A conversation with Namrata Agarwal on Quest for Better Futures, the QUEST Alliance podcast.
In Episode 11 of Quest for Better Futures, Gautam John and Namrata Agarwal discuss how we can move beyond seeing young people as passive recipients of change and instead recognise them as active co-creators of solutions. How can we build a culture of active citizenship in India? How should institutions evolve to support this?
Transcript
This transcript was generated with AI-assisted transcription and may contain occasional transcription or speaker-attribution errors.
Gautam John: The idea that in particular, young people are going to be active co-creators of solutions rather than passive recipients of solutions. And how do we expand that? While our active citizenry portfolio kind of focuses on urban civic kind of things, as a fundamental principle, it’s much wider than that.
Particularly for India, because we’re still a young country. And then what is an active, engaged samaj look like in any sphere?
Namrata: All right, welcome to our podcast, Quest for Better Futures. Our today’s series is Funding for the Futures. We have a guest who needs little introduction, Gautam John, CEO of Rohini Nellikini Philanthropies.
Welcome, Gautam.
Gautam John: Thanks so much, Namrata, for having me here.
Namrata: Today’s idea is Funding the Futures. And I think before we get into the future, there’s always a lot of wisdom in how we’ve evolved. History has a lot to teach us.
So we’re going to take a look back. Both of us are maybe not that old to talk about history, but we make an attempt. What has been significant movements for you in philanthropy in the last 25 years?
Gautam John: It’s a great question. I think 25 years is a period of time we can perhaps speak to longer than that would be challenging. A couple of weeks ago, I came across this really good piece.
Was it in the Harvard Business Review? It was published in 1997. And the title was VC Virtuous Capital.
And the piece was making a case back then for why philanthropy should be more like venture capital. And perhaps it is instructive to look back over the last 25 years and see how that piece aged. I think the challenge really is in how do we measure progress.
And over the last 25 years, we’ve become more driven by metrics, more driven by linearity of outcomes, more driven by dashboards. And I’m not entirely sure that was true before that. I keep saying that in philanthropy in India has a tremendous history, whether it’s community based, whether it’s geography based, whether it was the Indian freedom struggle, which in many ways was supported by philanthropy.
And I don’t think Mahatma Gandhi had a theory of change with a linear log frame outcome. And so to that extent, I think we’ve lost some of the texture of what philanthropy means, of what philanthropy is in service of, of building deeper and more diverse relationships in service of social change that isn’t necessarily a guarantee. And the venture capitalization of it or the metricization of philanthropy, we perhaps lost some of this.
And I see where it’s come from, right? People want to see what their return on investment is, people want to see what a sense of progress looks like. But perhaps the way to root philanthropy is more in uncertainty, rather than the certainty that markets and states require.
There’s that famous book by called Seeing Like a State, right? And the role of, what is the role of state? It is to make diversity more legible so that it might govern better.
What is the role of markets? The role of markets is to bring efficiency. But that’s not necessarily what the role of society is.
And then the larger question is over 25 years, what has philanthropy evolved to be? And I think that’s an interesting inflection point for us to be at, that philanthropy has had a role in building a good society. It’s then gotten a little bit siloed into programs and projects and measurement and dashboards.
But also now I think we’re coming to realize a little bit more that philanthropy is that but can be so much more if it looks at building the connective tissue for being a good society.
Namrata: Yeah, and I think I just want to pick on what you said in terms of philanthropy following really the venture capital model. And if you see, if I was to draw a loose parallel between how the startup ecosystem in India has really flourished and what it has done, do you think this idea of innovation, risk taking, while we have gone heavily on metrics, but do you think we have as philanthropy looked at more innovation, looked at more risks coming in? Because we also hear a lot of this idea of return on investment, the idea of exits in a particular timeframe, like you said, if you ask Mahatma Gandhi, give me an exit strategy, you probably didn’t have any either.
But those are the kind of also language and vocabulary that has come in in the last 25 years. Do you have a different view on that? Or how have you seen it evolve?
Gautam John: I think the idea of an exit strategy is perhaps necessary in some way, but perhaps not as exiting a space as much as not necessarily being as relevant or necessary.
Namrata: Or maybe evolving it to a different role.
Gautam John: Exactly. The role we start with doesn’t necessarily have to be the role we continue with in perpetuity as philanthropy. But also, the challenge I have in using the language of markets is that I feel like we’ve taken some but not the most important parts, the idea of risk, the idea of experimentation, the idea of pivots, the idea of being nimble and responsive, as opposed to the log frame structure, which is I will do A, B will happen and accumulation of B will be C.
And when has the world ever responded or the universe ever responded to such certainty? The challenge, of course, is, I think, in the capital ecosystem, particularly the for-profit capital ecosystem, that there’s a very clear return on investment, right? I mean, the company’s profitable and you exit.
We don’t have that in the development sector. And looking for that is perhaps a challenge in and of itself. So to that extent, how do we measure progress?
