What do you do when floods destroy your crops year after year? Well, in Baleshwar (or Balasore), they converted it to an opportunity and took to fish farming. 

Last time I shared my thotshots from Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Now, far from the sand and the camels, I was in Odisha to cover the fishery development project of Nalanda Foundation.

At a place where people didn't just eat but practically lived fish, as a vegetarian, I was probably out of my depth. Yet, the locals were very happy to share their stories.

So, here is the second edition of Thotshots (personal thoughts, random shots) from Baleshwar, Odisha. 

Nalanda Foundation used to spearhead the CSR activities of the IL&FS group of companies. I had the opportunity to see the idea of sustainable development in action during my brief association with Nalanda.

My work involved occasional visits to project sites to get a first-hand feel for all my writing. Beyond the official, my notes and camera would also capture whatever caught my interest. I would share these “Thotshots” (personal thoughts and random shots) with the team after every trip.
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Here are some thotshots from my visit to Jodhpur in October 2017.

After I read a newspaper report about the state of drought in Maharashtra and how man and animal were both at the mercy of the next monsoon, I called up my friend. He is the CEO of a company that is involved in corporate social responsibility (CSR) work (including water conservation) in several villages.
 “I appreciate your concern, Mohan! We now have someone looking after our CSR activity. I will ask him to speak to you. Catch up later!”
That was abrupt! Was he too busy running the business to bother about CSR? My conversation with his new CSR Manager a day later was revealing.
“Thank you, Mr Joshi for your interest in my work. To be honest, I am busy with my year-end paperwork. I have budgets to prepare and I need to close year-end issues with our partner NGOs. Your suggestions are great, but I just don’t have the bandwidth to take up anything new. I have just one intern to help me. And the boss wants the impact presentation tomorrow.”
While I commiserated with him, I could not help wondering if the profit centres in my friend’s company made do with one intern and used that excuse: no bandwidth.

Around the time Indian law mandated companies to spend a portion of their profits for social good, some of us were in Jawhar, a remote district in Palghar, Maharashtra. This place had various problems, but the specific issue on our radar was maternal mortality.
It was a familiar story—early marriage, the pressure to give birth to a male child leading to repeated pregnancies, no access to medical care and utter neglect of nutrition. Haemoglobin levels in expectant mothers in the region were at times less than 4 g/dl (whereas in a normal, urban setting a drop below 10 g/dl is enough to set off alarm bells).
Over the next three years, we achieved a fair amount of success—Hb levels rose, maternal mortality fell. Apart from the government, the Indian Medical Association and the NGO Pragati Pratishtan, many shared our work and the satisfaction we derived from it.

I remember interacting with the audit team from one of the companies. They came there to ensure the medicines were being put to good use. They went back transformed, having seen how they were helping transform the very lives of poor villagers and save many mothers and infants.
I shared the Jawhar story with my busy CEO friend as we met at a Rotary lunch. I believed the audit team went back more committed to their employer, more charged up to do better work, I told him. And all of them became ambassadors for their company’s products. The other participating companies too must have experienced the positive change, if they had bothered to keep their customers and employees posted.
I was getting somewhere, but I could see my friend was still sceptical.
“So, like you guys did in Jawhar, my employees go out there, solve the drought and my business booms, is that it?” he smirked.
Precisely! I ignored the sarcasm.
“Listen, the law wants me to spend 2% on CSR and I am doing it. Beyond that, what’s in it for me?”

Having been his mentor, I knew some of the problems his company was facing.
Their product was technically superior. However, it was also pricier and struggling to survive in a market flooded with hundreds of cheaper, me-too competitors, who were more aggressive advertisers.
His company comprised several islands of excellence. The silos were deeply entrenched. Much as my friend tried to build them, the “we-are-one” bridges never survived for long.
At the same time, they were doing some good work on the CSR front. They had fabricated a library on wheels, the only source of books for schools in several villages. And their little water tankers on three wheels were the only source of drinking water in remote locations as the severe drought singed crops and lives.
Imagine, I told him, that you were some 20 years younger. You are social-media savvy, discerning and passionate. You are bold, intelligent, a fantastic team player and, yet, ever willing to trek down a new path.
He must have liked the picture I painted because he was smiling.
Now, would you like this younger version of you to be your customer? “Yes!”
Would you like to recruit him? “Of course!”

Suppose you had taken pains to make this young you aware of the good work you are doing in the villages around the factory. Is he likely to pay more for your product that is helping children read? Will he feel proud to belong to a company that is reaching drinking water to families living in barren lands? Even if he were not aware of your niche products, would he easily recollect your brand because the name was emblazoned on vehicles engaged in keeping the length and breadth of the town clean?
When you do good, sustainable work, you are fulfilling your responsibility to society. And, in the process, when you ensure your brand gets greater visibility, you are fulfilling your responsibility to all those who have a stake in your business. 
We talked for long. At the end of it, he wanted me to go over and address his senior team.
I hope your CSR Manager would be present, too? “Of course!”
I agreed to meet them after two weeks. I needed that time to put together some resumes to beef up his CSR department. That band deserved more width.