A Company’s Main Objective is to Make a Profit

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

-George Bernard Shaw

I thought of this as I paid the room service guy under the table for the beers I was illegally ordering in Chennai, India during elections. Admittedly, I was also wearing shorts, something I would never wear in public. All cultural norms therefore broken, I found solace in this quote. Ironically, the more I travel, the less I believe in culture. What is culture other than some way of doing things a long time ago for some reason (usually now unknown) that is no longer applicable?

Three years ago I was walking through the streets of Thiruvananthapuram (seriously, that’s what it’s called) in the southern Indian state of Kerala when I found myself walking behind two women – one was a Muslim in a Burqa and the other was a Catholic nun. Do you know how you tell the difference between a woman in a burqa and a woman in a nun habit from behind? You don’t. Because they are both wearing the exact same outfit – an outfit that was designed to fend off high winds in a hot, sandy desert 2000 years ago.

I bring this up is not to say that wearing flowing robes in a humid jungle climate is incorrect, but because culture goes beyond country and religion and permeates organizations too – making change difficult. I have spent the last 2 months of my life trying to teach my NGO client one thing:

1. A company’s main objective is to make a profit.

Surely feels somewhat remedial for some of my MBA friends. But what if you had worked for an NGO your entire life? Your thoughts might go something like this:

“Companies want to exploit the poor.”

“Companies don’t care about CSR or doing good.”

“Companies think our money is never-ending and that they can just use us for free.”

I’ve also met with 10-15 Indian, Bangladeshi, and multi-national corporations while being abroad. Here is their side of the story:

“NGOs don’t realize that we have to make money.”

“We are interested in working with the poor, but we can’t do it for free.”

“NGO's think our money is never-ending and that we can just give them money with no strings attached.”

Did I mention my job is to get NGOs and companies to work together? This was clearly not going well… The next two rules I tried to impart were these:

2. An NGOs main objective is to create a social good.

3. An inclusive business model is when 1 & 2 occur at the same time.

The good thing about a company is that they believe in capitalism, which has proven to be one of the more adaptive religions of our time. So when we met businesses and discussed offering (profitable) pro-poor products and paying NGOs for their services in making these pro-poor products successful, companies were pretty much like, "where do we sign up"?

NGOs were a little slower coming to the table. First we had to remind ourselves that NGOs are not very good at a few things: Making soap and oral rehydration salts, providing banking services and disability insurance, creating industries and long-term employment, buying farming outputs and selling them on the free market, or providing new mobile health technologies. Once that was established, we started to see that companies could be kind of helpful. Now if only they weren’t such dicks…

So, this is why I get paid 50% of my salary to live in India. We decided that if we could make it profitable for companies to leverage what they are good at (employment, innovation, goods, and services) and ensure that their business models provide a social good for the poor (without being exploitative), then perhaps companies could be incentivized to create more inclusive business models that start to include those at the base of the pyramid, who have historically been left out.

Tigers and Lepers

So, I had a weird weekend, even considering that I was in a tiger village in the middle of India. Sunday morning I got woken up by a Hindu procession playing loud music outside my window at 6am and then I got racially profiled by some cops who tried to make me pay a “tourist” fee because they claimed I had lost my passport (which I hadn’t). I had a hotel room that lost power so frequently that I kind of gave up on having light or hot water. Just me and my industrial-strength bug spray. Which I had trouble finding in the dark, but whatever. At one point my host brought me to a leper colony. Not even kidding. I visited 2 events where I was asked to give speeches in front of hundreds of people, 10 events where I got flowers, and 3 homes where I was chastised for not eating enough and got to demonstrate my right-handed eating skills on the floor. I also took a picture with more or less every human I came into contact with.

In one town, I tried to use the bathroom in a villager’s house and was surprised to find that the concrete little room they brought me into had no hole in the ground – only one on the side wall. It turned out that this was only a “#1” toilet and to do “#2” you had to go to the next village over (or a nearby field). I determined all of this through charades as I don’t speak Marwari and the woman helping me didn’t speak English.

In one of the villages that I visited the women were wearing the best outfits – the massive gold nose rings were my favorite – and some of the most brightly colored, beautiful saris. As there were 20 of them in front of me, the color was almost overpowering. I was looking a little dull with my gray pants, gray shirt, and navy blue hat so they made me put a flower in my hat to liven me up a bit.

