 Council for India, for WEF, and I'm honored to be the moderator of this wonderful session with some extraordinary luminaries. Thank you all for joining us. I want to outline first our plan for this afternoon. As you can see, we have some truly extraordinary people on this panel, so in order to be able to hear from all of them, I'm going to need your support as an audience. We're going to begin with a two-minute opening statement from each of our panelists. And then I will open a conversation between ourselves on the dais for another 20 minutes, after which we will turn it over and include you in our conversation. So we hope you'll be paying attention to the conversation that happens beforehand, and we'll feel free to be a part of that conversation after it. The topic for this afternoon is really looking at a very core question. How can growth in South Asia? And I think in a very deep sense, we mean inclusive, sustainable growth. Be fostered through the convergence of social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and impact investing. And if any of you are unclear as to what any of those terms mean or what they might mean, I think you'll hear in all of the introductions today at least a little bit more of a clarification in terms of how different people view these issues. And please feel free, as I said later on, if you want to ask clarifying questions to do so. I'm going to begin with my other, as you can see, the one issue about inclusive growth is it's not very inclusive of gender. So unfortunately, Rohini and I so far are the only two women on the panel. And I'm so I'm going to ask Rohini to please begin in her capacity as someone who leads a foundation to reflect a little bit in terms of what it is that she thinks about in terms of how we can be really struggling with these issues, how we can think about a growth that includes all of our people in our very complex economies and political realities across South Asia. Rohini. Namaste, everyone, and thank you, Kavita. We're talking about philanthropy, impact, investing, and social entrepreneurship. Often those terms are kind of mixed up together. But I think one of the reasons all three have become important in the subcontinent in South Asia is partly because of governance failure and because of the failure of the state to provide certain basic and essential services that cover the entire population. While this is not the place to go into the reasons for that governance failure, I think it's important to say that there has also been in South Asia a creation of wealth, especially in India here, we have seen sudden wealth in the hands of a few people. And they have turned to philanthropy because of public pressure, because of the idea of trusteeship that we hold so dear in this culture, and because when there is that much surplus generated among a few people, its responsibility is to give it forward and at least do as well with it as the government would have done had it taxed that wealth. So that kind of responsibility is bringing philanthropy to the fore in India, and it is doing what perhaps the state could not do in some cases, take the kind of risk that governments cannot afford to take, and that markets will not take. It will not be able to reach a section of society, markets cannot go there, and government often fails to go there. So I think philanthropy in India is taking that opportunity to reach out to excluded people, and that's good. We are just beginning to experiment on a large scale in India, and I think you will see a lot more philanthropic innovation coming up. In terms of social entrepreneurship, that's been a buzzword for almost a decade now, and India has been the site of tremendous innovation, I have to my left, Anju Gupta, who will probably talk more about that whole thing. But we are seeing an explosion of social entrepreneurs who are also coming into the sphere of basic services to people, and I think there are some policy gaps, perhaps we can talk about a little later in the conversation. Impact investing backed by global investors, backed by patient capital, is supporting these social entrepreneurs, and what's wonderful is the power of the intent of these people to reach out and solve social problems, which neither the state or the market in its formal form have been able to solve. So there are exciting times ahead, and I think we look forward to more, thank you. Thank you, Rohini. I want to introduce Asanga, who is joining us from Sri Lanka, a part of the world that we often have only associated with bad news headlines in the last few years. Asanga, your thoughts on the importance of being able to think about a different form of growth and moving ahead, building on the realities of the conflict your country has experienced. Thank you. I think Sri Lanka has a sort of a unique case in South Asia because we had a war for about 30 years, which devastated the country. It was one of the first countries to open up in 1977, trade liberalization. Back in the 80s, we started this civil war, and it affected the country's social fabric so much that it dragged us many years behind. Either you find in the Sri Lankan society a direct or indirect victim, and it's shocking to see the amount of widows, the war widows we have. I myself is a direct victim of the war. My father was assassinated in Colombo in 1994, as a presidential candidate and a member of parliament. We lost many leaders in the political arena, including presidents, many social people who wanted to change. So it's been a sort of a bumpy ride, I would say. But now, from 2009, we have some hope in the country. Our statistics are improving really well. We have, for the first time, we have, for doing business index, it's one of the most efficiently improving countries, which is really good. And northeast of Sri Lanka, which we had the problems, is connecting back to the economy, because 40% of the growth, I mean, the contribution to the GDP was from the western province, but not from the northeast. There was about less than 10%. So for the first time, the country is actually connected, and economies are connected from the northeast, which is really great. Thank you. We are going to move now from south to north and west. And Kasim, you're here as a member of the Young Global Leaders group of WEF. And your thoughts on this whole question that Rohini began us off on, how do we think about a growth that is more inclusive, and what role, in particular, do efforts like social entrepreneurship and impact investing and philanthropy have? What is your experience coming from the Pakistani context? I think that in Pakistan, and I think I perhaps speak for South Asia in general, but certainly for Pakistan, I would say that education is probably a key driver to inclusive growth. And it is also a key driver for entrepreneurial growth in general. And one of the things that we've seen in Pakistan is that due to the, well, one can't really pinpoint responsibility, but due to, let's say, the failure of successive governments, our public education system, unfortunately, leaves a lot to be desired. And it's one of the major issues that's being highlighted in the country today. I think political parties from both sides of the spectrum believe that it's an issue that needs to be addressed. The other thing which I think is that education can also be looked upon as a model for social entrepreneurship, especially when we're looking at schools which are operating at the middle or at the lower end of the pyramid. So I, for example, am familiar with a lot of initiatives where education experts are getting together with microfinance banks. And they're trying to target this middle of the and bottom of the pyramid, because coming back to the point that you mentioned, I think one thing that is clear is that entrepreneurs have definitely been more successful in this area than the public sector. And I think that that's something which should definitely be encouraged. One of the issues