Together We Empoer 3rd Edition

Awards and endorsements for 2016 editions of Together WeEmpower: Rekindling Hope in Rural IndiaNational Indie Excellence Award (NIEA) winner for Multicultural NonFiction, Foreword Reviews’INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist in SocialSciences, and 2016 International Book Awards(IBA) winner in thecategory of Social Change.“is book tells the compelling story of moving a society from adversity to prosperity,turning roadblocks into opportunities, and helping community members find theirvoices and become engaged and active members of society, cognizant of their rights andresponsibilities as citizens. e resulting changes carry the potential to deepen and widenin their impact. e 3-P approach (people, products, and profits) to development work isunique in its application of business concepts to rural development initiatives to buildsustainable and lasting partnerships among all stakeholders.”~Deep Shikha, PhD, Department of Economics St. Catherine University,Minnesota“Together We Empower illustrates how individual hardships combined with innovations inseed science inspired Suri and Edda Sehgal’s personal philanthropy to flow from Iowa toIndia’s most indigent villages, clearing a pathway out of poverty for the poorest of thepoor.”~Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn, president, e World Food Prize Foundation,Des Moines, Iowa“e selfless activities performed by S M Sehgal Foundation go far beyond theirremarkable achievements related to water. eir new scientific as well as grassrootsinnovations are effectively addressing the needs of the poor in rural India. I wish everyNGO in India operated with the level of professionalism and credibility of S M SehgalFoundation.~M.L. Kansal, PhD, JPSS chair professor, Hydropower Water ResourcesDevelopment & Management Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee“Despite the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the fruits ofdevelopment did not reach some sections of the people in India. Social, economic, andpolitical justice, which is the promise of the Constitution of India, are being realizedincrementally in the villages where S M Sehgal Foundation works.”

~N.R. Madhava Menon, LLD (1935-2019), legal educator, innovator, andinstitution builder; founding vice chancellor of the National Law School of IndiaUniversity; and posthumous (2020) awardee of the Padma Bhushan, India’s civilianhonor for distinguished and exceptional service“Together We Empower documents how S M Sehgal Foundation has positivelytransformed and empowered rural communities and farming families. e foundation’stalented team is dedicated to measurable results and highly innovative in their approachesto solving complicated issues. e Mosaic Company and its foundation are honored towork alongside S M Sehgal Foundation to advance agriculture development, watersecurity, and educational opportunities where the needs are greatest in rural Indianvillages.”~Kari Niedfeldt-omas, senior manager, Social Responsibility; and executivedirector, e Mosaic Company Foundation“A revolution in the condition of women that will enable them to lead a fulfilling anddignified life is the need of the hour. e world will be a better place when women areempowered, which is why we should celebrate the spirit of this valuable book.”~Kiran Prasad, PhD, Communication and Journalism Sri Padmavati MahilaUniversity, India“S M Sehgal Foundation’s successful water system innovations, which benefitcommunities across diverse geographies, show the viability of a market-based model toprovide people in need with a sustainable source of affordable, reliable, and safe water. Iam quite excited to see that efforts and achievements by S M Sehgal Foundation are aptlydescribed in this book, a valuable document for others to follow and implement. eseinitiatives will no doubt be taken up by many social enterprises to impact millions morein need.”~D.R. Prasada Raju, PhD, FNAE, advisor and head, retd., Dept. of Science andTechnology, Government of India, New Delhi

Endorsements for this ird Edition of Together We Empower:Rekindling Hope in Rural India“Author Marly Cornell’s words paint a picture of the progress achieved by S M SehgalFoundation in rural areas of India during the last 25+ years. Seeds sown by SMSFfounders, Suri and Edda Sehgal, have borne fruits for millions in rural India inagriculture development, water management, women’s empowerment, rural schoolimprovements, and knowledge sharing. It has been my privilege to visit some of thetransformed schools, water augmentation check dams, the community radio station, andmeet with people in the villages—students, farmers, teachers, as well as the visionary staffof SMSF. I could feel the great future in their hope, ambition, enthusiasm, and smilingfaces. A number of us in Minnesota have been helping to support the Transform Lives oneschool at a time program since 2016 by sponsoring rural schools with modern facilitiesand classrooms and digital libraries and trainings. ese efforts have increased schoolenrollment, especially for girls, and are helping India move forward more rapidly. I amhopeful that SMSF work in all areas will raise rural India to the next levels ofdevelopment and achievement over the next 25+ years.”~Ram Gada, cofounder of India Oral History Projects with India Assn of Minnesotaand Minnesota Historical Society, recipient of JAINA Ratna Award & LifetimeService Award from Asia Pacific of MN.(Ram is featured in e $8 Man: From India to North America, Immigrants Who Camewith Nothing and Changed Everything by Brenda A Richardson)“rough their foundation, Suri and Edda Sehgal have endeavored to address the greatestneeds of rural India—to develop India’s villages and bring about positive transformationsin the lives of the people. eir patient and intentional focus on better agriculturepractices, water management, school improvements and, most importantly, givingvillagers a voice to be heard, have combined the essential levers of social change to resultin empowered women, children, and communities. I wish S M Sehgal Foundation everysuccess in the coming years!”~Vyoma Nair, MSc, executive board advisor to Nucleus, and volunteer advisor to SM Sehgal Foundation“Together We Empower describes how the foundation that Suri and Edda Sehgalestablished and managed, grew to make a major positive impact on the everyday concernsof the rural poor in India: improving farming practices, water management, communityparticipation in securing approved benefits, women’s empowerment, and a lot more. S M

