Shownotes

The Elephant in the Room is my learning and listening project. Something that started out during a period of deep introspection and despair evolved to also becoming a passion project. But being passionate means always trying to do better and living up to the committed purpose - to shine a light on issues of inclusion & inequity. In this case it is about spotlighting the importance of access to justice for everyone in society. The partnership with the India Justice Report is also about getting ordinary citizens to understand the justice system better - so that they are better able to exercise their rights. 

My guests on this episode are Maja Daruwala, Chief Editor of the India Justice Report, and a barrister from Lincolns Inn and Valay Singh, Project Lead of the India Justice Report. We spoke about the purpose behind India's first ever ranking of states on their capacity to deliver justice. The report measures the structural capacity of state based instrumentalities of the justice system against their own declared mandates. 

We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 The reality that not everyone has the same experience of the justice system. For the most marginalised and vulnerable in any society, access to justice is often beyond their reach and always too costly  

👉🏾 What really matters to citizens? Access to justice, speed of justice, the improvement of ground level infrastructure, locaslisation etc....

👉🏾 Why women that are recruited into the justice system inevitably find themselves confined to the lowest rungs of the justice system

👉🏾 Lack of representation in the justice system and the importance of reflecting the population for the justice system itself must be just. The inability to change being indicative of prevalent bias in the system. 

👉🏾 The fact that most citizens are not aware of their fundamental rights, because of lack of education on the same

👉🏾 COVID 19 and it's impact on the exacerbating inequalities across the justice system

We also spoke about support from stakeholders, trends and what success would look like. 

Like to know more, listen here 👇🏾👇🏾

Common Cause India Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative DAKSH Tata Institute of Social Sciences - Prayas Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy How India Lives. 

 #accesstojustice #sdg16 #benchmarkingforabetterfuture

Memorable passages from the podcast: 

👉🏾 Love to be here. Thank you so much for having us.

👉🏾 The India Justice Report is the first of its kind, quantitative assessment of the capacity of the four pillars of the justice system. What does it do? It takes data from only government sources, it divides it into these four pillars: police, prisons, judiciary and legal aid. It then further divides into six themes of: infrastructure, workload, human resources and diversity, trends. And then for each theme it has a bunch of metrics or indicators, these would be, you know, the share of women in say police, it would be the judge to population ratio, it would be the case load. Let's go to legal aid it would be the coverage of legal aid in a particular state.

👉🏾 So it brings all these siloed data sets about the different pillars of the justice system in one place and it ranks 25 states divided into two clusters, one cluster being the 18 large and mid-sized states and then seven small states. So for the very first time, we have a resource where you can see how the capacity of a justice system in a particular state is either as whole or for one of the pillars or two of the pillars. This is what India Justice Report does, this is what it has added to the discourse around justice in India. 

👉🏾 Yes, there isn't anything of this kind at the moment and also it doesn't have any subjective assessment. What do I mean by that? We would like to, but we haven't gone and surveyed the public, we haven't gone surveyed say select sample size of lawyers or applicants or policemen. What we have done is, we have looked at what are the benchmarks our state has for itself; so what is the percentage of women it has decided for itself? And we see has the state met its quota for women? Has the state fulfilled its quota SC or SC/OBCs? Has the state fulfilled its own sanctioned capacity of police officers? That's what we do. We do not provide our own judgments, which we of course have, but we have not done that in this report. Therefore, it is a sort of as pure reflection as possible of the prevailing capacity of justice system in India. 

👉🏾 Well as the subtitle says, the India Justice Report is an assessment of the capacity to deliver justice. We often talk about, in fact the whole conversation is about the lack of access to justice, the slowness, the bias, some of the difficulties within the police, the status of prisons, the conditions in prisons and so on. And there is a kind of hand-wringing about it. But then we wanted to look at solutions, but solutions have already been suggested many times.

👉🏾 One of the things that people don't look at, are the nitty-gritty of capacity. How many people are in this work? How much money do they get? What is the workload that they have to cope with? What is the infrastructure that they work within? So we wanted to put that out, in a simple way where people could understand it and then looking at it holistically, looking at all of the pillars holistically, through not opinion, but through facts, through statistics that the government itself publishes.

👉🏾 Look at police, prisons, legal aid and judiciary to begin with. And then every year build on it, make comparisons and see what has improved and what is deteriorating. To basically give a tool to people to look at: policy makers, media people, influencers. So that when we talk, we argue and we discuss on the basis of facts, rather than any kind of perception. 

👉🏾 Actually, the benchmarks are there already. If I can give you an example, for instance, reservations of schedule caste, schedule tribes, that's already there in government policy. How many women should you have in the police? That's already there benchmark is there of 30%/33%. There are general policies also, there are model builds, there are model proposals that are put forward, the centre gives the state guidelines. So there are many benchmarks that are already set. 

👉🏾 As far as third-party audit is concerned, I wouldn't put it that way, it was never intended as an audit. An audit seems to suggest a kind of judgment. But here the facts are put in front of you as given in official data. But from that, then there is an easy pathway to analysing. Especially where there are comparisons; why is one state doing so much better than another? Why is year on year, things not changing? What is the intention of the state? If five years ago or 10 years ago, you had 7% women in police and now after so many years you still only have 10% in the police and they are clustered right at the bottom, then it throws up a conversation. 

👉🏾 It throws up questions about what is the recruitment practices? What are the practical difficulties of bringing women into the police? Are the excuses that are made are the reasons that are given enough? Are they logical or could be changing mindset? I can give you a good illustration, one of the reasons for not bringing in more women into the police, apart from the usual thing about the police being dangerous and macho and so on and so forth, is there is not enough facilities for women. Not enough toilets; where can women go?  Now this is interesting, it's very practical, it sounds very logical. But my question then would be, how long would it take you to build toilets? And if there are toilets already, why are they exclusive to men? Why are they not given to women? If your intention really is to bring about gender parity?

👉🏾 We were not working alone, you very kindly said that it was the India justice team. But the team is actually comprised of six or seven NGOs who are specialists in this: Common Cause, Centre for Social Justice, DAKSH, CHRI, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Prayas. And we had a data partner in 'How India Lives'. So we had a lot of thought people who had been working for a long time. And it was they and the Tata Trusts who this report was nested at that time who sat around and conceptualised, what are the things that we would like to look at that are really vital to providing justice. You have to have human resources; you have to have budgets; proper budgets; you have to assess the workload. Is the infrastructure, the human resources; the budgets sufficient; is the workload too heavy and how do we assess trends? How do we assess whether things are going to improve? What is the intention of the state? Because over 10 years you get elections, you get bureaucracies changing by attrition, you get governments changing by election.

👉🏾 So is there a proper policy; is our policies being followed; are manifestos being followed and who is oversighting these things. We would have liked to have done much more, but I should say this is a baby report, this is a nascent report. We've only had two iterations, two editions, and the third one will come out in 2023. So it was to make a beginning that was rational and reasonable on which we could build. Some of it was of course dictated by the availability of data. But as we have gone along and become more and more educated, we are able to correlate across other reports as well. Like crime in India and researchers, et cetera, are going to use this and take it much further. It's going to be a building block and each year we hope to add a little bit more. 

👉🏾 Last year we added a bit on training; on technology. One of the things that we really realised was how little money there is spent on training. Across the board, it's usually around between 1 to 3%, if it goes up to 3%. And yet when you think about it, training creates the fundamental mindset, culture for the police, for the prisons, for the judiciary. And you look at the policy for instance. 

👉🏾 I give you an example the policy change across the years in prisons is to look at rehabilitation and the integration of people into society who come into the prison system rather than revenge and retribution. This is the world over but the question to be asked is how much of the training actually takes you there. And if your training facilities are understaffed, under-resourced, haven't changed their curriculums for years. The promise of using human rights as the baseline and a organising principle for your training has actually not been realised. Then you recognise why the culture in prisons is such or the culture in policing is such. And this is what the report actually takes you to.

👉🏾 I think ranking, I was very nervous about it frankly, because it creates the kind of controversy that you don't want, and it then goes into party politics and so on, so forth. But I think the ranking has been very, very useful. People should be ranked government should be ranked, for the performance that they provide to the people. And we mustn't be mealy-mouthed about. And this ranking is not a ranking that is based on my opinion or yours. It is a ranking that they themselves have given us the statistics for. Our government has given us the statistics. We have no cause not to believe the statistics, and therefore you live and die on the sword of statistics     

👉🏾 And I think that one of the things that the ranking must be seen as is not merely a competitiveness within each other. Like Maharashtra arguing with Tamil Nadu with Telangana. But rather it should be seen as a benchmark that you're making the effort to improve your state itself. You want to be first and you want to be first next year as well and the year after that as well. The other thing that I would like to point out very much is that these rankings, because they are made up of pinpoints of information, by changing two or three things, you can actually improve the entire rank of the state.

👉🏾 So some states for instance Bihar, the first report it had a poor showing on women and then suddenly due to increases of women in the police, they improved it quite dramatically and their ranking went right up. Now like all statistics, statistics only tell half a story, we have to also accept that. So each time we make the report, we try to nuance the report so that it is more and more accurate in terms of the reality that is on the ground. But low hanging fruit; reducing the number of undertrials, reducing the congestion in prisons, improving the amount of money that is spent on legal aid or your contribution to that, the state's contribution to the central budget can change your entire ranking. The changing of the entire ranking is, I would say, as a citizen are incidental. What really matters is the value you give to your citizen. The speed of justice, the access to justice, the improvement in ground levels infrastructure, localisation.

👉🏾 Actually it depends on how you measure feedback. If it is a question of getting noticed, we have been noticed, we presented to the NITI Aayog, which is the highest policy-making body in the country. We have presented to state governments, bureaucrats have been interested in understanding what's happening.

👉🏾 Everybody has welcomed this notion of having this holistic report to look at. It will definitely act as a reference point. There's no doubt about that. The media has been extremely kind, if you like, there's lots and lots of mentions of ourselves in the media. Where I see an outcome is I see that some reporting or much reporting is now quoting much opinion reporting, is quoting the India Justice Report as a validifying factor. So you're getting this mix of opinion and statistics and a reaffirmation of an argument because the India Justice Report shows it. So from that point of view, also there is a good outcome. I cannot say to you, because I wrote this or because we showed this, suddenly there was a huge change.

👉🏾 But undoubtedly bureaucrats, legislators, et cetera, are feeling that okay, if we are to be better, and people do want to be better, then we must improve X or Y. Whereas in Orissa, there has been a public interest litigation on decongestion of prisons. The Chief Justice has taken on board a lot of the stuff that we have said so that he has the statistical arguments to point out to the people that he is giving direction to. And it becomes a monitoring tool also. 

👉🏾 In terms of the judiciary, for instance, I think the statistics that are showing up, 40 million cases, a shortage of judges, a tremendous shortage of judges, a tremendous shortage of infrastructure. Budgets that are stagnating or going up very, very little. And I haven't calculated in real terms how much they are going up. We are seeing that in the high courts, the cases have gone up by 10% and in the subordinate courts by 5% and there is long pendency, and this is going to have a huge knock-on effect.

👉🏾 Now it's not only the India Justice Report that points it out. But as we go year on year, we can now project what's going to happen in the next few years. And it is frightening and people will start paying attention. This hiatus that we have had to go through during the COVID time, nearly 24 months of it. When the courts have not been able to function, simply because of the physical constraints or sickness, courts closing down, et cetera; presents a moment in which to think radically and change things radically because going on as usual is going to only drop us in the mire in a terrible way. And in the absence of this fundamental organising principle of 'Rule of Law' in a society, the breakdown of society is almost prophesied. And I think that this kind of dead serious stuff can be bolstered by something like the IJR but it is plea to change things, because this is never going to be business as usual. Business as usual is going to lead to bankruptcy.

👉🏾 As I said, I don't think it is at all feasible to continue in the same vein as before. You're going to have to take radical steps. A great deal of these steps lie in the bailiwick or the mandate, or the state government. How prisons are functioning, how justice is dispensed. You're going to have to create imaginative solutions, and they are there, they are there in those musty reports that have been lying there for years and years and years. But at the moment there is perhaps not sufficient incentive or push from the public, as well as there is a great constraint of finances. And that makes the struggle, to increase human resources, to increase infrastructure. But again, I think it's a false economy to say we don't have enough money to hire judges and we don't have enough money to improve training.

👉🏾 There are two ways, there are many ways, but two of the ones that I can easily talk about is just to increase human...

Shownotes

Dr Titilola Banjoko Chair of the Board of Trustees UK, IRC was my first guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast. I invited her back to talk about the humanitarian crises facing the world, with a record number of 274 million people expected to be dependent on humanitarian aid in 2022. 

The 2022 IRC Watchlist - a public report that warns global leaders, policymakers and concerned citizens not just where crises are deepening but why they are deepening and what can be done about it

The three C's: Conflict; Climate Change and COVID and its impact on the humanitarian crisis

The void in global leadership on the refugee crisis

UK's commitment on refugees 

The funding gap

The importance of changing the negative perception on migrants and what they bring to society

The refugee integration program, role of diaspora communities in supporting assimilation and her priorities for 2021

Want to learn more, listen on your favourite podcast platforms

Memorable Passages from the podcast

👉🏾 Good evening Sudha and may I say Happy New Year to you and your listeners. 

👉🏾 I think what's changed in the interim for me personally, is that we are beginning to see the structural instruments respond to racism. As you will recall, previous to that people would get away with a lot of things that otherwise they shouldn't have. And if you take some groundbreaking legal court cases in the States, as an example, where the expectation by a lot of people was business as usual, people could get away with things that were, wrong and that turned out not to be the case. So I think it does send a message to everyone there are consequences. And when people are aware there are consequences then there is consideration given to actions that are going to be taken by everyone on both sides.

👉🏾 So I think that has really been helpful because to me that was a landmark and I'm sure you're aware of the cases that we have seen, you know assume that they would not be found guilty and turns out actually they would be. And then also we have seen where lots of people who have, even here in the UK Cricket, it has given people the ability to come out and actually within our court structure, in parliament to ask questions of why things are happening and people now understand that actually what you used to do before is no longer acceptable. 

👉🏾 So for me, I think it's given boldness, it's given confidence to the BME community to come out and speak of things that they probably wouldn't have dared do before because you would assume there are no consequences. But now that there are consequences and people have confidence and assurance in the system, people are coming out and actually speaking of instances and incidences that have happened in the past and actually it's given its due consideration and process. I'll say it takes you on that journey where actually things are going to change and are already changing. 

👉🏾 It's been challenging. I mean, as everybody knows, the world has changed, the world is not what it used to be because of the pandemic. And the pandemic, is not a health issue, because it has consequences on everybody's life. And countries have become very insular in what they want because they are protecting their own citizens and we see that. So there are lots of things, when I took on the Chairmanship, I thought we will continue the journey, things will get better, but actually, things have got worse. So if you think about the space in which we operate as a humanitarian organisation, we now have in just 20 countries alone and the list is endless of countries that are faced with humanitarian challenges. You have over 274 million people in just 20 countries that are impacted and of those 80 million in some countries, when you add the total top 20 countries, actually, they're displaced globally and then you also have a considerable number of millions displaced internally.

👉🏾 When I spoke to you last, I don't think I don't think there was a coup in Myanmar, the fight in Ethiopia has gotten worse, there's the insecurity, Afghanistan that wasn't a change in the structure when I spoke to you. So the three C's, we're now calling it - conflict, which includes insecurity and decades of war; climate change; and COVID. So those three C's have actually really made an impact and if you think about it, Afghanistan is the crisis after the conflict. Ethiopia is climate change and conflict. Yemen, people forget that that is a cumulative impact of the war that has been going on and people have forgotten about that war. Nigeria has growing insecurity. South Sudan, tension, Democratic Republic of Congo there's conflict and there is disease because Ebola still happens regularly in DRC. Syria, it's a decade of war, I mean, can you believe that? And then Sudan has also had political tensions and then they have regional droughts and conflict. And I haven't spoken about the other countries like Honduras, where there’s violence and climate change impacting on that. Lebanon.

👉🏾 Sudha, can I just say, when you add all those three things together and what really has made it more challenging has been the fact that as I said if you take the impact of COVID. So the impact of COVID is either on the health, it's on the economic situations of the country and it has meant that countries have actually become more insular and I'm sure you've heard a lot about the vaccine inequities across the world.And that countries are actually more insular in terms of, what can I get for my own country, I'm not really interested in another you know, as much as what people say and therefore it has economic impact in countries that are already vulnerable before COVID and more people, therefore, want to move.

