The Government in Business Attire: Market Models for Poverty Alleviation in India

Arnav Mukherjee University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

USA

Word Count : 3998

2

The Government in Business Attire: Market Models for Poverty Alleviation in India

Abstract

For 64 years, development projects in India have been crippled by systems of dole, fostering the

lethargy of entitlement, poor poverty targeting practices, bureaucratic entanglement, and a

philosophical aversion to the market. The government has been the prime patron of these

projects leaving them susceptible to subversion by state agents, politically motivated funding

surges and troughs, and duplication of efforts due to overlapping populist projects. The result is

that India continues to falter in social welfare, accounting for more poor people than all of Africa

combined according to the multidimensional poverty index. This paper proposes that the solution

is to expose development processes to a managed market model, creating responsive government

facilitation and risk-return payoff schemes to make the poor stakeholders instead of dependants

on a benefactor.

The thrust should be to develop livelihoods for the communities holistically rather than just

giving aid to certain politically advantageous sections. A mechanism for this is revealed through

a case study of Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company (GLPC), the first and only for-profit

government institution in India for rural livelihood development. By establishing a company, the

government can outsource development to professionals, reduce bureaucratic friction, and

leverage corporate expertise for the poor to create a virtuous cycle of efficient development and

risk-sharing. The government will focus on arbitration rather than dictation of development,

negotiating agreements where the poor can receive training and participate in markets through

corporations. Using community representatives for propagation and corporations for guidance, a

regenerative model of development can be created.

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Introduction

Rajiv Gandhi, the sixth Prime Minister of India, lamented in the mid-1980‟s that “out of every

rupee spent by the Government only 15 paise (100 paisa = 1 rupee) reaches the poor”. The

unfortunate circumstance is that nearly 25 years on, his son Rahul Gandhi, General Secretary of

the Indian National Congress, confirmed that the situation remains the same or might have

worsened1. The World Bank highlighted the situation last year stating that “India is not getting

the „bang for the rupee‟ that its significant expenditure would warrant, and the needs of

important population groups remain only partially addressed”. India spent 2 % of its GDP in

2010 on social programs combating poverty which is higher than any other peer in Asia but their

impact is being limited by poor implementation, red tape and corruption, the report said2. The

result is that India continues to falter in social welfare, accounting for more poor people than all

of Africa combined according to the multidimensional poverty index3.

John Blomquist, the World Bank‟s lead economist, suggested in the report that the poor results

might also have something to do with the type of projects implemented noting that "safety nets in

India remain primarily 'nets' rather than 'ropes' or 'ladders' which seek to promote sustained

movement out of poverty". The top-down approach of most of the government projects failed in

capacity building for the poor. The Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), aimed at

encouraging rural self-employment and livelihood generation, recognized these failures and tried

to account for them by enshrining principles of empowerment and participation in its “Good

1 Staff (2011). “’Aadhaar to ensure money reaches people directly: Rahul Gandhi”

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-10-20/news/30301425_1_aadhaar-12-digit-unique-number-banking-services. Accessed 19th March, 2012 2 Foy,H.(2011).”India not getting “bang for rupee” from poverty schemes”

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/05/18/idINIndia-57103420110518. Accessed 19th March,2012 3 Shrinivasan,R.(2010).”55% of India’s population poor: Report” http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-

07-15/india/28281806_1_child-mortality-nutrition-human-development-initiative. Accessed 14th December,2011

4

Governance” model4. However, though the project managed to involve the poor, it could not

provide enough technical support to convert them into independent economic agents whose skills

matched market standards.

Thus, there is a need to envision a new model to build capacity among the poor more effectively

and make them competent stakeholders in the marketplace rather than perpetual dependants on a

benevolent benefactor. This paper suggests the solution might be found in partially substituting

government participation with corporate involvement and exposing development processes to a

managed market model. The government will act as a bridge between the poor and the

marketplace focusing on responsive facilitation while corporate bodies will leverage their

experience in building capacity amongst the disadvantaged to make their skills viable in the

marketplace. The paper will explore this solution in the context of a case study of Gujarat

Livelihood Promotion Company (GLPC), the first and only for-profit government institution in

India for rural livelihood development.

Context

To understand the requirement for GLPC and advantages of the model we will explore the

shortfalls of the major poverty alleviation programs already existing for wage employment, self-

employment, and food security in greater detail and draw out underlying reasons for the failures

of government projects.