Sehgal Foundation focuses on building long-term hard and soft infrastructure—andteaching ‘how to fish’ rather than ‘providing fish for the day.’ I have seen their impactfirsthand. is foundation is growing rapidly into one of the most remarkable socialservice NGOs in India.”~Dr. Arun Maheshwari, chairman and CEO of North South Foundation, andvolunteer advisor to S M Sehgal Foundation“We have had the privilege of visiting schools and meeting students whose lives have beentransformed by the visionary work of S M Sehgal Foundation. In the eyes of these youngpeople—especially girls—we saw hope, confidence, and a spark of possibility. ey speakwith courage and curiosity about their futures and the change they envision for theircommunities. Every conversation with students, teachers, and community leadersreaffirmed our belief that when opportunity reaches the grassroots, transformationfollows. e foundation has not only improved livelihoods but reshaped mindsets—instilling agency and optimism across rural India. S M Sehgal Foundation continues toilluminate the path toward a more equitable and compassionate world. It reminds us thatlasting change begins with hope, is nurtured through action, and sustained bycommunity. e foundation approach stands as a model for sustainable impact—whereempowerment is measured not only by outcomes, but by the enduring confidence ofpeople to create their own change.”~Dr. Yogesh Shah MD, MHP and Deval Shah, physician and dementia carespecialist; advocates for global health and education“Having volunteered and served on boards of various organizations, we have found thatSehgal Foundation exemplifies how a charitable foundation should function. Together WeEmpower captures the essence of this work. Key features that set this foundation apart: 1)Every dollar donated is matched. Our contributions go directly to the work in India,because Sehgal Foundation covers its own administrative costs. 2) e commitment tosustainability is assured by careful selection of projects that ensure strong communityparticipation and ownership before moving forward. 3) eir skilled technology teamdevelops and deploys practical, innovative, and locally appropriate solutions to improvecrop yields and farmers’ livelihoods; and their holistic, systems-based approach improves acommunity’s school infrastructure with clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. SehgalFoundation has truly mastered the elusive “third bottom line”—achieving sustainablegrowth that benefits people and the planet.”~Anoop and Preeti Mathur, Sehgal Foundation champions, Minnesota“Many profess to care about society, many others passionately espouse the cause of thepoor, but seldom does one see a strong, sustained, empathetic response on the ground. S

M Sehgal Foundation, over more than twenty-five years, has institutionalized its approachto community upliftment among the poorest of the poor in rural India through itspowerful ‘3i’s’ of integrity, impact, and innovation. Together We Empower captures thatjourney, which has been one of change, dedication, selfless effort, scrupulous adherence toTRUST and INTEGRITY, and relentless efforts on the ground, among real people,person by person, hamlet by hamlet, to help provide the basics for contemporary agrarianpractices, water, sanitation, and skills development. is book chronicles the power ofphilanthropy, humanity, relentless empathy and empowerment to move forward the dialof hopes, aspirations, and lives.While I served on the board of Nestle India Ltd, I witnessed firsthand, in ourpartnership with Sehgal Foundation, the power of strategy, purpose, execution,community efforts, partnerships based on common cause, integrity, trust, andoutstanding professionalism. I witnessed hope in the eyes of people, the sparkle in youngchildren to learn, and a blossoming of ambition and determination to overcome thedreary circumstances of their birth. Kudos to everyone who works at SMSF—you makechange happen each day and TOGETHER we make a better, more humane, more justworld. I write these sincere words as a tribute to this team who are making a realdifference in rural India. To borrow from Robert Frost, we have miles to go before wesleep, but we are enthusiastically awake to the cause.”~Suresh Narayanan, former chairman and managing director, Nestle India Ltd.

“To rekindle hope is to put the power in empowerment.”~Suri and Edda Sehgal

Copyright © 2016, 2026 Sehgal FoundationAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-9906207-7-8 (print)ISBN: 978-0-9906207-8-5 (ebook)Cover and interior design: BookwrightsSome names have been changed to protect the privacy of villagers.Proceeds from the sale of this book go to the work of SM Sehgal Foundation.Des Moines ~ Gurugramwww.smsfoundation.org

ContentsFrom the Foreword to 1st,-2nd Editions by M.S. SwaminathanForeword to 3rd Edition by Dr. Prabhu PingaliIntroduction1. An Inspired Vision2. Underpromise and Overdeliver3. Build Trust4. Stay Focused5. Seeing Is Believing6. Time to Scale Up7. A Magic Formula8. New Heroes Emerge9. Critical Learning10. Crystallized Strategy11. Grassroots Engagement12. A Game-Changing Mandate13. Impact Assessed14. Expanded Teams and Partnerships15. Scaling Up16. Farmer Capacities Advance17. Pandemic ~ Rising Up18. Surge Ahead

