GDL - Piramal Foundation » BEX

Bagar Employment Institute and Source for Change speak to BITS Pilani students

GDL Admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:16:41 +0000

A few of us at GDL were asked to speak on development at the grassroots level at BITS Pilani on Sunday February 7th. The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership hosted an Entrepreneurship week and our panel discussion was one of the events. Fortunately we were also able to bring BEI’s Community Leadership team, a nine member team comprised of young leaders from Bagar and the surrounding villages, who had the chance to share their ideas on how to build trust with communities for the purpose of development. Above are a few pictures from the event. The people in the panel are Sahil Chaudry, Vivake Prasad, and Kaushal Rajoriya of the Bagar Employment Institute, and Karthik Raman of Source for Change. The guys in the uniforms are the BEI Community Leadership Team. It was a really great experience for the students who wanted to learn more about social enterprise and for the panelists who were able to reaffirm their commitment to development using business methodologies.

An experiment in trust

rahulreddy — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:02:31 +0000

Despite one month of living and working in a new place and interacting in a language and culture I had only a passing familiarity with, I have not yet taken the time to write about my experience. Friends have encouraged me to write both about my time in Bagar and about specific successes and disappointments. My work at the Bagar Employment Exchange has definitely provided much material to write about as we have had a string of successes recently. Yet it was not until a group discussion last weekend that I really felt the impulse to write. Despite being such a seemingly simple concept, it was this idea of “trust” and its role in development that finally pushed me to write. So much of what one reads in development literature and encounters in a developing country such as institutional problems, lack of rule of law, public goods becoming de-facto privatized, etc. boils down to a lack of trust. And, in my experience thus far, this lack of trust is so widespread that personal relationships are needed to get anything done, business can become a painful ordeal, and one must always be on the offensive when dealing with others as written rules may not be respected. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma that one lives each and every time they interact with others and it perpetuates itself each time someone gets burned. Yet I’m also hopeful because once a process begins to be understood, alternatives can be imagined. What is my vision of a developed India? It’s one where trust exists between people and in public institutions and norms. It is of a broad, increased level of public trust rather than the intensely personal relationships I’ve encountered thus far that seem to trump any attempts to create trust beyond the individual. So let us see. My whole time here, everything I do, every person I meet on behalf of BEX, GDL, and the Piramal Foundation, is an experiment with trust. I’m looking forward to what it brings.

BEX scaling to new heights

Dharamveer Singh — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:40:02 +0000

BEX is now scaling to new heights. We have over 400 aspirants registered, and in less than 2 months since our inauguration on April 20, we have already placed over 60 students.

Many more updates to come soon.