CHAPTER ONE: Introduction to the Village of Darsanapur
A long time ago, there was a tiny village in India called Darsanapur.
Darsanapur had a very sad socio-economic make-up.
There was one very rich landlord who owned all the fields in
and around the village. And the village
had about one hundred-odd families of landless labourers who toiled hard in
these fields from sunrise to sundown to make a pittance wage from the landlord.
Every day, the labourers toiled hard in the fields to make a
minimum wage. This wage just about
allowed them to make ends meet, with no savings. Many of them could not even eat a daily meal,
since the wages they earned were so little, that any other unplanned expense such
as sickness or travel left them with no alternative but to skip their mid-day
meal.
Now in this village was a small temple in that was managed
by a very good-hearted pujari (priest). Every
day, after completing his daily puja (prayers), the pujari walked for several
hours to neighbouring villages to beg for alms and food. Most of what he collected, he brought back
and took to the fields to share with some poor farmer who was going hungry.
This routine had been going on for a few years.
CHAPTER TWO: A Visitor
One day, a rich trading merchant moved into the village of Darsanapur. This merchant was a shrewd businessman who
had earned his wealth through hard work and entrepreneurship. He built a big
house close to the temple.
The pujari thought he should try his luck and went to beg
for alms at the merchant’s house.
The merchant was a good man and gave the pujari some food in
alms.
The pujari promptly took the food to some hungry farmers in
the field. Within a short while, he was
back at the merchant’s house to beg for more.
The merchant was puzzled at first but did not want to offend the pujari
so he gave the pujari some more food.
Sure enough, the pujari distributed this additional food to some other
hungry farmers and was back at the merchant’s house in no time to ask for
more. The puzzled merchant then asked
the pujari why it was that he kept asking for food. Did he just have a large appetite?
The disheartened pujari then told the merchant all about how
there was this one rich landlord in Darsanapur and how he paid only pittance as
wage to the landless farmers. The pujari
also described how he walked for several hours every day to get food for them
from neighbouring villages.
The merchant carefully heard all about the pujari’s hard
work to collect enough food for the helpless landless farmers of Darsanapur.
Then the merchant gave the pujari ten coins and said, “Go
buy a big tiffin box. So that when you
come the next time, you can carry enough food for your friends and you don’t
have to walk back and forth from the fields in this scorching sun.” The pujari gratefully took the ten coins from
the merchant.
The next day, the pujari was back at the merchant’s house
begging for alms and food for himself and for the landless farmers. The merchant asked him for the tiffin box so
that he could give him enough food for all.
However, the pujari said, “Dear merchant, forgive me but I
did not buy the tiffin box.” “The pain
of seeing hungry farmers was too great for me.
So instead I spent the ten coins on buying fruit and distributed the
fruit among farmers for their families.
My heart yearns for them and I could not bring myself to spend money on
anything other than on fruit for the poor families.”
The merchant was quiet.
He was thinking hard but did not share his thoughts with the pujari.
He quietly gave the pujari as much food as the pujari could
carry and then sent him off on his way.
In a short while, the pujari came back for more food to the merchant’s
house. But found the house locked. The pujari was shocked and angry! How could
the merchant go away? Didn’t he know
that there were so many hungry farmers who could benefit from alms? In his heart of heart, he could not help but
curse the merchant for having deserted the poor farmers.
CHAPTER THREE: The Tour
The merchant had actually not gone away. He had locked his house in rage that the
pujari had violated his trust and not bought the tiffin box with the money. The merchant was in a shed in his
backyard. He was packing clothes, some
supplies and some material for trade for a long tour.
Early the next morning, the merchant took off in his horse-cart
and began a tour that would take him several months to complete. This tour involved a visit to 30 towns that
were close to the village of Darsanapur.
At each town that the merchant went to, he first contacted
some of the wealthiest traders and either sold them some goods or purchased
some merchandize from them. This allowed
him to make friends with them. He then
would describe to them the plight of the villagers of Darsanapur and asked for
their help. Over the months of his travel, within each of the 30 towns the
merchant visited, he established trading partners who:
- Agreed to trade with him regularly
- Agreed to put aside a share of the profits to fund one cartload of food once a month for the poor farmers of Darsanapur.
After about 3 months of this exhausting but profitable tour,
the merchant returned back to Darsanapur.
By now, he had a donor committed to supplying food for each day of the
month in addition some profitable trade deals.