4 Shylendra, H.S. & Bhirdikar, K.(2005).”’Good Governance’ and Poverty Alleviation Programmes: A Critical Analysis

of SGSY”, pg 3. Published in International Journal of Rural Management, 1(2), 2005, pp 203-221

5

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act - NREGA is a job guarantee scheme assuring 100

days of employment per year to adult members of any rural household willing to work at

minimum wage. While the program has been lauded as a success, it still faces numerous

challenges. Inadequate transparency and accountability mechanism has led to elite capture by

interest groups like farmers‟ committees. Exclusion of sections of the poor in issuance of job

cards is common due to corruption and caste conflicts sidelining scheduled castes. Being a

government headline project, misappropriation of funds is widespread, “fostered by the complex

structure of the administrative system and the program design” 5

. Though an extensive checks-

and-balance system has been created, its complexity negatively affects monitoring and

evaluation.

SGSY – SGSY was designed to encourage income-generating activities through a predominantly

micro-finance approach. Though it was successful in disbursing funds to self-help groups (SHG),

very few of them had the confidence, soft skills, or technical knowledge to compete in the

marketplace independently. As seen in the table below, K.S. Mandal notes that even after six

years of existence only 1.1% of SHGs had undertaken economic activity6. C.A.K.Yesudian also

identifies that only 1/8th

of the beneficiaries were below poverty line (BPL) and that “the richest

among the poor benefited most since they have the capacity to use credit and technology to their

advantage”7.

5 Rabbe, K., Birner, R., Sekhar, M., Shilpi, A., Schiffer, E. & Gayathridevi, K.G. (2010) “How to Overcome the

Governance Challenges of Implementing NREGA”, pg 25. International Food Policy Research Institute. 6 Mandal, K.S. (2008) “Privatizing Poverty Alleviation: Towards Business Solutions for Poverty”, pg 7. IIM Calcutta.

Presented at the 2nd

International Conference on Sociology held at Athens Institute for Education and Research, Athens, Greece, May 12-15, 2008. 7 Yesudian, C.A.K (2007) “Poverty alleviation programs in India: A social audit”, pg 3. Indian J Med Res 126, October

2007, pp 364-373.

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Public Distribution Scheme –PDS required states to provide BPL households with 20kg of food

grains at highly subsidized prices. Yesudian highlights the numerous problems faced by the

TPDS program. The administrative cost was tremendous due to the centralized procurement

system coupled with wastage and pilferage at every stage of operation. The high subsidy meant

there was constant incentive for state agents to divert the grains to the open market for profit,

with the leakage level being almost 41%. Further, there was faulty targeting with non-poor being

included as political favors and slum dwellers in urban areas being excluded. Moreover, the

grains were sold in bulk and many BPL families did not have the means to buy 20kg of grains at

once. This meant that a majority of the poorest 20 percent of households in the north and north-

eastern states as well as 20% of poor in Maharashtra could not access grains through the PDS8.

8 Yesudian, C.A.K (2007). Pg 6

7

Underlying reasons of failure – The above suggests a pattern of failure of poverty alleviation

projects by the government. We have tried to delineate this pattern by drawing out the underlying

constraints leading to failure.

1. Government projects have a lack of top management bandwidth and talent – The Indian

government‟s organization structure, as a whole and in projects, is usually bottom heavy,

hiring too many workers and too few managers. This is a result of colonial and socialist

history, which encourages an elitist view with regard to people fit for top management,

and a socialist view of the government having a responsibility for hiring labor.

Additionally, government salaries are benchmarked across all arms, and can be quite low.

This results in poor quality top management, leading to poor project tracking, lack of

ownership and rudderless performance.

2. Government‟s role as a model, uniform employer constrains it from providing adequate

incentives for performance – The Government‟s socialist ideals lead it to equate the

responsibility of being an ideal hirer to being impartial as far as possible. This means that

a high variable component of pay is discouraged, as is unequal pay between employees at

the same level. This creates little incentive to work well.

3. Poverty alleviation projects operating under socialist principles distrust market forces,

restricting integration with the market economy – The primary objective driving projects

are promises made by political parties to the public. These promises usually have to be

unambiguously pro-poor, and the political discourse in India is not tilted towards market

mechanisms. This leads to the unfortunate situation that poverty programs do not

properly integrate individuals into the wider economy, instead directly transferring some

products to them in isolation.