👉🏾So you have more refugees, you have more political asylum seekers and when I say refugees, I'm even talking about even those seeking better economic situations and that growing hunger and displacement, is even in countries that you might think are stable. So you will get people from Pakistan, you get people from Bangladesh, but they're still refugees for various reasons, whether economic or non-economic. And women and girls, and the marginalised groups always are the most vulnerable in any country, whatever that group or community is, they become more vulnerable to these impacts of climate change, conflicts, insecurities and Covid. And that really for me, has really been an eye-opener in terms of what people are facing. 

👉🏾 Obviously the resources will never be enough, but I think there are two key things that we've been doing. One is we have what we call annual watch list, which we publicise every year. And the 2022 highlights, I will say systemic failure. And it's broken into four key themes: First of all state failure, so most states are failing to actually fulfil their basic responsibilities towards their citizens. And as every country is accountable for its citizens and instead they're making things worse either through omission of what they should be doing or actually doing the wrong things. So if you give examples of the vaccine, as an example. In most countries, actually the people that are first in the queue are probably the elites, the ones in power, the government, whereas the communities where they're more vulnerable are not. And the same way, even economics when there is not enough, who gets the most. 

👉🏾 Then there is diplomatic failure, I mean as we all know, peacemaking is really not where it should be, instead it's dominated by geopolitics, rivalry. The global good is not really, I would say, being adhered to. So this last year or so, there's been reduction in aid that goes into countries and people are protecting themselves because of the economic impact on their own countries. But we live in a global society where actually, we are interconnected and the lack of peace in one country does have consequences for other countries. And that's why you see increasing people on the move, whether through legal or illegal channels. 

👉🏾 Then there is a legal failure. The system of international law has not really kept up with what it's responsibilities are. Growing crimes against humanity. There are people who are being killed in countries where we're operating and they're doctors. The idea that doctors, there are certain places that are sacrosanct under international law, that you should not be using war as a weapon. But in some countries now hunger is being used as a weapon. And that really is creating starvation and famine. And then of course there is operational failures, the system and the way we work together to be able to address the humanitarian crisis. 

👉🏾 So I think for us in IRC publishing that report really highlights to key decision-makers, the actions they need to take on those four areas, either as a state/diplomatic. So we have lots of multilateral organisations that is their role, making sure that the legal instruments internationally are being applied. So for me that's one thing, then the second thing is obviously, resources that is required. So one of the things we've done in IRC, it's not just the states and multilateral organisations or indeed private organisations, but even citizens of the world. Global citizens being aware of the humanitarian crisis. So we've done a lot of work either through: fundraising, mobilising individuals, either through targeted or even mass approach, so that people can do their collective bit.

👉🏾 So we're using instruments to ensure that people are aware. For some citizens globally, it's just the awareness of what is happening. Because as you will know Sudha, if I take the Afghan crisis, what we're seeing on the television, actually did move people. And when the recent unfortunate incident of migrants dying, when they're trying to cross the channel, grabs people's attention. But what we need to do is get people to understand that it's not until it's in front of you on the screen, these are things that are happening behind and they're things that can be done either through, global giving or indeed states playing their role.

👉🏾 I mean, for me on a personal level, I think there, first of all, has to be recognition that you might think you can close your borders. People will say, "Oh, we'll stop them from coming and we build whether they're physical walls or legal walls, and stop people from coming". Every citizen of the world would always want to aspire better than where they are. And when conditions that push them are greater than what is going to stop them, they will move. My personal view is people will die trying, people would prefer to die trying than not do anything and sit down and wait for death. So I do believe that there is something for us as UK citizens to understand our role in the global community, not our role as in UK and forget the rest of the world, it doesn't work that way.

👉🏾 And actually people find it very interesting that people want to come to the UK. And I'm sure you've heard jokes before Sudha, where people said, when you were all colonies, you spent half of the time telling everyone how the UK was the motherland and you trained people in English and you set up the English structures and, well Great Britain to some people means Great Britain. And therefore the ultimate goal, whether it's a fact or not, or is a perception, is Great Britain. And I've heard people say, well, that was years ago. No, it's not, the structures created in many of the colonial countries are so entrenched and deep, even into schools, the educational system, therefore people still see coming into the UK as the get-out card. 

👉🏾 So I do think there is something about the UK working with countries on how they can improve within those countries. Because guess what? 90% of the people actually do not need to leave if things were better in their countries, either economic or political. I gave the example of the COVID vaccine, and that just gives you an element of what's happening, where there are countries now where we're on the booster. While some people have not even had the first dose in some countries. And then people said, oh, they donated a lot of vaccines to many of these countries, but they donated vaccines with two, three weeks to ensure they give out the vaccines, that logistics doesn't work. So I don't know if you are aware, a lot of countries actually have had to more or less throw them away because there was no way they can mobilise infrastructure to deliver it in two weeks. And if it's use by date has expired, it is not a vaccine, it is dangerous. So therefore they've got rid of it. 

👉🏾 Those are things that we need to consider because you are dependent on these countries. A good example, is the Philippines is well-known in the UK as an exporter of healthcare workers and it's embraced by both the UK and the Philippine government. But what they've put in place is good infrastructure, legal infrastructure, and even support to the Philippine government. So it becomes a win-win the Philippine government relies on the remittances that its workers will send back and the UK government relies on the workforce both win. And that is what needs to happen.The challenge for the UK is, as we are not part of the EU, we now need to have bilateral agreements. 

👉🏾 Yes, it is actually. So at the IRC, we have what we call a 'refugee integration program' in Southeast England, which we call Rise, which is rapidly expanding. And that program offers resettled refugees, the knowledge and confidence to thrive, equipping them with skills, to be able to assimilate into their local communities as well equipping their local communities to be able to absorb them. And one of the tools, which has really helped, is also the countries they're coming from, the communities that are here.

👉🏾 One of the things that is really very good is the fact that we do have a very vibrant BME community in the UK. And they offer a resource and a tool to be able to support the refugees coming. And the beauty of working with the IRC, you then begin to recognise, and actually that there are many people who you might not assume to be refugees, had a refugee background, but they're so assimilated people have forgotten. They're doctors, they're nurses they're even politicians. So there are tools and their communities that do help them to absorb. And if we take the Afghan as an example, there are many Afghan doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, some of them are consultants well established in the United Kingdom. And they're able to offer advice using their own lived experience.

👉🏾 So one of the things we have on the IRC, when I started we've now got trustees with lived experience as refugees or coming from crisis countries. So they're able to tell you their experience they've got what they went through, and how you can support them. But one thing I always say to people never underestimate the resilience of the refugees. And many of them have gone through unimaginable circumstances to get to the UK, either through the journeys they've taken or what has happened to them. So giving them the right tools and support and indeed using the advantage. And we've got the benefits in IRC of learning from Germany, as there were lots of refugees that went to Germany. They've got a massive program there, learning from Germany, learning from the US as a global organisation. What's best practice in integrating people within the society so they can thrive. 

👉🏾 I will say that we are on a journey and we have started moving the perception. Because what we didn't have before was platform for people who have been refugees to tell their stories. So when we take Afghan as an example, and I know doctors, nurses from Sudan, from Somalia, from Syria who were ex refugees and when they tell the story of how they've assimilated and what they're doing and using them as voices, even in our fundraising and our advocating, it begins to say to people,"Oh, I didn't know my doctor was an ex refugee; oh, I didn't know this minister was an ex refugee". And these are the sorts of things that in fact I remind people.

👉🏾 This is not new, what we had missed was the narrative. What people saw was the negative narrative, and we've got to elevate the positive narrative. During COVID, the number of ex refugee doctors and nurses that worked all throughout COVID, and are still working cause we're not out of COVID. It's just a testament to the fact that we have not given people that platform to air their voices. And that's what we need to continually do. So people can see that ultimately the society benefits when many of these refugees are successfully integrated. 

👉🏾 Well, actually the US with a change of government have changed, which is good. We now have the US stepping up a lot of their commitment that previously had more or less been put to the background and that is excellent and good. I think one of the challenges obviously is the impact COVID has had on the economy of most countries. And therefore that meant that many of them, especially the UK, reduced their donations and private companies are also impacted by COVID. And therefore we're not seeing it as something that actually was essential. And what we just need to do is shift that dial, so people do see it as essential because it is in everybody's interest. 

👉🏾 As an example that the whole world gets vaccinated or at least 70% of the world get vaccinated. We've learnt that all it takes is for one or two to travel. And they don't have to be refugees. If we want the economy to pick up again, that has to happen. It could be a business person from the UK traveling to another country to ensure that they bring investment into the country that comes back with the virus. It could be your citizen going to that country that brings it back, that is the way it works. So in that context it requires leadership. It requires global leadership, I mean I read a news article recently, which I thought was very impressed by, where a lots of shareholders of all the pharmaceutical companies are now saying that the CEOs will not get their bonus. If they haven't increased what they are giving to the developing countries and that they wanted to see those numbers. And I thought that was good, that shows to you, the demonstration of individuals, what they can do. Because guess what? They might not listen to everybody else, but they will definitely listen to their shareholders. That brings in accountability and when that brings in accountability and that's where it is. So it's accountability of the private...

Shownotes: 

Journalists and PR professionals don't always trust each other, even though there is a mutual dependence - journalists are wary of spin, and the PR pro is worried about a negative angle or a hatchet job. However, it is possible to foster trust based on good ethics, respect and professionalism.

My guest Deepali Gupta is a journalist with nearly 2 decades of experience working with some of the most prestigious Indian and global publications (Indian Express, Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal, Economic Times). Deepali is also the author a book 'Tata vs Mistry'. 

We reconnected when she moved to the UK last summer with her family; as diaspora forging a new relationship based on our shared stories, experiences and love of India. 

She is not my typical guest, but I grew interested in talking to her when I read about how skewed the ratio is between men and women business authors. In the episode we also spoke about Deepali's journey to becoming a journalist covering finance, equity markets, conglomerates

👉🏾 Why she decided to write her first book on corporate India's growing up moment and biggest boardroom battle

👉🏾 How she prepared for it with material mostly available in public domain (approx 9000 pages of information) 

👉🏾 And of course focus on some of the issues that she dealt with in her book on governance, trust, conflict, succession planning, independent directors, family run businesses

👉🏾 We also spoke about her experiences in the newsroom and what it takes to succeed as a female journalist

👉🏾 Her much delayed next book (due to COVID) and a new beginning in the UK

Memorable passages from the episode: 

👉🏾Thank you so much for having me here. It's lovely to be here. 

👉🏾 So I've been a journalist for a little less than two decades. I started with the Indian Express group, then went away to Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal and finally settled into a nice role at the Economic Times. I quit the Economic Times towards the end of 2018 with a mission to write a book.You know the outcome of that. It's called 'TATA vs MISTRY'.

And to be honest, I landed in journalism purely accidentally. I come from a family of professionals who are overachievers in their academic fields and I wasn't one of those. So even though the charter for me was perhaps to follow a PhD in physics or coding and science related. I don't think I fell in that category. So when I finished my college The Hindu group came and gave me an offer and said, well, you finished English literature, why don't you consider this as a profession. And that actually took me to St. Xavier's to go on and finish a post-graduation in journalism, per se.

In hindsight, there couldn't have been a better profession for me. But this was a field that gave me a foot in every door, it allowed me to ask questions. So I landed up covering technology from an enterprise perspective, from an innovation perspective. I covered pharmaceuticals and again, the jargon over there can be quite intimidating, but it's fun once you've gotten the hang of it. I did equity markets, financial policy, RBI policy. And that breadth of coverage kind of landed me into a role in mergers and acquisitions and conglomerates. And that of course is, like I said, it all sort of lines up to....

👉🏾 So to be honest this is a very welcoming profession for women, contrary to perceptions. When I joined journalism, the perception was that this is a dirty profession for loose girls, right? I don't think that I agree with that, I think that my experiences have all largely been clean. Yes, you have that occasional brush, but I think that's true in life in general. So my newsrooms have always been clean, it's been a great arena to foster conversation, to foster intellectual thought and I do think that you are seen as a peer in the newsroom.

That said, I think the hours are needed and at some point in your life, in my case, I went through maternity and there is a lean period. But I don't think that you can grudge anyone else putting in more hours than you. Your focus had changed, you went away and did something else and then you came back to it. By the time you have come back to it, if you're writing regularly, then you continue to get that much more. Breaking back into that feels like you're reinventing the wheel, but I mean that's par for the course, it's true for any profession. I think journalism is one of those professions, also because it's public, you can always very openly collate what your success rate has been. But it's a great profession for women. 

👉🏾 Okay, so let's go back to the journey. Now I've been writing on TATA companies from the beginning of my career. I mean, if you track finance in India, then it's very hard to not write about a TATA company, they're in everything. And I think from TCS in tech to TATA Chemicals they're everywhere. So, I've written about various TATA companies throughout my career. In 2016 when all of this was unfolding, I was very actively involved with covering an issue that the group was having with their Japanese partner in the telecom ventures. And this was NTT DoCoMo, and it was a very bitter feud which was going on between the Japanese partner and the TATA group about settling some arrears on equity. It was bitter to the point that governments had been involved. I mean, the prime ministers of the two countries had had a conversation about it.

👉🏾 So I was in the thick of that and on the Friday before the final firing, I got a call from a source saying watch out for Monday - I can't say anymore and he hung up the phone. And I said, watch out for Monday? Okay, let me go back and think about it, and I said, well this has to relate to TATA DoCoMo. So I went through my entire contact book, and I didn't find anything, there was no major development going on in TATA vs DoCoMo. Then it just sort of passed right, the weekend came around, we got busy with other things. And then Monday came, the board meeting was scheduled for Monday. But it didn't seem like anything was going to happen, because prior to the board meeting there was no announcement. So I flagged to someone in my office that, you know, just keep an eye out, there’s this is board meeting going on, something may come from it. And I went away to another meeting at an office and I'm sitting with this executive and in his office, on one wall is a television screen, which is running a ticker. 

👉🏾 My phone is kept on the table, suddenly my phone buzzes and buzzes and then on the ticker it says, 'Cyrus Mistry fired.' And the person says, "You journalists, you write anything to be able to get an exclusive look at this. I mean, how can Cyrus Mistry be fired?" and I mean, to be honest, nobody had ever thought something like that would happen, that too at such short notice and my phone continues to buzz. So I said, you know what, I'm really sorry to cut our meeting short, but let me just step out and take this. And so I stepped out and it was in fact a firing and the release was a one-line release, "As of tomorrow, he will not be coming back to office". So I rushed back to my office and then, of course, the next day battle lines were drawn. 

👉🏾 So it was just one of those stories, you know, stakes were high, drama was high. But more importantly, this turned out to be a churn of stories for a period of three or four months, where every day it was a front-page article about what was going on and who was saying, what about the group and there were leaks from inside. There were sources who were calling us up to say, well, you know, have you looked at this aspect? Really, really involved on the day-to-day coverage of what was unfolding. And two years later, by the time the judgment came out, the dust had kind of settled, people didn't remember, it took all of us a minute and a Google search to be able to go back and see what it was that the key points were. So when we looked at that first judgment of the NCLT that came out - in my mind this was a growing-up moment for corporate India, it spanned well beyond the TATA group. And that was the reason why I decided to pick up the subject. 

👉🏾 So the starting point was my very first interview when I phoned up this gentleman and I said, I want to write on this subject, I wanted it to be chronicled for what it was. Can I come in and have a chat with you? And the interview was fantastic, he gave me wonderful quotes and he gave me a lot of salacious gossip. And then I got up and I said, thank you very much. It was lovely talking to you. He said, but you must remember one thing. This entire interview was off the record and if it ever comes back to me, then I will say that I never spoke to you or have never met you. And at that point, you know, it was one hour of complete, you know, I was rubbing my hands one minute and I was on the floor in a puddle in the second. But that kind of made me realise that everything needs to be corroborated, everything needs to be chronicled and everything needs to be documented very carefully if I was going to write on this subject.

👉🏾 And so began the research process, the first step was to go to the libraries and because both of these are very, very old established business houses. The older libraries, like the Asiatic society and some of the other ones in Mumbai, do actually have a longish chronicle of what has happened with them. I went and made friends in strange offices, like the charity commissioner of Mumbai. It's this little, slightly dilapidated office, which is dusty and has a whole lot of peons running around. And it has only manual records, nothing digital. But it has all the records of the TATA Trusts, which kind of oversee the TATA business, they have a majority stake in Tata Sons. So I went and I frequented that office a fair deal to bring out some of the establishment deeds of the trusts and some of the public disclosures that are made there. Newspaper archives were my friends. 

