Are you M A D ?

Give a hungry man a fish to eat & you feed him for a day, But teach a man how to fish & you feed him throughout his life.

Each one of us is a philanthropist at heart & we all have contributed in big and small ways to help our fellow citizens. I would like to ask you this question – Have you fed them for a day or have you fed them for life? 

Are you Making A Difference?

Let’s go back to December 2014 & transport ourselves 532 kms from Pune to a small town called Digras in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra. Here we meet Sunita Jadhav who lives with her husband Balu and 2 school going children. Balu is a daily labourer & works very hard 12 hours a day & 7 days a week to make ends meet for his family, but life is a constant struggle. Sunita is smart & ambitious and she also has tailoring skills learnt at her parent’s house. But she cannot utilize her skills in this small town without setting up her own business. She cannot take a loan from the local banks or credit societies as she is not creditworthy enough for them. The local moneylender would happily provide her with the required loan against collateral of her jewelry and at a very reasonable interest rate of only 10% - per month. So what can she do now?

Cut back to present date & we find that Sunita has been running a small tailoring business for the last 14 months. She has been contributing Rs. 3000/- every month to the household which now is nearly 40% of the monthly inflow. Instead of using firewood, she now uses a LPG cylinder for cooking & plans to construct a toilet outside the house. She now has a bank account & also saves around 400 rupees every month, which she plans to increase every year. She is now more confident due to her new-found success and also meets other women in her town to encourage them to use their skills to set up a business too. Do you agree with me that this is excellent example of Making A Difference?

You might now be wondering about what caused this transformation? Sunita had connected with a local NGO & was provided a collateral free loan thru a non-profit platform called Rang De. She bought a sewing machine & required raw materials for her tailoring business and started making children & women clothing which she sold at a decent profit to people in the locality. She repaid the loan in 12 easy installments at an interest rate of 10% per annum & now plans to buy another pico machine which will further enhance her business.

Rang De is a crowd-funding platform which helps philanthropists like us to connect with beneficiaries like Sunita. We can channelize a small portion of our overall investment portfolio into Rang De as social investments & this amount is then used to provide loans to rural poor to set up small businesses. The amount repaid back by the beneficiary can then be reinvested or withdrawn back by the investor. In this way we can utilize some of our investment portfolio to improve the lives of multiple people thereby Making A Difference.

Rang De has complete transparency in their transactions, follow 6 Sigma processes and is supported by grants from organisations like ICICI Foundation, World Bank & Tata Trusts. They have been in operation for the past 8 years, disbursed loans worth Rupees 46 crores & have directly impacted 50,000+ families. Again would you agree with me that this is an affirmation of the principle of Making A Difference.

I have personally been an investor in Rang De for the past 3 years & have invested over 1.74 lacs till date thereby directly impacting 286 families. It gives me tremendous sense of satisfaction and therefore I would like to make a sincere appeal to each one of you to consider Social Investing thru Rang De thereby help in Making A Difference.

What I learnt from my Dad

Suresh Hiraskar (1938 - 2007)

August 16th is a date which has a lot of significance in my own life. It is on this day 5 years back that my father passed away. He was to go for a small surgery in a local hospital, but that morning he passed away at home in Pune. He hated hospitals & was obviously not keen to go there and I guess he found a way to do so without causing any bother to his family. I was living in Bangalore then & had spoken to him the previous night where he was insistent that I should not come down for such a small issue which became a cause of guilt for me for a long time thereafter. When my brother conveyed this sad news to me on the phone, something just froze up inside & for many days I did not shed a single tear in public leaving my anguish bottled up inside. It took a long time to come to peace with the fact that he was no longer amongst us. Even though it was a heart-wrenching period for everyone in the family but we still thank God that he had a ‘peaceful’ exit from this world.

