The Story of my Experiments in Freedom Inclusion and Unity

[Music]

[Applause]

good morning

good afternoon good evening what does

creating impact mean to you

to some people it’s about creating money

creating wealth

for some people it’s about the

betterment of society working on

development

for some people it may be about

recognition or fame

perhaps due to some artistic talent or

some scientific talent that you want to

pursue

for some people impact may just be

improving the lives of just the

immediate people around them their

family and their friends

regardless this is one of the most

important questions to think about

and for me personally as i’ve spent the

last 20 30

years of my life building a career uh

clearly the most important motivator for

has been this notion of helping to

create development

and specifically sustainable development

and what exactly does sustainable

development mean

as many of you will be familiar it has

to do with reconciling the economic

the environmental and social aspects of

life and bringing them together

this may seem intuitive and natural but

it wasn’t always the case

in 1987 the united nations put out a

document called our common future or

agenda 21

which first talked about this definition

of sustainable development

and you’ll notice that it did not use

the words environment

or growth how did they talk about it it

called it

meeting the needs of the present without

compromising the needs of the future

and this is what shows us that it is

indeed possible to bring together what

are considered

till then competing ideologies and

actually create a blend

which is better than the sum of the

parts the field and i work in impact

investing

is the same on one hand we focus on

making profits and supporting good

businesses

and at the same exact time we’re looking

to create social impact

these are not two mutually exclusive

goals but they can be done together

now before i share with you my own

journey in terms of the specific stories

of creating impact

i just wanted to share briefly about my

background so

i was born in india but i’ve lived half

of my life outside of this country

mostly in the united states and my key

lesson in life has been that most of us

are shaped by two fundamental forces

for which we have to give credit and for

which we must be conscious

one is of course the education that we

have and i’ve been very fortunate to

have

a very high quality and liberal

education and the other of course is our

families

a lot of our human psychology is formed

as children based on what we learned

from our parents now i’ve been

more than fortunate in this regard my

father is an economist he used to work

for the indian government

he actually happens to be the man who

authored agenda 21 and the word

sustainable development

and worked in the u.n for many many

years on the programmatic

issues of economic and social

development and my mom is a social

activist

a scholar of islamic studies and someone

who has

encouraged me and my brother to have a

lot of exposure and travel both in india

and outside to ym so many times people

ask

why did i come back to india at the

young age of 25 when i was living in the

having a green card having a great job

and so forth and the answer is one

obviously because

i saw opportunity but also because of

these values that were ingrained in me

as a child

which really gave me the inspiration to

want to do the kind of work

to drive sustainable development in

india

the constitutions of our democracy

france the united states and even south

africa post apartheid

all start with the same three words

liberty

equality and fraternity which is what

we’re calling

freedom inclusion unity and this is

basically the three broad domains of

social science which is

politics economics and social issues

and it’s very important and very useful

to have this bifurcation

because they’re fundamentally different

sets of issues

it comes in that sequence first you need

political freedom

so think about nationalism trumping over

imperialism then you need economic

liberty

and then choices around what economic

framework society is going to follow so

capitalism

versus let’s say socialism and thirdly

you need

some way of improving the social harmony

amongst people

so think about issues of racism misogyny

patriarchy

and so on and so forth how do we remove

all these barriers so these are three

very distinct sets of issues

and you have different type of

professional actors different types of

thinking that goes into working on each

of these so i’d like to share with you

now some of my

experiences what i’m calling experiments

in working in each of these three areas

so first let’s talk about experiments

with freedom or political engagement

now the key insight that i want to leave

with you is the importance of political

neutrality

it’s very very important especially at a

young age not to

identify yourself with a particular

ideology institution or political party

but really focus on the issues it really

depends in a particular case

you could have one side that is right in

another case you could have another side

that’s right

and often it’s not about binary left

side or right side

but about the shades of gray and the

nuance of public opinion

so i in my life have had the good

fortune of working with governments

as a policy advisor both with the upa

government

and in my current political nba

government but at the same time i’ve

also done a lot of political activism

again against the last government for

example think about the protests that

happened in 2011

because people were so fed up with

corruption and currently

many many people talk about rising

intolerance they talk about specific

policies which are unjust

so the point that i want to leave with

you is it’s very much possible to engage

both in policy which is to work with the

government to help your people

and in politics as a political activist

in the extent that you want to share a