👉🏾 My PR colleagues were really surprised cause I called up a couple of them and I said, well, you know what? I'd like to interview you, you've been in the thick of things. But of course, I couldn't tell them why I wanted to meet them on the phone because by this point, I wasn't sure anymore how much scrutiny was going through. So I just told them that, can we meet? And one of them actually came with a list of possible things that could have gone wrong with me, that they would want to correct. And I said, well you know what, no, I have no complaints. I actually want the tables to be flipped for a change where I'm asking you questions and I want you to tell me what your experiences have been.

👉🏾 And then of course came the lawyers who are so suave and who knew exactly how to spin you around in circles. But I did get some pointed answers even in those legal offices. And so by the time I was done, I had plenty of information, a pile of about 9,000 pages worth of documents and of course all the other books and papers, which I had collated. So it was reasonably well documented by the time I got around that.

👉🏾 At the very base I would say the issue was of communication. At its most basic, but I think if you take it to the next level, I think it's a matter of perspective. Ideally in any organisation, you want the maverick innovation of Steve jobs, as well as the financial prudence of Jack Welch. But, in real life, those two managerial positions are at contravention to each other. What happened was the difference between a promoter's perspective and a professional's perspective. The TATA group has historically never been one to chase profits. They've always chased, futuristic planning, cutting edge technology. If you look at their charter, which dates back to the early 1900s, the charter is to further science in India. The charter is to create innovation in India and it's not so much balancing out profits, and therefore the point of view that the previous chairman of TATA have come at the group, has always been that of innovation and of fostering growth at perhaps the cost of profit. 

👉🏾 Now if you look at it, Cyrus Mistry was the very first non-TATA family Chairman to come and take that seat. And by this time the group is so large that it's answerable to stakeholders. Not just shareholders, but there are banks involved there are international arms involved, there are governments involved, and therefore he has to come at it from a professional perspective. And therein lies the need to meet profit focus, to meet shareholder expectations, to have image building. And just before this entire firing, there is this article that The Economist has written about flab in the TATA group. And that Cyrus Mistry has been unable to cut that flab back. And you know, what the shareholder community is expecting is very different from what the traditional point of view has been. And therefore, I think if you were to ask me, where was the single point of failure in that relationship? I think it is this, I think that they are not coming at the problem from the same perspective.

👉🏾 So let's analyse a little bit about what the succession process was for the TATA group. Why was Cyrus Mistry chosen to be the person to succeed Ratan Tata. At the end of the day, that list of 14 people who were being interviewed, included the CEO of Pepsi globally, the co-chair of Deutsche bank. So why was Cyrus Mistry a better fit for the role than some of these other people? And I think the answer to that lies in what is documented in the minutes of the board meeting, where he's appointed to say, well he's the outsider insider. He's not someone who is completely from the outside, but at the same time, he is not completely on the inside. And while that was supposed to work out rather well, it also put him again in the wrong place because there's the founder perspective, who's thinking, well he understands this perspective and he'll fall in line, and there is the shareholder perspective, who's thinking, well, he's an outsider, he's not an insider, therefore he will think about it in a different way. So it does put him in that spot. 

👉🏾 And as succession goes, therefore, what is the process? Now the process itself of selecting him was rather strange. He was a committee member on the selection team. He was not supposed to be a candidate at all. He was someone who was interviewing candidates. 

I mean if you're looking at family succession, for instance. The child of a promoter is often involved with many of these things. Therefore, can you say that this is an independent selection and an independent succession plan? And it's not necessary that it's always the best thing for the company. In many cases, it is better to get a family member who will be passionate and who will think about the company as their baby, rather than a professional who is looking to get a salary and then check some boxes and get on with life, right? So the fact that all the eggs of a promoter are in the basket - the organisation, may actually play to the strength of the organisation. Therefore, every organisation has to consider which process, but the mingling of the process is probably not a good idea. It's either an independent process where you get a professional chief or from the outset, you set out to say, well, this is going to be a family thing. 

👉🏾 So that's the process of selection. And of course, it also opened up the process that companies could follow. Things that can go wrong, things that they should be wary of. So this was a big lesson in succession planning, and I think any other group would not have been taken as seriously, but because the TATA group is associated with its transparency and its generally good governance practices, they tend to set a precedent for everyone to follow. This was a widely watched succession. 

👉🏾 Conflicts are inevitable. I mean, if there's human emotion involved and often there is especially in promoter driven companies, then conflicts are inevitable. But things that organisations can do is to put in place a mechanism of how to address these conflicts, if they do come up. For instance, there can be a sort of a blueprint on when there is a disagreement between management and the board. What steps will be taken, perhaps there's a third party evaluation that needs to happen between what the board is saying and what the management is saying. That said the chief way of resolving any conflict is communication and understanding, mutual understanding because the board is still dependent on what the management discloses to it. No matter how deep the board may want to get into the details of the organisation, it is it's key directors or key executives that control the flow of that information. So in some cases, what companies do is to create multiple lines of reporting. So for instance apart from the CEO, the chief legal officer and the chief financial officer have separate dotted lines to the board. But again, it comes down to the same thing. It comes down to resolving conflicts with communication and full disclosure.

👉🏾 So what leaders can do to foster this, is one ensure that there is completely open communication between various levels within the organisation, ensure that there is some sort of a one-on-one rapport that gets set up, between the top few echelons of the organisation. Failing these, there is always the option of third party mediation and of course at all points in time what safeguards any organisation is to let the independent directors in fact be independent. Instead of trying to partner them and have offline meetings or build consensus, if independent directors can be allowed to have their own views and their own thoughts without perhaps being at the risk of being axed from the board, then they themselves can become mediators for when there is a conflict such as the ones that we've seen.

👉🏾 There are a few examples but I don't think that they are publicly disclosed. I mean, conflicts can arise for the strangest of reasons. In 2017 I think there was a Kotak committee report which said, well part of good corporate governance is creating a succession plan and that created endless amount of conflict. I mean, it was a really uncomfortable scene for many boards, because the other board members had to nominate a potential successor for someone who was sitting in the room and who would probably not agree with a potential successor. In some cases,...

Shownotes

It's a new year, a new day and The Elephant in the Room podcast is ready with its first episode of 2022. My guest Dr Mukund Rajan is the Chairman of Ecube, an investment advisory focused on transforming the climate and ESG landscape in India. 

The focus of this freewheeling conversation in this episode is around ESG and Dr Rajan's latest book 'Outlast - how ESG can benefit your business' which he co-authored with Col Rajeev Kumar

We also spoke about the drivers for change including climate and environmental exigencies and changing stakeholder expectations👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 Demystifying the jargon around ESG

👉🏾 The value of organisational 'Purpose' in the 'Age of responsibility'  

👉🏾 ESG as a transformation trend that will enable companies and countries to meet their development goals

👉🏾 Big issues that corporate India can champion in building a fairer workplace and society

👉🏾 ESG as a competitive advantage and a race to the top and those who are getting it right

👉🏾 Linking ESG performance to executive compensation

👉🏾 Preparing for internal and external disruptions

👉🏾 Can be put ESG in the driving seat to drive social impact and sustainability when funds are essentially driven by profits? 

Memorable passages from the podcast

👉🏾 Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

👉🏾 Well, the book itself is I think quite straightforward in terms of the partnerships. So HarperCollins published my previous book, The Brand Custodian, and they proposed the idea of a book on ESG, which was beginning to get a lot of currency in India. They jumped on it and said, they'd be happy to publish.

In fact, I understand this is the first book on ESG in India, that's come out. Colonel Rajiv Kumar was my colleague in the Tatas and when I was the brand custodian at Tatas, we both worked on a whole bunch of issues and also saw a number of ESG crises, up close and in person. So when he retired from the group, we had sort of made a mutual commitment that we'd write something together. And here we are I think almost two years after we made that pact and we've got a book out. 

👉🏾 The subject itself is one that, as I said, is gaining a lot of currency. But, in 2018 you know, I left the Tatas and I started my own firm called Ecube. And Ecube as a name suggests is drawn from three E's Engage and Empower for ESG. The whole idea of the firm was to really support the transition of corporate India towards better ESG performance. And critical drivers at the time that my co-founders and I saw were, obviously a lot of the focus in corporate governance, that was happening in India, but equally growing concerns about climate change as a major issue within the E of ESG. So we really thought the Indian market would be getting ready for much greater focus on ESG issues. And thanks to a lot of the research and the reading one was doing, it made sense to put all this in a book form and make it available to a wider audience.

👉🏾 So, the two go hand in hand Sudha. And you know, as I mentioned in the book, I sort of outlined the way in which this whole focus on corporate responsibility, on concerns around sustainable development has really been evolving over the last few decades. But certainly human kinds ability to go into outer space and looking at the earth as a tiny blue marble from outer space reminded everyone that there is only this one Earth that we all share. And then going forward into the 1980s, you had the Brundtland report, which made the concept of sustainable development famous. Then in the 1990s, you had the Rio Earth summit, the increasing focus on global environmental issues, big developments. I think towards the late eighties and early nineties, obviously the collapse of the Soviet Union and from a world which is sort of fragmented and polarised between, you know, the non-aligned nations, the Western block, the Eastern block, you had this gradual tendency moving towards one interdependent global market. So I think in the context of all of these developments there’s been much greater light that has been shined on what is the role of the private sector, businesses and corporates in the context of the kind of new society that's emerging. And obviously greater integration interdependency and also the fact that technology is coming to your help now on a variety of issues, means there are more choices that could be made in terms of the way in which we are to take development forward. 

👉🏾 In all of that context, I feel that really we are now poised at a new sort of juncture in human history where there's much more information available, with all kinds of stakeholders, the public thanks to the ubiquity of the worldwide web, has much greater access to information. And therefore the demands for accountability from corporates are much greater now. And therefore this is a new age of responsibility where if you're not careful, you can upset stakeholders in some part of the world, and pretty soon see your business, your market share collapse. And that's one of the points we make in the book, that Indian corporates, I don't think have yet sort of woken up in large numbers to how swiftly the terrain is changing. It's a bit akin to what we saw 30 years back in India 1991 when you had the economic reforms in India, evolved from really a socialist economy, scarcity economy into one that's as much akin to a free market economy. And at that juncture, many corporates that weren't prepared for change really, bit the dust and this time around as well, if companies don't understand the expectation that stakeholders, not just in India, but overseas, including deep-pocketed investors have from them, they could stand to lose out big time, so it is a new age of responsibility. 

👉🏾 On the question of purpose, you know, I have a quote in my book which interestingly enough is actually Larry Finks quote at BlackRock. And I think probably it's the best sort of definition I've seen of what purpose can do for businesses. So it's something that really is quite profound. So he says "Profits are essential, if a company is to effectively serve all of its stakeholders over time, not only shareholders, but also employees, customers, and communities. Similarly, when a company truly understands and expresses its purpose, it functions with the focus and strategic discipline that drive long-term profitability. Purpose unifies management, employees, and communities. It drives ethical behaviour and creates an essential check on actions that go against the best interests of stakeholders. Purpose guides culture, provides a framework for consistent decision making and ultimately helps sustain long-term financial returns for the shareholders of your company".

👉🏾 I think that's the best example I've seen of what purpose can do for businesses. So you're quite right that it's integral to this whole idea of us moving into this age of responsibility and companies that are not purpose-driven, that don't have a clue about why they are here and which stakeholders that you are really tending to serve, to the best of the ability through their products and services. I think it will very quickly sort of get found out. So I think it's critical to explaining to your audience, you know, what you really stand for. 

👉🏾 So SDG is another acronym. So there is this whole mess of acronyms out there that have a lot of people scratching their head, wondering what these all really mean. But no, think it's all part and parcel of this evolution that we are seeing. So call it by whatever name you want, the fundamental point is that - there is an expectation of corporate responsibility whether it's expressed through your commitment to different sustainable development goals. Whether it's expressed through your demonstration of performance, on what are called material ESG issues, nobody's expecting every company to be equally good across the spectrum of ESG issues, but those that are material to your industry, you should be good on those.

👉🏾 I think that expectation is now qualitatively different and more measurable than perhaps at any previous point in human history. Like I mentioned, the availability of information is so widespread now, that if you have a plant in a muffasil area in India for instance that suddenly starts leaking emissions on big scale, this is something that can get protest as far away as the United States and stakeholders will take action. That is qualitatively different from the kind of impacts that you would have seen say 30, 40 years back. And because of technology also, people have the tools now to do something about these issues.

👉🏾 So I think the visibility, the scrutiny, all of them are qualitatively different of a much higher order. And the expectation of accountability therefore is also of a much higher order. And ultimately it's back to basics, right? We're expected to live the right values, we're expected to comply with the law, you're expected to do your part in really contributing to society and to the development of the community. That's what sustainable development is all about. You want to leave the world a better place than what you inherited. Otherwise, future generations are going to be extremely critical and upset. We've already seen that in the behaviour of millennials these days, much more environmentally sensitive and conscious.

👉🏾 The good news is, I think governments are beginning to be responsive, they're understanding that civil society has these concerns. If anything the last couple of years, thanks to COVID, I think a lot more people, that are much more in tune with nature and understand, you know, the context in which we've been allowed really to impose the natural environment. So I think governments are also now beginning to play their role with regulation, with policies that are on the whole, I think, proving to be more beneficial. We saw at Glasgow, whole bunch of governments coming together and talking the right talk about what they want to do to avert climate change.

👉🏾 And we are all in this together, I think that's the one big thing that global environmental issues have really done for us. The fact that, very similar to the same stance we take on COVID, nobody is safe until everybody is safe. You can't deal with the global environmental issue unless everybody collaborates. So I think that need for collaboration means that there are many more agents of change who are keeping an eye on what's going on and trying to collaboratively engineer the changes that are going to be important if human kind to survive in the long term. 

👉🏾 So I go back to the point about materiality. I think every business when it thinks about its ESG impact and where it wants to or needs to improve, we look at what is relevant to its business. And on the S, I mean, the S is a combinations, it's essentially social. So the combination of elements that may be relevant to the people within your business, your employees, for instance. In India contract labour is a big issue for instance. And it applies to the communities around you and outside stakeholders that you impact the human beings who live in those communities.

👉🏾 So you really have to decide, you know, what kind of organisation you are, where you have the greatest impact, what kinds of communities you need to engage with, and what kind of performance you want to demonstrate going forward. Pick out the most material issues, and then focus on those. So in India for manufacturing, for instance, I think contract labour is a major issue.

👉🏾 That terms and conditions under which many, many people labour and work are quite unfair a lot of the time. They work under contractors who don't necessarily provide them the benefits they're meant to under the law, that could be a big issue. The complexion of the workforce which is part of your organisation is another big issue. In India as I pointed in the book, two major challenges that you see across the board, one is gender diversity and the other is recruitment of members of the scheduled caste, scheduled tribe communities. Again you'll see that in the power structure, whether it's corporate India, whether it's the judiciary, whether it's a representation in parliament. These communities, women, the SC-ST communities, the physically challenged are all very, very poorly represented.

👉🏾 So if you want a more equitable society, if you want a more equitable framework in which stakeholders are willing to support what you stand for, you need to do something about where do you see a gross sort of inequality and I think many companies can do a lot of things to address these issues. Starting with the recruitment policies, the kind of support to provide people within the workforce, the kind of encouragement they give and to some extent affirmative action. So I think there's a range of things that you can do once you've identified really where you as a company are operating and where you can have the greatest impact and influence. 

👉🏾 And not enough companies actually apply their minds to that, they sort of take the situation as something that exists and do very little change it. And my proposition is, if you don't start interesting yourself in the kind of society you are already living within, pretty soon you could see social strife, and in a country like India with the levels of inequality and poverty, it's not surprising that you've had many sort of situations where local communities have erupted in defiance of the operations of a particular corporation and that doesn't bode well for the future. So before it's too late. I think all businesses need to really understand the context in which they're operating and do more to show that they really are caring and concerned about the future.

👉🏾 No, absolutely not. I don't think it has anything to do with your stage of development as a market or an economy. I think these principles, I mean take human rights, for instance, I don't think it matters whether you're a rich country or a poor country. Human rights are human rights and should be respected regardless. And India, I think has so much work to do. I mean, take the issue of affirmative action in particular, in favour of schedule caste, schedule tribes. You know, you go back around almost 14 years to the 2006, 2007 period, when you had the UPA government at the centre and there was a lot of talk at that time about potentially instituting reservation in the private sector.