Because ultimately, philanthropic capital is public capital, and must be held to account, like for public good. So what does that look like? And perhaps, there’s a case to be made that unlike venture capital, where ROI is a singular metric of exits, or valuation, P ratios, that in our universe, we need to take a little bit more of a rainbow or a spectrum approach, that impact isn’t a single thing at a single point in time, but a range of things over a range of time.
And that change, my colleague, Natasha Joshi, wrote a really nice piece on what does impact beyond metrics look like. And to say that in our work, there are some things that are going to be countable, and the impact is additive. There are some things where the impact is really not so much additive, but how many people repeat.
And then there’s a question of when people repeat, do new networks and connections form? And then lastly, do all of that lead to some sort of permanent shift, either in a system or a structure or in a policy? None of these have the same timelines, right?
They all have very different timelines. So to that question, can philanthropy be accountable? It must and it should.
Does it need to be accountable in the same way markets and states are? Not necessarily. And the other question is, who’s philanthropy accountable to?
Because ultimately, our take is that philanthropy capital is otherwise public capital that would have been taxed. So it must be accountable to the public good.
Namrata: Interesting. And do you think there are lessons to learn when I was tracing back, like you said, India has a long history of philanthropy, one may call it charity at that point of time, they weren’t words like we use today. But if you look at the history of, like you said, the freedom struggle, old family houses, like Tata’s, who’ve done work around the spaces that they were, and they did it as a responsibility, because they felt like if the community thrive, they thrive, right?
It was a singular that was there. And it kind of ended up being the whole community as well. It wasn’t a siloed idea of, I will give people jobs, it was this idea of what does it take to build a whole community?
Are there lessons to be learned from there as well? And how one looks at the society around and looks at it as a whole, and not in terms of silos?
Gautam John: The answer is likely yes, but it’s a long journey there. Our take, and this is something that Rohini talks about a lot, is that Samaj and Bazaar have a lot in common. We have a lot of common goals, common good, a society built to thrive will make a more active Samaj, will also make a more vibrant ecosystem around the Bazaar.
So we actually think there’s a lot, whether it’s rule of law, whether it’s environment, all of those things that we have strong common interests, because ultimately, the Samaj is the consumers as well. But reducing identity to only consumers is a struggle. We’re so much more than that.
The whole of community approach is something that I, you know, your work in education, I mean, at one point in time, the conversation in education was around remedial learning, work on math, work on reading. And in the last 20 years, we now talk about school transformation, school leadership. So that acknowledgement happens, right?
That when, what is that line by John Muir, that when you pull it, any single thing, the entire universe comes along with it. And ultimately, that’s it.
Namrata: If, when we look at social progress as such, and we look at historically how philanthropy work, it looked at community or society as a whole, maybe you look at education, you look at livelihoods is the space that we work in. Or if you look at climate today, there is just so much intersection, everything in life, it’s not just one silo, one thing going wrong could actually affect progress of that particular human being. And like you said, it is really about change for that one person, for that one family, for that one community, and then as it grows larger.
But in this idea of looking at portfolios and silos in the last 25 years, we’ve become more, more, more isolated in the term of how we look at change. And since you were talking about how do you look at change?
Gautam John: Fair question. Just to say that I think the siloization is also a function of specialization of how funding flows, etc. So not all of it is necessarily terrible.
I think part of the question that we must also hold is, in working on specific problems, do we take an approach that is holistic? Do we take an approach that is technical? Do we take an approach that is adaptive?
There’s no single answer. I mean, people are going to come at it from multiple perspectives. The second one is on the idea of a portfolio, as opposed to a program, I suppose, is that as a philanthropy, do you take a bet on a singular approach?
Or do you create a group of organizations, ideas and individuals who are working on a similar problem statement, but coming at it from multiple perspectives? Again, there’s no right or wrong answer. Like, for example, if you work in education, there’s the infrastructure piece, and there’s the learning piece, and there’s the community piece and many others.
To say that all of them impact student learning is true. But to say that everyone must work on everything is also a bit challenging. In choosing to work on student learning outcomes, assuming you work in community, what are the approaches you take?
And for us, one of the pieces that we hold very central to our work is where you start isn’t as important as how you approach it. Which is why curiosity, not certainty is a fundamental pillar of our approach to recognize that we might go in with certain ideas and with certain assumptions. But reality often tests them.
And it is in the iteration and the evolution that the richness of fullness of the work comes to be. And what we want to be able to do as a philanthropy is support our partners in exploring that. Because ultimately, there’s no point in being right, the goal is to be effective.
And being effective, one has to walk alongside the community, respond and react to their needs. And we as a philanthropy need to be able to, how to say, to enable that for our partner organizations. And then to be able to take all of these learnings from each individual partner organization, share it across the portfolio, share it at the level of philanthropy, so that it might inform some of our other work, and then share it with the landscape of philanthropy generally, so that there’s a greater sense of what’s happening, what’s evolving, what’s working, what’s not.
Not to say that one method is better than the other, but just to say that, as we sense make what’s emerging from the landscapes in which we are working.
