Come together, right now

We can create better policies when different voices are given room. And solve complex challenges when people and institutions work together to make use of their unique capabilities

Founding Fuel

[Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash]

Dear friend,

About three weeks ago, I wrote a column arguing why India had almost missed the bus in tapping the huge affordable housing opportunity. And one key reason for that was that our policy makers had chosen to engage with large developers, to the exclusion to the small, unknown entrepreneurs who currently deliver 90% of the supply of affordable homes. This is despite the fact that by now it is clear that large developers have little or no interest in catering to the demand for homes in the Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh range.

Just a few days after the column was published, I received an interesting mail from one of the 20,000-odd small builders dotting the country. He was a 68-year-old real estate entrepreneur, based in Hyderabad. He was passionate about doing something to bring a roof over the heads of our millions of homeless people. He had head-butted with local government officials over the years, written several letters to them, and tried to galvanise local builder associations to lobby for support for entrepreneurs like him in solving India’s affordable housing crisis. But it had fallen on deaf ears.

I posted the first mail on my Facebook page, where he had tried to simply explain how the state governments had chosen not to notify specific rules from the National Housing Code for low income housing—one of the many reasons that had stymied the growth of the sector. The post initially met with scepticism from a few friends. That was perhaps understandable, because it seemed almost inexplicable why the government would simply not carry out the policy—despite the acute need for low-cost housing. I encouraged him to continue the conversation on Facebook. And over a series of subsequent mails and posts, the entrepreneur explained his vision of how the seemingly tough low-cost housing challenge in India could be solved. By its own entrepreneurs. Provided their ideas were listened to. I am no real estate expert, but to me, the ideas sounded sensible and practical.

That’s why Arun Maira’s superlative essay on The purpose of the enterprise this week is a must read for anyone who is concerned about the quality of conversations and dialogue on issues of national importance in our society. There are many gems in his essay, but there’s one that stands out for me. It is becoming difficult to have thoughtful deliberations about many difficult issues in our country. Better dialogues will improve the quality of public policies. They will also strengthen democracy. The progress of the country depends on this, says Maira. Yet, are we prepared to listen to different points of view? Are we prepared to learn how to listen? Especially in an age where social media has created its own echo-chamber of voices that are tuned to listen to people like us, rather than people like them? That’s a fundamental question that each of us must ask ourselves.

In the same vein, I’m sure you’ll also enjoy N Dayasindhu’s column on Grand Challenges—because it talks about how governments, entrepreneurs, industry and universities can come together to solve complex challenges, in mission mode.

Please do write in to us with your comments and feedback at feedback@foundingfuel.com.

Have a great week ahead!

Best,

Indrajit Gupta

On behalf of Team Founding Fuel

Featured Stories

The purpose of the enterprise

[Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash]

Businesses, and inventors in technologies, must be held accountable for the impacts their products have on the lives of their customers and on societies, says Arun Maira. We must ask, why is this to be done? Who will benefit? Who may be harmed by it? (Read time: 13 mins)

A mission to solve grand challenges

[From tartanracing.org] 

Grand challenges that bring together government, universities and industry, can solve near future problems using technologies innovatively, says N Dayasindhu. (Read time: 7 mins)

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[By DFID - UK Department for International Development (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons]

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About the author

Founding Fuel

Founding Fuel aims to create the new playbook of entrepreneurship. Think of us as a hub for entrepreneurs- the go-to place for ideas, insights, practices and wisdom essential to build the enterprise of tomorrow. It is co-founded by veteran journalists Indrajit Gupta and Charles Assisi, along with CS Swaminathan, the former president of Pearson's online learning venture.