Decoding Impact with Rathish Balakrishnan

Globally, universal health coverage (UHC) has been highlighted as an important goal, because of its close links to poverty reduction and potential to enhance the economic growth of countries.

From public to private health care, across primary, secondary, and tertiary care, and whether we look at the challenges and opportunities for physicians or community health workers, the promise of UHC is heady and exciting. Through this two-part discussion with Dr. Nachiket Mor, not only an expert in health, but someone who is deeply passionate about health and health systems, host Rathish Balakrishnan explores the plethora of trade-offs and barriers to realising UHC in India.

In part one of this discussion Dr. Mor helps us understand what universal health coverage is, highlights existing bright spots, looks at the role of primary care, and discusses how we can talilor an approach to UHC that leverages India’s strengths.

Dr. Nachiket Mor is trained as an economist. His current work is principally focused on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a Visiting Scientist at The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore. He is also a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Reimagining India's Health System.

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Content Sections

Technology has the potential to revolutionise Indian agriculture. There are innovations in seed and bioengineering platforms, use of robots and AI and blockchain that are enhancing efficiency and transparency in the sector. India's agritech industry comprises over 1300 companies and is projected to reach over ₹1 trillion by 2025. The recent 2023-24 budget allocated INR 450 crores to the Digital Agriculture Mission and INR 600 crores for technology driven agriculture promotion.

However, despite these promising tailwinds, the low adoption of technology by farmers remains a major challenge, and agritech penetration in India remains abysmally low at around 1%. In today's episode of Decoding Impact, we try to understand the potential of a platform-based approach for agritech, the importance of directing the right capital to address the right issues, and how we can take a systems approach to identify key enablers for the successful scale up of agritech.

Our guest for this episode is Mr. Parmesh Shah, the Global Lead for Data, Digital Agriculture and Innovation at the Agriculture and Food Global Practice of the World Bank. Mr. Shah is currently managing a global programme on scaling up data-driven digital agriculture, involving data platforms and establishing ecosystems for innovation, entrepreneurship and incubation across 38 countries.

Content Sections:

India is known for its large companies across manufacturing and technology, but what often goes unnoticed is that a large part of the employment in this country is actually driven by Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

MSMEs contribute to more than 30% of India's GDP, and 11 million of these are in fact very, very small. These comprise the segment of MSMEs known as nano entrepreneurs, with an annual turnover between ten lakhs and one crore.

On this episode of Decoding Impact, host Rathish Balakrishnan speaks with Priya Naik, Founder and CEO at Samhita Social Ventures, to discuss who are these nano entrepreneurs, what are their challenges, and how can the ecosystem catalyse their potential to become growth engines for the Indian economy.

Priya has two decades of experience in impact and entrepreneurship and has worked with International Finance Corporation, the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, and Arthur Andersen.

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Content Sections:

Do we take the possibilities enabled by the unique identification system of Aadhar for granted in India today?

Certain reports estimate that 850 million people around the world do not have an official ID, and that around 133 countries today do not have a digital payment system. Through India's digitisation revolution we have made leaps and bounds in how people can be uniquely identified for social welfare needs and how they can use that identity to manage basic civic rights like accessing financial services, government support, and even applying for a job.

So how can more countries benefit from what we are doing today in India, in a manner which builds the agency of the country to deliver better welfare for their people? To discuss this host Rathish Balakrishnan had an opportunity to speak to Professor S Rajagopalan for this episode of Decoding Impact.

Professor S Rajagopalan, is currently the president of MOSIP & OpenG2P, both housed under IIIT, Bangalore. He is an entrepreneur, teacher, advisor and advocate, and his subject matter expertise and interests include innovation dissemination, economics of innovations, Geographical Information systems, and Economics of Information Technologies.

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Content Sections:

Education is the Harry Potter of the social sector. Everybody loves it. Everybody puts money into it. Yet, why aren't we seeing sweeping outcomes?

As per the Annual Status of Education Report or ASER 2022, in India the enrolment rate for primary schools stands at the highest it has ever been in Indian education history at 98.4%. However, only 42.8% of grade five students are able to read at grade level text. Assessment and measuring foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) outcomes has been thrust to the forefront of understanding what the problems in education are today, so that they can be solved more effectively.

To discuss this and more on Decoding Impact, host Rathish Balakrishnan cuaght up with the CEO of Pratham Education Foundation, Dr. Rukmini Banerji.

Dr. Banerji is an accomplished educationist, who advocates for data-driven education reforms and she has spearheaded the development of notable large-scale assessments, including the widely recognised ASER.

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Content Sections

Millets are often referred to as the crop of the future and India has been undergoing its own renaissance with this super food. Also, 2023 has been designated as the International Year of Millets by the UN, where India has been leading the discourse to develop the dialogue on millets globally.

