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Author: Samhita - CGF

India Inc buckles up to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

“Whether to safeguard their workers or help strengthen the country’s COVID-19 response, companies across India are stepping up to strategically utilize their resources to address the here-and-now but also shoring up for the future in ways that are beneficial to both business and society.”

Samhita’s CEO & Founder, Priya Naik and Visiting Scientist at The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, Dr. Nachiket Mor, illustrate the virtuous cycle of mutual benefit that can be created between business and society, especially in times of such crisis when the chasms between the haves and have-nots are wide.

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The key to COVID-19 prevention in slums

Slums across India have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis. 42% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums and therefore they require carefully planned measures to ensure that preventative and primary care remain accessible.

The Bridgespan Group and WHO emphasise that community participation is the key to implement any COVID-19 preventive interventions in the slums.

This is as a model of care, designed while incorporating community participation is more likely to be accepted and effective in the long-term. To elaborate on the practicality of their recommendation, they describe activities where communities have been engaged and relay how this principle helped the programs in Mumbai slums.

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Are healthcare facilities accessible to India’s tribals?

“India no longer has the luxury of continuing to wait and watch as millions of its tribal peoples suffer and die from preventable causes.”

There is a much higher incidence of maternal and under-five mortality, stuntedness, tuberculosis, and cardiovascular diseases among India’s 104 million tribals compared with the larger population.

Piramal Swasthya and The Bridgespan Group map out the reasons for the lack of reduction of health challenges in tribal areas based on their field studies.

They outline factors such as barriers in access to healthcare and information, insufficient number of public health facilities, and lack of data.

They stress that for scalable and population-wide impact to be achieved, especially to meet India’s national aspirations of Sustainable Development goals of health and well being- a focused and collaborative approach between all stakeholders of society is the only way forward.

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Align your employees with a broader purpose

“Employees are agitating for decisions and behaviours that they can be proud to stand behind and gravitating toward companies that have a clear, unequivocal, and positive impact on the world. Organizations turning a blind eye will face inevitable blowback”.

Read McKinsey & Company’s insightful article ‘Purpose: Shifting from how to why’’ to know how companies can begin addressing this ‘purpose gap’ and take ownership of their entire business ecosystem.

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The importance of NGO Governance

Ragini Menon, Consultant and Anushree Parekh, Advisor at Samhita Social Ventures ask, “Would we prefer to fly on an airline that had the lowest maintenance cost? Or go to the hospital with the oldest, depreciated equipment?” A survey conducted in 2017 revealed that 70% of 250+ NGOs do not possess the funds to recruit skilled staff, and 40% claimed that they could not attract senior leaders due to limited resources.

Deep contrast to this is the fact that philanthropic giving in India has seen a 15% increase from INR 40,000 crore in 2014 to INR 90,000 crore in 2019. There exists a tradition of majorly providing funding to NGOs for projects, This report unravels why it is absolutely critical for the giving ecosystem to strategically invest in the training, research and organizational development of the talent of NGO partners with the end goal of increasing the overall capacity of outreach, quality, and durability of impact achieved.

To learn about how to assess an NGO partner, beyond material factors such as responsible governance, financial sustainability, and legal compliance and common societal misperceptions of NGOs, give our article a read.

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Can the Microcredit Model Be Improved?

The problem here is not a lack of microcredit programs or their execution but rather something in the model itself. This leads us to ask: Can we modify or extend certain aspects of the microfinance model to achieve better outcomes for recipients?

Vikas Dimble, Director of Knowledge and Research at Samhita and Ahmed Moshfiq Mobarak, Professor of Economics at Yale University write on how microcredit can be used to help poor communities pull through unexpected shocks if the microcredit model is modified to incorporate inclusivity and flexible lending practices.

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Enabling Stakeholders to Take Purposeful Action for Large-Scale Social Impact

“Beyond CSR, we believe in companies integrating social responsibility into their business practices. We have developed the Responsible Corporate Citizenship Continuum (RCCC) to articulate the role of the private sector in society and to provide companies with a framework to conceive human rights and social and environmental responsibility in their business practices as well as CSR.”

Priya Naik, Founder and CEO, Samhita Social Ventures is interviewed by CSR Mandate where she shares Samhita’s strategies and learnings over the last 10 years while collaborating with a variety of stakeholder such as companies, social enterprises, NGOs, governments, multilaterals and donors. Samhita has curated a number of collaborative platforms to address challenges such as gender inequality, water and sanitation and sustainable livelihoods, with each contributing stakeholder honing their core competencies to collectively create significant impact. In response to COVID, Samhita set up the India Protectors Alliance (IPA) to provide support and equipment to India’s frontline health care and sanitation workers, and REVIVE to pave the path for sustainable recovery of jobs and livelihoods by providing financial and technical assistance.

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Innovative lending practices can improve traditional microfinance

Research on the traditional microfinance model reveals the alterations that can be made to further small businesses and welfare gains. Vikas Dimble, Associate Director of Knowledge and Research at Samhita, and Ahmed Moshfiq Mobarak, Professor of Economics at Yale University emphasize the importance of flexible lending models, using local information to select eligible beneficiaries and allowing beneficiaries to make use of microcredit beyond entrepreneurial purposes.

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The most vulnerable dictate the strength of our value chains

COVID-19 has exposed the weakest links in our supply chains, the largest impact of which has been felt by the poor. As we rebuild rural livelihoods, we need to innovate towards decentralisation, write Harish Hande and Jeffrey Prins in India Development Review (IDR).

While we take a fresh look at how we innovate in value chains, they need to be understood from the perspective of the most vulnerable.

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Freedom to earn a livelihood with dignity

Covid-19 was an eye-opener for many businesses in that it revealed the importance of migrant and informal workers in a business’s supply chains. Undoubtedly, the corporate sector holds the potential and responsibility to change the dynamics within which workers operate. It is therefore in their own enlightened self-interest that businesses should understand migrant workers’ perspectives and account for their welfare.

A particularly useful way of identifying vulnerabilities and addressing them systematically is the Responsible Corporate Citizenship Continuum (RCCC). The RCCC seeks to articulate the role of the private sector in society and provide companies with a framework to include human rights and social and environmental responsibility in their operations. In the context of a crisis revealing the importance of resilient business networks and a market that values business ethics and brand purpose, the incentives to perform along these lines are clearer than ever.

Priya Naik, Ragini Menon and Hrishikesh Bhatt from Samhita elaborate on this approach in an article for Forbes India.

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Disclaimer: This blog is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of cooperative agreement no. 7200AA21CA00027 (2021-2026). The contents are the responsibility of Chemonics International and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
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