In a world where corporate expansion stands in direct conflict with the communities that live in the area and state after state reverberates with protests from citizens when an industry digs in its heels, here is a heartening tale of how corporate progress and community development can go hand-in-hand.
This is a tale of how the TVS Motor Company enhanced the lives of the community around the vicinity of its factories, and beyond, along with its own reputation and profits. A Silent Revolution: The Journey of the Srinivasan Services Trust (SST) provides just this story — of how village life got transformed through a model that involved TVS and the local community and made them partners in change. All of this achieved through gentle nudging, democratic decision making and mutual respect.
The story springs from the core of ‘sustainable development’ in its original form — of making communities self-reliant and striving towards an inclusive society that anchors itself on providing every member the essentials of a meaningful life, namely health, education, gender equity and livelihood options. It also meant addressing caste discrimination and eliminating its ugly practices.
While recounting the story that began 25 years ago, author Snigdha Parupudi has explored and put in context every aspect including the blips and achievements. It’s a story needed to be told and needs to be read.
In 1996 when the Chairperson of TVS Motor Company, Venu Srinivasan, began the SST in Hosur “to honour his father’s (TS Srinivasan) vision” and “realise his dream of equitable, participatory and sustainable development” he did not envisage that it would grow to embrace 5,000 villages in five different States and impact three million people.
It began from the village of Padavedu in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai district. Venu Srinivasan visited the place to renovate abandoned temples. While he did this, he witnessed how the people lived in abject poverty — no schools, no drains, open defecation, no health facilities. Srinivasan decided to form the SST to do something for the people.
For the book Parupudi speaks to a large number of villagers, SST staff members, women of the self-help groups that were formed, and other stakeholders. To hook the reader, she presents the narrative through key milestones that created the whirlpool effect and gave the project its participatory dimension. For instance, she relates an incident from 2005 that changed the course of the project when Ashoke Joshi was at the helm.
One day he found a group of workers waiting hours to meet the SST team. Their intention was to inform the team that the tap it had installed in the school some months ago needed repairs. This got Joshi thinking about the model they were pursuing, and that it was charity-based and unsustainable. The tap had been installed for the benefit of the villagers, but they did not consider it theirs, which could be proactively repaired by them.
Participatory model
From then on SST started to do things differently, whether cleaning a water body, setting up an asset or organising livelihoods. The model turned participatory where the community contributed a fraction of the funds or their time for the development they wanted in their village. It was a simple dictum — without the wholehearted contribution of the community, no work would be undertaken. This move brought with it pride in the work done and empowered the community.
So, community after community started working on issues like clean running water, electricity, sewage lines, schools, anganwadis, healthcare, toilets, even paved roads where there was none. The panchayats and women’s self-help groups were involved at every stage. No longer would the community wait for the government, instead with the help of SST they would bring about the change and even access government schemes effectively.
Though SST is a social service arm of the TVS group, it works with the same precision as the company and has a well-oiled machinery. The SST team wears a uniform, lives amongst the community, and maintains a good rapport with the police and government.
The book succinctly puts into perspective the role SST has played for the past 25 years. Venu Srinivasan has dedicated the book to his father. It is a must read not only for the development sector, but all those corporate entities who still need to learn how building a business need not be detrimental to the lives of people who live in its vicinity.