19. Expanded Empowerment20. Beyond 25 YearsAppendicesAwards and RecognitionsGlossaryAcknowledgmentsIndexAbout the Author

From the Foreword to the 1st & 2nd EditionsLong ago, Mahatma Gandhi said that India’s “villagers have lost all hope. ey suspectthat every stranger’s hand is at their throats and that he goes to them only to exploitthem.” Against such a background, this book about S M Sehgal Foundation, whichprovides hope where there was despair, is welcome. Together We Empower documents thehistory and evolution of the foundation, offering a glimpse into this unique institutionand its impact at the grassroots level as well as in academic and policy circles. efoundation’s success is due to its approach to development programs that address thegreatest needs faced by villages in rural India.S M Sehgal Foundation has been at the forefront of many innovations that helpmanage water resources, improve agricultural production and rural income in some ofthe country’s poorest communities, and empower communities to demand good villagegovernance. I am heartened by S M Sehgal Foundation’s emphasis on individual rights.Leading by example and adopting a socially inclusive approach to development, S MSehgal Foundation is continuing to emerge as a knowledge institute.I wish S M Sehgal Foundation continued growth and success in achieving ruraltransformation based on developmental strategies that are pro-nature, pro-advocacy forthe poor, and pro-gender equality.I hope this story will inspire all those who wish to assist and empower rural and tribalfamilies and abolish poverty and hunger. As founder Suri Sehgal so rightly points out,“e only thing that counts at the end is the impact.”—M. S. Swaminathan, 2016

Agronomist, geneticist, humanitarian, and global Green Revolution leader, Dr. M. S.Swaminathan (1925-2023) won the first World Food Prize (1987) for his workintroducing high-yielding wheat and rice varieties to India’s farmers. He served asUNESCO chair in Ecotechnology and founded M S Swaminathan Research Foundationin Chennai, India, to develop and promote economic growth and increase employmentof poor women in rural areas. e United Nations hailed Dr. Swaminathan as the “Fatherof Economic Ecology.” His many honors included the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, andPadma Vibhushan awards for his immense contribution to science, innovation, andalleviation of food scarcity.

Foreword to the 3rd EditionLet me start by congratulating S M Sehgal Foundation for twenty-five years ofenormously impactful work. is work has shown how effective philanthropy can make adifference in uplifting the lives of poorest and most marginalized populations in India.Over the past seventy-five years, India has seen enormous success in terms of rapidlyenhancing agricultural productivity, reaching food self-sufficiency and kick-starting agrowth process that resulted in it becoming a global economic powerhouse. Yet India isalso home to the largest number of poor and malnourished populations in the world. edichotomy between rising urban standards of living and stagnant rural livelihoods isstriking and needs priority attention of government policy and civil societyorganizations. It is heartening to see that the S M Sehgal Foundation’s mission focuses onbridging this gap by enhancing rural incomes and improving the quality of rural lives.e emphasis on women’s empowerment is particularly noteworthy. Empowered womenare drivers of household welfare and broader social change.Together We Empower truly makes the case for rekindling hope in rural India. epersonal history of Suri and Edda Sehgal and their motivation to give back to theircommunity is combined with the foundation’s own lived experience in developmentpractice. e challenges and successes in working at the community level are extremelywell documented.is book provides a roadmap for future philanthropists interested in giving back andto NGOs interested in rural development and empowerment. As a developmentpractitioner and an academic, I found the book resonates with many of my ownexperiences in rural development, and I look forward to using it as a resource for myclasses in agricultural development.

S M Sehgal Foundation’s work shows how to make “rising India” benefit all its people,especially those least empowered and disadvantaged. is great experiment needs to beemulated by other development organizations in India and elsewhere.I wish S M Sehgal Foundation’s continued success over the next twenty-five years andbeyond.~Pradhu Pengali, 2025Dr. Prabhu Pingali is a professor of International Development Economics at CornellUniversity, and the founding director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture andNutrition (TCI). He is the past chair of the Governing Board of ICRISAT. He has heldsenior management positions in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), theConsortium of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the Gates Foundation.Dr. Pingali has written fifteen books and over two hundred refereed journal articles andbook chapters on food policy and agriculture. His 2019 book, Transforming Food Systemsfor a Rising India, has been influential in India’s food and agriculture community.

Introductione first time Edda Sehgal visited the rural villages in Mewat, where S M SehgalFoundation (SMSF) would start its rural development work in India, she looked into thefaces of women and was struck by what she saw in their eyes. She said, “I wondered howthey could exist in such difficult living conditions, with so much missing and not evenclean water to drink. A woman we spoke to said, ‘India has forgotten us.’”But soon after SMSF work began in Mewat, Edda Sehgal saw those same eyes light upas women and young girls were offered an opportunity to learn a skill for the first time intheir lives, one as simple as stitching cloth. “is was touching to us. ese people wereanxious to have more opportunities. ey liked what they were learning. We knew wecouldn’t do everything for everyone, but we were at least doing something constructivefor some. We were excited too, seeing young girls blossom.”e foundation team learned that, while furthering the well-being of ruralcommunities in India requires patience, the basic ingredients for transformation werealready present, even amid formidable challenges, in the hearts and minds of the peoplewho live in India’s rural villages. To defeat what may seem as unsurmountable roadblocksto development, such as poverty, education barriers, isolation, and social inequalities,rural citizens and their village-level institutions had only to be supported andstrengthened with the knowledge, skills, and encouragement to take charge of their owndestiny.Working in partnership alongside communities to achieve these ends proved to be thekey to accelerating development in rural India. Strengthening village-level institutionsand empowering rural citizens with the knowledge, skills, and inspiration to take charge oftheir own destiny has led to transformational change.