👉🏾 You already have reservation in the public sector for schedule caste, scheduled tribe communities. But there was talk about introducing it for the private sector. And then you saw a flurry of activity for a few years when India corporates tried to put their best foot forward in order to avoid government action, legislating this kind of reservation. But somehow the tempo has been lost after that. So some of these issues are not new. They are well understood, they're well known. Take the issue of gender diversity again there are World Bank studies that actually demonstrate that female participation in the labour force has actually shrunk by 5% in the last 20 years.

👉🏾 So this is not something that we were unaware of 20 years back, and it's not gotten better, it's gotten worse over time. So I don't think your stage of development has anything to do with this. I think it's just a function of one legislative pressure. Unfortunately, as I pointed out in my book, too often corporate India responds when the heavy hand of governments suddenly looms large. And until then they sort of coast along doing very little, there are obviously honourable exceptions to this, including some of India's largest firms. I was privileged to be part of the Tata group for 23 years and I know that in Tatas a lot of these issues are taken very seriously and the group tries to do its best. But there is enough scope for Indian businesses to change and as I keep repeating in the book, if they don't realise that these concerns are becoming quite strong and change fast I think they will have a very heavy price to pay. 

👉🏾 Absolutely and that's a big worry, but you know, I mean each corporate house in India, the largest companies are controlled mostly by some of these corporate houses. I think they're beginning to get it and most of them are trying to do something about it. If I take an issue like climate change now as a major ESG issue, I can see that a lot of, at least the larger companies which also have significant exposure overseas, they have footprints in other markets they're aware of trends around the globe. I think many of those businesses are really putting their best foot forward, being quite smart about the way they're thinking about business in the future, trying to put in place strategies to address the climate change issue. I mean, one of the best examples is India's largest private sector company Reliance Industries, despite being in the oil and gas space, has announced 2035 target to get to net zero. Talking about deploying huge amount of investment in new spaces like green hydrogen. So I think the larger companies probably already get it, and are beginning to do the right thing.

👉🏾 As you go into the small and medium enterprise space, I think you have many more challenges. Many of these businesses don't have, the surplus capital to be able to make the right investments. They don't have the kind of exposure which large corporates do to international trends. They often don't know what the best new technologies that are emerging, where they can be procured, which ones they should take a bet on, what kind of risks they're embracing. And that's the space where I really worry about the future that, many of the smaller businesses you know, how quickly can they adapt to these new changes and if they're also at risk of getting excluded from the entire commercial process going forward. There are already suggestions that you're seeing increasing concentration take place in the Indian economy with the big getting bigger, particularly after COVID and the introduction of the GST regulations, the formalisation of the economy. And this is a trend you're seeing in other markets also. A lot of the tech firms now are so big, they're giants with trillion-dollar plus market...

Shownotes:

Something to celebrate before winding down for 2021. The Elephant in the Room podcast is a year old (slightly over actually:) 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽 When I launched The Elephant in the Room last year, I knew that it was going to be a weekly podcast - that is the sum total of what I knew for certain. Beyond determination and hard work there was nothing else to recommend me or The Elephant in the Room. But, here we are 52 weeks later ......... And what a fantastic journey it has been 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽

I am full of gratitude for how far in my learning journey I have come, because people were willing and supportive of a newbie podcaster like me. I would like to thank each and every one of my guests for being an enabler, willing to share their knowledge and learning.

With eagerness and anticipation I am now, looking forward to embarking on the next 52 weeks - to continuing to push the agenda on inequity and exclusion in our industry, in our workplaces, in society and in our personal lives. And to ensuring that I stay true and rooted in the purpose of the podcast. 
But, before that I am going to take a break, the year has been brutal and it has taken a toll on all of us including me. I am going to revive and recuperate with my cheerleaders (my wonderful children), count my blessings and be back in the new year with some exciting announcements.

Meanwhile, if you are passionate about doing something, step forward and seize the moment. If I can, you can.......Don't let fear stop you.

Memorable passages from the podcast:

👉🏾 Hey everyone, welcome back to the 52nd episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast. I really wanted to use this opportunity to review the past year. And what a momentous year it has been, with unexpected highs and some expected lows; of amazing friendships and brilliant networks; of saying yes to many things and being assertive about saying 'No'; of speaking up and leaving the reticence behind; of being awake and mindful to doing good and being a facilitator for positive change; of trying to rid myself and others of self limiting beliefs and giving myself the permission to fly. Yes, it has been a wonderful journey and I am full of gratitude.

👉🏾 A year and some days ago I launched The Elephant in the Room podcast. I was nervous, as expected and there was a huge amount of trepidation in my mind about launching the podcast. It was to do with the purpose of the podcast - this was to be my learning & listening project, but it was also an opportunity to create a platform for people to speak about their lived experiences, hear from experts on issues that are taboo and deserve to be mainstream. Did I have what it takes to successfully run such a huge project - to make a commitment to turn up week after week with good content; stories that people wanted to hear; advise that people would want to take on board. Would I be able to attract listeners and followers with my credentials and credibility? Then there was the sheer logistics, background research on the topics, identifying and lining up guests week after week, the technology - what sort of mic should I have; what platforms should I host the podcast on; what were the steps...... It all seemed liked a lot of risk to take; too much learning to do; too much faff....

👉🏾 What kept me focused was the accountability to Janet Murray's wonderful network that I have had the privilege to be a part of. Janet is a fabulous leader, who believes in leading by example - she is committed, hard working and is constantly engaged in trying to figure out how best to bring value to the members in the network. In times when we are a bit lost, there is something to be said about being a part of something bigger - which helps you take one step after the other. So, definitely a big shout out to Janet. And I don't have to repeat how horrible COVID has been for people across the world especially for marginalised communities. For me it helped me focus my mind on my newly founded purpose; launch my podcast The Elephant in the Room and also my consultancy The Purpose Room. What was incredible was that I did not get asked questions anymore, on why I had decided to launch a virtual consultancy - the move to virtual workings and meetings validated my conviction about the future of work being hybrid.

👉🏾 I don't think it was just for me but the year has been hyper busy - perhaps it was to do with the uncertainty; the constant state of flux... There was a sense of urgency. It felt like everything needed to be done as of yesterday. Like millions of people across the world I spent an inordinate amount of time learning. This was fuelled to some extent because we had opened up our world to possibilities and also perhaps because we had taken back some time. And that has been great all around, everybody comes out a winner.

👉🏾 Continuous learning and upskilling is how organisations have kept or are keeping employees up to speed with the necessary skills to do their jobs efficiently in the world today, but are also equipping the workforce with future skills. And it has been a great way to keep them committed and engaged. It has not been smooth sailing all the way, we know that organisations have had to adapt their employee learning portfolio, some things have fallen by the wayside but on others there has been a huge opportunity for innovation., which is very important for organisations. But it is also important for organisations to be conscious of the fact that not everyone has had the time or the mind space or the drive to engage in learnings. The last year is strewn with anecdotal accounts of people being burnt out and struggling with just getting by from one day to the next. Smart organisations will keep that in mind while designing future learning programmes.

👉🏾 In 2018 when I was forced to reassess my professional life because of the barriers to entry as well as progress for leaders like me, I decided to hit the pause button. It was a deeply depressing time, full of angst but I was forced to consider the good that came off it. The pause gave me time to focus on some very important personal issues but also freed me up to make commitments that I had been thinking about for the longest time but not acting on. People of colour and particularly women are shy about bringing attention to themselves with conversations about gender, race or colour, leadership. While, my clients and teams will know me as a confident articulate person, I have always been hesitant to draw any attention to myself and keep out of the spotlight.

👉🏾 As a leader my advice to peer groups, colleagues and friends has been face your fears and last year I decided to follow my own advice. I stepped into active volunteering and made a commitment that henceforth I would spend a percentage of my time using my knowledge to do better and be better. To supporting things I was passionate about - that is when I became an advisor to PRADAN; a volunteer campaign champion on Justice for Rohingya Children for Save the Children; and last year I put my hand up to be a founding member of the Race and Ethnicity Equity Board at the PRCA and this year to be the Co-Chair of the PRCA Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council. It has been an incredibly rewarding journey and I cannot think of a better use of my time.

👉🏾 Letting go of the idea of a linear career path to leadership, is one of the hardest things I have had to do in my life. The idea that an alternate and equally or more satisfying career existed was not something I was ever interested in exploring. To a large extent I would say that was to do with me being generally risk averse; or fearing the unknown. It is also to do with our socialisation, our culture which creates that bind for us. For most people their identity is largely tied to their work or occupation, to what they own and what they earn. In hindsight that seems like a totally messed up way to define ourselves. But, it took me two to three years to unlearn and create a new path for myself and to accept that that there are different routes to leadership and fulfilment; embrace my identity; my choices and also my newly founded purpose. I discovered that in my 50s purpose has a very different meaning to what it was a decade ago. Now, it is about being intentional and authentic towards reaching a desired goal, towards challenging the status quo. In my 30s and 40s(like millions of other women) my purpose was about maintaining the status quo for fear of upsetting the fragile balance that is our daily lives. Today, it is something that drives me to be brave, to dream, to push the envelope every single day on things that matter.

👉🏾 As I look back to the year gone by, I take a moment to pause and reflect on the purpose of The Elephant in the Room podcast, the what, the why and the how. Most podcasts start with the end goal of monetising the podcast. Since money did not enter the equation for me - it freed me up, in a sense that I was neither chasing numbers, awards, nor sponsors. A key principle for me, has been since I conceived the idea or I thought of the idea of starting a podcast, was to not compromise on the integrity of my endeavour - so no sponsors or partners - telling me what to do or stymieing my style:) Like I have said earlier, The Elephant in the Room is my listening and learning project. And how brilliant is it that I get to share this learning with everyone. The end goal for me is to ensure that I am able to get in diverse voices on issues that are important for me but also for broader society. So, brilliant most of the time. But, occasionally it has been difficult putting in all the hard work and not seeing any money flow from it. I am aware that this has to do with our attitude; our conditioning, our expectations. Of course, the ubiquitous social media and the need to compare does make it harder. However, I am very happy to say that these were momentary blips - I have a mantra, and my purpose written down in bold and upper case and I review it when I feel overwhelmed and that helps me get back on track. You could try it:)

👉🏾 So, 52 weeks later, it is not difficult for me to encapsulate the good that came from launching the podcast - there is not just one thing, there are many , many good things actually. There has been so much learning from each of my guests, the topics we have covered, the issues we have discussed - whether it is to do with racism; climate change; inequality; inclusive leadership; purpose; fairness; equity............the learning has been phenomenal. Since The Elephant in the Room is a weekly podcast it has meant that I need to reach out to people who I admire, but in my previous avatar would have never dreamed of talking to. It has meant feeling uncomfortable asking people for their time, to believe in what I was doing or trying to do. The learning is that people are kind, generous and supportive - I cannot thank my guests enough for taking a chance on a newbie podcaster like me. One of the biggest positives for me has been the discipline that is required to turn up week after week - it's a lot of hard work. I edit the transcripts, create the show notes, the social media posts, the updates to the guests - there is no work around that. But, when it is done there is a sense of pride and achievement. And I love, absolutely love, hearing feedback from people - it is motivating and energising.

👉🏾 I say this all the time but the last year has reaffirmed my faith in humanity. I truly believe that the world is full of wonderful people - kind; generous; who open their hearts and mind to you. And along the way I have met with amazing and brilliant people who blew my mind with their knowledge and more importantly empathy. For every one person who rejected the offer to be a guest, I had two who were happy to come with me on the journey; who were willing to share their knowledge and experience. The Elephant in the Room podcast would not be what it is, and I would not achieved my purpose if these wonderful human beings had not made the time for me - so forever grateful for their contribution and getting us to where we are today in our first year.

👉🏾 A lot of people ask me if I had everything figured out when I launched the podcast.

Ha ha, and I would like to say, No, Not at all. I had misgivings right until the time I published the first episode.

I am a big planner. If I could I would plan my life to within an inch, I would.

So, I was nervous about the technology; the actual recording; the entire process because all of it was new to me. Should I use a mic, should I not use a mic? What platform should I record on - some of the decision making on this was taken away from my hands due to COVID - which was wonderful - I did not have to think of a recording suite after that.

The Intro/Outros; the name; who was going to be the first guest, who would be the right choice for this episode or that episode; the format, Q&A or just talking. I knew for certain that I did not want seasons; that I wanted to have a weekly podcast because that was the commitment I wanted to make.

👉🏾 So big No, I did not have everything figured out on the podcast or when I launched my consultancy The Purpose Room. I am still figuring some things out; learning; adapting; fine tuning every single day. And I think, it is okay to do that and give ourselves the permission to do that. We often let the fear of failure and the unknown hold us back - my advise, if you feel passionately about something go do it - at best it will be a success, at its worst you will know it doesn't work. The truth is - the learning and experience will set you free. Free to not be held back by your fears.

👉🏾 Aside from the occasional angst, I can confidently say that The Elephant in the Room podcast was the single biggest thing that gave me a sense of pride and also satisfaction. Does that mean that I have everything right and have everything figured it all out? Of course not. So, I am going to try and do better on all aspects, on topics, guests, how we engage with the content, how we reach more listeners and perhaps enter an award or two - though I am not entirely convinced. But, what I can say with utmost confidence is that I will work hard to do my best. And I am looking forward to announcing some exciting content partnership in the new year. The partnership will help The Elephant in the Room live up to its commitment to mainstream conversations that deserve to be mainstream, for how critical they are to all our lives.

👉🏾 In the first year The Elephant in the Room podcast was about new and diverse voices on issues of inequality and inequity. We are getting into year two with a bit more structure, more focus on best practice; success stories; pushing the agenda on women leadership; ageism; climate change etc and at all times considering all of the above through an intersectional lens. There is tons of exciting stuff and I am looking forward to the next 52 weeks. But, before that I am going to take a break to recover from the exhaustion and the continuous need to be present; I spend quality time with my children who are my constant cheerleaders, reinvigorate and renew. I will be dropping in new episodes during the coming weeks but meanwhile, take a break, breathe in and relax. Adieu, Au revoir and Namaste from The Elephant in the Room podcast

Follow Sudha Singh on:

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudha-singh-424ba53/

Twitter: @Sudha1404

Podcast: The Elephant in the Room : https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-elephant-in-the-room/id1540074396

Website: https://thepurposeroom.org/

Important Links:

👉🏾 https://www.provokemedia.com/ranking-and-data/innovator-25/innovator-25-2021/innovator-25-emea-2021

👉🏾 https://www.provokemedia.com/ranking-and-data/innovator-25/innovator-25-2021/innovator-25-emea-2021/sudha-singh

👉🏾 https://www.vuelio.com/uk/blog/fairer-representations-of-disability-in-pr-starting-the-conversation-with-mark-webb-and-sudha-singh/

👉🏾 https://www.communicatemagazine.com/industry-updates/moves/2021/sudha-singh-annoucned-co-chair-of-prca-diversity-network/

👉🏾 https://www.prca.org.uk/REEB-Story-QandA-Sudha-Singh

👉🏾 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-elephant-in-the-room/id1540074396?i=1000536469957

Shownotes: 

It is a fact that across the world indigenous people are on the frontline of climate crisis, they are particularly vulnerable to the extremes of climate change. Deforestation, unseasonal rains and shrinking water supplies are already impacting their precarious livelihoods. As a follow-up to my conversation with the World Benchmarking Alliance on a 'Just Transition' I spoke with Satyabrata Acharayya a veteran at PRADAN, working with indigenous communities in 7 of the poorest states in India. I was keen to understand what governments, multi-laterals, donors and the third sector are doing to articulate and embed concerns of indigenous people within India's roadmap to a low carbon economy.

We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 COP26 and expectations

👉🏾 Feminisation of Indian farming; women farmers bearing the brunt of climate change

👉🏾 The Tribal Panchsheel Policy; understanding the importance of ownership of natural resources for indigenous communities and the potential benefits.

👉🏾 Role of India's indigenous people in sustainable management of resources and being at the forefront of battle against climate change

👉🏾 The high demand from developed countries and the private sector to align with partners for carbon sequestration (offsetting). And exploring sequestration as a concept sustainable for the communities that PRADAN works with

👉🏾 We also spoke about how India's National livelihoods programmes that currently offers financial support or livelihoods to the most vulnerable in India can help them in the fight against the climate crisis; 

👉🏾 PRADAN's projects that are designed to mitigate the challenges of climate change and the partners on the journey. 

Want to learn more, listen here?

