Geek Heresy (32 page)

Abdul Mannan Choudhury is the senior Pradan staff member for Lonjo. He says that when Pradan first began working there, Diggi was a quiet new mother who knew little about modern farming, finance, or politics. She was like many other Indian villagers – born in remote rural areas, raised with little formal education, used to a life of hard agricultural labor, married off young, ignorant of life outside the village, deferential to authority, and discouraged from having thoughts of their own.

But the person Diggi had become was nothing like that. She and her fellow self-help group members not only knew the intricacies of the new rice-planting techniques, but also took out loans from banks and were active in the local
panchayat
village administration. One woman in the group confessed that she had at first felt intimidated by bank employees, but was now able to deal with them. Diggi told us how she and the other women gradually inserted themselves into village politics. Today, over half of the participants in village meetings are women. The women also meet routinely with government officials. Diggi volunteered that she was proud of her work, but that all of it was ultimately for her children and for her village. She wanted to assure the next generation a solid education.

Those of us on that trip were ostensibly there to see Digital Green’s video production process. We were also curious about the agricultural techniques recommended by Pradan. In other words, we were there to see the geeky packaged interventions. But as we interacted with the women in the self-help groups, it became clear that
they
were the real story. Diggi mesmerized us with her intelligence and charisma.
Choudhury mentioned that over the years, he had witnessed her “enhance her skill of interaction and presentation in the community, and increased her confidence by manifold.”

So, how did Diggi become the person that she is? It wasn’t the rice-planting techniques she learned in Digital Green videos, at least not in themselves. It wasn’t the loans she took out with her self-help group. It wasn’t the votes she logged at her local village meetings. Something much more than behavior change enabled by technologies, coerced through laws, manipulated via incentives, or exchanged in a marketplace was at play. Pradan’s unique engagement with Diggi and her self-help group had catalyzed an intrinsic transformation that was not unlike El Sistema’s transformation of musical novices into orchestras. What changed everything for Diggi was Pradan’s
mentorship
.
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The Model of Mentorship

In mentorship, one party helps another gain the capacity to achieve the latter’s aspirations, and both attain greater intrinsic growth. Mentors and mentees can be individuals, groups, or whole nations. Over a span of thirty years, Pradan has developed a set of tactics for how it engages with villages. By going through them, we can understand the elements of good mentorship. I use Pradan as an example because I happen to know it well, and because it is remarkably good at what it does. But there are many other organizations, often unsung and underfunded, whose primary model is mentorship, whether they call it that or not. Shining a light on the components of good mentorship will make organizations engaged in it more visible and help other organizations become more effective.

Building Relationships with the Mentee in the Driver’s Seat

After Pradan identifies a community to work with, a staff member spends a few days there each month for several months to establish rapport with residents. Choudhury’s predecessor in Lonjo was the first one
to work with the village. He began by seeking out residents to speak with, helping them with chores, and otherwise spending time with them. A relationship based on trust is essential to good mentoring, but good relationships may take a while to establish.

Mentorship also explicitly acknowledges any status difference between the parties. In the case of Pradan and the villages it engages, this happens naturally. The disparities are impossible to hide. Pradan sends its people where they know they can help. When staff members arrived in Lonjo, they met villagers who were poor, passive, and poorly educated. In contrast, Pradan employees are typically university graduates who speak both Hindi and English. They ride in on motorcycles that most villagers can’t afford, and they have a young, urban bearing that many villagers will only have seen on television. Acknowledging the disparity in status is the basis for vigilance against abuse and exploitation.
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Anirban Ghose, Pradan’s program director and former executive director, says, “Mentee communities are vulnerable, and it is our job to engage with a spirit of ‘trusteeship.’”

If the relationship is weak, or if the village is uninterested in what Pradan has to offer, the relationship ends. Potential mentees have the right to decline mentorship. Unlike with the imposition of law or projects run without community consultation, both sides must freely choose to be in a genuine mentoring relationship. Conversely, mentors may avoid activities that they don’t believe in or refuse to work with potential mentees who don’t seem sincere. Pradan sometimes leaves villages that don’t appreciate its intentions or its expertise. (Walking away like this is very different from a related but unfortunate practice common in international development – the coerced deal: “We will provide economic advice and $1 billion in low-interest loans, if you lower import tariffs.” Or, more generally, “We will provide X if you do Y.” That’s not mentorship; that’s extortion.)

Mentees should own the agenda and set the terms of engagement. Mentees need to stand firm about their own aspirations and avoid second-guessing their mentors. And mentors must resist the temptation to impose their worldview onto mentees. Developing these attitudes can itself take effort, and it’s part of the work.

With the mentee in charge of the agenda, though, mentors must be ready for surprises. I once heard a story from A. V. M. Sahni, a retired Indian Air Force lieutenant who worked with the nonprofit Development Alternatives. He was a proponent of check dams – small dams that slow the flow of rivers and allow adjacent fields more time to absorb water. Check dams turn cracked dirt into moist, loamy soil even in the dry season. After Sahni coached a few communities in and around the central Indian city of Jhansi in how to build check dams, residents found they could easily grow two crops per year, whereas earlier they were limited to one. Overnight, they doubled their annual incomes, and they were overjoyed. Sahni was more ambitious, though. He felt they could get three crops in. It would only take a slight adjustment in their planting schedules. As he suggested the change, however, the farmers rebelled: “Who is this old man, who has nothing better to do than to walk from village to village trying to make us do more work?” Sahni told me this story with a smile, and said, “You know, there’s no point pushing people beyond what they want for themselves.”