Earlier editions of this book chronicled the first fifteen years of work carried out bySMSF. At that point, the foundation team’s diverse and evolving initiatives had expandedto hundreds of villages where steady progress was being made. ey witnessed new hopein each project and every new partnership. By the twenty-five-year mark that promptedthis new edition, the founders, Suri and Edda Sehgal, along with SMSF teams andpartners, celebrated the remarkable acceleration that had occurred since the organization’sinception, and the careful strategic expansion in partnerships that brought suchtransformative growth. e insights contained herein are offered so others can build onthe hard-earned achievements, and learn from the inevitable missteps, to further thedevelopment and well-being of India’s rural communities.is new edition offers added perspectives to the continuing evolution of the work,emphasizing the underlying fundamental values and guiding principles that shaped thedecisions, nurtured the talent, and made the changes and adjustments over the firsttwenty-five years. Learning from successes as well as mistakes charted a path that promisesa continued positive trajectory.A stunning leap forward in scale and partnerships in the last decade has brought evengreater achievements, endorsements, triumphs, and recognitions that are so rare for sucha relatively small NGO. ese years have produced exceptional growth and success, alongwith greater wisdom, maturity, and perspective, to a professional staff that has expandedincrementally to meet the needs.Teams on-the-ground, grassroots expertise, and an increasing number of corporatesocial responsibility (CSR) initiatives, have significantly multiplied the foundation’s reachand impact. ese factors together have expanded the outreach and programming fromhundreds of villages in a few states to thousands of rural communities across thirteen ofIndia’s states, positively transforming the lives of well over five million people.Continuing progress and expansion show no hint of slowing down.Together We Empower: Rekindling Hope in Rural India is offered as a record of thefoundation’s rural development work in India and a valid benchmark and a definitiveexample to measure against when judging the quality, value, and authenticity of suchefforts. is record also serves as a historical touchstone for SMSF team members,partners, and collaborators—past, present, and future—who are inspired to assist inempowering rural India. is includes interns, volunteers, academic and businessprofessionals, students, and newcomers to the development field—anyone invested incorporate social responsibility, those planning to create their own developmentfoundation, and those who have already begun that journey. is volume is also a nod ofthanks to key stakeholders who played pivotal roles in the continuing expansion—thecorporations, grassroots partners, government allies, individuals, and group partnersacross the globe, and all the people in the villages where SMSF work has been done.

e uniqueness of S M Sehgal Foundation among NGOs as a leader in ruraldevelopment and grassroots empowerment is embedded with an integrated approach torural development. e overarching goal is still to improve the quality of life of ruralcommunities in India so that every person can have a secure, prosperous, and dignifiedlife. With a reputation built on a commitment to integrity, impact, and innovation,which the foundation team refers to as “the three i’s,” S M Sehgal Foundation serves as arole model for sustainable development in its uniquely qualified people, theircommitment to a shared vision and values, and their passion for excellence. eir teambuilding approach, effective relationships and partnerships, work environment, andinfrastructures all serve to make possible the continued success and goal of sustainability.Because so many NGOs do not thrive despite worthy goals and intentions, thisrevised and expanded edition of Together We Empower is offered to share the wisdomgained on the journey that transformed S M Sehgal Foundation into a top nonprofit androle model for sustainable rural development, and to inspire those with similar aspirationsto make a positive difference across rural India and/or elsewhere in the world.e entire SMSF team remains wholeheartedly committed to continually evaluatingthe components involved in their noteworthy achievements and staying open to newideas, technologies, and efforts to maintain and further expand their reach to thethousands of communities across rural India that may still remain underdeveloped andisolated, but no longer forgotten!Aspirations for the next phases of growth and transformation include continuedinnovations to address emerging rural challenges and expanded geographies. Scaling upthe most-effective projects and programs will help ensure that hope continues to benurtured, and inclusive growth becomes the norm. e teams of S M Sehgal Foundationendorse the founders’ intention, “We will continue to learn as the work expands andcontinue to change as we learn to achieve positive transformative change across ruralIndia.”