Namrata: So the idea of listening to communities, and like you said, that where you start is not as important as how you approach it and where the road leads you. I think it’s crucial to how we look at social progress. And I think the biggest example of it to me happened in recent times because then everybody was willing to just listen and say, hey, what is the need and let’s respond to that need.
But do you think if you were to raise philanthropy on a scale of one to 10 in general in India, in terms of listening and responding to needs, where would you rate it?
Gautam John: So I’ll get to that question. To pick up on the point of COVID, I think it was many ways, it was an inflection point for so many of us in the civil society. But my biggest takeaway was that uncertainty is the new default, right?
A friend of mine on LinkedIn recently said that we’ve been talking about the meta-crisis and the poly-crisis, but crisis frames it as the exceptional. What if it’s the meta-conflict and the poly-conflict that this is the new normal? Rajesh founded an organization called Socrates and Socrates positions themselves as midwives of collective wisdom.
And the reason I bring this up is because for so long we’ve heard that civil society needs to be more like corporate. We need to think in those frames. And I think that what COVID showed us was that first responders were all civil society organizations.
Governments and markets, yes, came in, but the immediate response was by local civil society organizations. And what does that mean for a future where this crisis are not the exception but the default? What is the kind of leadership necessary?
What is the kind of institutional structures necessary, the institutional architectures necessary for us to be resilient Samaj, a resilient community? We talk about resilience, we talk about regeneration as principles, but I think we’re now having to see that that’s how our default way of being. And civil society organizations and leadership because they’re so close to communities they serve, whether you’re an education NGO or a health NGO, ultimately you will respond to local need.
As we saw in COVID, everyone was responding to that. Given the intensity and frequency of climate events, and I think that philanthropy globally in India is beginning to recognize this. There’s conversation around what this community-driven change look like, there’s conversation around what it takes.
These are new conversations in India and I really appreciate that because I think we’re finally beginning to recognize that change is a non-linear process and that supporting change makers and change making cannot then subscribe to a linear process as well. And to internalize it at a philanthropy, it kind of means having to let go of some of the things that we used as very grounding frameworks. What is your theory of change?
Who are your stakeholders? What is the log frame approach? What are your annual reporting metrics?
Because to recognize that in an annual basis, if the ground is going to change then none of these things are going to work. So given this new landscape of uncertainty and volatility that we’re stepping into, a question that comes up then is who is best placed to lead on this, right? And I think this is a really important moment to acknowledge that the global majority of the global south, we’ve been dealing with uncertainty as the default for so long and in a way that we are uniquely positioned to offer leadership on this, not just as civil society organizations but also as philanthropies like how do we support this kind of work and in particular to recognize that civil society organizations and civil society leadership have been at the forefront of this. So I’d like to believe that the next few years are a really nice time for us to start asking bazaar and samaj, sorry, bazaar and sarkar to learn a little bit more from samaj because this has been our reality. Uncertainty because of funding flows, uncertainty because of community engagement, uncertainty because of so many things.
So yeah, I think this is the time that we’re going to start needing leadership from the samaj as well to be able to be resilient and responsive to these crazy changes that are in our future.
Namrata: And I think I was reading something the other day which talked about this triangle which talks about there is a pull of the future that is there and there is a push of the present and then there’s a weight of the past that we carry around and it depends on how we move, will depend on how much focus we give, where we lay our energies on. I think you talked of some of the weights of the past. For example, if you’re talking of an uncertain environment which has been a reality and continues to increasingly be so, we need to let go of some of the past weights that we’ve been carrying, be it how we measure success, how we look at metrics, how we look at programs.
We also see, for example, a lot of, you know, again going back to the startup idea, that if we have to be first responders, if we have to be custodians of so-called, then more than just like programs, you also need resonant organizations, you need leaderships, you see a high amount of people also facing burnout in the sector as well. So, how is one looking at all of these and these are also, I think, some concepts that are still not there, I think, within philanthropy, slowly coming in. I wouldn’t say not there but I think slowly coming in to say what does it really take to build an organization or to build a civil society space that can respond to some of this uncertainty as well.
Gautam John: I love the framing of resilience because I think that’s a really appropriate one and I think the question then for philanthropy to ask itself is, do we build project and program-based approaches or do we see project and program-based approaches being iterative and responsive but built out of resilient organizations? And like I said, some of the work that’s happening around community-driven change, for example, some of the work that McKinsey Scott is driving around large unrestricted runs, some of the work that Bridgespan is driving around the Prepay What It Takes initiative is moving to the fact that great work can be only done by great organizations and great organizations need some amount of relational and fiscal depth to be resilient in the face of this. It’s a new conversation but it’s not a new idea. I think for the long term we’ve focused on the technical necessity for change that there’s a framework or there’s a tool or there’s a approach and while all of that is true I think we’re now starting to acknowledge that many of these are deeply context-dependent and if they are they have limited replicability and applicability and so in a way if we’re building civil society organizations that are responsive to changing context then they need to have that institutional resilience as well and financing is one way of that, supporting leadership is another way of that, increasing not just the amount of local funding but what percentage of it goes for institutional building, increasing the time frames, these are all tactical ways but at the same time I think one of the ideas I hold very central is that philanthropy needs to approach this with more questions than answers.