Read somewhere about the relationship most of us have with our fathers at various stages in our lives;

• When we are 5 years old our Dad is a superhero & capable of doing everything, 
• At the age of 10 we start seeing some of his shortcomings as we land up comparing him to other fathers, 
• By15 he is an individual who has no clue about the world we live in & therefore his advice is out-dated, 
• 20 years & we wonder how our mother tolerated his pugnacious ways all these years
• 25 years yields a realization that the world is not as simple as we assumed it to be & in some ways he was right in what he told us
• At 35 we start wondering how he managed to juggle all of these responsibilities with the limited resources available with him & yet managed to provide us with a great life
• After the age of 40 we start understanding the depth of his knowledge & experience and try to take his inputs where feasible
• For most of us by the age of 50 we are in a situation where we crave for his presence, but he is not around any more.

I have been very lucky that the there was little reason to experience the lows of our relationship. This was more due to my Dad's various unique strengths. This article is dedicated to him & all that I learnt from him. My daily meditation is completed with a prayer of gratitude. The first item in that prayer is gratitude to my Dad and Mom for all the efforts they have taken to provide a great life to us & for the values and inputs which make me what I am today.

Sense of humour

He had an excellent sense of humour and was popular amongst friends as well as the family. Even though he was quiet as a person, he had the knack of making light of a tough situation. His face would break into a smile which was infectious & seldom failed to reflect in everyone around him. He was the central figure in family get-togethers & would participate in all fun activities. On this front I had a lot to learn from him as I would always don a ‘dead-pan’ or ‘poker face’ expression. As the years have passed now, I would have only come to the half-way mark as compared to him. Would leave it to others who know me to now to validate this aspect.

Supportive approach

He gave us the freedom to tread our own path & gave relevant inputs when we would go to him. This applied to his sons as well as my mother who was encouraged to finish her studies as well as join him in his travel agency business as a partner. He would not interfere in our decisions & was always supportive even when I made some radical choices in terms of my studies & career. In the later years we would spend time together albeit occasionally (as I lived in different parts of the country) and I would take his advice on various matters. His approach was never prescriptive, but he would provide his perspective which would guide my own decisions. As a parent I still struggle to implement these things which came so naturally to him. Being a friend & guide to my own sons is the learning derived from him.

Willing to do new things

It was amazing to see the variety of things that my father has done in his lifetime. After some 10 years of working as an employee in 4 different fields, he sequentially started 8 different businesses in completely unrelated areas. If something did not work, he was willing to let it go and move on to something else. He learnt everything about computers on his own & landed up starting a business in computer sales, repair & training too. So in a way new challenges excited him & I have imbibed the same quality which is reflected in the myriad roles & industries on my own resume. In some sense my interest in supporting start-ups is also derived from his own approach to entrepreneurship.

Helping others

If I could count the number of people who were helped by my father, it would form a very long list. Most of the people who were employed by him went on to grow in their respective careers & gained by the time spent working with him. Countless friends & business associates would have been successful due to his support & inputs. He was very honest himself & therefore would not easily identify tricksters who also benefitted from his largesse. For him the biggest wealth was in the good wishes of people around him & he would not bother too much about these smaller leaks in his finances. His large natured attitude meant that everyone was always welcome to his house & that ensured that our house was the common meeting point for all family members. Again I have a long way to go on this front, but definitely do my own little bit by providing inputs & advice to others. His experiences have definitely made me wiser is separating the wheat from the chaff.

Make the best of what you have

This was not a fatalistic attitude towards life, but a pragmatic one where he would focus on what best could be done with whatever he had. He had many ups & downs in his life, but he never let these situations pull him down. At most get-togethers we would clamour for him to sing his favourite song ‘Que sea sera’ made famous by Doris Day & featured in the Alfred Hitchcock film ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ (1956). In a way that song was a reflection of his perspective towards life & his willingness to focus on what he had, rather than think about what he did not have. This aspect about him made an indelible impression on me & the things which I have achieved in my life & career can be ascribed to these inputs.

Signing off this article with some lyrics of the song which still resonate in my mind;

"Que sera, sera,

Whatever will be, will be;

The future's not ours to see.

Que sera, sera,

What will be, will be."