An Inspired VisionDr. Surinder (Suri) M. Sehgal and his wife, Mrs. Edda G. Sehgal, approached the start ofrural development work in India with the belief that every person in the more than640,000 rural villages across the country deserves a secure, prosperous, and dignified life.e Sehgals were especially concerned about the millions of small farmers living on arid,rain-fed (rain-dependent) land, those who were bypassed in large part by the GreenRevolution and by modern agricultural practices.1 ose families who lived in suchimpoverished and precarious conditions would become the primary focus of the Sehgals’philanthropic work. Understanding that the exact nature of this work would evolvedepending upon a complex combination of social, cultural, and economic factors, theSehgals were primed for the challenge, open to the possibilities, and ready for hard work.Suri and Edda Sehgal had each escaped dangerous circumstances as children in theircountries of origin—Suri from the part of the Punjab in India that is now Pakistan, andEdda from the part of German Silesia that is now Poland.2 Suri’s personal commitmentto social responsibility, community empowerment, and gender equality was implantedearly in his life. When Suri was a child, his father was a follower and associate of MahatmaGandhi and a community leader in the Indian National Congress. ey worked hard forfreedom from British rule in India. When the Sehgal family became refugees during thebloody Partition of India in 1947, Suri experienced poverty, hunger, and homelessnessfirsthand at age thirteen.While separated from his family and living on the streets of Delhi for a time, theyoung boy found comfort at the feet of Gandhi who spoke each evening on the groundsof the Birla House (the home of Gandhi’s friend and benefactor), where Gandhi lived

during the final months before his assassination in January 1948. e great teacher’smessage in favor of unity, and highly critical of injustice and inequality, was deeplyembedded in Suri’s mind, and stayed with him throughout his life.Edda knew similar deprivation as a small child when she and her family becamerefugees from German Silesia toward the end of World War II and through the years thatfollowed. e couple’s common experiences as displaced people living in compromisedcircumstances provided each of them with deep compassion for the poor, and a strongand enduring desire to take an active part in helping those less fortunate.After earning a PhD in plant genetics from Harvard University, and later a diplomain business management from Harvard Business School, Suri Sehgal became, over thecourse of his career, “a primary player in the development and worldwide disseminationof high-quality hybrid seed.”3 With Edda, he developed a successful seed business, ProagroGroup, consisting of four companies (three in India and one in Egypt) headquartered inNew Delhi. Part of Proagro’s corporate mission was to improve the lives of the rural poor.With the profitable sale of Proagro in 1998, the Sehgals used the bulk of the proceedsto establish a philanthropic foundation based in their hometown, Des Moines, Iowa,4 anda public charitable trust in India the following year—S M Sehgal Foundation (SMSF),based in Gurgaon (now Gurugram), Haryana.Suri explained, “Undertaking an obligation to repay the many kindnesses we havereceived throughout our lives, my family and I established these foundations to put ourpersonal resources to work to make a positive difference in the lives of others.”e choice of Gurgaon district for the foundation headquarters in India was astrategic decision. e location, about thirty-two kilometers southwest of New Delhi inthe state of Haryana, was familiar, because Proagro Group’s operations for the NorthIndia Region had been based there.Although a relatively prosperous state, certain parts of Haryana were home to some ofthe poorest of the poor in India, particularly in Mewat.5 In contrast to developmentoccurring elsewhere in the district, time seemed to have stood still in the villages ofMewat. Despite its close proximity to New Delhi, Mewat faced challenges in accessinggovernment programs aimed at assisting the poor. Until 2018, the Indian governmentthink tank, NITI Aayog (National Institute for Transforming India) still referred toMewat as the “most backward district” in the country.6e region’s low literacy rate, high infant mortality, skewed gender ratio in favor ofmen, little availability of clean drinking water, widespread malnutrition, lack ofhealthcare, erratic electric power, and extremely limited natural resources identifiedMewat as an area of profound and urgent need. Attempts by others to develop the regionhad been fruitless.

e Sehgals felt that if SMSF could demonstrate success in such a difficult anddeprived place, their programs could be expected to also perform well in otherunderdeveloped regions.e foundation’s operations in Gurgaon began in a rented one-story house withoffices in the front and two guest rooms in back. A move was soon made to a rented twostory house with first floor offices, and a second floor that served as a guest facility withSpartan, but comfortable, furnishings. Suri and Edda stayed there when in India.With the primary office location close to the villages being served, the foundationteam could more easily monitor the progress of their grassroots projects and make suredeliverables were achieved. Core staff, external experts, and international visitors foundthe location accessible, which would be an important advantage as global partnershipswere further developed.From day one of the creation of the foundation, the Sehgals were convinced thatpoverty in rural India was related to large family sizes and the powerless position ofwomen. Rural women had little control over their reproductive lives and no easy accessto information about reproductive health issues. ough women had primaryresponsibility for providing food and water, childcare, and family health, they remainedisolated at home and working in the fields.Women made up the majority of the agricultural workforce in India, and the manuallabor they did for their families was not compensated. Discouraged from seekingeducation, and often prevented from acquiring assets or influence, women had nodecision-making power within their families, or with family finances or farming practices.Economically, they were entirely dependent upon their husbands or other male familymembers. Even though the Constitution of India granted equal rights to men andwomen, keeping women subservient was deeply embedded in the centuries-oldpatriarchal traditions of the culture.Growing up with six sisters, Suri saw up close how little voice women had even inwell-educated Indian families. He noticed that his mother and sisters carried out all dayto-day responsibilities involved in running their large household. His father was soconcerned about and involved in efforts for the public good, that his own family wasoften neglected. “Our family was relatively progressive, but still,” Suri recalled, “when itcame to marriage, education, or selecting a spouse, boys were given preference in allthings. A son-in-law was on a pedestal; a daughter-in-law had limited recognition. If mysisters had been given the same opportunities I was given, I know they would have donejust as well or even better.”As a strong promoter of empowerment for women, Edda Sehgal took a specialinterest in education for girls and improving healthcare and sanitation conditions in thevillages of Mewat. e foundation team would endeavor to empower women to have avoice in their families and in their communities.