Memorable Passages from the podcast: 

👉🏾 Thank you so much Sudha for this opportunity extended to me. Thank you so very much.

👉🏾 I am a Satyabrata Acharyya, I work in an organisation called PRADAN, which stands for the acronym Professional Assistance for Development Action(PRADAN). So PRADAN is a pioneering initiative in India that tried to professionalize development sector, especially in civil society space. So it was formed in the year 1983. I did my masters in agriculture and then I joined PRADAN. So PRADAN has operations across, mainly in the central as well as eastern Indian region. So I joined in Bihar which is now Jharkhand. So I continued in Jharkhand in that region for almost 26 years. I worked with tribals, I worked with forest dwelling communities and a large number of women. Currently I'm based out of PRADANs head office. I anchor PRADANs operations across locations. 

👉🏾 You see, this way of industrialised growth this way of agriculture even our own lifestyles need to undergo changes. There is absolutely no doubt about it. It's now apparent that effects of climate change is quite apparent in our life. And especially those who are dependent on nature, a large number of farmers in India, I'm finding that they are really facing huge risk. 

👉🏾 So I would say that, one of the outcomes would be that India should actually suggest changes as well as bring in investments especially for carbon sequestrations, especially for undergoing these kind of structural changes, moving towards more carbon-neutral kind of situation, so that's something which I am very eagerly looking forward to. As well as I would also say that this whole conference should actually make people aware of what are the different measures being thought of and it should also bring common people on board. 

👉🏾 So the world is not aware of what's being discussed about this kind of climate change and the measures in the previous COPs, but this COP is something which is very important primarily for two reason. I think that COVID has made us very conscious about the way we are carrying out our lifestyle, our life, our agriculture, our industry, is the kind of economy growth that we are visualising. Something which everybody is understanding that large number of people are actually facing huge vulnerability, that is one. The second part is also about effects of climate change day by day becoming very prominent and it has started affecting lot of people. People specially living in the coastal regions, as well as people who are living in the peninsula region. So that's something which is very important. So I think that it requires a kind of a good awareness about how the world leadership, as well as the corporate is actually thinking about taking different measures. 

👉🏾 It's a very important question. And I would say that there are two-three things which actually characterises, our client group. One is that we work with farmers and Indian farming, about 85 to 90% of the farmers are actually small and marginal farmers. So owning less than let's say two hectares of land many of them are actually owning less than one hectare of land. So they are marginal farmers, very large proportion. So any climate uncertainties are actually hugely affecting, this a group of people. So one way is that any uncertainties affect peoples, let's say food security, which is so basic to human existence, human life. And so food security is very deeply affected. Many people, I see that they're unable to meet their food requirement from their own production. So that is something which is extremely important. 

👉🏾 Second is with the farm holdings are getting smaller over the years, as well as because of climate uncertainties, the income from farming has become so less and so unpredictable that the young people, specially the men, they are leaving their farmlands and moving to towns and cities, taking up jobs, as manual labourers. Some of them, who are better educated find, opportunities in the skilled sector, but most of the cases, people go there for doing manual job. Now the other part is, who actually then runs the farming system? So you can find that over the years, Indian farming has undergone considerable feminisation. So large number of women, you can find that it is predominantly in places where we were, like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, parts of West Bengal, large part of Bihar, while men migrate, the responsibility of running the small farms, these are fallen on the woman. And it has not come to the woman by design, it has come by default. So what has also happened is that they're not fully prepared, they don't know the technology, they're not adequately equipped with knowledge and skills. And on top of that, mainstream systems are also not, very aligned to support the woman.

👉🏾 So for instance, if I require access to credit the Kisan credit card, you know it requires land ownership. The women since they are not landowners they can't access Kisan credit card. They can't access subsidies from the government because they are not the owners of the land. They cannot access 'minimum support price' from the government because they are not registered farmers because to become registered farmers, you require land documents. So that's not in their names. So in several cases as I find that it requires a much more systemic approach in order to help the government understand that, Indian agriculture is facing a different reality and much of that agriculture is actually run by the women. And the women are also facing both on one hand, lack of knowledge and skills and access to government support. On the other hand, there are these terrible consequences of climate changes. So it is actually adding huge complexity and I find that people are losing food security, people are losing incomes besides losing access to water, losing access to good quality seeds.

👉🏾 So I would say that PRADAN has been always talking about the problems of small holder farmers, specially the way the small holdings are currently being managed and the kind of problems that the women they run the show, so that is one aspect. The second aspect is that how do you also invest more and more, organised public investments around conservation of water, conservation of soil, conservation of landscape, how do you plant more trees, how do you improve hydrology, how do you make the soil much more biologically active.

👉🏾 So these are the areas where PRADAN has been very systematically engaging with the government. And I think that these are the need of the hour. Besides at a later stage I will definitely talk about our experiences of carbon sequestration, which is now increasingly assuming importance in our intervention strategies.

👉🏾 I would give two examples Sudha. One is about this project titled Usharmukthi Project, which is currently being implemented in West Bengal. So there is a kind of a collaboration between department of rural development and Panchayati Raj. PRADAN being the no one dilgence agency and then there are large number of CSOs. So West Bengal has its share of highlands, especially if you just look at the districts of Purulia, Birbhum, Bhankura. So there are six districts which are drought prone and where the farmers actually suffered a lot because of uncertainties of a monsoon. Much of the area is actually monocrop areas, so it can't have second crop because of the lack of irrigation et cetera. So using the MGNERGA fund, how do you actually treat five lakh hectares 500,000 hectares, a big area, how do you treat it in a manner by which you preserve soil? Because these are highly undulating areas with moderate rain and with rain coming down so often you find that, because these lands are untreated, these are not properly bunded and terraced. So with every rain it washes away the precious top soil and most of the time you can find that the rivers emanating from these areas, they are also periodically sand filled and filled with silts et cetera, and the rivers go dry.

👉🏾 So in such kind of situation it is important that we take a kind of a watershed approach starting from the ridge to the valley. And then you treat the land, you try to preserve as much of water as possible and then go for planting large scale trees and then at the same time, you go for recycling the stored water for a second crop, if not a third crop. So that is a kind of a comprehensive treatment that we are doing it. Through a kind of a participatory process, people-centric planning process where we are engaging with a large number of small holder farmers, especially the women, understanding their concerns and trying to see what best can be done and trying to address their concerns of lack of irrigation, uncertainties of monsoon, uncertainties of food security, et cetera, and try to see what best can be done. And accordingly we have actually now come up with a kind of treatment measure on a very large scale, with involvement of Panchayati Raj institutions, so Panchayat civil society organisations, PRADAN and government of West Bengal. 

👉🏾 So there is a kind of a very large scale, consorted, orchestration which is happening in these areas, with focus on reviving and revitalising a big chunk of watershed area, a big chunk of land area so that you can grow multiple crops, you can then very effectively address the constraints of water, constraints of food security faced by the people. And at the same time unleash a large number of ecosystem services. On similar lines we have also kind of taken up a similar project in Chattisgarh, its called Chattisgarh mega watershed development project, again with participation of civil society organisations, PRADAN, the department of rural development and Panchayati Raj, as well as different donor agencies who have also come forward with the same kind of objective. So the whole understanding is that how do you safeguard large number of small holder marginal, holder farmers, as well as woman from the effects of climate change, climate uncertainties so that they don't lose the food, they don't lose out in terms of income, et cetera.

👉🏾 I've given two examples, but there are several examples where we have actually integrated climate concerns and tried to develop some actions. These are not kind of problems which can be addressed by doing things at a moderate scale, these are big problems, requires a bigger collaboration requires more number of stakeholders to be involved and think about the larger scale.

👉🏾 Especially in this areas where agriculture is predominantly rain-fed, so agriculture is anyway 'Baghwan bharosey' in this area. So to that extent people take a kind of a fatalistic view. But the other part is that agriculture, solves one problem which is food, food availability, because much of the agriculture is subsistence agriculture, but besides food you can also see that people require water for domestic purposes round the year, people require water for their livestock, people require water for constructing their houses. All the available water bodies are getting dried up by the time it reaches February or March, so creates terrible, terrible problems. So that's something which is to be understood and people are saying that the number of rainy days are less, but whenever it rains, it rains so intensely that often there is no way to check the water. So it breaks the bunds, it breaks the available water bodies and it creates havoc many a times, even in the undulating areas, the lowlands get flooded and it damages the crop. It actually triggers huge soil erosion. So these are the kind of catastrophic effects people have started understanding and started articulating that it never happened earlier in their living memories, even the older people they're also saying that these are great problems. 

👉🏾 And the other part is about that it actually then affects the quality of agriculture, reduces food production, affecting productivity of all kinds of crops. So you find that, unable to sustain themselves in the villages, there is large scale migration. So migration is not always aspirational in these areas, so many a times you find that people are migrating because of the fact that there is a severe shortage of food at the household. Even if the public distribution systems are working but people do require money to send their kids to the school, treat their elderly people for any health problems, so on so forth. And they find that there are problems of income opportunities locally so agriculture is no longer, productive and remunerative enough for them to hold them in the local areas. 

👉🏾 And in our villages, wherever we are working, we are very consciously making people aware that these are the effects of climate and unless we change our way. So there are problems that they're going to face and they need to take all the adequate safeguards.

For instance, I can tell you that paddy requires large volume of water, paddy requires a stable water supply. The problem is that, if you are fully dependent on paddy always you can meet failure in agriculture. What we are trying to do you can go for more of crop diversification. So in the last six, seven years, you can see in our project areas, large scale adoption of pulses, oilseeds and different kinds of vegetables, which actually can withstand, tolerate occasionally droughts and sometimes intense rain. So these crops are now gaining popularity, there are varieties which are drought tolerant, so these are now getting more and more accepted in the local areas. Also in order to withstand shock, people are also now getting diversified into, let's say livestock cultivation, small ruminants. So these are the kinds of ways by which we can actually help people to diversify the risk and try to withstand the shocks that they are facing out of climate uncertainty.

👉🏾 So firstly India has also recognised under it's constitution that the existence of scheduled tribes and there are also certain kinds of guaranteed protection enshrined in our constitution, I think a very important approach that government of India has taken in 1974, in the planning commissions, they have actually taken up a kind of an approach called, tribal sub-plan approach. our planners they thought about doing more in the spirit of equity, so there are special funds called special central assistance created for the tribal sub-plan areas. So it gets certain kinds of government support for infrastructure, as well as education health of tribal communities their livelihoods et cetera, so that's something which is important for us. Also in each of these states, you have tribal welfare, welfare departments created and at the centre we have this tribal welfare minister which actually oversees it and each of the tribal states, the governors that actually the custodians of the scheduled areas. So they have been also entrusted with certain kinds of powers. 

👉🏾 From 95 onwards, there have been this discussion around Panchayati Raj act in scheduled areas so PESA something which is very important. They have actually recognised that tribal village councils are extremely important for them. So basically something which also suggests, the rights and entitlement of their tribal communities over all kinds of natural resources. So suppose if you want to buy land, if you start mining, you have to take permission from the gramsabhas. That's something which is extremely important. So basically actually, empowers local communities, especially the gramsabha with this kind of powers natural resources, et cetera. So if you see , to what extent this PESA has been enacted. I would say that, there are variations, while PESA have been, to a great extent adopted. But in case of Jharkhand, you will find that, still there are long way to go. So depending on, to what extent you have actually devolved power. So these are all, actually democratic, decentralisation processes. And to what extent you have actually devolved this power right up to the level of the gramsabha is something which actually then sees that, the poor people and the tribals in the indigenous community, they have power to control over their natural resources. 

👉🏾 Very Important question and I would say that PRADAN'S whole approach actually revolves around supporting local communities and their collectives to take decisive actions that actually improves their lives and their livelihoods. I would say that it is extremely important that people start seeing their stakes, so what is at stake is something which is extremely understood, extremely important in this context and the kind of leadership Sudha we have experienced and seen, specially in conservation of natural resources is something which we are also greatly enthusiastic, greatly encouraged by the fact that we are finding that women just because they live in the villages, they are much more articulate about the...

Shownotes: 

In the 50th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast my guest is Shilpa Ajwani, a strategy consultant & leadership advisor to consumer/lifestyle enterprises and Founder of two startups UnoMantra and SheMantra.

As two women leaders we were keen to use our conversation to explore the barriers faced by women in leadership, her second innings; passion projects; spirituality, being a mother, her identity....👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 Challenges she faced as a woman leader in the direct selling industry 

👉🏾 Women and their self-limiting beliefs

👉🏾 Being overlooked and the importance of taking charge of one's own career and life

👉🏾 Her journey to becoming an entrepreneur and launching UnoMantra and SheMantra

👉🏾 The shift from success to significance as a driver in her second act

👉🏾 Redefining leadership:traits of aspiring and potential leaders and our ability to learn or nurture leadership traits

👉🏾 The importance of resilience and adaptability for managers and leaders

We also spoke about what drives her to do better each day or who/what inspires. 

Want to know more, listen here 👇🏾👇🏾

Memorable Passages from the podcast

👉🏾 Hello Sudha, so glad to be here with you and your audience today. 

👉🏾 My name is Shilpa Ajwani and I'm the founder and CEO of UnoMantra, which is my strategy consulting and leadership advisory firm. This is my second act, an act of an entrepreneur. But in my first innings, I have been a corporate professional, creating a successful career in some really well-known multi-national corporations, such as Oriflame and Tupperware brands, where I had my last date as the managing director for Tuppaware brands in India. I am the mother to a 19-year-old and feel very proud to have fulfilled that role to really my satisfaction and that's something I always talk about in my introduction Sudha, because I think I'm a nurturer at heart and that's an important part of me as well. In the pandemic last year, I founded a community for women-led coaching and consulting enterprises called Shemantra. And that is something which is a passion project and that's something I love to do. I also am very passionate about creating gender-equal organisations and that's something which takes up a lot of my time as I am passionate for the cause but, more importantly I'm driven to do something about it as well. So that's me Sudha. 

👉🏾 So that I do not know if that will sound spiritual today. I'm at that stage where I honestly feel that that would be my most honest answer when it comes to answering any question on my identity. I identify very closely as a human being and that's it. I feel I'm this tiny little particle of the universe and that really keeps me humble.

👉🏾At the same time, I have realised that I am the universe. And that makes me feel extremely powerful. So I think, you know, today I'm able to make peace that the humble side is me and has to be me. And at the same time, there's a very powerful Shilpa because she is also the universe. Everything else in my journey on this planet will be a blessing in the form of different roles I'm gifted to play. Starting with when I became a daughter. And then, you know, I became a wife and a daughter in law. Always have been friends and many, many other relationships with people around me. Then I became a mother which I think was a turning point in many ways for me personally. And then of course, there's this whole professional aspect of me which I think introduced me really to the outside world, not just, you know, in my city, in my country.

👉🏾 But that gave me exposure to know and make meaningful relationships with so many people around the planet. So, all of these you know, are me. And Yet none of these is me. These are all gifts or blessings that we get as, we journey through life, is how I have you know, decided to see it. Call it "wearing a different lens as one starts to get some gray hair".

👉🏾 But this is what really, you know, gives me a lot of peace. Otherwise when we start to sort of live the identity of, for example, a CEO or a managing director, it's very easy to, to adopt only that mono identity. Or if I just have the identity of being a mother or a wife and, you know, everything in my life just, just is about that.

👉🏾 Then somewhere we will feel not really complete When any of those things suddenly get taken away from us, then we are at a loss. However, when I choose to see myself as a human being journeying through life I think, you know, everything just falls into its own perspective. And I like that.

👉🏾 This is a question, you know, today, when I look back, I think I have an answer. However, when you know, I was in the early years of my corporate career while still growing in my career. I have actually no inclination that I was a woman leader , right?. Such was perhaps call it, a blind spot, call it ignorance. But for me it was blessed because it just allowed me to show up wanting to do my best work to be fully committed, to growing myself and my organisation and making my own contribution without the whole idea of Gender. Making me either someone who was less able or more worthy. In either of these scenarios. Right. So I think I could bring my most authentic, natural self without over thinking about any of those aspects. However, you know, as I started to grow, I realised that, you know, in more and more rooms round me to be firstly, one of the few women and then ultimately to be perhaps one woman in a room full of men over a period of time.

👉🏾 And then to always have leaders, the ultimate leader, the CEO, or the Managing Director to be always a man. And then, somewhere, I think it, it started to create some questions in my own mind and I realised that you know, perhaps, there wasn't anybody who had held my hand and mentored me to actually make me think that I could actually one day be at the helm of affairs of organisations that I truly loved.