that I find in Pakistan in general, and it's something that is quite interesting, is that in India, there's a lot of talk about social entrepreneurship. And there were, for example, Anshu won the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award last night, which is amazing. But it's a space that's relatively less understood in Pakistan. So you either have business or you have NGOs. But in between, there's like a huge vacuum. And I think that's something which social entrepreneurship is definitely something which I think needs to be encouraged and can play a role in inclusive growth. Thanks. Thank you, Kasim. Mr. Gauderich, you have a long history in being a philanthropist and having both been a businessman of considerable repute and now really being recognized as a leader and as a thought leader in many other spheres as well. What are your thoughts as you watch what has happened in the last few, well, really in the last five to 10 years in India, total transformation, as Rohini put it. How do you think philanthropy can be doing more? How could we be strengthening the sort of ecosystem for this kind of innovation? Your thoughts on this. Yeah, thank you, Kavita. Just a few important points. I believe that social infrastructure in South Asia and of course, particularly in India is even more important than physical infrastructure. I think a lot of attention needs to be paid and clearly I don't expect the governments in these geographies to be able to do everything. So it will have to be supplemented by corporates, by corporate social responsibility, by philanthropists and by people in general. I also believe, I think there was a mention that education is very important, I believe there's no unemployment in a country like India. It's only unemployability. We are very short of people, even blue collar skill, blue collar workers are in short supply in industries like construction and many other industries. At the same time, there are many unemployed people because they don't have the requisite skills in training. So education is going to be extremely important at all levels, primary, secondary, tertiary, but even more important to my mind will be skilling and training because there are many people in the late 20s, 30s, 40s who need to be re-skilled, re-trained. The requirements are changing also if they have been trained earlier. So continuous training in corporates by industry associations, government can play a part, but a private public partnership in this area in South Asia to my mind can be very useful. And both social entrepreneurship and business entrepreneurship has huge scope in South Asia. South Asian peoples are very entrepreneurial and I think this needs to be encouraged very strongly. Unfortunately, to my mind, angel capital is underdeveloped in these geographies and that's when angel capital, especially in America, has developed, it has helped entrepreneurship very strongly. Lastly from philanthropy, I think philanthropy of course, as I mentioned, is a big part to play in getting these agenda items forward, but I do feel that when philanthropies spend an equivalent amount of money, they do a much better job by and large than when government does it. So I am in favor of leaving more disposable income in the hands of corporates, in the hands of people, so that a fair amount of that can go to philanthropy rather than government overtaxing and then inefficiently spending the money. Thank you. Thank you for that perspective and now to someone who has actually been on the ground and was, as we just heard, recently recognized last night for his very entrepreneurial efforts. We were speaking a little bit about what do these large concepts of inclusive growth look like and Anshu said very modestly, well, I won't be talking at the macro level, I'll give you an idea of what it looks like on the ground and so Anshu, your thoughts on these issues? My thought process is that there is a lot wrong in the thought process itself. Fundamentally, I think, somewhere we are not understanding that what is the core issue, like if you talk about the entire South Asia volume is an issue. I mean, we are in a region which is where the problems are in volume. You need solutions in volume, you need people to work on those solutions in volume. That's where I often ask that why and where is the question of either or. Why do we have so much of fight on business entrepreneurship versus social entrepreneurship or versus different kind of capitals and ways of working it? There is enough space for everything. That is number one. Number two, I personally feel that there is callousness of society. The society at large is not involved in the development process. And the unfortunate part is that we think that doing good, we never understand that doing good is a collective responsibility. You don't need a separate kind of entity or separate kind of people or social entrepreneur or NGOs to do something good. I mean, if all of us just play our role a bit more, you know, in a much more responsible manner, it can happen. So that's why we say that it's a collective responsibility and when you talk about inclusiveness and all, it's not only about the caste community and the financially background, you know, poor people and all. It's also about the issues. I mean, the way we speak about the issue of clothing, issue of sanitary napkin, very small issues, maybe later on we'll talk about it. But these issues and many, many such issues are not even in the radar of the development or, you know, the holistic development or even the general development of people. My last take, to be honest, is that, you know, in a country or in a situation where you have almost half the population who does not get two means a day, the moment I see a new tile in a temple or mosque, somewhere it's a bit painful for me. I'm also a religious person. But it's extremely painful for me that you have a beautiful tile in a temple and mosque and a person outside the temple or mosque or a church is dying of hunger. Somewhere as people of these nations, we need to be much more responsible towards the people maybe then the God or any other thing. Thank you, Anshu. That is, I think, a deeply moving statement and I think perhaps it's fitting that we are ending now with Imran Khan, who I think, you know, it's easy for us, some of us have already stated sort of this nexus between thinking about government, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, business. You have played, shall I make a pun, and say you have played on many sides of this issue and you are now at a point where you are really seeing the need for, I might argue, an entrepreneurial approach to government, an entrepreneurial approach to governance. That has implications for the region as a whole, really. Could you share your perspectives on this and what has taken you towards looking at those issues from the perspectives that you are now actually leading a political movement for change? Well, thank you, Kavita. Look, I started, I left cricket. I was building this cancer hospital. The whole idea behind a cancer hospital was, I realized that 95% of people in our country couldn't afford cancer treatment. So I wanted to build a hospital where a common man could come in and not worry about the very expensive cancer treatment. So during this struggle to build the hospital and then run it, I realized that actually we, philanthropists, can't do anything because it's still a drop in the ocean. The only way you transform a society is through a government. And that's how I ended up in politics. And the classic case is now China. In human history, it's never happened that in 20 years, they have pulled 400 million people out of poverty. When you talk about China's growth rate, this is one of the biggest reasons why they're growing. Because the more egalitarian the society, the more you're going to grow. In Pakistan, I discovered that there was so much injustice. The gap between the rich and the