Other contemporary influencers shared the Sehgals’ views. United Nations SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan had asserted that “no tool for development is more effective than theempowerment of women.”Suri and Edda Sehgal’s vision for their foundation in India was clear. ey wantedtheir NGO (nongovernmental nonprofit organization) to be effective, credible,transparent, and “built to last.” SMSF had to be well managed, with the ability to evolve,in order to ensure the enduring impact of productive work in perpetuity.A centuries-old parable of three stonecutters illustrates the situation where the Sehgalsfound themselves. In the story, three stonecutters were busy working on the same largeproject when each was asked what they were building. e first said he was “making aliving,” the second said he was “doing high-quality stonecutting,” and the third said, “I ambuilding a cathedral.” All three stonecutters had the same job and used the same tools, butthey each had a very different perspective on their work on a cathedral that would likelytake longer than their lifetimes to complete.Suri recognized himself as in agreement with the sentiments of the third stonecutterwhen he first heard that story some years later, saying, “We are indeed building acathedral!” He said that the stonecutter story “reconfirmed that I was on the right track.My approach all along has been to have a short-term and long-term balance in workingtoward our objectives. I have always preached to our people to think ‘beyond the wall.’Similarly, on geographic expansion, my focus-has always been a balance between localand global efforts. ink globally and act locally to achieve the desired results.”e initial plan was for the foundation in India to serve as a “donor” organization.Rather than develop new programs to confront such deeply entrenched issues, they beganby providing funds to other NGOs already doing good work in Mewat. e first projectssought were in the areas of agricultural productivity and family stabilization. By requiringclearly defined goals, deliverables, and timelines from their NGO partners, the Sehgalshoped to achieve quantifiable results. Funded projects would be evaluated in six-monthintervals, and discontinued if they didn’t work out or were not sustainable.e founders operated with a firm belief that the sustainability of a project can onlybe achieved if driven by community participants, a concept key to continuingdevelopment, particularly in light of limited funds. Transferring a concept they knew wellin business, the Sehgals understood that, just as a company cannot survive without profits,a philanthropic foundation cannot thrive without the equivalent—sustainable results.e deliverables are not the same, but measurable results are required in bothsituations. eir vision for helping was not based on “charitable” giving so much as onlending a hand to those who were willing to take an active part in their ownempowerment.e Sehgals began assembling a capable working team to oversee their operations. Inchoosing core staff for their fledgling organization, their top priority was to hire

trustworthy individuals they could rely upon for all facets of the foundation on-site. efirst executive director was Arvind Bahl, who had worked at Proagro for ten years as anadministrative director, where he coordinated major projects and proved histrustworthiness. e rest of the original team were social scientists qualified to monitorthe effectiveness of funded initiatives. ese people then searched for appropriate projectsand partners.Bahl recruited B.R. Poonia, a skilled sociologist who had worked for more thantwenty years with organizations committed to fighting poverty, including CARE Indiaand Trees for Life. Poonia had substantial experience in the rural sector and spoke thelocal language. Originally from a Rajasthan village that was similar to those communitieswith the greatest development needs, he brought the experience and insight to observeprograms in action and evaluate how well they worked.Anjali Makhija was the next team member hired. Her master’s-level training in socialscience, and seven years working in organizations with education programs inreproductive and child health, made her another ideal fit for monitoring the effectivenessof programs and services, especially those designed for women and girls. Her skill atgrassroots team-building would be put to use when the time came to develop a field team.Like Poonia, Makhija spoke three languages, including the local dialect in the Mewatvillages where the first funded initiatives would take place.e next hire was Lalit Mohan Sharma, who had previously worked with Bahl atProagro as a civil engineer. Lalit began volunteering with SMSF on weekends starting in2000 and quickly immersed himself in addressing the challenge of water availability.With continuous guidance and participation from Suri and Edda Sehgal, a coregroup of eight began the process of establishing the foundation’s day-to-day operations.ey helped define goals and objectives, obtained the required approvals and paperwork,and set up appropriate administrative recordkeeping so they could begin solicitingprojects. ey interviewed representatives of NGOs with similar goals and interests.Each step in the start-up process was fraught with complications. Giving away foreigncurrency funds, or even accepting donations from others, entailed obtaining approvalsand other compliance measures required by India’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.e foundation was given temporary approval status to take on short-term projects withNGOs in India, but to obtain approval from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs to conductmore substantive work took a lot more time and effort.Written proposals from NGOs interested in long-term projects in the region werereviewed by the core team, who were anxious to take an active role in countering thepoverty and poor living conditions they found each day in the villages of Mewat. Lackingeven the most basic amenities, the people of Mewat were mired in hardship andprivation, and largely disconnected from the outside world.

