for collective as well as individual action in entrepreneurial direction. A notable development that has commenced was in shaping up a concept of developing and supporting rural service delivery institutions that are business centric, service delivery oriented and focused towards financial sustainability, by multiple stakeholders of the country and attempting to find meaningful solutions towards these objectives.
Advent of Digital formats of business and service delivery concept
the mid 2000s - especially during 2008-09, the concept of common service centres had taken shape and it was promoted through public-private partnership mode by the government of India, in various states, to offer a model of electronic governance for the citizens of the country. Initially, these CSCs are to act as the last mile delivery channels of government services, taking them beyond the district revenue offices, Taluk offices and even the informal village level functionary, called Village Assistant or Gram Patwari or Village Karanam and/or other such nomenclatures prevalent in different parts of the country, and use the internet connected computer centre to offer the most basic services of a revenue department unit in a village. These CSCs were designed and established by training a village level entrepreneur, with some aptitude and training in operating a computer and accessing internet is willing to run the center and eke out a living from the service charges paid by the users of the village.
The last four years have seen evolution of such CSCs and have become popular and highly patronised business enterprises at a village level, leading them to become full-fledged IT centred service delivery units, prompting Government of India, Reserve Bank of India, IT firms and both nationalised as well as private banks to start thinking of co-opting them as banking agents at village level. Besides the potential they have with regard to operating as banking agents, these CSCs have already started working as agents for various commercial businesses, as their last mile delivery agents or in other words, as rural retailing points for hitherto rural marketing firms.
Examination of Digital Enterprise as an alternative for Development Delivery Organisation
In this blog and the few forthcoming ones, an attempt will be made to argue that the 21st century looks forward to convergence of development theories, to roll-out the services through integration of last mile delivery institutions of social change.
For this purpose, few arguments will be made, with limited conceptual framework, one that analyses the rural credit and marketing delivery system, another that analyses the banking delivery system and the third that deals with e-governance and G2C as retailing of citizen services. Only when these three are understood from the development point of view, it will become appropriate to place the zig-saw puzzle of addressing sustainability in various contexts and relating it to social theories of change.
An incomplete timeline of development initiatives - and its relevance to the world
1900-1915s - the early years of the 20th century witnessed the advent of cooperatives in our country, through state intervention and the enactment of the first law on cooperatives. The British India paved way for the establishment of cooperatives as a collective action and organizing them as social organizations with a business intent.
1915-1950s - the famines and collective action to address hunger witnessed the emergence of grain banks in various states of the country, notable among them Maharashtra and Deccan, where people came together to pool food grains and share them across the communities, in different ways and manners that they deemed fit in those circumstances. Formalizing the operations of these collectives lead to some of the note worthy cooperatives such as Paisa Fund Bank in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra and Paddy Grain Banks in Deccan and other parts of the country, which alter transformed as Cooperative Rural Banks.
1950s - 1980s - The independent India witnessed the emergence of primary agricultural coopeatives in various formats and frameworks, basically to meet the rural agricultural credit needs, and some cases, to integrate the agricultural credit with marketing of farm produce. This period also witnessed the cooperatives becoming state subject and laws being framed to govern them by various states, besides the central government re-shaping the central law to address the cooperqative businesses spanning more than one state.
This period also witnessed the emergence of International Cooperative Alliance and several countries, including India recognising the core principles of cooperation as the basis for promoting cooperative movement. 1964, the ICA formally comes into existence and commence its operations to promote cooperative organizations.
The later part of this period also witnessed the proliferation of cooperative businesses in almost every domain of society and business, with varying levels of success, in our country.
1980s - 2000s - this period witnessed the decline of cooperatives - aptly described by Dr. V Kurien as the era of politicisation, beaurocratisation and commercialization of cooperatives, through blatant flouting of cooperative principles, and laws to suit the political and beaurocracy's requirements as well as movements that resisted such abuse. the last decade of the 20th century saw a silent revolution, where new formats of cooperatives emerged under new forms of cooperative laws, supportive business laws on one side and market changes under globalization bringing new sets of challenges in terms of competitive sphere of business. It is also noteworthy to mention here that the period also witnessed the emergence of women's thrift and credit movement under self-help groups, silently paving way for emergence of micro-finance institutions - supporting new age cooperatives as micro-organizations of collective action and enterprise in rural India.
2000 - 2010s - the new found discovery of a term called inclusive growth and a focused term called financial inclusion, where the micro-finance institutions, banks and technology firms coming together to develop new platforms for inclusive growth on one side and developing new business formats for collective as well as individual action in entrepreneurial direction. A notable development that has commenced was in shaping up a concept of developing and supporting rural service delivery institutions that are business centric, service delivery oriented and focused towards financial sustainability, by multiple stakeholders of the country and attempting to find meaningful solutions towards these objectives.
Advent of Digital formats of business and service delivery concept
the mid 2000s - especially during 2008-09, the concept of common service centres had taken shape and it was promoted through public-private partnership mode by the government of India, in various states, to offer a model of electronic governance for the citizens of the country. Initially, these CSCs are to act as the last mile delivery channels of government services, taking them beyond the district revenue offices, Taluk offices and even the informal village level functionary, called Village Assistant or Gram Patwari or Village Karanam and/or other such nomenclatures prevalent in different parts of the country, and use the internet connected computer centre to offer the most basic services of a revenue department unit in a village. These CSCs were designed and established by training a village level entrepreneur, with some aptitude and training in operating a computer and accessing internet is willing to run the center and eke out a living from the service charges paid by the users of the village.
The last four years have seen evolution of such CSCs and have become popular and highly patronised business enterprises at a village level, leading them to become full-fledged IT centred service delivery units, prompting Government of India, Reserve Bank of India, IT firms and both nationalised as well as private banks to start thinking of co-opting them as banking agents at village level. Besides the potential they have with regard to operating as banking agents, these CSCs have already started working as agents for various commercial businesses, as their last mile delivery agents or in other words, as rural retailing points for hitherto rural marketing firms.
Examination of Digital Enterprise as an alternative for Development Delivery Organisation
In this blog and the few forthcoming ones, an attempt will be made to argue that the 21st century looks forward to convergence of development theories, to roll-out the services through integration of last mile delivery institutions of social change.
For this purpose, few arguments will be made, with limited conceptual framework, one that analyses the rural credit and marketing delivery system, another that analyses the banking delivery system and the third that deals with e-governance and G2C as retailing of citizen services. Only when these three are understood from the development point of view, it will become appropriate to place the zig-saw puzzle of addressing sustainability in various contexts and relating it to social theories of change.
(*views originally shared in a cryptic and brief manner in a workshop titled "Creative Social Theorizing", held at Indus Business Academy, Bangalore on 26 Dec, 2013)
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