poor was increasing by the day. And there's no way the society could sustain itself. Now, I'll just give you an example, cancer hospital, but medical care, vast majority of people outside medical care. Health, education, we have a system where we have for the elite English medium. Then we have Urdu medium and Dini Madrasas for the majority of the population who have no chance of going up. I mean, the education system is exacerbating the inequality between the rich and the poor. It does not allow a common man to go up. And so it's the most, I think, the greatest injustice is education. And then secondly, female education. They even have less chance of going up because we have the lowest female literacy. I set up this, after this hospital, I set up a university, the first private sector university in the rural areas. And it was the most conservative part of Pakistan. It's the first time that girls have been allowed to come into a co-education. It's never happened in our area before. The reason we could do it was obviously we respected the social norms. But I mean, when you talk about, giving the example of the Americans, that one of the stated aims of Afghanistan was to liberate the women of Afghanistan. As if women can be liberated through the barrel of a gun. Women can liberate themselves, give them education. They will empower themselves. So education is one of the key reasons how you uplift a society, providing equal opportunities to everyone. And unfortunately, we have the most unjust education system. Then the tax system, the poor subsidize the rich. Rich don't pay taxes in Pakistan. 80% of taxes are collected through indirect taxes. So it again exacerbates the poor get poorer, the rich get richer. And then the judicial system. While a poor man, if he steals something, goes to jail, the biggest crooks get what is called the NRO, Amnesty Scheme. So there, you know, our president, of course, is sitting there because he's been given the NRO. Excuse of billions of dollars of corruption. He's sitting, becoming the president. Only poor thieves go to jail. So all this, the whole society, the reason why we call ourselves movement for justice is basically unless you have educational justice, you have health, health care. Because by the way, health is one of the most important reasons why people sink into poverty. Because as it is, 70% of people are surviving on $2 a day. The moment they have someone ill in their house, the whole health, the budget collapses. They don't have money to buy medicine and so on. And then, of course, it's economic justice by taxing the rich. It doesn't mean heavy taxes to the rich because Adi, of course, is my mentor there. Not heavy taxes, but make them pay taxes. They must pay their due in the society. You can't have the rich having Amnesty Schemes to whiten their black money. And then, most of all, I think, which when I met the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, a local government system, the most important thing is empower people at the village level. Before the British came, this Indian subcontinent was one of the richest, in fact, the richest country in the world. And one of the reasons was villages were self-contained. They were empowered. They ran their own schools. You do not have, in our, the reason why governance system in our country has collapsed and that's why, again, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer, because it's a very centralized system. So we have to, again, empower the people at the village level. And then, the moment you empower them, they can look after themselves. So, and finally, the judiciary, you must have a justice system, you know, where everyone is equal before law. Corruption is one of the biggest reasons. Corruption is actually a tax on the poor man. Corruption is a tax on the masses. It also exacerbates the rich and the poor. And you need a really good governance system which tackles corruption. Thank you, Imran Bhai. I think there are some really provocative topics here for us to dig our teeth into a little bit more. We've had at least a couple of things put out there, which I think are worth delving into a little bit more deeply. One of them, I think, is this whole, what is the right balance in terms of creating an ecosystem that encourages innovation, that encourages people to take risks, whether those are business risks, whether those are social risks. We've heard people agreeing on the fact that an investment in education is really important. But I think then there's this question of what's the right balance between the role of government, the role of philanthropy, the role of the private sector, because certainly after my 30 years of living in the United States, many of the big philanthropies in the United States were actually set up as tax shelters. The reason Andrew Carnegie and Nelson D. Rockefeller and Henry Edsel Ford set up these foundations was not because necessarily they wanted to build a cancer hospital, but in fact because they wanted to make sure that the American government didn't get a hold of their taxes. Now, you could argue that in the 100 years or 200 years since, they've done some considerable good with their resources. But you could also argue, Adi, that I think there's no real form of accountability in philanthropy. You have a democratic system, you can vote the rascals out. You can't actually vote the heads of a foundation out if they decide that instead of wanting to give money to a cancer hospital or to improving the lot of the poor, that they might want to do something completely different with it. So your thoughts, first let me ask Adi and Rohini to both comment on that from the perspective of how philanthropy and business might interact on that question. Well, I don't think philanthropy needs such controls because it's a voluntary thing somebody does and therefore you should leave it to their discretion where they want to invest more of their philanthropic activities. Unless of course, as you say in some countries there's a lot of tax advantages to philanthropy, so that then you need to monitor it a little more carefully. I don't think, I believe that there should be reasonable low taxes on business so that to my mind, the biggest philanthropy in the South Asian region is really business flourishing. It creates employment, it creates many businesses of course have corporate social responsibility programs, et cetera. So I think you should have reasonable taxes so that a lot more is invested into the businesses, businesses grow and encourage people not through tax benefits, but through say recognition awards, things like that on the philanthropy front. And I think that philanthropy would have, as the Americans would say, bang for the buck. And I think that is a way to go in South Asia. But ultimately it is the growth that allows whether it's the government or the people to invest into the future. And I totally agree with Imran that social infrastructure, social success, alleviation of poverty, will add to growth in South Asian economies. So it will be a win-win, virtual cycle created. Roineet, do you want to add your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think, you know, there's this joke about how this young boy was reading a newspaper and told eight-year-old boy who told his mother, you know, when I grow up, I want to be a philanthropist and his mother was really proud of him. That's very good, my son. He says, yes, they all seem to be terribly rich. The kind of growth model that we have today allows value to accumulate with a few people at one end of that chain. And that's why you become wealthy and then you have to wake up in the morning and say, oh my God, what am I going to do with all this millions of dollars that I've accumulated? Now is that the kind of philanthropy we used to have? I'm not so sure. The kind of philanthropy Anshu is talking about is philanthropy, the love for humankind, where anybody can share. But having said that, I