The magic of millets holds the promise of unlocking a model of production that is good for us, the farmer, businesses, and good for the environment. In this podcast host Rathish Balakrishnan had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Sivakumar S, someone who deeply understands the Sarkar, the Samaj and the Bazaar of agriculture deeply with over 30 years of experience in the sector.

Mr. Sivakumar S is currently the group head of Agri and IT businesses at ITC Limited and is a member of its Corporate Management Committee. He also oversees ITC’s Sustainability and Social Investments programme. Mr. Sivakumar S has also been engaged as an advisor for the agricultural industry, at both a national and international level.

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Contents of Episode

Digitalisation has already been a significant game changer for India's economy and society. Digital public infrastructure and digital public goods, or DPIs and DPGs,have emerged in the development ecosystem as a means to achieve population-scale social impact.

We have already seen the potential of DPIs with the success of Aadhar and UPI, solving for identity and payment transfer problems. While we will continue to hear about how additional value gets unlocked, there are 5+ DPIs brewing across the social development sector of education, health, skilling and livelihoods. So what does it take to unlock value from DPIs and DPGs as they emerge in other important and complex social sectors in India?

To discuss this in detail with us today, we have with us Dr. Pramod Varma who is the CTO of EkStep, a not-for-profit creating learner-centric, technology enabled platform aiming to provide learning opportunities to 200 million children in India. He was also the Chief Architect of Aadhaar, and various India stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI). He is a co-founder of FIDE and the genesis author of the open source Beckn protocol. Pramod is an adjunct faculty, he is the Co-Chair at the global Center for Digital Public Infrastructure at the IIIT-B helping other countries design and architect their own DPIs. He regularly speaks at technology conferences and is part of advisory groups of various national and international projects.

For more, follow Sattva Knowledge Institute on our Website, ⁠Linkedin, ⁠Twitter,⁠ and Instagram: @sattvaknowledgeinstitute

Host: Rathish Balakrishnan ⁠Linkedin⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠

Guest: Pramod Varma ⁠Linkedin⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠

Podcast Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

Audio Engineer & Editor: Abhilash Raikar

Designer: Usha Sondhi Kundu

The planet is on the verge of exceeding the 1.5 centigrade limit established by the 2015 Paris Agreement, placing the issue of climate change front and centre for all of us today. On the other side of this crises are vulnerable nations, who have fewer resource to fight climate change, and are facing the double jeopardy of climate justice. In our next episode of Decoding Impact we explored the topic of Climate Finance - focusing on the intersection between finance and climate change, and discussing the role India can play in the global agenda.

For more, follow Sattva Knowledge Institute on our Website, ⁠Linkedin, ⁠Twitter,⁠ and Instagram: @sattvaknowledgeinstitute

Host: Rathish Balakrishnan ⁠Linkedin⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠

Guest: Varad Pande ⁠Linkedin⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠

Podcast Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

Audio Engineer & Editor: Abhilash Raikar

Designer: Usha Sondhi Kundu

India's G20 presidency is coming at a historic time. In the face of a mounting economic crisis, along with the demands placed by climate change, it is important for leading nations to pave a way for the world that is enduring and sustainable in the long term. 'Green growth' emerges as a critical priority, therefore, for the current G20 presidency.

What is India's vision for green growth? And how is it steering this conversation globally? In the first episode of Decoding Impact Season Two, we are joined by eminent governance reformer, public policy change agent and the Indian emissary to G20, Mr Amitabh Kant. With Mr. Kant, our host, Rathish Balakrishnan unpacks what green growth means for India, and how it is critical to our G20 agenda.

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Website: https://www.sattva.co.in/knowledge-institute/
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Instagram: @sattvaknowledgeinstitute
Twitter: @sattvaknowledge

Host: Rathish Balakrishnan Linkedin | Twitter

Guest: Amitabh Kant Linkedin | Twitter

Podcast Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

Audio Engineer & Editor: Abhilash Raikar

Designer: Usha Sondhi Kundu

In the last few years, digital health has emerged as a potential game changer for enabling accessible, affordable, and quality health care for all. The pandemic has only emphasised the role of digital health as a key enabler to achieve universal health coverage.

In spite of the high potential of digital health, the urban-rural divide, the digital divide, the low economic social conditions and the low return on investment deprive the underserved populations of its benefits. In order to scale and implement digital health solutions in underserved populations, it is important to address the question of who pays for the service and how.

This episode explores the current landscape of digital health in India, including the financial landscape. We also dive into innovative ways of addressing the gaps both in innovation and financing of digital health solutions, and understand the role that stakeholders can play in the scaling of these solutions. 

Joining us in today's conversation is Badri Pillapakkam (Partner, Omidyar Network, India). Badri has been a part of the growth journeys of leading companies such as HexaHealth and 1mg, and healthcare, especially digital health, continues to be a key focus area for him.