And then once that realisation started to set it, you become a little bit aware that there are biases that you encounter in the everyday. And, and when I saw that I was someone who was respected, the results were great. I gathered courage and I asked one of our you know, super bosses in one of our meetings about my future and roadmap and all of that.

👉🏾 I said, No, "do you see me as someone who could be leading this organisation?" And He, you know, his expression is something I will not forget because it was like, he looked extremely surprised as if that didn't even cross his mind. And he said, well, "I think you would be a great number two, but I, I honestly don't know if you can be a number one."

I said, "Fair Enough", not everybody can be a number one. There can after all be only one number one, I said, "can you elaborate what would make me qualify to be a number one or what makes me disqualified?" And, just, you know, making me good enough to stay at a number two, if at all. And he honestly didn't have a great answer to that question.

👉🏾 And that is just one of the instances I'm sharing with you Sudha. Of course, all of us might have many, many more, but that was my realisation that you know, for too long, I had allowed other people to determine what my career should look like? At what pace should I grow? What are the roles that I could or could not really be good enough for?

👉🏾 And that's where I realised that our career and our life are our responsibility. So I chose not to blame him. I chose not to look at myself in a way that would disempower me. I took it as a challenge, that "Oh Great!, you know, my eyes are opened and even if It's a foolish try, but I would want to know what really is the barrier between me at that number one position.

👉🏾 How can I get it? And then in the next couple of years, I was a managing director. I was in a leading role and did that for a decade before I set out to be an entrepreneur and set up my own firm and become a founder and CEO there as well. So that's one instance. 

👉🏾 So yeah, so I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur and on my birthday, I think it was my 45th birthday, which was a fantastic birthday. I really sat down and I started to reflect upon how life has been so fa also professionally, my entire journey. And I had a lot of gratitude when I did that little exercise Sudha, because I felt that I was blessed with a lot of success from a very young age.

👉🏾 And of course, it came with hard work and you know, grit and, and a lot of persistence. At the same time, I just wouldn't take away from the fact that it was a successful career. And then I asked myself one question. I said, you know, I have seen a lot of success. What does it take for this success to become significant?

👉🏾 And I think, you know, asking that question and honestly answering that, gave birth to the idea that the time is now. And of course, it took a few months from the time I thought about it to really, you know moving out of the corporate world with my own idea of what I wanted to do, giving it form and shape, and then getting started off as an entrepreneur in 2019, early 2019.So success to significance is the driver.

👉🏾 So Unomantra is a strategy consulting and leadership advisory firms. So I break that up into parts. The leadership advisory bit is what I will start with. So when I take on my work with organisations and I primarily work in the consumer and lifestyle domain

So, brands, which are in the beauty and personal care space, health and wellness, food and beverages, home and lifestyle, fashion. So anything which you and I would consume, I'm in love with the entire consumer and lifestyle businesses. I've grown brands and organisations all my life and it's a natural extension of what I know the best. So I work in that domain and as a leadership advisor, what I do is that when I go in I work first with the founder or the CEO and the leadership team more as a mentor and advisor to them. I help them unpack their personal purpose and I help them to find meaning and connect that back to the organisational purpose.

👉🏾 Many times organisations haven't sat down and articulated, why do they exist, what really is at the core. So that's the bit I start with when I take the strategy consulting piece that we really uncover the purpose. Which I think is a great point of differentiation, but it's also a great way to inspire, the founders themselves, the leadership team and everybody in the team. Then we really sit down and we talk about the strategic roadmap with purpose at the core and once the purpose is clear, everybody's aligned to it. I see the energy of just working with that team the before and after completely different.

👉🏾 And with that excitement, then we talk about all the things which make an iconic organisation of tomorrow, and that's what I'm driven to create. So we talk about the go-to-market strategy, the brand strategy, the people strategy, the financial strategy, everything that is needed. But I say that those are bells whistles but purpose is the real deal. And once that is clear, you can build strategy and actually convert that strategy into brilliant execution. That's what I do, strategy consulting and leadership advisory. And that's the proposition of Unomantra.

👉🏾 So purpose is at the core and for me I have to really spend a lot of time in unpacking my own purpose and articulating that. And once that clarity really was defined for my own self with that inspiration, I actually created the proposition for Unomantra Sudha and that's ``where I feel that purpose is what wakes me up every morning.' Most all mornings without an alarm, because it's creating an excitement, right? To go out and do some great work and to make that contribution that, the whole significance piece. I see that coming through every day as I get down to work. The second act I feel is going to be an evolution. It's not a revolution, I like to see it as an evolution of who I was, because the learnings are very much something that I will take from what I did in the corporate world for more than 25 years. I've had my fair share of setbacks, challenges, mistakes, oh my God, how many? Learnings, lessons, some really big ones and some fantastic successes as well, which I feel very proud to own.

👉🏾 I have had the big privilege of working with exceptional people, learning from them. And I have also been a good student reading, observing, discussing, having brilliant conversations with people on businesses and what really is an iconic business all about and how have businesses that have endured stood the test of time? What had they done differently, that we love them as consumers, their stakeholders have so much of respect and they can make profitable organisations and sustain them over a period of time. So for me, I think the second innings is really an evolution and coming from everything that I'm hungry to share of what I know and I have gained so richly and so beautifully in the last 25 years.

👉🏾 When I look at barriers and I work with so many women as a mentor, very very closely, and I worked both with professionals as well as entrepreneurs today. I like to look at the barriers in a way that I can describe them as intrinsic and extrinsic. So I start with intrinsic because I think that's extremely important.

👉🏾 You know, thanks to all the social conditioning and a lot of it, inherited generation to generation. What we do find is that women tend to grow up with a lot of self-limiting beliefs. A lot of boundaries are already defined for them in terms of what can you aspire for and what you cannot. And when somebody is told something enough times that tend to believe it, right? And one of the biggest things that shows up in every research that I get to read about women and what really stops them, what's the biggest barrier. The biggest barrier turns out is confidence or the lack of it. So I think, self-limiting beliefs, the lack of confidence and this ingrained social conditioning creates a very powerful, system inside a woman which actually nags her and stops her and allows the imposter syndrome to show up every time she decides to get out of her comfort zone actually stretch the boundaries. So that's one piece of it and an extremely important one to have a deep authentic conversation and sometimes they're not even aware that this is happening to them, by themselves, right? 

👉🏾 The other aspect, which is better known and now, beginning to also be understood and researched and spoken about thankfully, is the extrinsic piece, where we see that there is a closed society which has also decided the roles and responsibilities that we should or should not have across genders. And I think that somehow is deeply entrenched and that's where sometimes the family becomes the first place where the woman is pulled back rather than propelled forward to go for her dreams. That’s one of the first things that I see. The other piece which is really spoken about is that we tend to lose women and India we see has a decreasing percentage of women in the corporate workforce year on year now, thanks to the three M's you know, marriage, motherhood, mobility. And I think these have been very classic in terms of just putting an end to just so many brilliant careers.

👉🏾 Today though there are a lot of returning programs where women can even come back after motherhood. But I have such horrendous stories of extremely talented women who have to just give up everything that they had worked so hard for and they just didn't get the respect, forget equality, forget equity. They just didn't get the basic decent respect every human being deserves. Just because they became a mother and chose to go back and work in the same organisation. It's amazing to me and apart from that, I think there are, many other, some of them are more exposed, some of them are below the layers, but they're working all the time. 

👉🏾 Sometimes differential access to technology sometimes, differential responsibility level. So look who are the caregivers, the primary caregivers. So we get hit by a pandemic suddenly, whose responsibility do seniors at home and the babies at home become? And logically who is then expected apart from keeping everything intact at home, also look after everybody who's at home. And good luck to them, if they also try and nurture their dreams at the same time. So things like these, I think the pandemic exposed so much of what was already happening and these are just few of the things that I can talk about. When I work with entrepreneurs access to funding, to know-how, to even mentorship, I mean all that is rare. Access to networks, completely missing, there are no valuable connections a lot of women themselves build, or they are seen as the right to build those. So they don't even have the right to build those as for many, many people. So I think it's a complex mix of many things happening inside and outside and around a woman. But together they very, very capably keep the woman back and she has to fight against all possible odds to go out and do what should come naturally. So yeah, there's a lot happening out there. 

👉🏾 I think the debate can go on for the next billion years Sudha on this one. But I have a view that all of us are born with certain strengths and what's important is to take help and recognise those strengths as early as possible. And then work on honing those strengths and in that sense, everybody is a born leader because a lot of those strengths, which you have as a human being, as a person are also extremely good at you being a leader. So like I said, I think nurturing is a strength that I have. Now that's not just for moms, but you know, you could nurture other leaders in the organisation you work for. You could nurture an entire organisation, and you could nurture a country, right? As a political leader. So, these traits are just an extension of what you can apply in the corporate world.

👉🏾 And thankfully, a lot of the traits such as empathy, nurturing, being a better listener are collaborative working styles. They were seen as feminine and not really worthy of so-called "great leadership". But today, I mean, I think we're talking a very different language and a lot of the men might have to actually go back to school and learn a lot of these. That brings me to the other part of it. Once you have awareness, and you have the ability to get access to information on, what

As we navigate a world in a constant state of flux, there are deep discussions around what organisational purpose actually means, not just as rhetoric for public consumption but the systemic actions organisations need to take in order to live their values. 

For the first time in decades we are also redefining leadership and the must have skills for leaders of today. 

In the 50th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast I spoke with Nitin Mantri, Group CEO of Avian WE and the President of International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) to explore the boundaries of purpose and leadership. 

We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 What it means for a brand to have purpose at its core

👉🏾 Redefining the business of business in the context of stakeholder responsibility and accountability

👉🏾 The role of the C-suite and CEO in articulating and living organisational purpose

👉🏾 Leadership in a post pandemic world and inclusive leadership

👉🏾 What comms practitioners are doing to step up to the challenges; trends in India

👉🏾 How can aspiring leaders in our industry keep pace with the change? 

👉🏾 And actions agencies need to take to ensure they are future ready and fit for purpose?

Memorable passages from the podcast: 

👉🏾 Thank you for having me. 

👉🏾 I believe that while purpose was important I think even before the world was turned upside down by the pandemic, purpose was gaining importance in the boardrooms. The pandemic just accelerated the whole pace and it's now become a business imperative. And from 2019 to 21, the expectation for brands to create stability in uncertain times has risen by 20%. So just to give you some excerpts from a report, in previous years Brands in Motion global reports established that consumers expect brands to have a purpose, humanity and authenticity.

👉🏾 In 2021, what we call the bravery mandate clients expect purpose to inform organisational decisions on how to speak and act on societal issues and purpose initiatives at a given point. And the report actually finds that the brands that will flourish in 2021 and beyond are the ones with the courage to take bold actions and make strong stances with the full understanding that not everyone will approve of them.

So for example, consumers and B2B decision-makers surveyed for the 2021 Brands in Motion report rated environmental sustainability and income equality among the top issues they wanted brands to address. 71% respondents felt that brands have an obligation to engage with social global issues when they impact and stakeholders. And they're more likely to purchase or recommend products or services from brands that address, societal issues. I'll just touch upon one more thing here, which is purpose washing. And I would say that purpose does have its pitfalls as well.

👉🏾 So even though brands across industries are taking up social good marketing, there are instances of purpose washing. People or brands eager to gain eyeballs and profit, brands are choosing causes that they think will strike a chord. So in fact, the Brands In Motion finding on purpose washing talks about this, it says that, despite a rising expectation, brands perceived impact for societal good remains flat. And 52% said that brands that take stance on societal issues are just trying to sell more products and services. So the audience want brands to help, but they aren't yet convinced that brands are delivering. So the task ahead for brands is to bridge this sort of disconnect.

👉🏾 So when we say a brand is purpose led or has purpose at it's core. We mean that brands are rooted in their own values and are clear what they stand for. So, even if part of the audience doesn't want to hear it. They should be clear about what it is that they stand for. So, these brands ground, their purpose statements in long-term quantifiable action. Microsoft talking about reduction in carbon all over the world by 2030 for example. Truly purposeful brands build on their core promise and makes longterm single issue investment to build a purpose credibility endurance. So, the idea is how do you do it, finding your purpose and leading with it? Purpose has become a must have and therefore determines not just which brands or how they'll stay viable in the next few years, but in my view decades to come. So that's how important it's become.

👉🏾 I strongly believe if you follow purpose profits will follow. So I think in this sort of what I call the new fractured world, profits won't be possible if you're not purposeful. So, I mean what will happen if your consumers don't want to buy products, if you don't follow purpose. So it may be tempting for brands to shift focus towards their own financial worries or financial priorities, I mean should treat the balance between purpose and profit as a zero sum game right? 

So, if you withdraw from your purpose and stop contributing to creating and supporting a better more sustainable future, then in my view there will be no profits in the end. So today's audiences want it all. In fact again to quote from a Brands in Motion study saying that silence isn't an option and that kind of cosy middle ground is shrinking fast. But the opportunity might be for brands to step into their own light and tell the world who they really are and follow the purpose. I think it's a great opportunity in my view. 

👉🏾 Well, yeah I mean, several brands. I think some of them have done some really wonderful work. Reckitt is a client we worked with for many years now and Reckitt has been engaged in a multi-year mission to improve the health and hygiene of communities in India. About 750 million people live without access to basic sanitation and more than 120,000 under the age of five died from diarrhoea for example. Reckitt has provided a whole skill development training for sanitation workers. Their brand Dettol has launched a hand-washing curriculum for school children and after COVID hit, Dettol donated product care packages to more than 150,000, and this is not just India. Even in the UK, they donated packages to 150,000 NHS workers. And donated media space to the government for public health announcements. 

👉🏾 So there's Reckitt for example, then there's McDonald's they're doing a lot. I'm just moving away from COVID, they're doing a lot with people with disability and they've created something called Eat Equal, which is a specialised packaging solution to eating a burger with one hand, easier for people with lack of mobility. Giving an example of Godrej, in India, they have a huge land base in Vikhrohi and Godrej & Boyce's wetland management services teams has been managing and conserving one of the largest mangroves in Bombay. And taking their efforts a notch higher they've actually joined hands with WWF India to further strengthen the conservation efforts and promote awareness of that area. I mean, it's quite amazing what they've done. So multiple examples, not just India, but across the world 

👉🏾 Good question I think brand purpose is a group commitment, right? It cannot be farmed out to a department or project team. So it cannot be that this is my team that will just work on purpose of the company or the organisation.

It has to be a group commitment and genuine purpose doesn't kind of sweeps through down from leadership or shareholder, it'll actually come down from the company's heart and soul, its people. Really and it belongs to everybody so if the whole company does not belong to it, it'll never be successful. So it has to go down from the C-suite to the interns, rising organically together. And you know purpose begins at home right. So this is how brand purpose will truly work when every single person in an organisation believes in it and is driven by it and the brand's purpose in the DNA of the company by and large. 

👉🏾 So before brands try to save the world, they must ensure that their own organisations are in order. You know you can't run mental wellness campaign if your managers are sending emails at 3:00 AM in the morning. You know, so purpose has to start at home. In fact, again our Brands in Motion survey respondents rated employees as the group executives need to communicate with the most more than customers shareholders and media. So 75% of executives should communicate with employers about their personal position on issues at least every six months, that's the report. So there's a lot that people are doing around it. 

So for example in India, we are running a campaign, you know, as you're aware, India was struck badly by the second wave of COVID in April this year right. And many people lost loved ones, they were impacted at one point. I can tell you we had 50% staff away because either they were impacted or they were taking care of loved ones. And, we really thought what will be best when people will really be involved and as soon as the second wave was over, we launched a campaign called, 'Puri Tayari hai kya', it's a campaign around getting people to follow COVID appropriate behaviour and encouraging to vaccinate themselves. And it's still running we launched this in September I think and it's going to go on post-Diwali. And that's where I think people want to get involved in it because they were so badly hurt by the second wave. So I think we need to take that perspective. It has to be inbuilt within the organisation 

👉🏾 So one is employee engagement, they really need to communicate frequently. C suite executives who show courage to communicate frequently and with authenticity will stand out as leaders in my view. And I think, CEO's like Microsoft, Satya Nadedla, Bumbles Whitney Wolf are speaking out in a very, very personal way, for example, and doing so very frequently. And I think they have changed a lot of audience perceptions. I think also leaders are coming to terms with their fears and limitations while acknowledging the same in others. 