think the way philanthropy is set up today with all the foundations and everything, I think they have to be accountable to the public because that wealth, which would have otherwise been taxed, Adi, in other societies, and you're allowing philanthropists or people to give it back. And that's good, and it should be voluntary. The government cannot tell you how to do philanthropy, but certainly the public must be told where that money is going. And that just means putting your accounts up on the web, website, making sure that you are having real impact, telling the world even about your failures. Failures are important in philanthropy. But that doesn't mean that you're not accountable for your philanthropy and for the way you're using your wealth. Otherwise, the government should tax it and use it and it's all its wisdom to create redistribution, which we know doesn't work. So I think that's very helpful. Please jump in. Yeah, let me comment there. Look, first of all, because we have a governance failure, it does not mean that the government should be abdicated from its responsibility of looking after its people. We have to improve the governance system. Now, just carrying on, Rohini, what you said. Now I've done flood relief, and I've done earthquake relief. And of course I've got these two charities. One is this university, one is the hospital. As I dwelled into this NGO business, I discovered that it's the big, some of our, the biggest scams going. Now, we had, we figured out that for every rupee we collected, the maximum we ever went into collection, which went into the collection of the rupee, was seven passers, six passers, three passers. Here were people taking 50 passers in expenses. I think this really has to be looked into. How can you, if here's me giving for charity and half of it is going into the administration or whatever or the expenses, it doesn't figure. It has to be, there has to be some account to believe. I certainly believe, inshallah, when Terik and Saf government comes into power in a few months time, we are certainly going to make sure, having been into philanthropy for now 20 years, I certainly know all the scams that are going on and we are going to clamp down on them. You know, the government must collect taxes and it's the government's responsibility to alleviate poverty. China has done it. Look, you must, I especially went to China to study, how did they do this? 400 million people out of poverty in 20 years. And it was government driven. It wasn't some philanthropy driven. And so just because our governments are corrupt, we lack governance, we then leave everything. What is the government's job is left to entrepreneurs to sort of provide charity, it doesn't work. Thank you. Anshu, you mentioned something that I think certainly resonated very deeply for me. You know, the comment that somehow we, in a part of the world, which is deeply religious, deeply faith-based with so many different faiths, we still somehow can live in peace with the fact that there's a hungry child outside a masjid or a mandir or a church. And we are able to kind of put our traditional philanthropy into religious giving. This, by the way, is not unlike what happens in the United States. The vast majority of giving in the United States is also giving through churches and religious institutions. So how do you, do you want to talk about how you think you can shift that and also speak to Rohini's point, because I think we do forget that philanthropy means exactly that, love of humankind. And you don't have to wait to become a Rockefeller or a Adi Godrej or an Andan Nilikhani to be able to be part of giving back into your society. And I think you can tell us a little bit more about that. Some of the finds is that, A, we need to understand that we cannot compare between the development world and our region. Why, why I say, even if you talk about the philanthropy and all. Because, you know, there are two stages. One is the stage of survival and the second is the stage of growth. Now, till zero, that's the stage of survival. We are, the large part of our communities are below zero. You need to bring them to zero and then from zero, you can think of growth. We know that the voluntary sector across this region is still, unfortunately, forced to work on the survival of people. Two, two times food, basic education, basic pair of cloth, what is this all about? I mean, these are basic things for survival, which is, which is ultimately the state's responsibility. As Iran points out, yeah. That's not the responsibility of the voluntary sector. Voluntary sector or business sector doing philanthropy or whosoever is, needs to become a part of the, of the progress, of the, of the growth. So that's one very unfortunate part and that's where the entire money actually goes. Second part about the voluntary sector. I don't belong to the traditional voluntary sector. I'm also, you know, an ex-corporate person and say 13 years back left my job and started all this. There are lots and lots of preconceived notions about the development sector. It is the easiest things to, to put blame on the NGOs. Think of India where in many parts you do not have G of governance or G of government and still people survive, people grow. It's because of some good people somewhere, you know. You need to understand that a particular class of institutions are not corrupt. People are corrupt. So if the, if the same people are in politics, they are corrupt. If same people are in bureaucracy, they are corrupt. If same people are there in NGOs, they are corrupt. You very easily people come and say that there are 3 million NGOs, you know, in, in India. Do you understand that the richest cricket board is an NGO? The every single school is an NGO? Every single thing is an NGO. Where, where is the, where is the figure? Where is the figure? So I think there are a lot of misconceptions in, in our work, you know, which we, where we deal with the old clothes of people. We often tell people that when you come and give us two, you know, two shirts, two beautiful shirts, do we ever ask you that, you know, whether it is your hardened money or it is the bribe of Commonwealth game? We never ask you. We don't doubt on your intention. But when you give it to us, the first question you ask us, whether it will go to the right place or not. You know, but I'm not, I'm not doubting on your intention. Do not look down to the development sector. It's a crime to become a social entrepreneur here. It's a crime to start an NGO here. Because people doubt on your intentions, people doubt on your integrity, which is very painful for people like us. I've, I've gone through and many, my friends have gone through the same process. It's very tough to see this, that you give 1000 rupees to Goonjh. And you doubt on my integrity, that from where I am wearing a decent cotton trouser. No, I think this is a, I think this point is- This is a big, it's a big thing, which we, which we all go through. And this is, this is basically a basic discouragement. One question, which I often ask people, if DHL spends money in transportation, that's a process expense. If Goonjh spends money on transportation, that is an admin expenses. If a person in the corporate is paid salary, that's fine. That's, you know, wages on radium, whatever you call. If a person is paid wages in voluntary sector, that's an admin expense. I think this points to an important issue. I think, you know, there's this whole question of an expectation in the voluntary sector, in being a social entrepreneur, that it almost has kind of a mother Teresa-like quality about it, that you should be sort of doing this, you know, selflessly without any aims to, you know, benefit in any way, but rather than, as you said, applying business principles. I have to add one. And I think, you know, that's an important clarification. That's an important point, which I, which I often ask. Mr. Ambani's son become Ambani's. Our roadside barber