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Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company Case Study

GLPC is a for-profit company established in April 2010 to promote sustainable livelihoods and

holistic development by integrating SHGs of the disadvantaged into the corporate value chain

while still safeguarding the SHG‟s ownership of their productive activity. To understand its

functioning better, we will highlight some key features of the project, provide examples of its

processes, and present statistics and visuals of its progress. Since GLPC has not prepared any

reports for the public domain yet, the information provided here was collected through

interviews with the Managing Director, Milind Torwane (on 30th

December 2011), the various

area consultants, as well as from Mission Mangalam (the mission overseeing GLPC) brochures

presented at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit 2011. The consultant team at GLPC also agreed to

share their executive PowerPoint presentations from August 2011 as well as a project update

presentation from November 2011, which were presented to the Managing Director and the

Board of Directors reviewing the project‟s progress. Finally, we referred to the „New Guidelines

For Grading & Credit Linkage of Self Help Groups/Sakhi Mandals by Banks,‟ an internal report

published in March 2011.

Distinguishing Features

1. For-Profit Status:

GLPC‟s managing director told me in an interview that “GLPC is a for-profit company

which doesn‟t want to make profits”. This is a curious statement but the distinction is an

important one. The for-profit status, appearing merely cosmetic at first or anti-people at

worst, affords the organization numerous advantages highlighted below.

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(a) Corporate involvement – The for-profit status is the main reason GLPC has been able to

attract major corporate houses even though many projects have previously tried the same

but failed to be an attractive proposition. It allows the organization to safeguard

confidentiality agreements and corporate profits. Let us contrast this with the case of

GLPC not being listed as a private company to understand better. The organization then

would not be able to ensure the confidentiality of MoUs (Memorandum of

Understanding) signed with a company and will have to release it in the public domain

since the agreement would fall under the purview of the Right to Information Act 2005.

Many companies have corporate policies which discourage entering into non-confidential

agreements for knowledge protection and legal safeguard purposes, so this would limit

their involvement. Further, if the organization was listed as non-profit it would exclude

related activities that were for-profit in nature. That means that corporations would only

be able to participate as part of their „Corporate Social Responsibility‟ rather than on a

for-profit economic basis. It is clear then that the for-profit status of GLPC inherently

gives it a wider spectrum of organizations to collaborate with and makes it a more

attractive partner.

(b) Human Resource Flexibility – GLPC isn‟t bound by government-mandated pay scales

and so can offer compensation to attract competent knowledge professionals and

consultants. It also allows GLPC to offer performance based contracts instead of being

limited to union protected bureaucrats. In fact, all general managers and project managers

in the project are hired on a 3-year contract basis with an option for a one year extension

after performance appraisal. This is crucial in overcoming the traditional principal-agent

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problem inherent in government institutions where an employee has incentives to reserve

his labor and/or pursue rent-seeking behavior to subvert the system for their benefit.

Government employees are primarily in overseeing roles like managing director and

general manager of finance and accounting. By issuing short-term contracts rather than

outsourcing to a contractor, the organization also discourages collaboration common in

long-term relations between state organizations dealing with private involvement.

Therefore, GLPC can benefit from a dynamic workforce and extract greater productivity

than normal government organizations. The flexible pay scale also means that it can

attract higher caliber employees than autonomous non-profit organizations can.

(c) Decision Making Efficiency – The third advantage is the obvious one. Being listed as a

private company, GLPC can escape the bureaucratic red tape, decision-making logjam,

and organizational malaise inherent in working under a complex government structure.

However, it retains all the competitive advantages of government oversight such as fast

track approvals and clearances of licenses and agreements. GLPC can act autonomously,

display flexibility, and make decisions efficiently. By retaining the best of both worlds

(private and government organizations), GLPC is a very attractive proposition for

corporations compared to other government organizations or even small private partners

which have to be subservient to the whims and fancies of the government.

2. Holistic Development:

India has numerous government programs for social support, wage employment, self-

employment, and skill building as explained previously. However, due to political

compulsions, many of these programs have identical target groups leading to some sectors of

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society being left out while others benefit from duplication of efforts. Further, these normally

each focus on one issue often disregarding other issues, which might be plaguing the family

or community. GLPC‟s mission is to cover every household (in Gujarat) and coordinate the

activities of the various programs with other partner bodies like corporations, NGOs,

academic institutions, and banks, so that a “diagnostic approach” to poverty eradication is

followed where every household can get the services they want rather than be limited to the

service mandated by the program. The goal is to provide the necessary services to fast track

families towards empowerment and integrate them in the economy through sustainable

livelihood generation.

To provide this, a multi-pronged approach has to be followed. The first step involves poverty

mapping to the block level in collaboration with government bodies and NGOs to create a

comprehensive database. India is a diverse country and so detailed mapping has to be done to

fully understand the needs of the area, the livelihoods prevalent, and the nature of poverty.

Poverty mapping will also prevent the exclusion of BPL households due to rampant

manipulation in survey collection9. Next, the poor are organized into SHGs and depending on

their needs, social capacity building is done by coordinating and directing related institutions.

