Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Gagan Sethi: Unedited material collected for Effective people by Prof TV Rao


Unsung Heroes
Gagan Sethi


Indian Constitution promotes equality and justice to all, irrespective of caste creed and religion. However there are instances when there is non-compliance with these highest ideals of the Constitution, and it is then that men of strength, courage and fairness needs to step up to ensure that the foundation of the Constitution remains strong. One such individual is Gagan Sethi: a man who is actively involved in institutional building, fund raising and promoting social equality and justice through his work.
Gagan Sethi holds a Masters in Social work from Maharaja Sayaji Rao University, Baroda and has also interned in behavioural sciences under the tutelage of Father Heredero. In his twenties, he met Father Heredero, and it is charismatic personality which implanted the seeds of institution building in him.  He says that, “Father firmly implanted in me three fundamental principles, which he himself practiced with rigour. First: Getting into your team, people better than you or having a skill that you yourself do not possess. Second: pursuit of excellence in detail. Third: Dialoguing to the n`th degree” Gagan Sethi still practices these three principle and attributes his work to these principles.
Armed with these principles and with the association  of Professor Contractor,  he started Jan Vikas: a NGO based out of Ahmedabad , which was started to ensure justice, focusing on giving marginalised people the opportunity and support to live a life with dignity and equity. It began to motivate, train youth to start new initiativesfor social transformation. Gagan Sethi maintains that “to be effective, organisations should limit themselves to three structural levels.”
 What started out as a journey for women empowerment, political education and natural resource management, branched out to other area like human rights, legal education, social justice, and environmental education.  Gagan Sethi has played a pivotal role in fostering the creation of many organisations. The challenges in institutional building are a lot but his abilities of team building and strategic planning has eased the processes. His model of providing youngsters with fellowships to innovate, experiment and create organisations in the social sector has reaped dividends. Following the guidelines of his mentor and his model of fellowships, Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan( KMVS) was formed in the year 1989 under the leadership of Sushma Iyenger. It was Gagan Sethi who had mentored Sushma.“Sushma Iyengar was one of our first fellowship holders and she made a mark with her work on KMVS. She was far more creative and precise than what I can be in many ways.” Says Gagan. KMVS started with promoting handicrafts of the region but gradually developed into a body to empower the women through better bargaining of their products. It became a pioneer in the ecological restoration of the district of Kutch and graduated to improve the status of women through an integrated approach involving handicrafts, health literacy, savings and credit. Gagan Sethi through his mentorship, collaborative roles has helped it to develop into a successful body, even helping them with getting funds.  His model is allowing others to come forward and choose their areas of work, and implement them successfully.
Gagan Sethi s` working methodologies have been successful and have led to the creation of17 bodies of national and international significance. They focus on nurturing organisations at the grass root level with development professionals. He has an uncanny style of thinking and organisational development, which have been influenced from his love for the work of Paulo Freire`s philosophy: a philosophycombining humanism and Marxism. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) was started in the year 1994, as a project of Jan Vikas. CSJ was started to pursue justice and uphold human rights in the country. CSJ adopts a unique approach by ensuring social justice through legal awareness, alternate dispute resolution, and challenging laws for not being sensitive to the needs of the underprivileged. CSJ mainly focuses on Dalits, women, tribal’s and under trial prisoners.
The biggest challenge encountered by Gagan has been the 2001 Gujrat earthquake and the 2002 Gujrat riots.“Life changed in the period of 2000-2002. We were sitting on top of one of the major earthquakes and just finished the basic rehabilitation program, that there is the communal violence in Gujrat.”  Faced with this huge task, his leadership in this crisis situation stand him apart.“My biggest challenge came with the earthquake and riots, which was all about handling volumes with integrity and commitment. With volumes expanding, all our organisational systems got injured.  Consciously, I outsourced my accounting systems so that nobody could say that the institution or I made money.”  If transparency is one aspect of his leadership, it is uprightness; even in difficult times that’s what makes his work even more special.“During the riots, I heard some murmur of protest and that’s when I called everybody and told them in no uncertain terms, that if they do not agree with our work, they can leave immediately. I sometimes took charge and put the institution in a political flux, where everybody had to follow. I see that when the chips are down, there is no consultation. Facilitative leadership happens as long as people are in alignment of the larger vision and political views. When it becomes contingent on institutional growth, directive leadership has to be used, but sporadically and judiciously.”
The Muzzafarpur riots in August,2013 has been another blot in the history of the Indian democracy, but what is worse has been the partisan relief and rehabilitation work carried out by the state government. There have been instances where people have been displaced from their villages, but have received no support from the government to help them start afresh their lives.“Jurisprudence should use language that is inclusive. When the nation talked about rehabilitation during rights, we introduced the concept of internally displaced, which has now gained currency. CSJ is a step away from getting recognition of the United Nations concept of internally displaced due to ethnic violence in Gujrat.” Gagan Sethi emphasis that India needs a formal policy to protect and rehabilitate the internally displaced people.
Gagan Sethi s` strategic thinking is highlighted in the fact that he focuses on the development of youth by supporting young professionals with the objective that they will work in an organisation after two years. This programme named SMILE has received financial support from many quarters, simply because it’s a programme for development of youth and correspondingly finding youth for development.
Jan Vikas started based on the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, BR Ambedkar and as they always talked about social equality for all sections of people, Gagan Sethi has collaborated with Martin Macwan for setting up of the Dalit Foundation in New Delhi. It is his sensitivity to the womens` collectives that has helped them in their upliftment. Dalit foundation has worked with Dalits from all professional fields and strives to fight injustice everywhere.
“My skill and competency in training is entirely due to him. All my training sessions came under most rigorous scanner.”says Gagan referring to his mentor Father Heredero. It is his intense engagement through dialoguing, be it in training session or interpersonal dialogues that connect people to him.  The compassion, the counselling that he offers to people are what makes him more approachable to people. Probably this is one of the virtues which help him to connect well with financers for the projects. “I believe that trust begets trust. There`s are exceptions to this principle and we should learn to take the consequences.”
Gagan Sethi stresses the importance of governance in organisations. His emphasis is on getting the fundamentals correct. Transparency and accountability is required and can lead to good governance. It brings more credibility to institutions. His grass-root level understanding of the processes has helped him. His advice to the youth is to watch out and ensure that their organisations are aligned to the external world.His advice to NGO`s is that they have to work as public institutions. He maintains that “networks cannot e single minded nor have ideological tensions. For networks to be dynamic, one must allow dissent and not regimentisation. One has to appreciate diversity.”
Gagan Sethi has worked at the grass-root level and his clear understanding with strong ethos has fostered the creation of institutions which are creating ripples in the society. He decided to quit top organisational position at Jan Vikas, but believes that it is prudent to do so when one is in prime or when the dip starts.  We hope that many more young people follow the footsteps of Gagan Sethi.
·         Sincere thanks to Gagn Sethi for his time and help providing the case study on him developed by Dr. Uma Ramaswamy.
References: The following websites have been accessed to do the secondary research on Mr. Gagan Sethi
8.      http://janvikas.in/
10.   Dr. Uma Ramaswamy, (2009).HID Forum . Bangalore.
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