son become barber. Why don't you have examples of people who have spent their life in social activities, coming back to the social sector? How many examples do you have, except Baba Amte or some of the families? Even Gandhi's family didn't join the same, same, same path. Have we ever thought about it? That what is, what is this missing? My daughter is about 13 years old. She wants to become a dancer, absolutely fine. But tomorrow, if she hates the voluntary sector or the work I am doing or we are doing, something which is, which is going to be the biggest asset, actually, we are losing, because she has lived with it. She knows it. We will be losing it, because the expectations are that I don't draw enough salary. And my daughter goes to, you know, a minstrel school. A hungry person cannot solve the problem of hunger. Let's be honest about it. Let us do not accept or expect Mother Teresa from all of us. No, we cannot. We cannot become Gandhi, never in our life. We can, we can adopt some of the principles. So Anshu, I'm going to ask, Yeah, Gavita, can I just say one thing? I think, Sure, and then maybe I'll ask both Kasim and, Perhaps you didn't understand what I was saying. Look, the issue, I've been running NGOs now for 20 years. All I'm saying is that just like you expect accountability in the government, you should have accountability of NGOs. Absolutely. And the second thing I want to say is that, you know, you also, you mentioned something about religion. My experiences that religion, all religions encourage donations, charity, all religions. I found that the people who supported me the most were spiritual religious people. It does not mean that people who collect, religious people who collected the name of charity actually are honest. Most of the time I found that the, the religious organizations actually were quite dishonest, but the people give money because of spiritual reasons. Right. Thank you for that clarification. Asanga, would you like to talk, I mean, I think what we've heard a little bit here is what does it take to really create an ecosystem that both sustains, rewards and holds to account? I mean, I think Rohini began this by saying, look, you know, foundations do have to be held accountable. And what that means is you kind of create a set of transparency guidelines by which you actually make that, make your work visible. You make it visible in the public sphere. We've just heard Imran expand upon that a little bit to talk about the fact that the same standards that apply have to apply across the board. How has that worked in the context of Sri Lanka? How does it, how do you see it, how do you see Sri Lanka creating an environment for that work moving forward? Let me give an example on how Sri Lanka sort of came across this terrible disaster in 2004, the tsunami, took about 35,000 lives and 500,000 families were dislocated. And within three years, amazingly, the philanthropists, the social entrepreneurs, NGOs, government, they got together. And the sink, it happened. And within three years, I was in charge of the Fishery Harbors Corporation. So I had to rebuild the fishing harbors, which was damaged by the tsunami. So within three years, we completed the job. And it happened because of the sink. We got everybody to work together. I think South Asia, you need to get everybody to work together. And that's the challenge. Most of the conferences I come to in India, like we have these discussions on SAAC, for example, Sri Lanka had the first, India has the first FDA signed with Sri Lanka, the first. And there is a lot that we can do regionally. And I agree with the things that the other members discuss on. One is on getting the governance right, the policy, because Sri Lanka got it right, I believe, by identifying the people for homeless. For example, we built one million houses, one of our presidents, he said, everybody needs shelter. And amazingly, he developed housing. So there is, we don't have malnutrition anymore in Sri Lanka. We don't have actually very minimum numbers of poverty. We have 98% literacy rate. And amongst women. Yes. So it's really important that we get this ecosystem right. And in Sri Lanka's case, we are trying to develop the ecosystem, the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the North and the East, which was affected by war. We have some success stories, which is amazing. Like the women, for example, the contribution to the economy, Sri Lankan economy, I need to mention this. It's actually the women's contribution is the most, if you look at the foreign remittance that the women send, it's all from women employees. And the next is the tea industry, which women workers, the textile industry, again, women. So there is tremendous contribution. And South Asia has so much potential. I think the lifeblood of South Asia is its working capital, the amazing amount of working capital we have. So it's about improving the ecosystem, getting the government's right, doing the right thing. And it could be the unpopular thing also. I mean, it's not always doing the right thing, but a lot of leaders, I see they do like to do the popular thing, but it's not the right thing. Thank you. Kasim, I want to give you a chance if you want to add anything before we turn it open to the floor for questions to come to us from the floor. Is there anything you'd like to add, either on any of the topics we've spoken about so far or clear of perspective? Yeah, I mean, I just have a quick comment. Again, coming back to the education bit, because Mr. Khan made an important point, and I think I just want to reflect on that. And that was about the education system exacerbating inequity in countries like Pakistan. And I have to say that I do agree, I do agree to a great extent with what he is saying, but I think that the point I want to stress here is that ultimately the responsibility for public education has to lie with the government. Neither the private sector nor social entrepreneurs can replace the role of government. And one of the concerns that I have with this is that because I am involved in private schools and often when people talk to me, the sort of implication is that the very existence of private schools is creating inequity. But you see the public education system is the way it is. But the irony is that if it weren't for some of the good schools that we have operating in countries like ours, a lot of the Pakistanis who are sitting in this room would probably not be here. Khan Sahib and I both went to very good schools and that's probably given us some of the advantages that we have. So I think that end of the day, what we need to do is that we need to uplift what is happening in the public education system because ultimately that's the only solution. And sometimes we do very idiotic things like in Pakistan. Again, I don't want to on this, sitting on this stage try to run down. Pakistan, I'll give you one silly example. The Punjab government recently decided that, I don't know maybe because the elections are coming up in a popularity bid, they decided to hand out like 120,000 laptops. Now this is in a country where you have or in a province where you have ghost schools where there aren't teachers on paper, they're drawing salaries but actually the schools don't exist. But their solution was to hand out laptops. Now a lot of those laptops are currently available in electronics markets in Lahore for resale. So anyway, I think that are basically are... And they'll still vote for that. But is there enough electricity? Is there electricity? Well, I should hope not. Do you want to jump in? No, no, it was the electricity in the schools for the laptops or they sold up out. Well, they would charge them and then the electricity would go. So I guess maybe that was the logic with laptops as opposed to desktops, I don't know. Yeah, that's what I wanted. So yeah, we have serious issues. So I can already see hands up on the floor and if we have someone with a mic, I