For example, if a group needs funds then MoUs have been signed with financial institutions

where GLPC will provide collateral and the banks have to provide minimum Rs.50,000

($1000) to maximum Rs. 100,000 in cash credit rather than term loans. Alternatively, micro-

insurance can be provided if that is required. After that, in collaboration with industry

associations like the Chamber of Commerce & Industries, market employment demand

9 Mukherjee, N. (2005) “Political Corruption in India’s BPL exercise”, pg 12. Development Tracks RTC. Presented at

the ‘Redesigning the State? Political Corruption in Development Policy and Practice’ Conference held at University of Manchester, 25

th November 2005.

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forecasting is done for targeted skill upgradation while local community skills are also

identified. By coordinating various government schemes related to skill training and training

institutions, demand-supply linkage is done and the beneficiaries receive certification from

the Gujarat Skill Development Mission (GSDM).

After that, livelihood interventions are done at three levels.

(a) Existing livelihoods like agriculture and animal husbandry are augmented by relevant

information dissemination through SMS (real-time market information, information on

vaccination, immunization etc) and marketing support from corporate houses and other

bodies.

(b) The participants certified by GSDM are provided soft skills and technical knowledge and

matched to jobs by convergence of agencies involved in wage employment promotion

and corporate houses which had called for the skills during the demand forecasting stage.

Even after they receive work, consistent monitoring is done and skill improvement

interventions are offered through partner bodies.

(c) The most significant intervention is to promote self-employment. Companies pursuing

backward linkages in their supply chain (such as a clothing company looking to expand

to cotton farming) are encouraged to set up units in rural areas to provide employment as

well as self employment opportunities through outsourcing of tasks in sectors like food

processing, garments, organic produce, assembly of products etc. Holistic training in

production, marketing and management is provided by the corporations with relevant

government programs like SGSY and EDII (Entrepreneurship Development Institute of

India) providing forward and backward linkage support to build capacity among the

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micro-entrepreneurs. This is augmented by a support mechanism and round the clock

„hand-holding‟ at the local level by GLPC.

Thus, whether a villager wants to pursue his existing livelihood, wage employment, or self-

employment, GLPC facilitates their integration to the market place. Previously, though a

villager might have received skills and training they wouldn‟t have certification and would

often find these to be useless as they lacked the necessary soft skills and marketing skills to

participate in the market. But due to corporate involvement at every employment

intervention, their skills are now streamlined to market standards.

3. Participation and Ownership:

Whenever the villagers seek employment or involvement with the corporations, they are

encouraged to acquire the tools of production through their group‟s savings and contract their

production out to the corporate. This will encourage them to have ownership over their

activity and gain confidence as a market agent.

Further, at all stages of GLPC‟s processes the SHGs are invited to participate and provide

feedback. To encourage participation, GLPC has instituted a „Community Resource Person

Model‟ where a self-help group or person who has developed a skill and profited from a

business activity through GLPC is identified to go to nearby villages and teach them the

skills. To incentivize him, the corporate house seeking more people for the business activity

will pay him, as will the villagers who are learning. The remuneration for teaching will

encourage others to propagate their skills and activities and since the teachers come from

similar backgrounds, people will not be as resistant as they would if an outsider from a

government organization was coming to teach them.

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Benefits and Examples

GLPC‟s model is intriguing to study because it reserves benefits for each stakeholder. Through

greater coordination among the various agencies of the government and involvement of

corporate bodies to invest capital the government limits oversight and duplication of efforts,

reducing costs as well as transferring a proportion of its capital compulsions to the private sector,

which is better equipped to finance it. The benefits to the poor are numerous with the main one

being that they will be able to participate in the market economy more easily through corporate

involvement while government facilitation will protect them from market exploitation and

predation. Finally, the corporations will be able to target new markets which were previously

inaccessible to them. They will receive government tailored skill development support and so

will not incur the significant training costs that they would have if they were entering a

community alone. Further, the community will be less resistant to their entrance and corporations

will be able to leverage SHG members‟ access to personal and community assets such as land,

produce, forest resources, infrastructure etc.

To understand how this will work let‟s consider the example of Tata Motors. In Gujarat, many

villages are not connected to the public transportation grid. As such, people use large locally-

converted motorcycles called „Chakdas‟ as public transportation with 8-10 people hanging onto

one. Tata motors launched Tata Magic in 2007 to target this segment of intra-village and rural

transport passengers and thus wanted to enter the market.

