“Bhaiyya, ek pen lelo bhaiyya. Bhook lagi hai bhaiyya” said the little girl at the traffic signal in the heart of New Delhi, Connaught Place – the ninth most expensive office location in the world. I barely lifted my head from my smartphone to take notice of her leaning against the auto rickshaw taking me to the railway station. I was typing a critical email to one of the clients about how our work was transforming lives across different states. I saw her for a brief moment before nodding (saying no) my head. Just when she was about to walk away, our eyes met. She was barely ten years old, wore a shabby maroon frock, her hair was neatly tied back and one of her eyes was completely grey. She wore a dejected look. All this happened in maybe three seconds before I turned back to typing my email “…in one of the states, over 22 lakh children are directly empowered to...” My hand shut the phone down before completing the sentence. For the next 20 minutes, I stared into the maddening traffic jam ahead.
Few hours before this incident, I was meeting a very close friend of mine after almost four long years. Our lives had taken different trajectories altogether. She was working with teachers on mentoring them, training them to become the leaders of tomorrow. I was working with state governments on creating systemic transformations across sectors. We spoke at length about what we love about our work and what are some of the things that still require a lot of effort to be put in. During the conversation she said, “You know, when you’re working at scale it becomes so difficult to see what’s happening on the ground in somebody’s life and when you’re working on the ground, you don’t think beyond that small world at all.”
I have now worked for two years each at both levels – bottom rung and top leadership. My experience so far has taught me a lot of things that matter at both levels. One of the critical pieces is that there is an information asymmetry between the two levels. This is only natural to happen anywhere in the world. Information asymmetry also leads to mistrust between the two levels and thus the system fails. The people working on the ground will always speak about how “the system” is failing them and those on top will always talk about how “the people” are not equipped enough to be given full autonomy. Over a period of time, these become self-fulfilling prophecies.
The way to enable any system to perform better is to first ask the question – “why is it working as it is?” instead of “why should it be replaced/redesigned?” The former helps to understand the current situation at a very elemental level which informs the change making process and the latter biases the design thus failing in achieving any real outcomes as it wouldn’t get implemented well.
Beyond all these learnings and applying them to drive further impact, the girl at the traffic signal brought me back to an existential standpoint. How long before we can figure out an all-encompassing solution? How long before the bouquet of solutions reach every single human being? What is the success given this scenario? What if this incident has hit me so hard because I too have been consumed by the mindset of the people on the top? What if our solutions never reach that girl? Would it still be a success? What about the morality? While I am busy “changing systems at scale”, I could only inform the child helpline in this case about a child begging on the streets?
I have often wondered, what it is that can keep people tethered to the ground while still staying at the top of the solution pyramid? On the other hand, what is it that can keep people aware of the top while still working on the ground? How does one solve this information asymmetry for even oneself? How do I keep myself abreast of the reality of maybe million such girls so that I can actually create a meaningful impact? I think the first step is to be aware of the gap and… “Hi Nikhil, waiting for the email”.
I suppose everything has its own time, for now, it’s time to send out that email. What will definitely linger on though is the dejected look on the girl’s face, maybe it is also an expression my own soul wears today!
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