think moving around. So the lady to my right. And then we have a couple of others up here. What I'm going to suggest is I'm going to take two or three questions from the floor, have the panelists respond and then come back and take two or three more. So rather than responding to each one individually, we can group them a little bit. Go ahead and please introduce yourself. Hello, I'm Mehta Aziz. And I'm the founding director of Children's Global Network. I work in the education sector for the past 20 years in Pakistan and I would like to take the discussion a little forward in light of philanthropy and entrepreneurship. Kasim and Mr. Khan have both mentioned education and in Pakistan, a silent revolution is happening and which I would term as furthering social entrepreneurship and philanthropy or convergence of social entrepreneurship and philanthropy, which is the low-cost private sector. And especially in Punjab, Kasim, there are 70,000 primary schools, low-cost primary schools. And they are not making, I mean, you know, you have the Beacon House at one end and then you have that school, which is like... Educators. Educators, no, but the school, the Mohalla School, which is in Southern Punjab, which has come up in, I mean, like it sits everywhere and they charge like 50 rupees to 150 rupees and basically in the primary sector. So, you know, but they are doing it for the... There is a demand and people are responding to that demand and it is the largest employer of women. You know, anybody who has passed their secondary examination and all would be employed in that. Now, I also sit on the Punjab compulsory education commission, which is to make the act of 100% literacy. Now, when I sit, when I take the other side of the panel, you know, they don't, I'll just quickly. So the recognition of this kind of social philanthropy is not there with the government. So how does the social contract between the government and the social entrepreneurship and philanthropy happens because by the end of the day, it's the government's responsibility, not only in service delivery, but also in policy making as well. I am going to interrupt you, I'm sorry. We need time to be able to take questions from the floor. Can I ask those of you who are, I know there's so much juicy material to respond to. So please state your name and state your comment as a question. I don't put, right now we're not going to hear sort of long positions on issues. The gentleman over here, and then there's a lady in the back over there with her hand up, so please go ahead. Sam White, one of the co-founders of Promethean Power. One of the subjects that hasn't been brought up is how for-profits have social impact. In the last session we heard from the head of Nestle and the more successful they are in collecting, and they are in selling milk, the more they are successful with the farmers and the infrastructure that they create for farmers. I'd like to ask Mr. Godrej how your for-profit side of the business has social impact, particularly in rural India. Thank you. Question over here in the back. My name is Preeti Dabra. I'm from the National University of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yee School of Public Policy. My question is to you, Mr. Irrankan. You had mentioned that you went- Could you speak up a little bit so we can hear on the panel? Yeah. You had mentioned that you went to China and you had meetings and waging and that they have had an astounding rate of growth, especially vis-a-vis education. Are there any learnings that you think Pakistan or India can take away from a different political system like China? So, we have a question about for-profits and their social impact. We have a comment about the another part of the sort of business model that is available in terms of education in Pakistan. And then we have a question about what in specific we could be learning from the Chinese experience that has of relevance to South Asia. Would anybody want to take a short sort of immediately as a response to any of those? Just on the budget schools. I think this really cuts to the heart of what is the role of the state in education. And budget schools have come out because of in the vacuum created by a state which is not serving a need for the bottom of the pyramid, the students that need to go into good schools. And surveys in India have shown that the budget private schools are not giving that much better outcomes, learning outcomes than government schools. It's marginally better in some cases. So the case is still to be made and their infrastructure may not necessarily be as good as some of the government schools. With the right to education act, in fact, the government has outsourced equity to the private sector. So I don't know, we need to get back as you were saying the public schools back on track but whether the budget schools and other such social entrepreneurs playing in the basic services space, we need to have some consensus about the role of the private sector in basic services because right now there is not public policy clarity on that. And there's a big gray zone in which these social entrepreneurs are operating. And anytime the political people can pull the rug out from under these brave entrepreneurs. So we need to build consensus about their role, I think. Thank you. Would anybody like, Adi, I think the question was directed at you, the comment on for-profits having social impact. And if anyone else would like to comment from a different perspective on that as well. So please go ahead. I think businesses which obviously are for-profits can create tremendous impact. For example, I'll talk about rural just shortly but in Vikroli which is our business township in Mumbai for more than 50 years, we've provided housing to our employees and schooling. And we've seen children of illiterate parents turning out to be excellent doctors, lawyers, et cetera. So once given opportunity, it's proven that people do extremely well. In rural areas, now in India, there's a movement to move manufacturing across the country. And where we are near rural areas, we spend about 2% of our profits on corporate social responsibility. And the impact it can have on a village having some schooling, a dispensary, et cetera, is tremendous. And I think a lot of Indian businesses are doing that. Much more needs to be done. And I think now the new Companies Act in India is going to make it mandatory for all corporations to spend 2% of the after-tax profit on corporate social responsibility. Again, I hope it is well spent because these kind of obligatory things can not necessarily always create. But I think the impact that can be created to my mind with relatively small expenditures is tremendous. And if I could ask a little follow-up on that, which is to say, how does one ensure the kind of accountability? I mean, to some significant degree, this depends on the wisdom and the commitment from the leadership at the top of the organization and really setting an example all through that for-profit. And are there mechanisms that you think we could be sharing across the board where we have best practices that can actually encourage other businesses to join in that project? Well, I'm a strong believer that you can't sort of control everything through legislation or orders, et cetera, or even punishment and exposure because people talk of corruption being controlled through punishment and exposure. But murder wouldn't be there in the world. Murder has always been exposed and punished all over the world, but it's still continued. So there must be other things, incentives. To my mind, recognition is a very important thing. When people see other people being recognized doing good work, I think it encourages people to do so. And general principles of governance should be spread. So for example, CII carries out a lot of programs on improved corporate governance. Instead of getting government to monitor it and so I think volunteerism is what we