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GLPC signed a MoU which will give funding to SHGs to buy the van if Tata agrees to train a

few of the villagers to drive while also providing basic management training to the SHG. The

SHG will own the van and run a transportation business hiring the drivers trained by Tata. So,

Tata will not only get sales but also a foothold in the market while the village will benefit from

the increased money coming in as well as employment opportunities. This model would be

propagated to many villages to replace the previous motorcycles, which were dangerous and

unreliable.

Another example is Arvind Limited, India‟s leading manufacturer of super fine fabrics and one

of the largest denim manufacturers in the world, which was looking at backward linkage.

Recently, Arvind had to close down one of its plants in Ahmedabad due to uneconomical

running costs and wanted to outsource its production to decentralized garment stitching units.

GLPC signed a MoU with Arvind where they would fund SHGs to buy the abandoned sewing

machines. Arvind will train the people to use the machines for garment stitching and would

manage the entire production chain ensuring quality control. It also agreed to include a quality

based buy back guarantee from the new garment entrepreneurs.

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Progress

Progress data and all visuals shown in this section are taken from GLPC‟s progress status

presentation dated 30th

November 2011. GLPC has formed 2,38,937 Sakhi Mandals (SHGs) with

member households numbering 29,09, 898. The SHGs hold $300 million up from $109 million

on 31st March 2011, a nearly threefold increase in just 9 months as shown below.

Further, 30,279 SHGs (12.7% of all SHGs) are linked to meaningful livelihood, a much higher

rate than the 1.1% under SGSY.

Rs.

77.79

Rs.

297.20

Rs.

171.46

31st Mar, 2011

Total Amt : Rs. 546.45 Crores

Rs.

79.86

Rs.

1,047.9

9

Rs.

376.61

30th Nov, 2011

Revolving

fund

Credit

Linkage

Savings

Total Amt : Rs. 1504.46 Crores

10,251

771

12,671

4,630

1,956

Total SHGs linked to Meaningful Livelihood

Activities = 30,279

Agriculture

Horticulture

Animal Husbandry

Cottage Industries

Rural Services

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GLPC also intends to expand from an area coverage of 100 blocks to 185 blocks in 2014-15 to

cover the whole state in conjunction with the National Rural Livelihood Project (NRLP).

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Further, marketing interventions have led to nearly 6000 GLPC outlets for SHGs to use with

2500 food outlets opened in partnership with AMUL, the largest food brand in India. 750 Gram

Haats have also been opened in city centers to sell traditional handicrafts while space has been

procured in shopping malls, large department stores, and domestic and international fairs.

Challenges

1. Since GLPC is the headline project of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, there is a

possibility that progress will be derailed if another party comes to power since they will

want their own headline project.

2. A nexus might develop in the future between corporations and the GLPC executives

leading to favor granting and lopsided MoUs exploiting the SHGs.

3. Market forces are not inherently fair and in the marketplace, scale is a major criterion for

competitiveness. This may lead to SHGs with initial success as well as other SMEs to

out-compete smaller SHGs.

4. A recent study of the Gram Mooligai Limited Company (GMCL) found that group

approach towards entrepreneurship might not be an ideal circumstance in many cases

since it can be undemocratic and unresponsive in nature to individual members needs10

.

Since GLPC also attempts to enthusiastically organize women into Sakhi Mandals, it

should carry out studies to explore other organizational structures which can be more

participative.

10

Torri, M.C. (2010) “Community Gender Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Groups: a way forward to foster social capital and truly effective forms of participation among rural women?”, pg 73. Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal.

19

Conclusion

We feel that the GLPC exhibits a managed market model to poverty alleviation which is quite

unique to development projects. We understand that this can‟t be the mainstay of government

development projects in a poor country like India, and major programs have to deal with direct

transfer of subsistence products like food, water, basic income. However, we feel that

development does not end at that point, and further progress depends on the individual becoming

a part of the wider market economy. At this point, initiatives like the GLPC may well be more

effective.

We also feel that the GLPC is well designed to take care of India‟s strengths i.e. the presence of

prosperous private corporations and many elements of a large, thriving market economy. GLPC

is designed to overcome India‟s weaknesses, particularly the organizational rigidities of its

government projects, to try and connect communities to this modern economy. This may work in

the Indian context simply because one of the major problems many individuals face is the lack of

synchronization between their community‟s information and skill base with that of the

industrialized economy.

The initiative should also be noted for the precedent it sets in possible experimentation with

government organization structure and incentives. We must note that India and other developed

countries may need just these sorts of innovations in providing government services effectively

with the much lower budgets that they have. We sincerely feel that the GLPC model may prove

viable for other countries facing issues of government inflexibility and market synchronization

gaps.

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22

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nutrition-human-development-initiative. Accessed 14th December,2011