Volume 19, Number 4 Article by Trilochan Sastry and R Srinivasan December, 2007
An Enabling Model of Community Development :
Context of Interview with M P Vasimalai, Founder and CEO, DHAN Foundation
The DHAN Foundation, headquartered in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, serves over 600,000 poor families through facilities in microfinance, agriculture and ICT. Unlike most other NGOs, who directly deliver services to the community, DHAN creates community-based organisations that deliver the services. In order to understand this unique enabling model, IIMB professors Trilochan Sastry and R Srinivasan spoke to M P Vasimalai, DHAN’s founder and CEO.
M P Vasimalai, a graduate of the IIM Ahmedabad, has spent his entire career after graduation in the development sector and set up the DHAN Foundation in 1997. Vasimalai believes that the task of an external enabler is really to build community organisations. Decisions are then bottom up, demand driven, develop members’ capabilities much better and foster participatory democracy. In the long run it also translates into higher incomes in a sustained manner. With his management training and development experience, he brings fresh perspectives to both fields. In addition to adopting the enabling model that DHAN has proved both effective and sustainable in the long run, the development sector could also emulate DHAN’s rigorous mechanisms for assessing its own processes and progress. The corporate sector on the other hand can benefit from DHAN’s business model as well as Vasimalai’s definition of the top and bottom line of an organisation in the development context, his views on sustainability and his insights on leadership, based on the Buddhist concepts of buddham, sangham and dharmam.
Reprint No 07403a&b