should... Encourage. What we should progress. We're going to turn to Imran Khan to ask in response to the question Preeti posed, how exactly can South Asia more broadly learn from China? And China has also such unique circumstances within which it was able to kind of lead. It doesn't have in some ways the democlete sword of democracy. And that does actually create both incentives and disincentives in very different formats. So what is your takeaway from your experience and exchange with that society and that governing? Just quickly about what Adi said. I think there's no doubt that the more wealth creation in a society, the more you alleviate poverty, more jobs and everything. It's just should not descend into greed. As you know, this whole banker's greed which has led to this disaster, it should be the government should be able to limit the levels of greed. This idea that you know, the more money you make. I mean, people, we are very greedy, unfortunately. Coming back to China, look, number one, you're absolutely right. In China, since they don't have to worry about elections after every four years or five years and then the coalition governments and the immediate catering for survival, they can actually plan long-term. But I can tell you that in Pakistan, in the 60s, we actually had governments who planned long-term and actually made a huge impact. Jarwal Nehru, although, well, I guess he was helped by this because he was there for a long time. He built these institutes, these technical institutes, which had this huge impact in India. So in China, they have long-term policies. They actually sat down and prepared for the long-term. Secondly, they understood that because most of the population lived in rural areas, how to get them out of poverty and they made the village or the small units the center of growth. They concentrated on them. They ended up, you know, they had small land holdings so they made them these cooperatives and then they used those bigger units as a unit of development. So I think the key, I think I found from China was one long-term planning. Secondly, they concentrated on empowering people at the grassroot level. And once people are empowered, they can lift themselves up. There was a great Pakistani called Akhtar Humid Khan. He did this famous project called the Orangi Pilot Project. So in a shanty town where there were the poorest people living there, he did this pilot project where all he did was, he empowered them. They ran their own schools. They had micro-credit and he started that long time ago. He gave them skills, you know, they built their own sewerage system and he proved to everyone that this shanty town lifted themselves above everyone else. And actually the standard of living went above localities which was supposed to be looked after by the government. Thank you. We have time for maybe two more questions from the audience here. There's a lady here in the front. Hunger, poverty, disenfranchisement, poor education. Please introduce yourself. Sorry, my name is Shafalika Saxena. I'm a technologist. Hunger, poverty, all the things that you've been talking about, it seems to me that they're all symptoms of a single disease. And that is the grand failure of governance. So my simple question is, would a shorter cut to true progress be to focus philanthropy and social entrepreneurship efforts on the cause rather than its many insidious effects? Thank you, that's a great question. And we have someone right here in the front. Go ahead. Sorry, so it looks like you made, I'm sorry. Somebody got the, there's a, there's a hand up. Thanks. I'll get to you next. So you're the number, you're number three. In order to, sorry, Sunil Parekh. Sorry, I have the lights right in my eye. I know. It's the most impossible to see all of you. Sunil Parekh, chairman of PAN IIT alumni. I have a question that actually cuts across Anshu what he said. And I'd like Adi's inputs to it. Organizations such as yours that need money from public have to have accountability in terms of what kind of percentage are you sharing on your own admin costs? Organizations like her, perhaps may not be accountable because they're spending their own money. From a business perspective, Adi, what would be a good percentage to be regarded as a reasonable amount as admin costs? And if there were some directions in this as what you would regard as comfortable in terms of working, then that should become the acceptable norm rather than saying 50 is too much or seven is too little. Thank you. That's a great question as well. By the way, one that continues to be debated also in the United States, what's considered to be best practice in terms of administrative costs and overhead for foundations and for nonprofits. There was a gentleman with silver hair in the third row who had his, thank you. Well, it looks silver in the light, so you know. You should just stay where you are. It looks good. Nothing to do with the age. That's right. I'm often asked by people at a restaurant, what do I do to get this? And I said, it took a long time and a very good address. But thank you for recognizing me. I'm Praveen Mayur from New York University and I have a simple question, I hope, anyway. I hear a lot about individual successes and we have many examples. Could you hold the mic closer? I'm sorry. We hear a lot about individual successes in the social entrepreneurship arena. And it seems to me that what's lacking is scaling up. And it seems to me that a partnership, I'm kind of offering a solution perhaps, a partnership between the successful private sector, perhaps even parts of successful government, together with a successful social entrepreneur, maybe the way to scale these things up rather than reinventing it in different locations every single time. Okay, thank you very much. So the last question sort of about how we do scale up and how we actually address the question, which I think you also mentioned on true of just the sheer volume and the size of what we're trying to get at. We're going to have a hard stop at 3.15. So here's what I'm going to suggest. I'm going to ask for people to respond to the question first about whether we're tackling the right, whether we're tackling the symptoms of the problem or whether we should be tackling the actual cause, which is this comment about governance. Anybody who would like to speak to that. And then what I'm going to suggest is that you make your, there are two other questions. There was a very specific question about sort of, is there a good percentage with regard to kind of what is fair for administrative costs? And then lastly, this question of scale. So may I ask each one of you to, if you want to respond to the question, you may do so and otherwise make sort of your closing comment as we end this panel. Please, Imran. Well, the only, I'll let the panel answer the other questions, but young lady who talked about why not fix the governance system? That's why I'm in politics. I realized that no matter how much social work we do, if there is bad governance, there is actually nothing. It's a drop in the ocean. And good governance, the problem you do not have good governance is because the quality of people who come into politics, unfortunately, are ill-equipped to provide good governance because the way parliamentary democracy has evolved in the subcontinent, the sort of guy who goes around in a constituency to get votes, I'm afraid most of them know nothing about governance because they have done nothing in their lives. And I can tell you two of our prime ministers whose first job was that they became prime ministers. They've never done anything before. So when you have never done anything before, all you have done is to develop a constituency which is a completely different skill. Just because I've become a politician because I've managed to understand or worked out the formula how to get votes in a constituency, but I might not have done anything else in my life. So governance