We do have a slightly unique place that we tend to fund multiple organizations and so we can see a little bit more of the landscape but not to mistake our position for our power and for influence to offer some of what we’re seeing as reflections but not prescriptions and in that way to be able to offer organizations a path towards iteration and evolution rather than staying locked in a log frame, you signed up for this five years ago, we’ll do it come what may.
It’s a gradual process and I really like the idea of in philanthropy us being map makers in a sense that we’re not explorers but we’re following civil society leaders who are explorers, who are venturing into the unknown and don’t necessarily know what it takes and they are making sense, they are making their own paths and what we can do is then take that and create maps because ultimately how we navigate reality is only as good as our maps of reality and how often they’re updated.
Namrata: I think just from what you’re saying maybe it’s a recap of the discussion we were having in the morning, this conversation of letting outcomes emerge, you can measure some things a lot of things you can’t measure, we for example run programs where we work with a lot of children and young people and it’s a singular agenda of making young people you know thriving for careers but we see that when we often influence that one young person the ripple effect of what happens when this young person goes back into his or her home society community or a teacher that we’re influencing a lot of that has ripple effects which is hard to measure but that’s how really change happens but my question to you Gautam is that if this idea of uncertainty, this idea of emergence, emerging outcomes, if this idea of how change human development happens is a very organic process, you walk five steps forward, you walk two steps backwards, sidewards, all of that is going to happen and I think as a Samaj maybe the idea of us being more mechanical in terms of what can we measure because there is this idea of return has become so ingrained in us. So two questions, fundamentally is there a change in the way we look at an underlying philosophy of change? It’s more, it’s for me ways and means comes later, for me philosophy and the values that govern us come first.
Second, like all change, this change is also going to take a while to happen but is there a need for, for lack of a better word, I would say more dialogue but is there need for someone or somebody or a few people to play that role to say hey this is also how change could happen because sometimes the idea of uncertainty and emergence unless it’s a heavy huge thing like covid is hard for people to wrap their head around saying but I need to go back and I need to report this, the reporting becomes and then that guides everything else that goes down.
Gautam John: Great observation because the phrase that I’ve heard most often this year is this phrase called islands of coherence and in this universe either I am wearing very tight blinkers or it feels like we’re at a tipping point where people are recognizing that there is no singular answer, there is no singular work to be done and in terms of the, you phrased it as a value or a pivot, I suppose the question that resonates most with me and within the philanthropy is a little bit not so much what is the work that needs to be done as much as what are the conditions that will cause the work to be done. So going from saying that we must do the work to we must create the enabling conditions for the work to emerge that comes with no guarantees but we think it’s a little bit more durable in that sense and it’s come out of learning from our partners, right. You can do the work but then the work is never going to, the work will not outlast the organization doing it as opposed to trying to create the conditions under which it happens so that when the work does emerge it is a little bit more co-created, more co-owned that the container in which it happens ultimately becomes the vehicle and we are catalyst not fuel.
So to that end I do believe there is a moment in time where there are two things happening, right. One is if you look at organizations, civil society organizations particularly in India, there’s a generational shift happening in terms of leadership organizations that are about 20-25 years old are now bringing in new leadership, it’s a natural shift but I think the bit that we see and is really exciting is that there is also a capital transfer happening to the next generation. It’s global and happening in India as well and the younger generations are more fluid in terms of how change happens not necessarily bound by the same linear outcomes and so maybe there’s a moment in time where they’ll handle intergenerational wealth transfer is meeting the intergenerational civil society leadership transfer and there’s a moment of transition which we might be able to step into and to that work, yes of course there’s work to be done to create conversations and convenings and connections across these but organizations are stepping up into it.
I mean just this podcast talking about sense-making, meaning-making and multiple futures is not a conversation we were having 10 years ago. The other point that you mentioned which I think was important to pick up on is the idea of well-being. One of the things that I’ve come to realize at least in philanthropy is that you can only give what you have, so if you want to be a trust-based philanthropy you must have trust central to how you operate as well not just how you engage, how you grant make.
Similarly we talk about civil society organizations caring deeply about the well-being of their communities but that cannot be something they only offer externally if it doesn’t happen internally and I think we really need to acknowledge the fact that civil society organizations and in particular civil society leaderships and in particular over the last few years post-Covid have operated in really difficult conditions and you know well-being hasn’t been a conversation we’ve had much of and it’s something that we need to focus on and yeah I think maybe that’s one space that philanthropy can lead a lot more into just internally for the organizations you support to create these spaces for the leadership for the second line of leadership to create opportunities for leaders to step back do you have an internal sabbatical policy for your team but also for the organizations you support there’s lots of stuff to do.
