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What if the people you are trying to empower already know the answers better than any policy, consultant, or expert ever could? I learned this not through theory, but through proximity- working alongside Deaf leaders for a mission with Enable India through Niiti Consulting and Questera Foundation, that reshaped my understanding of inclusion. It wasn’t just a project, it was a humbling, daily awakening to what true leadership looks like when lived experience, not assumption, g

In my 6+ years of development sector experience, I’ve worked closely with the deaf community for a few of the years- and yes, I’m using the word deaf deliberately. Most deaf individuals I’ve met prefer this term over “persons with hearing impairment,” because it affirms identity rather than deficiency. To them, deafness isn’t a limitation - it’s a culture, a language and a shared experience. So when I look at how Bollywood portrays deaf characters, I don’t see it as just “cin

By Sanjay Chittora, Director, STEP Academy, Aajeevika Bureau At STEP Academy — the skilling initiative of Aajeevika Bureau — we’ve always believed that real impact happens when training goes beyond classrooms and connects deeply with people’s everyday realities. One of our flagship efforts is the On-the-Job Training (OJT) programme. It’s a simple but powerful idea — train unskilled workers right where the work happens, so learning is practical, relevant, and immediately usefu

From football fields to kabaddi courts, sports are transforming how girls claim agency and leadership. Learn how design-led,...

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,”  These timeless words from Martin Luther...

By Archana Sinha, Nourishing Schools Foundation   This year marks 15 years of impact for Niiti Consulting, and we at Nourishing Schools...

There’s no denying that the role of a ‘leader’ has expanded extensively in the past few decades. The increasing prevalence of ‘both/and’ leadership  means that leaders are not only spearheading organizations, they are also managing the gap between the global and the local, maximizing their company’s values while doing good by the community. With these ever-growing paradoxical demands, it has never been more important for you to know what kind of leader you are.  Your leadersh

The Leadership Dilemma The idea of leadership has always drawn people’s attention. What makes someone a good leader? Have we reached a position where old-fashioned hierarchies don’t apply, and if so, how can a leader adapt to the same? Raj Nayak, the then COO of Viacom18 and founder of House of Cheer, was the best person to spearhead the panel on leadership during 2018’s edition of Knowledge Factory. Raj and Madhavan Narayanan (editor and consultant) discuss how ideas about l

There’s a growing body of research proving the tangible and measurable outcomes of diversity and inclusion initiatives in organizations: whether it is achieving better financial returns , or capturing new  markets of customers. Visibility is another highly touted outcome of these initiatives: a brand’s perception changes based on their inclusion practices. As this study  shows, 64% of people surveyed would take action if the ad they saw was inclusive.  But diversity & inclusi

As the old adage goes, “What gets measured gets done”. It’s a management mainstay, focusing heavily on the importance of frequent measurement and reporting to help you tackle all your challenges. It’s the ideological basis of monitoring and evaluation, the first step towards building an evaluation culture.  Any organization can adapt an M&E system based on project types and goals. Evaluation culture takes it a step forward, by embedding evaluation and learning within organiza

In 2014, we had to work with a national non-profit working on improving health and hygiene among women in rural Uttar Pradesh. As a part of the project, tens of thousands of women were surveyed, and a sanitation plan was developed, and deployed. A year after the project, the sanitation plan was all but abandoned as there were no users, and local authorities did not find the resources to implement it at all.  Looking back on this, the main thing that strikes us is: why did it

There is a section of entrepreneurs that are all around us, but are rarely recognized as ‘entrepreneurs’. We’re talking about nano-entrepreneurs. A nano-entrepreneur , by definition, is a person who runs a business, employing 1-2 people, and dealing with a limited amount of capital and scale. They require little overhead, and thereby, little in the form of initial investment as well.  This definition can include a wide variety of workers in India: from people who run petty sh

The idea of ‘social entrepreneurship’ has been gaining a lot of momentum lately, especially with the ever-increasing focus on self-reliance within the country. This is fueled by India’s long standing tradition of social enterprises, starting from Amul India’s establishment in 1950 as a milk co-operative that lifted thousands of dairy farmers from poverty . While Amul was not established as a social enterprise, it’s a promising and exceedingly famous example of one: after all,

Knowledge Factory is a festival of ideas, insights, and trivia. It’s an avenue of knowledge exchange to throw light on unconventional topics relevant to our world today. Subscribe to Knowledge Factory on Twitter  & YouTube  to stay connected to this world of new ideas.  India has been a thriving ground for aspiring entrepreneurs, as evidenced by the fact that even in the throes of the pandemic, a whopping 16,000 start-ups were recognized in the 2020-21 period. The industry is

With over 2 million social enterprises  registered, India is one of the most fecund grounds for social innovations in the entire world. Global interest in Indian social enterprises is also on the rise: as evidenced by the India Impact Investment trends , which shows that impact investments amounted to $2.6 billion in 2020, with a lot of momentum being shown in early-stage enterprises focused on education, development, agriculture, and healthcare. The future is limitless, as i

In June, we spoke  to Swati Pandey, the laureate of the 2018 Cartier Women’s Initiative (CWI) and Meena Vaidyanathan, the founder of  Niiti Consulting  and Swati’s CWI mentor about their mentor-mentee relationship. 1. How did your mentoring relationship start off back in September 2018 and how has it evolved since then?Swati (laureate):  In the beginning, it took us about two months to connect in person. We connected much better once we had met in person than over emails. Si

One in five people globally report having experienced some form of violence or harassment at work, but what are factors that make some workers more vulnerable than others? Based on the 2021 World Risk Poll report  'Safe at Work? Global experiences of violence and harassment' , we know that while men are marginally more exposed at a global level, for a third of women who reported violence or harassment at work, there was a sexual element to this experience. The  second World

According to the Human Development Report 2020, 78.8% of workers in India are unskilled. This is just one of many stark facts: Present-day labour markets are structured so entry-level wages in the organised sector differ little from casual daily wage labour. While state programs focus on skills relevant to the formal sector, such as computer training and retail, skill development resources for industries like construction need to be more evolved. Given that the construction

‘ESG’ is a term that has been floating around quite a lot recently. Simply put, ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG). It’s a set of criteria pertinent to a company, mostly used by socially conscious investors to determine the impact their potential investments could have in those fields. ESG investments have been known socially responsible investing (SRI) or impact investing as well. ESG investments are being lauded for their ability to increase social

“Customer is king” was (and is) the refrain one often heard as being the ultimate guiding principle, especially in service-oriented businesses. My experience at HCL Tech and translating Vineet Nayar’s philosophy of “Employees First Customer Second” into action was a new paradigm shift in the early to mid-2000s. Subsequently, we have heard many industry stalwarts including Richard Branson talking about putting employees first (especially in service industries) as the customer