Can we fly?

It has been an interesting 3 days …feels more like 3 months. The project brief that I have been given is more like 3 years work. A similar project was made with dozens of people in a timeframe of one and half years for the state of Jharkhand, my project entails two states, Bihar and Bengal.
In a conversation I had with my guide yesterday morning I tried to rationalize his expectations. It was alas to little avail. When I gently told him “Sir, don’t you think this project is too big” he even more gently reminded me “well, we thought an IIM grad….” When he trailed off I could imagine the later part could have been ‘can fly’ or ‘can do miracles’ or some such like, because the impossibility of the project is self evident.

The feasibility of doing a feasibility study aside, life has been quite interesting over the last 3 days. I had my first experience of a field visit in rural India. Tagging along with 3 executives on 2 bikes we made our way to 2 tribal villages about 50 kilometers from Ranchi. We finally landed up under the cool shade of a tree with ‘chattai’ underneath facing about 20 tribal farmers. The agenda of the day was to help them form a self help group which would enable them to have some kind of bargaining power and accelerate social development. The most striking aspect was their diffidence in our presence, with a tendency to look for everything from the executives. It was a sucessful day and after some egging they decided they are going to put 10 rupees per week as savings in the SHG fund. The group was named Kisan Vikas Grameen Manch. The womenfolk sitting on the side seemed to be more vociferous especially when deciding the amount of saving with a general consensus among them that the only reason their men want to save less is to spend it on booze. The village incidently already had 3 sucessfully running women’s self help groups a surer example of womens empowerment than all the Lakme and L’oreal advertisements.

Microfinance in general has been a powerful driver in reducing global poverty, 2005 was named the year of ‘microcredit’. It involves forming intitutions among the poor which will help making lending to them viable. The next step is to design suitable financial products for them so that they are financially viable and also helpful in solving the credit gap for the borrowers. The entire focus is on productive loans and the structure is designed to be profit making so as to be sustainable in the long run. The key question is at which point of the value chain you are making your intervention, if this is not properly planned the credit intervention might not be able to break the vicious cycle which plagues most rural populace. My job will be to get atleast a basic outline of the 2 states and try and form a rudimentary plan regarding where the organisation can intervene.

It has been interesting work and the sense of satisfaction when seeing those three groups being formed in the villages and their general gratitude towards us (being current clients in credit) did dissolve a lot of my doubts regarding what I am doing here. The only hurdle now is the ambiguity surrounding my project and the lack of support I am getting considering the size of the project. I can only hope this does not go the normal MBA way…cut, copy and paste.