It was late in the evening when the merchant returned back to Darsanapur.
CHAPTER FOUR: The Return
The next morning, the merchant went to the fields. The
landless farmers were quite surprised to see this well-dressed man in the
scorching sun.
The merchant told them of his plans. “I will ensure that all of you have enough
food for lunch every day. However, I
need to have 3 men every-day who will ride to the town I tell you in my
horse-cart. They will then ride back
with 2 carts of goods for me and one cart full of food for the village.”
The farmers readily agreed.
Giving up one day of labour was a small price to pay for 3 men to get
lunch for all hundred farmers. The merchant
was happy too that he was getting free help to transport his goods – which
meant more profit.
And so it came to pass.
Every day, 3 labourers would ride the merchant’s horse-cart to one of
the towns and carry back two carts of goods and one cart of food to Darsanapur. And the farmers feasted on a hearty lunch
every day in the fields.
Everybody was happy!
The farmers for the food, the traders from the neighbouring villages for
the business and profits, the merchant for being able to get free labour and a
profitable business. In fact, the
landlord was happy too! The merchant had
started buying the produce from the farm and using his newly created transport
organization was able to sell farm produce from Darsanapur to the 30
neighbouring towns for higher profits.
This allowed the landlord to make a little more money than he used to in
the past. Well, almost everybody was happy – not the pujari.
The pujari was very angry at the merchant. In the pujari’s view, the merchant was
exploiting the poor farmers for personal profit.
“How dare the merchant ask the farmers to transport his
goods for free despite being so wealthy?” thought the pujari to himself. “And how dare the merchant exploit the
charity of his trading partners for personal benefit. This was so immoral! Surely the merchant would rot in hell,” he
thought to himself.
The pujari remembered the long hard days where he slept on
an empty stomach just to make sure that at least some farmers did not go
hungry. However, now the pujari realized
that he needed to beg for alms for only himself. The farmers did not really need any lunch
because now they had a cartful of food every day. They could also save a little money from
their wages and use it for emergencies. So
while he was happy that the farmers were not in trouble, he was very angry that
the immoral merchant who had denied him food for the farmers on the second day of
his visit and who was personally benefiting from all the charity being done by
his trading partners, was so popular – not only with the farmers, but also with
the wicked landlord.
But the nice man that he was, the pujari prayed for the
merchant every day in the temple, requesting God to forgive the merchant for
his immoral and selfish behaviour.
CHAPTER FIVE: Moral of the Story
The Sanskrit word for philosophy or direct vision is
Darsana. This short story is seeking to
provoke thoughts around the vision or philosophy of social
entrepreneurship.
5 Key inferences that could be drawn from this story are:
While the pujari had a good heart and worked very hard to
help his fellow farmers, he could but make only limited impact on their
lives. It was only the innovation and
entrepreneurship demonstrated by the merchant that actually created a
sustainable change in the socio-economic landscape of Darsanapur.
Many leading change leaders agree that sustainable change
needs the involvement of the stakeholders for whose benefit you are attempting
the change. The merchant ensured that
the farmers were in some ways contributing to the process that would help make
their lives better. Pure welfare
assistance or hand-outs rarely leads to sustainable change. It may be wiser to invest resources in
teaching people to fish and then motivating them to fish for themselves as
opposed to giving out fish as alms!
3. Unity is Strength
An important extension of the engagement of stakeholders is
the notion of community assets. When you
have a community own an asset or process of improvement, each individual looks
out for the other and can divide the risks and responsibilities so that no one
person is overwhelmed. This principle is
used widely by the Government of India when extending subsidies to
self-governed self-help-groups (SHG) as opposed to individuals.
4. Sustainability
Sustainability is an important principle of social
entrepreneurship. The pujari although
well-meaning deflected resources away from a tiffin box (that could have been a
sustainable solution enabler) to food (that was a short term gain). Planning for sustainability is cardinal in
social enterprise.
5. Generating Surplus is Crucial for Stability
Many individuals view the notion of generating a surplus or
a profit as being in contradiction with trying to help people. Somehow, making profits while trying to
impact quality of life is viewed as immoral.
The fact is, that profits or surplus allow you to attract strong talent
and build organizational strength that brings growth and sustainability to a
social enterprise. As Dan Pallota warns
us, “Don’t confuse morality with frugality!”