I was in the countryside to observe my NGOs field operations to get a better idea of how things run so that I can better design processes and business plans. After my time in the Peace Corps, I was not a big fan of NGOs because they tended to start unsustainable programs, provided handouts that created paternalism, and were just checking boxes on development tasks rather than promoting real impact. My current client has more or less renewed my faith in the work that they do. They have certainly moved, in many ways, towards creating programs that are more sustainable and the global push is definitely towards bringing in the private sector to make the things even more sustainable (which is what my work is).

There are still a number of handouts, but that is true of any government project – and in many aspects NGOs are just filling a vacuum left by government. They are building roads and schools, providing access to clean water, and educating children. Some of my Indian friends have argued that this allows the government to ignore the problems and get off scot-free, which is true. But the NGO is also lobbying the local governments and getting them involved in many projects, which certainly adds to the sustainability.

Additionally, I don’t know that it is so bad for NGOs to be filling the government vacuum (and do we really think if NGOs didn’t, the government would step in?) After all, NGOs are sort of like their own de-fact government with a global taxation system. Whereas normal government programs are funded by a redistribution of wealth (taxes) among people in the same country, NGOs are funded by a redistribution of wealth (donations) among people in different countries (we, as Americans, supply the vast majority). If that’s where the money is and governments don’t mind giving up some influence, perhaps it isn’t so bad…

For those of you interested in rural health programs in developing countries, I also had a chance to learn about a really interesting project where a U.S. software company created an application for cell phones that allows government health workers to track health data on mothers and children and provide them healthcare advice. It’s a really amazing application that helps government workers do everything from tell a woman when her due date is, to track a child’s weight, to provide detailed health care advice. I spoke to some healthcare workers about it and they loved it. The start-up costs for development of the app were funded by USAID and my NGO created the health training content. Now that start-up costs have been overcome and value proven, the Government of India is interested in scaling it to other parts of the country, and paying for it. These are the kind of programs that make you think that maybe this whole thing could work…

Bye Bye Bangladesh

So my last day in Bangladesh came last week and, oddly, I was kind of excited to go back to India. I had a great time in Bangladesh. I loved the shopping (great clothes and artisan stuff), and the sites (the countryside was beautiful), and the people I met (Bangladeshi’s were fabulously nice and accommodating). Also, not going to lie, it was kind of fun having drinking be illegal again so that I could justify going to the Westin and American Club with my credit card to by beers. Plus, it forced everyone who wanted to drink into one of like 3 locations, guaranteeing a big party (welcome to the law of unintended consequences, Bangladeshi Government).

But I kind of missed the vegetarian food in India and I definitely felt like I was lacking freedom in Bangladesh…

There is a lot of meat in Bangladesh and, as I will continue to note, I lose my meat appetite when I see cows, chickens, and goats eating garbage. I have eaten ants and I abide by a 20 rather than 5-second rule (10 on dirt floors) so I think otherwise I’m pretty accommodating…

As for the freedom, people tended to tell me what I could and couldn’t do a lot. Sometimes I wonder if it was the language barrier because people scream more loudly so that I can “understand” them. Or, maybe I just look like a moron. At my hotel, when I had an American friend come to visit, they informed me he couldn’t stay in my 2-bedroom hotel room until I convinced the staff that he was my husband. Why my moral standing is anyone’s business is beyond me…

I was also told when I got there that I was “not allowed to go outside alone” which seemed a bit severe. Yes, there are few women on the streets but there are about 2,000 men on every street corner. And I’m bigger than most of them. (Did you know Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities in the world and, according to National Geographic, it is “mathematically impossible to be alone”?). Despite the warnings, I didn’t actually feel unsafe. Although that means nothing because I’ve never felt unsafe doing anything which is probably part of the reason that I am in my current position…but anyway, I understand that there is a higher than average concern about muggings here. There are signs of increased security that you don’t see in India – all of the hotels and apartments we stay in have gates so that our drivers can safely drop us without anyone on the street having access to us, the “tuk tuks” have metal grating on the side which I think is to avoid people grabbing in to rob you. So, while I wasn’t robbed, I was stared at a LOT. However, as no one said anything, it wasn’t too bad. Luckily, thanks to my time in Peru, the men have set the bar exceedingly low for what I think is rude street behavior.

The other thing that is somewhat striking about the streets of Bangladesh is some of the poverty. I’m sure I haven’t even seen the worst of it but there are a number of images that stick in your mind…The shantytown along the river road that my driver takes to work where I see moms giving their kids the morning bath. In the river. The make-shift tarps strung up for the “sidewalk dwellers” and the women sitting on the sidewalk cooking their lunch with a stove. After all, this is home. The boy in a wheelchair that sits outside our office and begs. The man with the gouged out eye covered in tape who tapped on my window to beg… I think you have to grow a pretty thick skin to deal with it.

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