Namrata: Yeah I think that’s an important conversation and when you look at you know building resilient organizations I think well-being is a very critical part we also talk of full being well-being right what does it really look like but I also realized that civil society operates in such a resource constrained environment and one person is typically doing the role of many other people right so just it’s sometimes a luxury to be able to do that but I think the space like you said to be able to step back to even acknowledge vulnerability and failure there is so much talk of who did how much who achieved so much and I don’t think it’s a civil society alone way it’s how samaj is operating in general but I think that comes to my and maybe a segue into the segment of if you have to look at 2050 since we are doing futures thinking if you think of how philanthropy may work and philanthropy obviously is for social purpose so society the samaj, sarkar bazaar all need to kind of move together one singular movement is not enough.
I’m wondering if we need there’s a lot of talk you know when I read philanthropy reports I see a lot of who gave how much where for what do we fundamentally need to talk of good giving and what makes good giving and shift that conversation a little bit from the amount to actually the values one of the things that I keep thinking about is there are so much that has been done on civil society due diligence of this and that what do we have out there to say hey these are people who could give well right not give more or give how much will give well do you think we need a fundamental shift there as well and how we look at good giving in general.
Gautam John: Interesting thought, I don’t know if we can look at good giving or giving well alone I definitely think we also need a more tactical give faster give sooner if we can pair that with a sense of curiosity the giving better or giving differently will happen to go back to a thread that we’ve been pulling out for a while like how does change happen how do individuals and institutions change how they give I’m pretty certain it’s very rarely from reading a report it’s often from an interaction from a series of interactions for something that you hear echoing from you know from something deeply human and my sense is if we can accelerate people’s giving journeys when they start giving how much they start giving and how often and how often they give it how much they give it’ll create a forcing function just to create a larger landscape from which to be influenced by and perhaps what we can do is create conditions where there’s a little less certainty and a little bit more curiosity so that this larger landscape from which you learn from becomes more resonant you’ll hear echoes and we see that happening we see philanthropy at least having pure conversations and pure networks very often there is no single conversation or single data point a single report that we’re changing this is ultimately accumulation of all of these that reaches a tipping point and then that happens so in a sense as a philanthropy ourselves our goal is no longer it has is unlikely to be and no longer is kind of creating a singular narrative where change will happen for philanthropists and for people with capital I think it’s creating the artifacts and the journeys so that when people start on this journey or arrive at a point of curiosity it’s available to them. To your larger point of what should what should 2050 look I mean there’s no there’s no doubt that 2050s will look very different from 2025 just as 2025 looks very different from 2020 but which is also why we say futures thinking right there’s no there’s no deterministic single future that we’re going to inhabit and in a sense what we try and do is be co-explorers co-learners with the partners we work with to see what’s just under the surface and then what is our role in being able to support some of that work I’ll give you an example I’ll give you two so but eight or nine years ago because one of our largest portfolios was in environment conservation and biodiversity it was very clear that the question of climate was under the radar but Indian philanthropy wasn’t really engaged with the conversation global philanthropy was but very much through a mitigation energy transition lens so about six seven years ago now along with a bunch of other philanthropies we said hey Indian philanthropy needs to be in this conversation how do we do it and so something we co-created along with in other Indian philanthropies like the Tata Trust etc and global philanthropies like McArthur and oak and I see and Ikea was the India climate collaborative which has been working a little bit under the radar for the last few years but now has ultimately become institutional infrastructure and sometimes that’s the role of philanthropy right to see what’s lurking under yeah not to say that we’re particularly good at it but just to say because they’re the examples I know most commonly like we now have a conversation on what’s happening with young men and boys across the world linked with jobs linked with identity it’s unlike portfolios one that we started a decade ago because it was just under and I suppose making sense for making sense making sense making meaning is what we’re well suited to do right and I think philanthropy should do the things we’re good at doing are not the things that society can do our goal is to fill the gaps shine light on the darker spaces of the maps.
Namrata: So I think just picking on your point of what’s lurking under what’s under the radar darker sections of the map and like we know that 2050 there are multiple possible filters so it’s it’s impossible today to say that this is going to happen but if you look at some of the more driving forces today that are controlling society we you know the rise of more right-wing governments across the world we need more crackdown on human rights, justice, the division of caste, class, economic divide, migration crisis.
Do you think while you may be doing it as RFP but do you think as philanthropy we’re really being bold enough and tackling or can we can philanthropy actually be bold enough to tackle some of these issues which come maybe sometimes in direct conflict with Sarkar, is it being done or can it be done?
Gautam John: So I actually don’t think it’s a question of boldness right it’s a question of to us it’s a question of what are we suited to do and in many ways we see ourselves as being uniquely positioned to amplify the voice and connections of samaj to build a good society. So we’re not anti-anything, we’re not against anything, our point is that we support resilient civil society organizations to build a resilient samaj and in that I heard a phrase that makes so much sense in terms of the rise of right-wing governments across the world is that human beings would rather be uncomfortable than uncertain and in many ways it helped me understand so much of the simplistic narratives into which people are pouring hopes, energy, and ambition because there’s perhaps a great sense of discomfort that it’s not going to work or perhaps it’s not complete but it’s better than the uncertainty and as we started off with uncertainty is the new default going forward.