👉🏾 They're coming out to be more authentic. The 86% of leaders surveyed in our report, they said they have become more introspective during this time. This introspection has become the starting point in my view for a whole new leadership paradigm. So hardwired into believing that a leader should be stoic, relentless and fearless, the whole leadership concept revolved a lot of infallibility in the past. So Covid happened, and the pandemic exposed a gap in health, administrative systems and the vulnerabilities of our personal/professional identities. So now leaders recognise importance of acknowledging, what I would say, human imperfection and leading with compassion. I think that's the way the role has evolved for leaders, it's changed to that extent. 

👉🏾 I think the first and the key leadership trait is listening for real. I'm adding the words for real, right, so I think it's not just about sitting listening to people, but for real. Again I'm saying it for the umpteenth time. But it will start with the employees, it will start with your people. Leading today requires listening without judgment. The new age leader must be open to engaging in difficult conversations to set things right.

They must be available to their people always. For example, during the first pandemic lockdown in our firm, we had set aside an hour a day to listen and address people's concerns. Managers held regular connect sessions with the teams, and talked about how they can manage things better.

👉🏾 Secondly, apart from this thing, you need to practice empathy. So inclusive leaders need to reach out, connect with people during a crisis. In fact, this is a crucial step, right? This realisation changed the way at least I led my teams. In fact, I got COVID in the first wave, in September last year, it's been over a year now. I shared with them about my COVID experience right. I was very open about it because during the first wave have a lot of people were not even sharing, it became like a stigma. When I got Covid I actually addressed the issue upfront - that I have COVID right and how I dealt with it. So empathy is very important and sharing is very important and finally, I think we've talked about this but people over profit. 

So, inclusive leadership means prioritising community emotional wellbeing above organisational practice. And we need to take an active role in initiating and maintaining relationships with diverse groups, both inside and outside the organisation. So I think those three things would be very important for new leaders.

👉🏾 I think the 18 months have given us that opportunity to radically rethink how we connect with one another right and how we share ideas and collaborate. I think some of the best campaigns were devised and executed during the lockdown, a lot of people were like, it's not going to happen, we may not be able to create it, we may not be able to do this or that. But honestly, nothing changed. I mean, we did some great campaigns, we delivered everything. So what I think communicators have done is they've fast-tracked tech competence to meet the demands of their stakeholders, right. They've adopted future-forward technologies that encourage what I would call digital agility amongst all team members.

👉🏾They've implemented interactive hyper-responsive campaigns suited to the new reality. AI is something that people are toying with today. I don't know how much it'll be successful. We're tried to build work cultures around holistic wellbeing, I think that's really important and then I think just the fact of how do we listen to people, right? Listening I mentioned to you earlier, practitioners today need to work with more teams.

👉🏾 Some trends I would say to consider would be accelerated digital transformation in the new normal really. Increased integration of data and creativity. So how we use data to build creativity, understanding larger geopolitical shifts today, because there's been realignment completely from a geopolitical perspective right? So, all those things are happening in India and those are trends, I think, which I don't think are far away from global trends either.

I actually think that the Asian culture per se was more about working in the office a lot compared to the West because the West was still doing a lot of flexible working and they will still work remotely but in India and a lot of Asian markets it wasn't happening and people were still of that mindset that people need to come to office, right? And I think that's been the biggest shift for a market like India and for industry like ours.

👉🏾 Yeah, I think it's changed in two ways. One COVID has changed it to the extent that we are working with people remotely. We are doing remote working and we need to just think of different ways than how we are going to create campaigns et cetera. Secondly, I think the industry itself has changed. I'm talking from India perspective, we no longer amplifying things, divergent thinking and creative shaping of PR strategies are becoming the hallmark of our industry.

👉🏾 I think we'll have to be real and compassionate, leaders have to listen, learn, and engage with employees and take a harder look at their own behaviours. We must be able to articulate our personal values. I would say we have to be in a constant state of introspection that would kind of enable people to reflect on the beliefs and acknowledge actions and how they in fact impact organisations.

👉🏾 I think the two other big things would be that, one be open to change. I think we just realised that one thing, that change is going to be a constant now, and that's going to be very, very important. I mean today we've opened our office, right? After 18 months in September, we asked people to voluntarily come to office if they want to. Some really want to come back to work, some really don't want to come back to work. And I think we'll all have to find that midway, so all have to be open about change. It's not going to be like COVID is over and we're now going to be back to office at the same pace. It's going to be different and maybe two years later there'll be something different. I don't know. So it will all in my view, keep changing and we have to be ready for that change.

👉🏾 How our agency is going to ensure the future-ready and fit for purpose. I think we'll just have to act with more, I would say boldness and conviction and bravery and start on a solid foundation. We have to define our purpose and values and make that mission statement our North Star and guide everybody around that. I think agencies have to walk the talk. We do advise our clients on how they have to act with purpose, but I think what is going to change is about how agencies will walk the talk and act with purpose as well. So, we'll have to stay our course as well. 

👉🏾 So for example, we've taken on three issues this year right over the last year and this year. We did three pieces, we said we are going to focus on, one mental health, because that was a big piece for us because of the pandemic. We've done multiple things with people, we run a campaign called we care internally. We have an employee assistance program where people can call this helpline talk to somebody, in confidence for free anytime they want. We've got experts coming into the office and talking, We did something yesterday with Dr. Parikh, from Fortis hospital, for everybody on world mental health day. And the 3rd piece we're doing is around diversity. So we tied up with rainbow literature festival, which is a literature festival for the LGBTQ community. And we took out a book called Consciously Speaking, which was on how to use the right terminology when working with the LGBTQ community because people did not know how to address people in different ways. And that's something we did on our own, we launched it. FICCI helped us, and it's pretty good and we're doing the second launch now of that book. So we took on these three broad areas on working with us as purpose for us. 

👉🏾 Good question. So I'll just go back a bit, I worked in India for a few years and I went to the UK for a few years and I came back. And when I came back I said, how do I contribute back to this industry right, which has given me a lot. And I think I did a couple of things.

I started teaching and I think that was one way of giving back to me. And of course, also talent was a big issue in our industry and I thought, what better way than to kind of hone talent and get people...

Carbon neutrality, De-carbonisation, Carbon credits, Carbon offsets, Carbon sequestration, CFCs global warming, Adaptation fund, Kyoto Protocol, Bali Roadmap, Paris Agreement, G-77, UNFCCC are terms we are increasingly getting familiar with as more and more people across the world engage on issues of climate change. 

To that list add 'Just Transition' - an initiative of the World Benchmarking Alliance(WBA). In light of the crucial role the private sector has to play in achieving a low-carbon world, the WBA intends to assess 450 of the world's most influential companies in high-emitting sectors on their contribution to a just transition by assessing their alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement alongside their approach to addressing the social challenges of a low-carbon transition. The assessment covers what the companies are doing to respect the rights of workers, communities and the most vulnerable as they work towards low-carbon goals.

To learn more, I spoke with Natasha Zervudachi from the WBA about sustainability and sustainable development 👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 The big challenges facing our planet

👉🏾 How are governments and the private sector ensuring that as we work towards addressing climate change, we're not creating even greater inequalities or creating mass unemployment or increased poverty as a result of that transition to this new, more carbon neutral world? What we can do to ensure a 'just transition' that is fair and equitable

👉🏾 What the WBA is doing to incentivise businesses to encourage uptake, learning from best practice and roadmaps for those at the start of the journey

👉🏾 Steps the WBA is taking to ensure that 'just transition' balances voices from global south since advocacy on climate change and de-carbonisation is dominated by voices from global north

👉🏾 The importance of embedding concerns of marginalised people in the design of the assessment 

👉🏾 The short term and long term ambitions of the WBA for the initiative, the 'Just Transition Coalition' and much more

To learn more listen here 👇🏾👇🏾

Memorable passages from the episode:

👉🏾 Thank you so much for having me. I'm a massive fan. So it's a real, real pleasure to be here and to get to speak to you today

👉🏾 Really, really good and interesting question there. I guess to give listeners a tiny bit of a background on who I am and where I come from. So I'm speaking today on behalf of the World Benchmarking Alliance, which is a global organisation that essentially develops free and publicly available assessments and benchmarks to measure company progress and performance towards the sustainable development goals, and the Paris Agreement. So I think, this question as you said, we can definitely see that it's being talked about much more. It's appearing within public reporting. But what we have found for our benchmarks is that there is hugely still like a massive disparity of approaches when it comes to sustainable development and the reporting of progress on that. And I would have to say that certainly for many companies, it is still either completely missing, or we do still see it as purely kind of a tick box exercise or a compliance exercise where it's purely kind of meeting legislation, rather than being kind of fully integrated into the business strategy. So if for example, we recently did a kind of holistic assessment of all 2000 companies that we've benchmarked, within our benchmarks and these are the 2000 companies that we've identified as being the most influential companies in supporting the systems change that's really needed within their industry in support of this UN Sustainable Development Goals. And of those 2000 companies, we found that 775 of them aren't even mentioning sustainable development goals within their corporate communications. And when we kind of throw our benchmarks, dig deeper, those companies that are talking about sustainability, a lot of them it's still kind of smoke and mirrors tactics or greenwashing rather than that true integration of sustainability into their business practices 

👉🏾 Yeah, definitely. I mean, as you said, with COP26 is in full swing. It would be certainly be remiss to not say that climate change is the glaringly obvious kind of biggest challenge that we're facing as the world. But the truth is, so many of these challenges that we do face when we talk about sustainable development, they are very interconnected. So you can't kind of look at each challenge in a silo

👉🏾 And when you begin to dig into the UN Sustainable Development Goals, I think this becomes really apparent. If you start to look at them as individual problems and try and treat them as individual problems you don't get very far. So if we take climate change, for example, or lack of action towards climate change, that is going to have a huge impact on things like access to water, poverty rates, health and well being, gender equality. I mean, the list really does go on. And I think, companies therefore, really do need to take a holistic approach to sustainable development. And they need to be much better integrating kind of looking at those sustainable practices and approaches, both across their business and their value chains in more strategic way exactly as you were saying, rather than these kind of side projects, big PR pieces that sound really good and you can make good sound bites of, but you're not really changing the way that you're doing business. And I think that's the key, really

👉🏾 So at WBA we take what we call a kind of systems approach to sustainable development, which means we're focusing on the whole interconnected nature of the sustainable development challenges rather than on a single specific element in isolation. So I think, the reality is, the issues that are facing the planet and humanity, they are so interlinked, and they all impact on each other massively. So, we're talking here today about the Elephant in The Room. And I think for me, the real Elephant in The Room is how do we ensure that as we tackle climate change, we are ensuring that that transition to a lower carbon economy happens in a way that doesn't leave anyone behind and is just an equitable for all people

👉🏾 Yeah. We released on Monday, so yeah two days ago. We had our public launch event yesterday. I guess, first maybe just in case there's any listeners that might not be familiar with the term “Just Transition” it's essentially what I was just talking about. So how are we taking an integrated approach to sustainable development challenges and in this case, specifically, how are we ensuring that as we work towards addressing climate change, do we ensure that we're not creating even greater inequalities or creating mass unemployment or increased poverty as a result of that transition to this new, more carbon neutral world

👉🏾 I think it's very clear when it comes to the climate crisis, what that mission is. We need to halve global carbon emissions by 2030, we need to ensure zero net emissions by 2050. But what does that actually mean for the huge number of people that currently work in those industries that we’re sort of saying you need to go. So, if we look at oil, coal production, we're saying that these industries essentially cannot exist in 20/30 years if we're going to meet these net-zero goals, but there are literally millions of people that currently work in or rely on these industries and they have done it for generations. Proportionate number of those workers and especially as we look further down the supply chain, are based in developing countries. And if we look, one at the direct employees, that's one big issue, but then we've got the supply chains, we've got the communities around those workers, that all rely on these industries and they're all propped up by these industries. So as companies are developing their net zero emission plans, they need to be building in to those strategies. How do they ensure that as they transition, they're making sure that they are bringing people along with them to avoid any negative impact on people and they're supporting those people into new and green jobs

👉🏾 So what we've developed at the World Benchmarking Alliance is a methodology and a set of six indicators that basically assesses how a company is doing exactly that. So we look at how they're developing their plans, we look at how they're engaging their employers in these conversations so that they're making sure the employees are part of those decisions that are obviously going to be impacting them most. Then we look at how they're developing the skills of those workers so that they can transition into these new industries, these new green jobs. And then we also look at how the companies are working with governments to ensure that social protection systems are adequate and to ensure that the companies are not locking governments to create the enabling policy environment that will ensure that this transition is just and is equitable

👉🏾 The assessments that we released on Monday, so we looked at 180 companies from high emitting sectors. And what we basically found in those assessments is there is currently a striking and very systematic lack of action by companies to do this work on a 'Just Transition'. So whilst a lot of them have low carbon strategies, very few are actually working to identify prepare for and then mitigate the social impact of those strategies. And out of that 180 companies we found that only 9 scored 50% mark on the six 'Just Transition indicators. 

And really, most companies right at the start of this journey and what this means is that there's essentially those 180 companies just in themselves, they employ eleven million workers, so those workers are potentially being put at risk if they're not being included in these decisions about how the company is changing. And that's the conversation we want to start and that's what we want to engage companies in 

👉🏾 So no it's not just oil and gas. So our benchmarks are all focused on company progress towards the sustainable development goals. So our initial assessments have looked at 100 oil and gas companies, 50 electric utilities companies and then 30 car manufacturers, because these have all been identified as high emitting sectors. But then in terms of influence and who are the benchmarks intended to, so they are partly intended for companies to understand where their gaps are to understand how they perform against their peers. But then they are also intended for the use of stakeholder groups such as investors and NGOs and civil society organisations and policymakers all of whom work with and have the ability to influence corporate progress and also to hold companies to account

👉🏾 It's not mandatory in the fact that companies aren't obliged to engage with us and they're not obliged to do better on the benchmarks, but there is no ability to opt out. So, we basically select companies based on how influential they are within the systems change that we have identified as needed within their industry. So if you're on that list as a company, we will assess you, you don't sort of get the opportunity to opt out. We also do try and engage companies in the assessment process and we try and engage them in the feedback process. And they do have an ability to kind of feed in to that and to learn from us as well. We want this to be a useful tool for them not just a kind of naming and shaming

👉🏾 And with these 'Just Transition' assessments, for example, we found that a third of companies have engaged with us which, considering this as a pilot year is really great. We think that's a really positive sign already and hopefully that will only grow year on year. The way that we sort of incentivises companies, I guess is creating this race to the top but it's also about providing anyone that's lagging behind with a roadmap of what needs to be done. So we say it is in the company's favour if they engage with us. In the report that we just released on Monday there's a large number of best practice examples and case studies of those companies that are doing this really well

👉🏾 And what we hope is that, that gives companies, one it sort of takes away company's abilities to say "this is too hard, we can't do it" because here are companies that can and they are so here have a look what they're doing and learn from their best practices. And then it's also about as I said sort of giving other stake holders, like investors, like policymakers, kind of concrete data, that they can actually then use within their sphere of influence, to be able to incentivise further action 

👉🏾 That's a really good question and it's something that we do `consider a lot at the World Benchmarking Alliance. So Inclusivity is one of our core values. And I think it's early and continuous engagement and inclusive dialogue is key really. At World Benchmarking Alliance, we try to ensure that we're inclusive both with the companies that we assess, but also the allies that we work with, and the countries that we work in

👉🏾 So this is one of the key reasons why, when we look at companies we’re basing that on that influence rather than just their size or their turnover, we look at things like where are their subsidiaries based, where are their supply chains based, because this often is in the Global South. And it's also where we have a number of colleagues that work all over the world, colleagues based in Asia, South Africa, South America, and that's to ensure that we have kind of an on the ground ability to engage with companies with allies and with partners kind of locally

👉🏾 That's another great question and definitely, in developing our assessment methodology, so we had an advisory group made up of 16 people, those people all have expertise within 'Just Transition' topics specifically but they also bring the perspectives from a number of different stakeholder groups such as labour unions, civil society business and employers, policymakers. And we made sure that those voices were based across all five continents. We also then went through a public consultation stage to ensure that our methodology could be consulted on and we could get feedback publicly. And we held a number of round tables for feedback as well