Waking Aspirations

Once a relationship has been established, Pradan recommends that the village form self-help groups that meet regularly. Diggi joined one of two that were formed in Lonjo in 2002. Pradan’s work here is extensive, as Choudhury explained:

In the very beginning, there was a concept-seeding meeting. That was followed by an exposure visit to some of the female and male members of an existing SHG [self-help group] promoted by Pradan in the neighboring village of Edalbera, who oriented them about the nitty-gritty of SHGs. There was interaction with existing SHG members who discussed an SHG’s operational principles, its by-laws, and its benefits for a member. After the exposure visit, another meeting was conducted to hear if village residents were interested in membership. In the subsequent meeting, an SHG was formed.

Pradan’s gentle yet persistent facilitation results in a vibrant esprit de corps within the self-help groups. Today there are thirteen self-help groups in Lonjo and more than 22,000 across India.
⁸

Once formed, an SHG’s first task is to articulate its aspirations. But in communities used to the losing side of justice, aspirations might need to be awakened. “The greatest challenge in our work is not corrupt bureaucrats, not insufficient government programs, and not internal strife within villages and families,” Ghose says, “though all of these problems exist.” The greatest challenge is overcoming the villagers’ capitulation to the status quo. They ask, “Even if God Himself were to appear here things are not going to change, so what chance do I have?” Pradan therefore provides gentle, frequent encouragement, building on whatever strengths villagers already have. Eventually communities are able to identify the fragile hopes hidden under layers of protection against disappointment.
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“We’d like to be less dependent on moneylenders.” “How can we wean our husbands off of drinking?” “We’d like to improve our rice yields so that we have more money to spend.”

This process could be called an
aspiration assessment
, in contrast to the needs assessment so many social activists are trained to perform. The intent behind the needs assessment is a good one – efforts should obviously go toward what communities actually need, not what we, as outsiders, think they need. In practice, though, it’s nearly impossible not to project needs onto others. Richer people believe that their poorer counterparts need better health care. Citizens of democracies are certain that others need political freedom. University graduates assume that everyone needs higher education. For most readers, these are without doubt essential, but for other people in other circumstances, these “needs” may come second or third to more insistent desires.

In contrast, people are deeply vested in their aspirations. One example comes from the mobile industry. Research finds that even very poor people will work hard to pay for high-cost, high-tech smartphones.
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The underlying aspiration is for status and cosmopolitan sophistication. Mentorship would help people meet the substance of the aspiration. It would help people increase their knowledge, self-confidence, earning power, or social influence. (In contrast, a technology-centric approach
would give away free cell phones.) Aspirations, more than needs, stretch heart, mind, and will.

For Pradan, the foremost question is, “What does the community
want
to do?” Though it offers suggestions, Pradan is careful not to impose too many of its own ideas.

Driving Intrinsic Growth

The point of aspirations is to drive intrinsic growth, so once aspirations are articulated, Pradan brings in technical experts. These experts teach skills, help obtain resources, and connect the SHGs to relevant institutions. According to Choudhury:

[Pradan first provided] training about how SHGs work. We walked them through savings programs and microcredit. We explained their legal rights and entitlements. Then, we discussed social evils like witchcraft, alcoholism, and domestic violence. A few select SHG members, including Diggi, were trained on legal actions open to them, gender issues, etc. They were informed about different natural resources available in their community. Land- and water-based works were conducted in partnership with the Jharkhand Tribal Development Society, who provided funds for irrigation infrastructure. Most recently, Lonjo was introduced to new rice varieties, and we worked on improved practices around rice cultivation.

Throughout, the focus is on increasing the community’s capacity. Pradan provides assistance and coaching so that the self-help groups are able to meet their aspirations on their own. People such as Diggi are direct recipients of Pradan’s tutelage.

Pradan avoids doing a village’s work itself. Instead it facilitates the process by which villagers learn to achieve the goal for themselves. Mentoring may involve demonstrations, but Pradan doesn’t implement anything on behalf of villages on an ongoing basis. If Pradan attends to Lonjo’s agricultural output, it’s primarily because it signals Lonjo’s own increased learning. The increased output means that Pradan’s mentorship
is working. Mentors provide encouragement and inspiration, even occasional pressure, but they don’t harass or dictate milestones.

Mentorship thus focuses on fostering knowledge, skills, social networks, and other forms of individual and communal wisdom. Pradan’s main gifts to a community are its staff’s time, energy, and expertise, as opposed to money, food, equipment, infrastructure, or technology. Pradan does obtain grants and donations for packaged interventions, but all such gifts are in service of the village learning something new. (Pradan’s long-term ideal is for villages to learn to secure their own funding.) Pradan’s relative disengagement from material provision has many implications, but one of them is that mentorship is relatively resistant to corruption. A million dollars of aid dropped in a government bank account easily slips through the greasy cracks of corruption, but $1 million of time from mentors is much harder to tuck into a pocket. That said, mentorship must be effective and appropriately priced. There’s no value in lining the pockets of overpaid consultants claiming to be mentors but doing little other than filing reports and securing their next project.

Focusing on mentee aspirations avoids the problems of labeling people or blaming the victim. The hierarchy of aspirations is meant primarily to map the landscape of human progress. It demonstrates that summits exist and that it’s possible, in theory, to reach them. But the map doesn’t provide specific routes, which depend on where people start their journey as well as their particular preferences and capacities. Where people are on the mountain matters less than that they climb. Knowing which way is up is all that matters, and
up
is indicated by aspiration.

In our role as mentors, we should foster the capacity for people to choose and take their own aspirational steps. We don’t have to decide the step for them. If there is an end goal to mentorship, it’s to reach a point where mentees can achieve their goals on their own. This is exactly why Pradan puts so much focus on fostering autonomy in self-help groups.
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