Kasipadu - An Illustration of Virtual Leadership

Dr Mani Paturi, 59, is a pediatrician who migrated to USA almost 30 years ago. Her husband was an active member of Telugu Literary Cultural Association in Queens, New York. He was also interested in social service both in US and at his native village in India. He came from a village in West Godavari District, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The village, like most of its counterparts in the country, does not have access to good quality healthcare and education. The Paturis used to visit the village once or twice a year and organize medical camps with the help of local relatives and friends. After her husband passed away in 2005, the family was looking for a way to continue the services and planned to create a permanent health center in the village in his memory. When I explained the concept of Virtual leadership to Dr Paturi in 2006, she expressed a keen interest and wanted to know if it can assist her in her mission.

Though her village did not have internet, there was Kasipadu, one of its neighboring villages which had the connectivity, thanks to the Project ASHWINI implemented by Byrraju Foundation. Project ASHWINI provides broad band connectivity to 50 villages with a combination of terrestrial and wireless networks and hence has created a high quality video conference platform on which services related to health, education, livelihood etc are being delivered.

On one fine weekend, Dr Paturi started interacting with Village Kasipadu, a village almost 5000 km away, right from her home environs. The medium used was the most popular video chat on the internet. The village was very glad to interact with her and the local leadership including the elected representative (the Panchayat Sarpanch) extended their co-operation to her. Dr Paturi consulted the infants and the young mothers in the villages for about two hours every week. The Foundation’s health worker in the village and a few volunteers help to spread the message and organize the young mothers and the infants to consult their “US Doctor” every week at the appointed hour. Within a few months, the dedicated Doctor had counseled young mothers in over 12 villages, without moving from her home. This is a small beginning no doubt, but it has given Dr Paturi tremendous professional and personal satisfaction and she hopes to realize her dream of building a health center in her village soon.

Technology today provides various cost-effective channels for real-time interaction (like chat, videoconferencing, Voiceover IP, e-mail, and instant messaging). The key then is to evolve suitable structures and processes so that the diaspora is able to assume a larger role without sacrificing their professional careers and interests and with minimum investment of their time. There is a strong belief that real-time interaction of the diaspora community with the projects/communities/villages in India would have a beneficial impact. The services that could flow through the system include educating school children, primary health care, computer literacy and skills-imparting especially for women. However, the issue of leadership is an unsettled debate with ambiguous views from the diaspora and the nonprofits.

An innovative vehicle of diaspora philanthropy that emphasizes this two-way exchange and, if effectively harnessed, has the potential to solve many issues on the ground in the rural India is Virtual Leadership. Virtual Leadership is defined as assuming full lifecycle responsibility -from concept to implementation- for an initiative or a project addressing specific deliverables in the social sector with modern information technology being used as a tool. Virtual Leadership – the term combines two different but situationally connected concepts; The Leadership, with focus on making things happen and Virtuality, necessitated by the geographical distance and enabled by technology.

Tail piece :

Diaspora philanthropy is but one component of a broader concept of ‘Social remittances’ that includes the transfer of values, attitudes and practices. In the coming days, it is expected that Diaspora giving will switch from material giving – money or financial contributions – to intellectual or in-kind giving, such as research, advice, and teaching. A majority of the Indian diaspora consists of professionals and knowledge workers who could utilize their core competencies for social causes. However, the diaspora’s influence on the implementation of social projects (the weakest link of the chain) is minimal, considering the distance, time and effort required, and the hitherto prohibitive technological costs.

The concept of Virtual Leadership combines three key components: The potential of the Indian diaspora, the power of ICT and a new mechanism which can foster a Southern version of Philanthropy as ‘Doing Good together’ as opposed to the Northern version of Philanthropy as ‘Doing Good to others’. It can be praxis for poor, as it reflects the broad principles behind the public-private partnership (PPP), which is courted by almost every Government across the world. In a way, it becomes a ‘Micro PPP’ –much more effective in its impact because of the factors behind it – the individual commitment, technology and managing for impact.

The above piece is an extract from my work ‘Virtual Leadership – The next wave of Diaspora Philanthropy’ done at CUNY in 2006. But when I read it again recently, it occurred to me that if you replace the term “Diaspora” with “Urban Indian professionals”, it would still ring true and open up a lot of possibilities!