certain view share a certain ideology

or protest against what you consider as

a justice both are very much possible

the other thing to remember

if you’re interested in issues of

promoting human freedom

is that you don’t have to be restricted

to india if you take our immediate

neighborhood

and you take our labor to the west

pakistan of course we’ve got a very

troubled relationship with this country

and it excites strong passions across

the board

now i have been very fortunate i’ve had

the chance to travel to pakistan more

than five times in my life

starting with when i was as young as 25

years old in 2005

i went there as part of a group of nris

and nrps

who traveled there collectively as the

first ever expatriate

indo-pak peace delegation visiting

political leaders and civil society

leaders on both sides of the border

and basically making the case saying

that if pakistanis living in new york

london canada abroad

can get along and you know be happy why

can’t the people of india

and pakistan also similarly give up the

state and this is very distinct from the

political issues

so we can still have differences with

them one kashmir

for example we went to srinagar and we

met uh both the horizon friends

as well as you know people on both sides

of this issue you’ve got to travel all

over pakistan as you’ll see in some of

these pictures

not just to the wagon border in the

major cities but even to the cairo bus

and the pakistan afghanistan border and

similarly our pakistani friends came to

india

and visited all the different cities so

initiatives like this

are also a great way to engage key

issues that you’re passionate about

without having to directly get into

politics yourself

now moving from the issue from freedom

to unity

or fraternity which is bringing people

together

social justice removing the hierarchies

and the divisions and the discrimination

that we have in our society

for example towards women towards

certain castes towards religious

minorities

towards lgbt towards children towards

all people

any instance of people expressing hate

right because we as human beings stand

for the opposite

so ultimately social inclusion is

probably the most important value

but it’s hard to figure out what to do

here rather than you know just

advocate for certain causes i did a very

interesting experiment in the space

which is i set up a cultural center in

uw called whatsapp

now this was a building which had three

floors it was an art gallery

it was probably one of india’s first

co-working spaces it was an event space

and had all kinds of activities we were

publishing a comic book we had a polling

platform

uh we were doing multimedia and so on

and so forth and the idea here was to

really connect across the social divide

to middle class the middle class and the

lower middle class

so think about your driver or your main

son when he or she goes to the mall

he may have some pocket money that he

you know wants to go in there and buy

something

but socially he may be discriminated the

guard may not even let him in

that is unacceptable so what what subhan

tried to do was it took all of these

best practices like ted

like the kind of things that people like

you and me are very much used to and

exposed to

and try to take this to the masses and

give them access to all of these things

and it was a very very interesting

exercise and it really showed the power

of when you move beyond some of these

political and economic issues and

directly connect with people

what is really possible and finally

coming to the issue

of economic inclusion or giving people

access to

incomes now this has to do both with

growth and equity now i work in a field

known as impact investing

which is basically focused on taking

private capital this could be

philanthropic capital or commercial

capital

and investigating businesses which are

providing access and affordable

services to low-income people so think

about affordable education

affordable healthcare affordable

financial services affordable housing

again the same thing that you and i take

for granted but delivering those at

quality at

scale and at the right price to the

people who don’t have it

or helping the low income populations

increase their incomes

or increase their life inputs so think

about sectors like agriculture

or even think about sectors in the urban

economy like an uber driver

or any kind of a great caller or blue

collar job now what impact investing

does is it mobilizes a lot of private

capital into this and you have impact

funds which take this capital

from abroad from institutions from

developing agencies

from private investors and asha impact

has created india’s first such platform

for taking money from indian business

leaders from h i’s and wealthy families

and directly investing this into high

quality social enterprises in india

working across sectors and also a small

think tank which is taking the lessons

from these social enterprises to the

government

because ultimately the government is the

biggest impact investor right they have

the budgets to really make change happen

at scale

so it’s not just about getting capital

but about using that capital to figure

out

what are the right innovative business

models to address some of these social

problems

and when those solutions are identified

taking that to other people in a

collaborative manner so that the

solution can be scaled

because ultimately that’s what all of us

want is to help address some of these

huge problems our society is facing

so now those are some of my so-called

experiments what does this mean for you

as a millennial i’m sure you must have

heard from many many people that you

know millennials are different from

older people

whether that’s better or worse people

debate but i wanted to give you a

slightly different perspective rather

than just this binary

for one between millennials and what are

called baby boomers there’s a third