• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

They also serve

Anjali Prayag

For 30 years, they have done nothing but manage, negotiate, sell, buy, look for better bottomlines, create equity. They have been the generals of the corporate sector. Today, they are doing the same, but minus the plush ambience of their offices, champag ne dinners, hi-tech conference rooms and the jetsetting lifestyle that goes with corporate life.

Here we are talking about four people who have opted out of their drivers' seats in corporate house -- there is just one exception -- Narsim Shenoy who's managing the reins of both horses.

Kishore Rao, former General Manager (Accessories), Madura Coats; Shukla Bose, former Managing Director, RCI Ltd; N.S. Raghavan, Founder-Director, Infosys Ltd and Narsim Shenoy, Chairman, ABB Ltd have donned the mantle of social reformers and are slowly b ut surely realising their dreams of a better world.

But how does a successful score in the first innings help them in achieving the same in the second? Are the virtues of a corporate life seen as virtues here? Do management skills, gained and honed over years, serve them in this new avatar that they have taken up? And most important, why did they change their garb from the glamourous to the home-grown?

Kishore Rao, Managing Trustee, Bangalore Hospice Trust, talks of his skill transfer from the corporate life to philanthropic life. ``When I still had several years before retirement, what was bugging me was the corporate lifestyle that was common to all managers like me. The adrenalin was flowing and the company was a respected entity to work for. Yet the good salary and the perks were not enough.''

Opportunity for him came in the form of something, something urgent that needed to be done for cancer patients in Bangalore. The city had a 600-bed hospital for the care of the disease but no facilities for the patients' emotional and social support.

The Indian Cancer Society in Mumbai doing yeoman service for cancer patients from 1952 had no branches in Bangalore. The Society agreed to set up a branch in Bangalore and Madura Coats did not object to Rao operating the branch from his office. ``The tac it understanding being, of course, that my official responsibilities did not suffer. My secretary did all the secretarial work, eager clerks in my department did the day-to-day jobs and somebody from finance even maintained the accounts.''

All this was purely voluntary work and, Rao's hindsight says, ``I think all of them got a satisfaction from this extra work and it actually improved their official performance.''

In 1992, he opted to retire and joined ActionAid as Director, Corporate Partnership. ``Here again it was the desire to make the company `babus' more responsible to the community that made me accept their offer,'' he states.

His contract with ActionAid was for two years and during this period he made the corporate sector recognise its social responsibilities, take a more active role in interacting with the poor and the needy and also to take a more lasting part in poverty al leviation. This function in ActionAid is now called `Partners in Change'.

But Rao realised that useful though this work was, it was taking him away from his goal -- to look after the terminally ill cancer patients. ``Within a couple of months of finishing my contract with ActionAid, I succeeded in setting up the Bangalore Hosp ice Trust. This is a joint project of the Indian Cancer Society and the Rotary Club of Bangalore, Indira Nagar.''

The Trust has so far taken care of 1,500 terminal cancer patients and their families and helped them face the inevitable end. ``Everything had to be done to create a relatively pain-free condition and, mainly, help these terminally ill patients die in pe ace and with dignity,'' explains Rao.

About 90 per cent of the patients who sought the care of Hospice are very poor. The work that goes on here is recognised as a unique mix of a dedicated home care service and in-patient care in the hospice that is called Karunashraya.

Rao's efforts are now bearing fruits. Recognition has come in the form of two of the most prominent hospices in the UK agreeing to his request to twin with Karunashraya and more important, the doyen of the modern Hospice movement in the world, Dame Cicel y Saunders, has accepted his request to be Karunashraya's patron.

For K. Narsim Shenoy, Chairman, ABB Ltd, his commitment to health and education prompted him to take the plunge into social work. His pet project: Quality lessons for government school teachers.

The initiation for the project came from one of the employees at ABB. ``She said that there was no first aid facilities available in government schools. Teachers did not know how to deal with injuries or epileptic attacks.''

When Shenoy and his team met the teachers, they realised that they badly needed to be trained in providing first aid. Their current target is the 509 schools in the North District of Bangalore. Subsequently, they plan to cover 1,500 other schools.

In a smart move, Shenoy got the State Commissioner of Public Instruction to mobilise the teachers to attend the medical training classes. While this was happening, Shenoy who was responsible for setting up the CII Institute of Quality in Bangalore, took a shot at another project. Imparting quality lessons to these teachers. Both the workshops could be conducted simultaneously, he planned. ``Anyway, we have managed to garner their time and attention. Might as well use it to give them some sort of trainin g,'' he considered.

The programme now works this way now: Every week for two days, 30 government school teachers are shuttled to the CII Institute of Quality, where experts in quality (from the corporate world) lead them through lessons in quality in education.

Of course, the content is made simpler and in the local language -- Kannada, so that they don't get overwhelmed by management jargon such as CRM, time management, TQM, the

Japanese 5S and Kaizen, problem solving and priority analysis, etc. The concepts are explained in as uncomplicated a manner as possible. Lessons in creativity, discipline, accountability are thrown in. A gentle nudging into better methods of teaching is given.

