The biggest banquet hall of the hotel was decorated as if a big national event was about to unfold. Just the look and feel of the hall was enough to leave ordinary mortals like me 'awestruck'. There was a touch of irony, for two reasons.
One, it was the grand finale of an "idea" contest where contestants had undergone several rounds of proposal writing and interview sessions just like a beauty pageant. The one with the best idea, the one that makes the most economic sense in terms of viability but also sustainability, would be declared winner. The main sponsor was a charity based in New York. The prize money was only Rs 50,000; hosting the entire event must have cost around half a million at least.
After a bombastic opening, the judges, predominantly expats, started asking questions to the finalists. The answer that got the loudest cheer—and as I later came to know, most votes—were for the participants who mentioned 'poverty'. Mind you, this was a sustainable business model presentation contest under the tag of generating new entrepreneurs. One after another candidate mentioned that should s/he win the contest, s/he would use the 'seed' money to set up a business to alleviate poverty. Nothing wrong with that.
The one who made an emotional comment on how people struggle for two meals every day and his entrepreneurial idea would ensure that those two meals would be guaranteed, went on to win the first prize. He had also mentioned that beneficiaries of his 'business' model, in turn, would propagate the idea of entrepreneurship to neighbors and villagers. The feeling I left off with was of disgust coupled with bewilderment. If only wishes were horses!
So in what capacity was I was attending the event? Well, exactly eight months ago I was working for another start up that pretty much tried to implement the same idea. We did not have an office then but zeal and passion was there. Especially for me who had always thought that these kinds of initiatives were to be encouraged. Perhaps the most appealing part of this new set up was that we would not just distribute money but become business partners with small time businesses, help them do their business the right way by providing not just additional capital in form of the cash and machinery, but also technical knowhow. We were confident that should we be able to 'promote' and make use of 'e-commerce' to transform any business. That was the time when I first got to know how much a 50 Kg bag of wax costs and in weeks that followed, production cost of mushroom and net profit per kg. Within three weeks we had over fifty participants vying to win the top three positions.
Ours was pretty much the same contest but the cash 'award' was 10 times more. The selection took place at an unrecognizable venue (read: cheap). Three contestants were selected. All the while I was upbeat because we did not see any chance of failure. Unlike government's project of dishing out interest free loan of Rs 200,000, here both the parties had to ensure that they worked to succeed, for it was a classic case of the need for two people to tango. Anyway, we got started. I was fairly new to organization and soon got to know that the investment fund that organization had managed to raise, and still continues to raise, was by selling nothing but 'poverty'.
Six months into the work none of the three chosen businesses was making money, no profit whatsoever. Even the small profits started transforming into losses. I started to feel that the symbiotic relationship that we had envisaged in the form of business-partnership was doomed to fail. It was because the 'partners' chosen suddenly would start blaming us for everything going wrong. We were later astounded to find that there were lots of consultants—formal and informal—who were influencing their impressions about us. The entrepreneurs were convinced that we were helping them become big but 'local consultants' were busy convincing them that we were minting money at the behest of their enterprise. To cut the long story short, days were getting difficult; nothing seemed to be working.
A couple of months later when none of the businesses was doing well, something unexpected happened. One of the co-founders who lived outside Nepal had managed to 'sell' the idea to one of the local TV channels in the country he was living. With a short notice of five days, a relatively big team of TV crew landed in Nepal. A barren land was turned into mushroom sheds and everything bought readymade.
After about a month, I was told that the documentary was aired in one of the entrepreneurial events in that country. The theme was how some youth had managed to bring change. It was a fairytale, even better than a frog turning into a prince. The irony was that the winner literally had squandered all the money in spite of our regular inspections.
However, the message aired through documentary was how a village boy transformed the entire village by turning a barren land into a mushroom farm and in the process generated employment for almost a dozen youths of the locality. To add an emotive twist, we had asked the 'workers' to say that had it not been for the farm they would have left for some Arab country as their poverty had become unbearable. The poverty was sold. The organization managed to bag the first prize. That translated into even more funds.
At the end of the day, what hurts most perhaps is that we have become experts at selling the drama. The Great Nepali Poverty Alleviation Drama!
hiteshkarki@gmail.com
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