Simplistic reductionist solutions are never going to be the answer but we’re all human beings right ultimately and we want some degree of certainty, it’s hard. So what is philanthropy’s role? Philanthropy’s role is in being that bridge and creating the uncommon ground for the dialogue between state markets and societies for us to reduce our discomfort of an uncertainty of the future to say that we’re in this together.
So in that sense it’s not confrontational, it’s generative and it’s generative at the level of we’re all Samaj first and then we’re Sarkar and Bazar and in that sense for us to go back to holding a dialogic space the uncommon ground for our to uncover and discover our shared interests and our shared humanity because ultimately that’s where progress will happen from.
Namrata: And do you think there is a coming together of there are a few examples that we can see but do you think there is a more scope of coming together of Samaj in general and then influencing then be Sarkar and Bazar because while things are coming together we talk of more collaborative and multi-stakeholder collaboratives which is also the need of the hour there is also in my point of view there’s also a stock lines that are there between the three as well and I think there’s an attempt to blur the lines but do you think that’s ever going to be possible for us to be Samaj first?
Gautam John: I mean it was the default, we were Samaj first and I think we’re seeing the limits of state-led models, we’re seeing the limits of market-led models and it’s not just around state failures and market failures that philanthropy needs to fix, it’s fundamental failures of imagination itself. And so to that extent, we were recently talking about this piece on relational state capital, it’s not language that existed in the last many years but now it’s starting to come into being, the limits of seeing like a state Scott’s book on the necessity to bucket and the necessity to make visible too much diversity was hard. We’re now seeing that we can do diversity at scale, I mean I think one of the things that we don’t necessarily recognize around some of the technical and technological progress we’ve made is we often had to have a trade-off between scale and context.
Namrata: That is actually one of my questions within civil society because we often get caught in this binaries of context and scale, so if you’re scaling you’re not contextual or your contextualization it loses. So please continue with that.
Gautam John: So I think one is we now have imaginations which allow for scale and personalization or scale and diversity to coexist, what does that mean and what is the role of these sort of technologies in our life, is it to narrow choices or broaden them? The second one is, do we need to scale the work or do we need to scale the conditions and the relationships that make work possible. So that’s also an interesting dynamic and often to scale we needed to use technology and technology ended up becoming reductive rather than generative but now that we can do stuff and to acknowledge that technology will always be a tool in service of and never the end in itself.
Now that we have these pathways to build lightweight digital infrastructure that allows diversity at scale and we all acknowledge that diversity is resilience, so you can do resilience, diversity and scale together rather than set them up as orthogonal forces, what do we do? I think we definitely have an opportunity to reimagine, there are people leaning into it.
Namrata: And I think that’s interesting because we’ve also had this dialogue internally, we’ve been early adopters of technology but like you said, it’s seen an evolution at R&D as well, today the kind of work that we’re doing is a lot more personalization and contextualization which at the scale we operate would not have been possible humanly or physically but to recognize the power of what it can do has taken a certain evolution for us as well but we definitely see that as a huge, it plays a huge role going forward as well. So I think there is a need for I think even for us as civil society to embrace some of these newer technologies coming in, new vocabulary that’s coming in for us to collectively shift some of these binaries that we keep operating in.
Gautam John: Without a doubt, I mean the world doesn’t operate in binaries, it exists in that gray space between black and white and that’s for us to inhabit. The second one is on technology to recognize what it can do but also to recognize what it can’t do, the work that is deeply human-centric and relational that technology can perhaps accelerate and amplify but cannot replace nor should we seek to do the replacement. And the third one is really to recognize that it’s an and not an all and to that end I think India is particularly well-placed at this intersection of social change, technological change and value and purpose.
Namrata: I also want to talk about a little bit that we talked about more community-led philanthropy or giving more power to communities that we work with. I think there has been slowing growing conversations on the idea of power and transferring the power to actually communities and learning from them that you also touched upon and again if I look into the future, do you think what are the enabling conditions that you think will need for that to happen and do you think we can at some point we will sit on the table as equals to learn and out of curiosity?
Gautam John: Yes, because I’ve already seen it right like there are some intermediary organizations which have put together pooled funds to support grassroots organizations that have decision-making bodies like the equivalent of investment community which has grassroot community members and organizations says I wouldn’t have seen that 10 years ago and I’m like it’s happening now. I also think that we’re finally starting to recognize that civil society organizations very often understood the value of supporting and working with community, the idea of supporting them in their own transitions, in their own journeys. Maybe philanthropy slowly starting to see that our role is to support leadership of civil society organizations in service of that rather than as a singular program, etc.
But to recognize that everything is interconnected gives us a great deal of liberation and freedom, to recognize that we don’t have to do everything but perhaps all we can focus on is that individual and the relationship. I recognize that Gandhi never said it but this idea of be the change you want to see to me lands very differently now at 45 than it did at 25 because I recognize that ultimately change is a fractal pattern that reflects outward inside out not outside in and that all we can do is change the seed conditions for this and then it shows up in how you operate as an individual which reflects on how you operate as a team, reflects on how you operate as an organization and then reflects on how you operate in the ecosystem that you inhabit.