means the ability to develop institutions and nurture them. Unfortunately, parliamentary democracy, most of the people who come in do not understand the basics of governance. So my conclusion is that the one man who we in Pakistan have thought, one of the best politicians here, Natesh Kumar and Bihar, is the one guy who understood governance. And lo and behold, there's Bihar going up. So key is the people who come into politics. Unfortunately, most of them should be disqualified to run the government. Thank you, Imran. Anshu? I think in terms of governance, again, we talk a lot about the macro issues and ignore the micro issues. I'll give you a very small example. When we talk about the bribe, which is a very common thing, you bribe a traffic guy, say about 100 rupees, and you say that, listen, he's a very corrupt guy. You do not understand that while giving him 100 rupees, you gave him 100 rupees because you wanted to save 400 rupees of yours. Otherwise, actual chalan was for 500 rupees. So now, he only took 100 rupees. You save 400 rupees. Still, you say he's a corrupt person. So I think it has to start from me. And it looks very small. It looks very micro, but all the micro issues ultimately become macro. The government is elected by us. It's very simple. And we will always elect a government the way we behave because that goes in our favor. That is one. On two other parts, as far as transparency is concerned, I strongly feel that not only, say, the organization which gets the direct support from people, but from any money which is spent in the voluntary sector, as Imran Bai also said, needs to be made public. It's very simple. All the accountability, everything needs to be visible to people, and there needs to be norm. This is 100% true that in the voluntary sector right now, we do not have that kind of governance system, no answerability that way. It is one-on-one answerability is there. You give me money, you ask me, I'll give you. You know the answer. But not in the public domain. It needs to come in public domain, 100%. Then only things will improve because this is absolutely true that in the name of voluntary sector or corporate foundation or NGOs or social enterprise, people are doing enough bad things. Doing enough bad things. That needs to stop. Scale up my answer is very simple that we need to understand more on the, you know, let's stop thinking of scaling up the organization. If we can scale up the ideas, that is a practical solution. Thank you, Anshu. You know, like at Goonj, we say that we don't want to grow just as an organization. We want to grow as an idea. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rohini. Yeah, I think the point is well taken as to what, how do we all attack the root cause of the problem? And I think that's really about building what we call society or Samaj. When you are building a strong Samaj, then you can make both the state and the markets accountable. So the root cause, philanthropists and that money can afford to take long-term risks in building up the capacity of the Samaj to make the state and the market accountable to it. So that's the root cause question and that's not easy to build. It's not easy to build the capabilities of people to hold the state and market accountable. But there is no shortcut and we have to keep building on that. And so I'll leave it at that. You have to develop a thick skin when you get pulled out in the media for having supported such things. Sometimes you have to do that too. Awesome. Ji, I'll just wrap up by quickly addressing one of the questions which was about whether there can be partnerships between government and social entrepreneurs. So I think that yes, there can be very successful partnerships and it's something that at least in education has been done and the success rates have been quite high. So I think that in countries like Pakistan or indeed other countries in South Asia, we should be looking at public-private partnerships but even that is not a replacement for the role that the public sector has to play. But it can certainly help in scaling up. The other very quick thing and this just sort of links up with something I'm sure that you mentioned about bribes and I want to actually bring this to the attention of Mr. Imran Khan. One of the very interesting presentations that we saw the YGLs a couple of days ago was by a gentleman who has set up this website called ipaidabribe.com. And so what happens is that each, I mean it sounds funny, but it's actually quite phenomenal. So what happens is that each time somebody pays a bribe whether to get their electricity bill or gas connection or whatever, they actually log on to this site and they describe the nature of the issue and the amount of money they paid and it's phenomenal because there have been apparently hundreds of thousands of hits on that and the outcome of it has been that it's been holding those authorities responsible and actually a large percentage of these issues have been fixed because people responsible have been exposed. So I would really like you to take a look at that site. Something we can look at in Pakistan also. Thank you. Thanks. Atanga. Yeah. I think it's really important. I visited one of the Angarwadis a few days ago and I heard the 43 million children sort of educated in these schools in Angarwadis. So if you can connect direct investment, CSR projects to sort of scale up and recognize a few of the people who are doing change at these centers, I think that will be a great help for the economy because you need to get the basics right. If you don't get the children educated in a proper way and you have the, of course, you have the targets, the double digit growth and all that. So you need to get the basics right. So it's really important because Sri Lanka, we have this experience but because we actually had this war but we parallelly we got the basics right sometimes. So it's really important to focus on the bottom of the pyramid, the grass root and also the governance, get the governance in a proper manner and it's pretty hard because you to get the right people into politics, it makes a huge difference. If you're getting the right person, a courageous like Ramesh Ram and other like you mentioned, he's amazing, he's got a lot of courage to do that website and all that. So South Asia needs courageous leaders and also to empower the like the Angarwadi's and the bottom of the pyramid. So that's really important. Thank you. Adi, you get the last word. Okay, just a couple of points on governance. I think there's tremendous improvement required and I totally agree with the other speakers but we should also realize that as far as tackling say poverty in India is concerned, we have made a lot of progress. The average longevity in undivided India just before partition was 27 years. Today in India at 65, I don't know the exact number but in other South Asian countries, there is progress. We have lifted 300 million people out of poverty in India. Of course, the fact is we've added much more than 300 million people to our population but poverty when the British were here was almost all prevailing, which has changed and I expect as growth continues over the next 20 years there will be considerable change and to answer the question on overheads, most corporates, I shouldn't say all because there are certain business models which are different, most corporates run on about overheads which are around 10% of their sales turnover and I think keeping a cap on that number for philanthropies and NGOs makes sense. Overheads perhaps shouldn't be more than 10% of what they expend or what they get from their donors. I think that would be a good note, thank you. So thank you for all, I want you all to join me in giving our panelists a warm applause and thanks. We have plenty of food for thought here, much more to be gone into at length. I thank you all for joining us and again my appreciation for all members of the panelists. Thank you.