e Sehgal team questioned, “Why does it have to be this way?”e Sehgals felt great respect for the Mewati people’s distinctive tribal identity, whichhad been preserved over many centuries. e majority of the people in Mewat were MeoMuslims, a unique ethnic blend of two major religious and cultural groups. ese wereMuslim people with ethnic roots in Hinduism. e two groups shared some of the samecaste names. Many Meos followed the traditions of the Pal and Gotra tribal cultures ofHindu Kshatriyas. Hindus and Muslims in Mewat had a long history of harmony andunity, fighting side by side against invaders. ey stood together during the 1857 uprisingagainst the British and had revered many of the same pilgrimage centers. ey stillcelebrated each other’s religious festivals together, though less commonly than in the past.Suri and Edda Sehgal spent several weeks in India during that first year, participatingin strategic planning sessions while the foundation goals were defined and approvals camethrough. ough their home base remained in the United States, and business obligationstook them elsewhere around the globe, the Sehgals traveled to India each year for at leasta month in the spring and again in the fall to meet with the foundation team and visitpeople in the villages. Suri and Edda remained in close contact with the team and activelyinvolved in the strategic development and growth of the organization.When the required approvals were obtained from the Ministry of Home Affairs, thefoundation team could finally begin implementing efforts to strengthen community-leddevelopment initiatives to achieve positive social, economic, and environmental changesacross rural India. ough the team sought potential partners to help fund projectsrelated to developing sustainable agriculture and to address issues of family stability andsize, the undertaking was not as easy as hoped. e selection process took much longerthan expected.Unlike southern India, where they found many NGOs doing excellent work, findingcredible NGOs in the north was more difficult at that time. Many were businesses lackingany form of transparency. As the search continued for organizations that coulddemonstrate their adherence to principles of accountability in their daily operations, thereality became apparent: a large number of NGOs operated with varying levels of deceit.NGOs receiving government funds for rural development often faced challenges inensuring that resources reached the intended beneficiaries. Financial management andtransparency were key focus areas. Wherever any challenges in terms of financialmanagement and transparency persisted, the SMSF team remained committed to thefundamental principles of honesty, integrity, transparency, excellence, and professionalismin all aspects of its operations. No bribes would be offered or taken under anycircumstances. e team fully adhered to and modeled these principles to demonstrate toother philanthropic organizations that it was possible to work honestly.

In business and otherwise, the Sehgals had always found that respect for people was akey precept, along with strong professional ethics and values. In practice, certain basicbehaviors always bore fruit: treat people with the utmost respect; always give credit topeople for their contribution, big or small; be fair; strive to create a win-win situation foreveryone involved; remain optimistic, and be helpful to others whenever possible. eybelieved that with well-treated talent, a company can be assured of good products, whichwill result in profits—each triggering the next. e Sehgals considered these “three p’s”—people, products, and profits—to be a staple in development as well. In this case, the“products” were the programs, and the “profits” would be positive impact.Putting people first in all situations, Suri and Edda had seen how inspired andproductive any team could be when appreciated and given a voice in decision-making.Employees were able to enjoy the freedom to be creative and do their work without anythreat of shame or harassment for missteps. It was okay to make mistakes. Any “mistake”was seen as an opportunity to learn. at key factor promoted a sense of belongingamong the staff and a willingness to consider seemingly audacious goals. Operating thisway proved to be a winning formula for success.Just as with Proagro Group and other Sehgal seed businesses, the work environmentat SMSF would continue to reflect that every team member understood the core missionand felt vested in successful outcomes, every success was a shared success, and each personwould continue to think, learn, evolve, and grow. Teamwork remained the steadfastkeystone that continued to motivate people and sustain the organization over time.e Sehgals had experienced the power and enthusiasm of those who came togetherfor a common mission. And now the same potent methodology was applied to theirapproach to helping the rural poor in India. Every person in the equation, everyemployee, volunteer, partner, as well as each recipient of assistance from the foundation,was considered a partner, a member of the team. Each team member team was morenaturally compelled to demonstrate behaviors at work and in other parts of their livesthat would influence others positively. ey were collectively determined to raise thebenchmarks of the development sector in India in terms of expectations andaccomplishments. A catchphrase often used at the time was “Commit Less and DeliverMore.”e foundation’s first funded projects addressed two current realities in rural India:issues related to the role of women, such as large families (the average family size was 7.5in Mewat at the time), and poor agricultural productivity. In screening and choosingNGO partners to carry out projects, the team made sure that formal agreements clarifiedexpectations and included each project’s goals, expected deliverables, and projectedtimelines. Each project budget included details on how much money to pay thoseimplementing programs in the field. e core team worked with field trainers from NGO