Namrata: And just from showing up, there is this again, sometimes it gets a little muddled in my head because you look at 2015, if you say the pace of uncertainty is so high, pace of change is so high, the need for development is so urgent but a lot of the things that we’ve spoken about being patient, listening and change takes slow. Sometimes again it feels like there is a lot of conversation on are we moving fast enough, but fast enough also comes with its own implications. Do you again see these as either or because there is a need for urgent action but there’s also a need to do all the other things to step back, to listen, to learn, to change, to let things emerge, the idea of well-being and sometimes these two seem in conflict.
So just curious to hear your take on that.
Gautam John: I think it’s definitely a balance, it’s a dynamic but perhaps part of it is acknowledging the fact that that dynamic is built and that tension is best held by the organizations on the front lines themselves, not by philanthropy. We discussed earlier how organizations irrespective of where they worked, whether it was education, health, etc. during COVID responded to that crisis and that was possible because the leadership of that organization recognized that we don’t work in health, we work ultimately building a good society and this is what society needs in their local context.
So to that extent, so as long as we as philanthropy and holders of capital acknowledge that you’re going to have to be both reflexive and responsive but that dynamic intention is best held by organizations at the front line rather than at our level, we’re doing okay. I mean, there are short-term journeys, there are long-term journeys and these will coexist, there are hard pivots necessary, there are short-term pivots necessary. I mean, the market makes this all the time.
So there’s no and we know that civil society organizations are capable of it, the question is are we resourcing them in the right way to make it flexible for them to meet the moment as it evolves, not just meet the moment but also make the journey.
Namrata: We talked of how decision making can be transferred or communities can come on the table as equal decision makers when it comes to philanthropy. Do you feel more young people, we talked of transference of leadership as well but you think more young people from communities can actually participate in decision making in philanthropy? For example, we were on, you know, we were actually applying for a grant and the decision making of who the grant went to actually was by the people for whom the solution was made for.
So it was a game on careers that we hit up and the kind of questions that we got asked were young people who were potentially people who would use the game or play the game and then they decided whether it was relevant for them or not. So do you think there’s role for more young people to come in as the other custodians of who will take the future forward?
Gautam John: Your question is really relevant because it’s our entire active citizenship portfolio. The idea that in particular young people are going to be active co-creators of solutions rather than passive recipients of solutions and how do we expand that while our active citizenship portfolio kind of focuses on urban civic kind of things as a fundamental principle, it’s much wider than that particularly for India because we’re still a young country and then what is an active engaged samaj look like in any sphere if you work in agriculture, if you work in what’s it called conservation. So for us it’s a founding principle that an active samaj, an active citizen is a very core basic identity that we have and not so much as a consumer or a subject of state or a consumer of a market or a user of a product or a subject of a state. This idea of being an active engaged citizen is core to how we operate and that it’s not just in any particular area but more of a horizontal muscle, a societal muscle that we all embody and if we recognize that then as organizations, civil society organizations how do we create spaces for this work to co-create be co-created with young people in the community and then how do we as philanthropies be able to support that process of co-creation and center the voices of young people in this.
Namrata: Yeah and I think it takes a lot of letting go of our own biases of our own powers because I remember when we went to this meeting we had all these you know our data and facts ready but the questions that young people asked us were not something we were prepared for and we were trying and explaining and then we said hey but let’s take a step back and say this is what young people need and hence are we really solving for that problem.
So really co-creating it with them but a lot of letting go that happens from our side of people who sit on these tables as well.
Gautam John: Increase the density and diversity of voices at the table is a great way of framing it.
Namrata: And as holders of capital in the next 25 years, do you see your role as more creating the enabling conditions and learning also not deciding what the enabling conditions are but really learning from the society, do you see that as the role largely of that philanthropy to play?
Gautam John: That’s a role I’d like philanthropy to step into right, to recognize that the journey, the longest journey we will make is from how to say from head to heart and it’s the most difficult one. So in some ways to recognize that while we often lead with the head it’s because we want to be certain, we want to be convinced of what we’re doing but to recognize that the real world doesn’t care about your certainty and your conviction. The real world has its own journey and ultimately to recognize that head heavy is good to start with but we need to balance it with the heart and balance it at some level with the hand as well.
That actually doing work is also important but just to be careful that the work that capital and philanthropy does is towards of capital isn’t work that civil society can do. We should add unique value that bridges and bonds all of this rather than duplicates or impinges on what self-society can do. We should be bridging and bonding capital.
Namrata: If you look at again like take a futures approach you think it takes it might also help for philanthropy to take a slightly more futures thinking approach in terms of what is it that’s needed for the future and hence what are the seeds we need to sow today or do you think we’re also too busy solving problems of today and like you said both are needed in some places we’re really responding to emerging needs right now but it’s sometimes we’re also looking at where the future is where how do you think philanthropy is playing a role in these two like what’s the balance today.