The programme trains teachers to treat students as customers and in a feedback programme, students are made to assess the teachers. The idea is `to make a difference subtly' in the teachers and schools. There are plans of extending this programme to the governance and services sector.

The ABB Chairman's family trust called `First Response,' has adopted a school. ``We have improved the infrastructure and also have the services of a doctor. Apart from this, three volunteers teach the children Math and Yoga,'' says Shenoy. The school has also come under the mid-day meal scheme run by ISKCON.

Shenoy's attempt has been to address the spirit of the teachers because they in turn hold the door to a larger community.

A similar endeavour but addressing the spirit of the student directly is being experimented at Christel House in Bangalore. The history of Christel House reads like this: When Christel DeHaan, co-founder, RCI, sold her company, she wanted to invest her t ime and money in the development of children. She founded Christel House Learning Centres all over the world where children from impoverished backgrounds received education. In India, she chose Bangalore.

Shukla Bose, then the Managing Director of RCI India, decided to pitch in her resume for the unconventional post of Managing Director, Christel House. Bose says the whole experience for her is now a kind of deja vu. ``There are a lot of things that happe ned in my early life that has influenced this decision. I have come a full circle.'' Bose has had professional training in Montessori education and kicked off her career as a teacher in Mother Teresa's school in Kolkata.

At Christel House, Bangalore, 320 economically-disadvantaged children, are picked from their homes (mostly from slums) and brought to school. After a nutritious breakfast, they start formal classes. The children are also given lunch and afternoon tea. T hey are then dropped back home.

Bose declares, ``Instead of boardrooms, I conduct assembly everyday and teach my kids how to `Share, Care and make a Difference to the world.'' She feels she holds in her hands 320 small dreams and hopes and have allowed them to merge with hers. And her hope, ``Even if about 100 go out and make a difference to the way they live, I'll consider my job done.''

The idea here, is that the school is a safe bridge to build and to reach out to the macro world of impoverishment. But Bose feels, ``That by itself is not enough. This is just the first model of interface. The change should be felt in the entire communit y.''

Christel House will soon be housed on seven acres of land in Bangalore and about 2,000 children will benefit from their activities.

Working in the field of education, but at a different level, is N.S. Raghavan, currently Chairman of the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning. After he retired from Infosys, work in education was top priority.

The reason for this was: ``All Infoscians have benefitted from knowledge. I wanted to give a similar opportunity to others. At that time, IIM was looking out for support and when they knew I was interested in knowledge management, they approached me.''

NSR (as he's popularly known) has donated about Rs 12.68 crore, out of the money he got from Infosys, to IIM, Bangalore. Most of the funds have been used for setting up and running the NSRCEL.

When Raghavan found that several professors were keen to go on a sabbatical to study at other universities, but could not because it costs a lot of money, and there was a long period of waiting, NSR set up an endowment at IIM-B where the interest was to be used for funding the sabbatical costs of professors.

NSRCEL has an annual Business Plan Competition called Biz Wings which encourages people to look for ideas that succeed in the business world. The Centre offers incubation facilities, access to IIM faculty, library and other infrastructure within the camp us.

Among his other plans to help the Indian entrepreneur is the setting up of a Distance Learning Centre for small and medium enterprises. ``Unfortunately there are no formal management programmes for them. They can spare minimum time because they are hard pressed for time.''

He has also started a trust called FAME (Foundation for Activity, Motivation and Empowerment), which helps children with disabilities. FAME has tied up with the Spastic Society of Karnataka and eight children of the school are already undergoing vocation al training.

There's no doubt that these crusaders are trekking on a fairly difficult terrain, but are they steering better because of their previous experiences? In other words, what element of corporate experience has best helped them in voluntary work?

Rao believes it was the single-minded purposefulness and dedication which the corporate sector teaches plus the financial and managerial skills that he learnt which have brought success to his efforts. ``Here I was, neither a medical doctor nor even expe rienced in the para-medical field, who had succeeded in bringing together two organisations. I had brought skills of team management, had extracted sterling performances out of a disparate group of Trustees and had succeeded in putting together an organi sation which was so successful.''

Bose feels she's using the strengths of her business school education here too. Bose has grown in the time share industry.

``I give my best when challenged to create industries. That's what I did in the time share industry. I started with Rs 10 lakh equity and Rs one lakh cash and now RCI has a Rs 35 crore turnover.'' Shaping lives, giving dreams a vision -- this is her miss ion in life.

For Shenoy, it's the commitment to one organisation that has taught him dedication. ABB is the only organisation he has ever worked for in his professional career. Unswerving devotion to a cause, that's what his professional life has taught him. As for N SR, in his long innings in the IT world, he realised the potential of the Indian entrepreneur which he has decided to tap. ``Indians, I realised have the capability and `copability' to manage any situation and I thought why not tap this talent?''

Surely these are business models that will not go wrong in any economic climate.

Picture: Shukla Bose -- nurturing the dreams of under-priveleged children.