👉🏾 And going through that process, we were able to ensure that the views of a huge number of stakeholders were taken into account, in particular, those that were focused on, vulnerable and marginalised groups in society as you said. And what this has kind of resulted on in our methodology through having those voices at the table a number of our indicators specifically assess how companies are ensuring that vulnerable groups, so women, migrant workers, indigenous communities, are included within their transition plans. But it's also even more importantly in a way is looking at how companies themselves are including the voices of those people that they see as most impacted within their own company in supply chain because for each company that's going to be different. So our assessment looks at how companies are doing that, how they're engaging with workers and with those communities, to ask them what they need, what they want, how they can be brought along on this journey. Unfortunately, what we found in our assessment sort of to date, only 8% of that 180 companies currently are demonstrating that they are engaging those workers in those communities in social dialogue. So it's sadly not currently happening the way that it should be, but it's certainly something that we're really supporting and we're really looking at through these assessments

👉🏾 But at the moment as I said companies do seem to be very near the beginning of this journey. We've only seen that 7% of companies have actually made a public kind of time bound target to mitigate the social impacts of their Just Transition on their workers, communities and business relationships. So it's certainly area thats a lot of room for improvement 

👉🏾 Yeah, definitely. So I think the very short term practical steps at WBA is we'll be integrating the Just Transition methodology, so this new pilot methodology that we've just released the first assessment of by Monday, we'll be integrating that into our climate and energy benchmark. So next year, we'll be assessing 90 transport companies and we'll publish that in Q3 2022. And we hope having that much integrated approach will mean that we're assessing companies on their environmental and social risks and impacts and how they impact on each other within each company. But in terms of the kind of longer term ambitions and impact, we are at the same time publishing our results. We've also launched what we call the Just Transition Coalition. So this brings together again, going back to those other stakeholders like investors and policymakers, and also research and academia brings them together collectively to work on Just Transition impacts and drive impact on the ground through what we've identified within our assessments. And within that coalition, those different stakeholder groups will make commitments depending on who they are and depending on their unique position within the ecosystem of influence. They will make commitments on how they can support this

👉🏾 So for investors for example, they might commit to engage companies to create better just transition plans and then commit to base their investment decisions based on the quality of those plans. So that's kind of what we want to get to and what we want to drive towards. And I think in terms of what does success look like, I guess again, on the very high broad level, success would be that the necessary transformation to a low carbon economy doesn't lead to mass unemployment, doesn't lead to the collapse of entire communities. And it's also actually taken as an opportunity to fix some of the economic injustices that we currently have existing in our society. I guess for us at WBA it's about encouraging action and being part of the ecosystem and providing clear, robust and simple metrics that can inspire companies, investors and policy makers to move on this journey. You know, as I said earlier, the 'Just' part of the transition really needs to stop being the elephant in the room when we're talking about climate change, the race to net zero, it's not a race against each other. It's a race against time. And we're only going to win that race if we run it together. And we ensure that these impacted workers and impacted communities aren't left behind

👉🏾 I mean, I'm going to remain hopeful, I think it has to really, if it doesn't happen now, then we are all going to be in a pretty terrible state of affairs. And I think that's what I really do hope that it's not all just talk, and we walk away from this without, really moving the needle and creating the catalytic changes that needs to happen. There's got to be action behind these commitments. And I think that's the key

And again, making sure that when we're making these...

The last 18 months have deepened the divide amongst people across the world. These divisions have been amplified by the worsening social and economic realities of a post pandemic society. As individuals the fissures mean that households/friends are often on different sides of the divide, neither side willing to concede or find middle ground. The ubiquitous social media platforms that have made our world shrink are often the battlegrounds to perpetuate ideologies along with a liberal doses of misinformation. What does this mean for all of us (not just comms practitioners)? 

To dig deeper into this phenomenon that threatens to tear asunder the world, I spoke with Laura Osborne and Alison Goldsworthy, two of the three authors of the book "Poles Apart: Why People Turn Against Each Other". We spoke about the inspiration for the book and the collaboration amongst the three authors

👉🏾 The essential premise behind the book

👉🏾 Affective polarisation and what it means

👉🏾 The role of misinformation and uncertainty in reinforcing divisions

👉🏾 Recognition of polarisation as a business risk and preparedness

👉🏾 What leaders can do to prepare for impact of polarisation

Want to know more, listen here 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Memorable Passages from the interview

👉🏾 Thank you for having us. 

👉🏾 That is in essence true. So Alex, our co-author, and then Laura, who's on the podcast with me today and myself. We all used to work at the consumers association 'WHICH' in the UK and just really enjoyed working with each other. And really respected each other's knowledge and talents because we were good at things, that the other person wasn't, in general. And then I went out to Stanford and that was just in the year 2016. So Brexit had happened, Trump was going on and I realised that the way that we worked from different political backgrounds and reaching across divides was really very unusual. Particularly that we all enjoyed it. And then what really tripped me onto it was, I was sat in a room at Stanford, we helped put on a course on depolarisation in the aftermath of the election, and an audience member asked some people who'd voted for Trump who were on a panel. "Can you tell me about a time you've changed your mind and why?" And you could feel the entire sort of tenor of the room change as people answered that question. So Kat who's a friend who voted for Trump, talked about how she had been raised as a Roman Catholic to believe all gay marriage was wrong and then had gone to college or uni and had a roommate who was a lesbian and was really ashamed of her prior beliefs and couldn't believe she thought it and all of that kind of thing. And when she said that the amount of people who softened was significant because they could see that engaging was worthwhile. 

👉🏾 And I was telling this story to Laura and Alex, and it began to morph into a podcast that's we should ask people with our backgrounds and politics and business and behavioural science, about a time they changed their mind and why, and 'Open Democracy' leapt at the idea they absolutely leapt at it. And as a result, we went from there to then getting a book deal and quite unusually, you hear tales of people collaborating as authors and really not getting on. And the three of us are closer now than we were when we were at 'Which'. 

I was talking to Laura the other day and saying, can we have this as a monthly supper club for the rest of our lives. It's so much fun. And I get so much wisdom from these two women that it's really valuable. So I guess that's how the book came about. Laura might want to expand and answer the bit of the question I didn't about like what the essence of Poles Apart is

👉🏾 Thanks Ali. And I think that's absolutely right. We were, I think really pleasantly surprised about how we managed to work together all the way through this in a way that was really constructive and where we all made each other better at what we do. And I think when we started to write the book, what we really wanted to do, it might sound a bit hackneyed, was something that was quite solutions focused.

👉🏾 So I think there's a lot of work on polarisation, you know, excellent work on why it is such a difficult issue for society to grapple with. Not so much of it that's written in a way that a wide audience can interact with it. And perhaps not so much of it, that's written in a way that has a big focus on what you can do about it in your lives. You know, accepting that there are these kinds of system-level issues, what each of us can do to make a difference everywhere we interact with it. So I think, for us, the real premise behind the book was what can you do to bridge those divides? Not just accepting that they exist, but what might we do about it.

👉🏾 So if I pick up a bit there and Ali I might hand back to you as well. I think the central premise behind it, Sudha was that, the divides can be bridged, but it's not easy. You know that there is not one quick easy silver bullet for all of the divisions that we see around us, that it's a complex phenomenon, but that we can break it down.

👉🏾 And that actually, when we do that, each of us individually can start to pick some of our beliefs apart and especially our beliefs about other people and about other groups. And that we can learn a lot about how we try to persuade other people. You know, what we should really do if we genuinely want to have a conversation rather than an argument about something, you know, and the tools that can be applied to that. I think a bit for us as communicators as well, reflecting on where we might have in the past, inadvertently made some of that worse. You know, Ally I don't know if you want to talk a bit about your campaigning experienced there, but I think, you know, it was understanding where some of the divisions that you might deliberately create can backfire, become problematic.

👉🏾 And I think it's sort of exactly what Laura said. So I made my name as a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser. You know, at which I built a base of millions of people who I could get to take an action almost whenever I asked them to do. And as I realised sometimes some of those actions are like, from emailing your MP, to sharing something on social media, to signing friends up, you know some of them were extremely worthwhile. Occasionally I might, and comms professionals, who listen to this, might have known it was a slightly weaker requests that I was making. But I would still see hundreds of thousands of people doing it. And that was great, it made me feel really powerful and I thought we were bringing about change and often we were. And then when Trump started to happen and when Brexit happened, I realised that maybe I hadn't always been as responsible as I should have been, or that people could build these huge movements, which is much easier in 2021 than it was a hundred years ago because of tech and none of us ever really thought about, were we creating any damage with what we were doing.

👉🏾 And the answer was that we probably were, and that also started me thinking, cause I was a bit inclined to be like, oh God, these people, all these other people, it's everybody else's fault. And then I was like, actually, It's a bit my fault. In fact, the more I thought about it, It was really quite a lot my fault, what was going on and if you don't all have a really good, critical mass of people, respecting norms or rules of engagement, then things actually start to fray quite quickly. As people are seeing as polarisation is rising in general, around the world where you are in India, where Laura is in London and where I am in the US are, are all places where polarisation is rising to very dangerous levels. 

👉🏾 So, I think often when you think about polarisation, we think quite narrowly about our views on particular issues. And I think the question historically when talking about it's been focused very much on how far apart those views are, but actually as Ali touched on talking about those groups that were being created before, identity is also a really important part of that. And those issue-based differences, quite quickly become differences of social identity. And when that happens, there's obviously a kind of feelings, more than facts, aspect of that. And people increasingly dislike and distrust those from opposing sides, irrespective of whether they actually disagree on a specific issue.

👉🏾 And once we group in that way, those kind of labels that we adopt for the us and them groups come to act as proxies for all kinds of differences and beliefs and values and behaviour that actually go far beyond the groups themselves. And it's this that's known as affective polarisation. So it's that sense that it's moved into identity. It's very much moved into us and them and the us and them don't actually really have to disagree on very much, but there can still be very significant divisions. 

👉🏾 So it's a big question, isn't it? And I think maybe I'll answer it in two parts which you need, the first is given that how affective prioritisation operates, It's not particularly difficult, as Ali said to activate those divides. They are very emotional, they are much more present and palpable when we're in times of uncertainty or when we feel under threat.

👉🏾 So you know the sort of perfect storm of a pandemic and economic uncertainty. There's lots of things that make people vulnerable to the activation of those groupish divisions. And I think what misinformation does, is both obviously mislead people to think in some cases, you know, the divides are more explicit and worse than they are. But in others it worsens that sense. And so we know people respond much more strongly to negative news, to bad news, and it will trigger certain responses. And a lot of what that does is just reinforce those group identities. So there are real kind of risks there. I know Ali, you did some really good work on fake news for the book. I don't know if you want to give a couple of examples there.

👉🏾 On fake news, which is one it's really hard to up-to-date a position once you've taken it. And once you've taken it publicly, which was one of the challenges of misinformation, is often it's designed to be particularly triggering and not always by terribly genuine actors who want to do things. So one of the classic examples is, you know, foreign interference in elections, they could have a preferred candidate and people often think nowadays in terms of Surkov who is not quite as influential as he was, but in Russia and how he deliberately would fund extremes to try and get sort of misinformation out there. There's some evidence that, that happened in Scotland done, certainly in the U S. 

👉🏾 So that's one of the problems with misinformation, another thing actually is people they don't want to fall for misinformation. People find it really hard to believe that they have fallen for it and they particularly find it hard to believe people like them will fall for it. But the people from the other group all of them, I never fall for misinformation. It's all those other stupid people, for that other group that will fall for it. Almost all of us will fall for it in some way at some point and it can be a bit embarrassing when you do, because everyone likes to think that it doesn't affect us and it does. And that's one of the really big ways that it plays into polarisation and could be very challenging how it can amplify our existing beliefs. And suddenly you can end up down a spiral holding onto something very suddenly, which is really tricky to undo. There are some ways that Laura has talked a lot about solutions that you can help to reduce the effect of misinformation, which is one, partly to become better at spotting it and falling for it.

👉🏾 There's a very neat game that some guys at Cambridge uni did called the 'bad news quiz' which asks people to go through and try and spot fake news and in a sort of funny and humorous way.  And it sort of gets you to try and spot which might be a fake account or where, a message might've been taken over by someone else. And what's really neat about this game is that one acts as an inoculation against you doing it. So you start to get better at spotting things in the future, but also the role of humour that they play in it. And if you're able to laugh at yourself or find something funny, it's much easier to detach yourself from your prior belief and to generate a bit of empathy either for yourself or for others and go from there. And so that's how it goes with misinformation, of course, the concept of misinformation itself or disinformation, both of them slightly different things, but they're not new either. Again, they've been used for a very long time for often nefarious purposes. Let's put it that way.

👉🏾 And that's where this question about people by the time they changed their mind its so important right? And because people find it so hard to remember a time that they'd done so, or that they might've been taken in by misinformation or something like that, because this is slightly simplifying it, but it activates the same parts of your brain that can feel pain almost. And so that can be physically painful almost to admit that you've got things wrong and to change your mind if you're not very careful about things, and then also we're quite programmed to forget that we do do it because we don't like to hold that dissonance in our heads. And that can be very challenging for people as individuals and for leaders and for how. 

👉🏾 Children are great bonder across divides. So one of the things you might want to talk about in a second is, you know, how do you try and solve things, people you might disagree with? And one of them is to find out something you have in common with them that you don't otherwise and talk about that first so you kind of fool your brain into thinking you share a group and kids and motherhood. And suddenly you bond across divides and it can be really powerful. So yes big up for the kids, though not necessarily at 3 am when they are keeping me up. 

👉🏾 So I'll kick off and I'll bring Ali in, in a second, I'm sure. But I think probably the first key thing to say with the work on genetics is that, there is no specific gene that exists for a particular political leaning, you know, socialism or conservative or more liberalism. It doesn't really work like that, but what our genes do, do is dictate our sensitivity to things. And so our genetic makeup and the way it interacts with our environments does shape the way that we, both perceive the world and respond to it. So there is some really interesting work as you mentioned there, Sudha about epigenetics and how all of those processes work together. And I think one thing that really stuck with me was the role of our regulator genes in this process. So, for those who don't know much about genetics, which included me before we did the book, the differences in our structural genes or what it explains, the differences in how we look and the difference in our regulator genes partially explain the differences in how we behave. So it's really the way that the two of them interact. And so the interaction of those genes can influence how we respond to the environment around us. And, obviously, all of this stuff comes from when we were living as prehistoric creatures, trying to survive in the wild and forming groups and a lot of this stems back from those kinds of early days of humanity, but it does help to help to explain some of why we can be more or less prone to engaging in different types of groups. Why we can be more or less sort of small C conservative, and how that interacts with our environment.

👉🏾 And, I think if Alex our co-author were here, that's the other point she would probably make is that how critical that wider environment is in terms of those interactions. Because what you experienced and how you are raised and the people that you grow up around, they will all shape some of how you think. And there's a really interesting statistic actually on how increasingly focused we are on wanting our children to marry people who have a similar political outlook to ourselves. So, 30 years ago only 5% of Americans cared whether their child married someone of a different political.......... may be difficult is the one different.

👉🏾 But today that's nearly half and about a third of Democrats who say they'd be actively displeased if their child married, outside the sort of preferred, political party, which I think shows you how strong some of these kinds of political partisan in groups are becoming. Ali I don't know if you want to add to that.

👉🏾 I think this was one of the bits of the book that as we were researching, it made me more uncomfortable if I'm honest. And I just had to learn to live with that discomfort because I very much wanted to be like, of course, I'm in charge of my own views. My genetics doesn't shape my politics. I'm my own woman, I'm really independent. And actually all the evidence is that's not the case. It's an interaction as Laura said of the environment and the genes that you have. And one of the example that we use in the book a sort of a classic one, though a slightly more extreme one is, if any of your listeners have seen the film Free Solo, which is about a guy called Alex Honnold, who's a climber and he climbed El Capitan, which is a 3000 foot or a 1000 meterish climb in a slab of granite rock in Yosemite national park here without ropes. He just went straight up it and it's an astonishingly brilliant film. But, Alex doesn't have a normal response to risk as you might imagine in that thing, a bit of the brain called the amygdala for him, it just doesn't really activate from the environment. But the amygdala, which you know, is like, oh, I'm feeling a bit threatened by this, or I want to try and conserve things or do things differently. That can be activated very differently in different people.

👉🏾 And of course then if you're more conservative and you feel more threatened, the clue is in the name, you also tend to vote more conservative and go from that, and that will interact with your viewpoint and that makes perfect sense to me. But is also, as I say, slightly uncomfortable for someone who had previously been like no, free wills how we do things. What it is, is that you might be someone who is naturally more inclined maybe to collaborate or to like say to respond to risk and to threat differently And you can see that in children or in other people, and in the differences in how they behave already.

👉🏾 Well, well, that's a great question. So uncertainty can generally, it's not always the case, but uncertainty generally amplifies divides. And if people think about it, as you know,...