Gautam John: I can’t speak to the balance today because I don’t know how much of this futures thinking approach is embedded at least in the universes in which we operate but I think the recognition that conditions are a good starting point for multiple emergent outcomes is perhaps where we can lean into and also to recognize that it would be unfair to say that every philanthropy or every steward of impact capital needs to take this approach perhaps part of it is also to recognize that within philanthropy we need some of these containers for philanthropy to be uncertain about its own role because at the end of the day it’s not easy right that like you said that sense of vulnerability that sense of humility that sense of failure and you know ultimately failures aren’t of some moral values they’re failures of ideas and imaginations and you can then use that as raw material to make new ideas and new imaginations so perhaps there’s also a little bit about where are the containers for these brave conversations within philanthropy itself to make sense in of what’s emerging across the landscape what is the new role that philanthropy can step into what are all things that philanthropy doesn’t need to do as much of so my ask to philanthropy is that as much as we support our partners what is a relational approach within and across philanthropy look like
Namrata: is there is that conversation of within philanthropy what is our role and I think fundamentally in terms of even shifting some of the vocabularies that we are so used to I don’t know today if there’s an alternate vocabulary so if you don’t use lock frame people may struggle to understand what is an alternate is there even an alternate
Gautam John: I wrote a piece an idea called love not long frames but broadly it’s a conversation that has to happen in close circles before they happen publicly right we can we can support we can push we can challenge each other in places that offer space for a brave conversation before we can publicly articulate them so yes I do think that it’s starting to happen a little bit more that there are whether it’s an email list or gatherings etc where we can be a little bit more reflective a little bit more honest about what’s working what’s not what is our role what are we seeing emerge that’s ultimately part of the role that we need to play and steward this
Namrata: capitalism I think what I’m taking away Gotham from you is more brave conversations to create
Gautam John: the futures that we want I was just going to say that what you articulated is how do we all collectively make visible the invisible what’s visible to you is invisible to me but ultimately that relational web is where we do it and once we see what’s bubbling under as visible then we can start to think about approaches to creating the conditions to work on that but fundamentally this relational web is very often invisible and we need to make it more visible for communities for civil society organizations for philanthropy and then for Samatsarkar Bazaar.
Namrata: Yeah I think it’s more hidden for it to become more common in public spaces to be able to speak about it. Quick rapid fire for you Gautam, I think you already answered the will ask you again an alternate for lock frame.
Gautam John: Relational, I say love but love to me is an expression of a relational interest not necessarily a transactional one so very much focusing on the relational work because the relational builds resilience, resilience builds progress, progress is then independent of any single actor.
Namrata: Some of the buzzwords today that you think are overdone and need changing.
Gautam John: I think a word that I hear used very often is the word community and the word platform and I think we tend to use them as mechanistic technical architecture and not so much around relational architecture. A community isn’t a set of people on a digital platform, a community is something that you build with investments of care and trust so that you embed relational and resilience in there. Can a platform help?
Yes, it can but it is not the only way to do it. The second way, the second one is to understand platforms as being more than just connections of people, to understand platforms as being places where we can co-create as well, not just co-exist. So those are the two words that I really struggle with.
Namrata: What advice you would give to philanthropists?
Gautam John: I mean curiosity is my biggest one, right? That being curious about why something’s working and why something isn’t and being honest about it to yourselves first and then to everyone else is perhaps the biggest articulation of how change happens.
Namrata: One question that we don’t ask but we should ask.
Gautam John: Who are you accountable to?
Namrata: And that question is for philanthropists, for everyone.
Gautam John: Because I think ultimately what we’re accountable to is part of the biggest driver of our innovation and ambition and also how we do our work.
Namrata: Is philanthropy funding innovation enough?
Gautam John: I think sometimes we focus too much on innovation and not so much on what happens after. Innovation is helpful but also innovation sometimes can be deeply contextual, something that’s not necessarily widely applicable but applicable to a community or a geography. So if innovation is people process and path dependent then is it the innovation we care about as much as seeing innovation as the emergence of creating having created the conditions.
And so innovation to me is an outcome not a going in measure.
Namrata: On a scale of one to ten, do you think philanthropy is funding resilient organizations or building resilient organizations?
Gautam John: So I give it somewhere around a six or a seven but also to recognize that there are some structural challenges. Individuals, private foundations and philanthropies etc have a lot more leeway. With CSR, I mean, it’s structural, right?
There’s a slow movement on CSR being able to do things over three years rather than one year. So that is also an evolution and to recognize that some of it is structural not necessarily of intention alone.
Namrata: One advice you would give to civil society?
Gautam John: You know, it’s easy to say push back. I recognize it’s not hard but I think for civil society organizations to think, not to think as much as to go back to our older ideas of solidarity because ultimately, we recognize that no single approach, no single organization, no single institution can work on the challenges of the present and the future. So what does solidarity look like amongst this?
Namrata: Solidarity is a word we probably don’t use often enough and we should start using that. So closing this podcast, I’m taking three words back. Curiosity, humility and solidarity and I hope we can all work with these three as our core values as I’d like to say.
Thank you so much for being here.
Gautam John: Thank you for having me. It was lovely visiting with you as well.
Originally published on QUEST Alliance on 31 October 2025. View on YouTube →
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