Satyabrata Acharya has one of the most important jobs in India. As Programme Director, Jharkhand for NGO Pradan, he leads 12 teams who are responsible for guiding over 100,000 families out of poverty.
Dhrubaa Mukhopadhyaya heads one of these teams. When, after graduating with an M.Phil from Jadavpur University, she joined Pradan in 1995, her teachers and classmates thought she was nuts! Today, she and her team of Executives, Subject Matter Specialists (SMS), and Development Apprentices work with 250 villages in two districts of Jharkhand and Bihar- helping them improve their land condition, increase agricultural productivity, and explore additional livelihood options.

Sericulture expert, Prabhati, and Development Apprentices, Meena (Patna University,’07) & Bhavna (BHU,’07) are three young ladies roughing it out in the villages. Working as part of Dhrubaa’s tight-knit team, they display a passion that is hard to find in urban centers today. I witnessed Prabhati and Meena training villagers to produce Tasar cocoon, while Bhavna sang & danced with tribal kids at a mobile crèche being run by Pradan at village Raksha( while the mothers were busy at the Tasar reeling centre).

Having been a spectator to the HR mayhem in metros and mini-metros, where youngsters driven purely by material gains, accept and leave jobs every six months, it was something else to see this young Pradan brigade in action.
Pradan carefully hires and nurtures this young talent. Sujata Nath, the talented HR Executive who traveled with me on my field visit, filled me in on the details of the intensive 12-month apprenticeship that all Pradan hires go through. But, as Pradan scales up its operations to meet its Vision 2017(of working with 1.5 mn poor families), it needs as many as 100 teams(= 800 people) across the country. For Pradan’s HR Director, Nivedita Narain, this is the real HR challenge. On the one hand, Pradan needs to hire such large numbers; on the other hand, retaining this trained and committed team is an equally big challenge. As these executives reach their late-20s or early-30s, and have families, they feel the need to move to an urban centre, in order to get better housing and education.
One way to overcome this hiring challenge is for Corporates to collaborate with large NGOs like Pradan. 4 to 6 years of Pradan training produces some of the best managers who understand rural markets; for corporates addressing mass markets, this could be a boon. By working together with corporates, Pradan could continue to hire the best youngsters, while offering them a road-map (to a corporate career) after 4-6 years.
Are companies like ICICI, Unilever, Asian Paints, and Mahindra’s ready?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 7:10 am and is filed under Inclusive Growth, NGO, Indian Economy, Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR That Works, On The Road, Remarkable People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.