partners carrying out programs in more than thirty villages to ensure that training in thecommunity encompassed the intentions of the initiatives.Some programs focused on empowering young women, such as a program foradolescent girls ages eleven to nineteen, most of whom had never had an opportunity toattend school. Young women were given the chance to learn how to sew, a skill that couldproduce income.e value of literacy was demonstrated immediately upon finding that the girls insome parts of Mewat did not recognize numerals or letters they needed to know tomeasure cloth. Female literacy in Mewat was only 4.5 percent. Teaching basic readingand math immediately became essential components of the program.Other programs addressed hygiene, care of newborns, and introduced the concept oflife goals. A female physician was added to the foundation team to coach and train NGOstaff trainers on childcare and reproductive health.To begin to address the needs of poor farmers, the team sought out global partnershipopportunities. S M Sehgal Foundation provided start-up funding to the Institute of PlantBiotechnology Outreach, University of Ghent, in Belgium, to create new programs onstress tolerance technologies for crops. e ongoing initiative was led by Dr. Marc VanMontagu, a University of Ghent professor emeritus that Suri Sehgal had worked withpreviously on two corporate boards.Van Montagu appreciated the Sehgals’ interest in the complex issues involved in therelationship between subsistence farming and women’s reproductive health in India.When a water buffalo and an acre of land were the only assets a family had, they mightonly be able to eat what they could produce themselves. However, with improvedproductivity and access to more nutritious crops, families could enhance their health andbetter address their food insecurity.In 2001 Suri Sehgal met with Dr. William D. Dar, director of International CropsResearch Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), based outside of Hyderabad,Andhra Pradesh. Already recognized globally as an important international researchinstitute, their work on neglected “orphan” crops, often called “nutri-cereals,” includedsorghum and millet for resource-poor farmers in India and other arid and semiaridregions around the world. India’s farmers in general were already benefiting handsomelyfrom the institute’s long presence in the country. e rapid growth of the seed industry inIndia could be greatly attributed to the availability of elite germplasm (improved seedstocks) bred by ICRISAT.During the meeting between Dr. Sehgal and Dr. Dar, the two reached an agreementthat the foundation would provide the institute with a multimillion-dollar endowment, agrant for development of elite (improved) sorghum and millet germplasm. Mewat farmfamilies would ultimately be beneficiaries of this work in the form of greater cropproductivity, more nutritious food, and improved health.

S M Sehgal Foundation was the first NGO to carry out research work at ICRISAT. Aspart of this arrangement, the foundation set up an office there and rented some of theirland where foundation researchers conducted studies on maize (corn), a crop not in theICRISAT mandate. ough corn was not being grown in Mewat, farmers in the southernand eastern states of India would be able to benefit from this work.Geneticist Dr. M.D. Gupta joined SMSF in early 2002 to initiate a corn-breedingprogram. Germplasm obtained from CIMMYT, and other worldwide sources already inthe public domain, was checked for its purity and uniformity and then multiplied fordistribution. A “field day” was held at the peak of the autumn harvest by Vani Shekar,who joined SMSF as a breeder. Breeders were invited from public, nonprofit, and privatesectors.About sixty breeders and scientists attended to see the field where each row wasplanted with a different type of seed. Each attendee received a booklet describing thegenetic material in each row so they could make selections. Seed samples were availablefree of charge. e program flourished, and field days were held annually for several years.“Mega” field days were held periodically that included at least a hundred participatingscientists. ousands of germplasm samples were distributed free of charge for use inbreeding programs in public, nonprofit, and private sectors. Dr. Gupta remained astechnical director until 2007, and continued for a few years thereafter as an honorarytechnical advisor to the foundation.Back in Mewat, a valuable realization had come from more carefully listening to thevillagers. A disparity was revealed between the focus of SMSF’s program priorities and themore-urgent priorities of the people in Mewat. Rather than narrowly focusing on familyplanning and agriculture improvements, clean drinking water and healthcareinterventions were more critical needs.While visiting the village of Rangala Rajpur in September 2001, Suri Sehgal had seenfirsthand the deplorable water scarcity so prevalent in the region. e semiarid villages ofMewat averaged less than 600 millimeters of rain a year, which all came over a few weeksduring monsoon season, between June and September. Overextraction of water fromaquifers, along with insufficient recharge, caused an increasing depth of groundwater. elifeline to “sweet” (clean drinkable) water was further threatened by increasing salinitythat fouled water in 78 percent of the area. Salinity deteriorated soil quality and limitedthe farmers’ choices of crops. e greater the salinity, the less likely plants could extractwater from the soil. High levels of salt destroy soil health and lead to erosion. Asgroundwater became more and more brackish, conditions were increasingly desperate forpeople, plants, and animals in the region.For families living in this environment who could not afford to purchase water fromtankers (large trucks that deliver potable water), women and girls had to make multiple

trips of three or four kilometers each day to bring home enough water for domestic use.is obligation resulted in many young girls being kept from attending school.Water-harvesting measures could save women and girls from the daily drudgery offetching water from long distances and also directly help to increase agriculturalproductivity in this arid zone. Assisting communities with water management fit perfectlywith SMSF’s strategies on agriculture and easing burdens endured by women and girls.Geography played a large part in the water predicament. e subtropical region ofMewat is bordered by the Aravalli Range, a hill system that runs through the state.Monsoon rains typically flush freshwater down from the hills. e runoff flows fast fromthe high ground down over low-lying areas, where it often mixes with and becomescontaminated by the saline groundwater.By building a check dam as part of an overall water-augmentation system in thewatershed area in Rangala Rajpur, rain runoff could be captured in a large storage area.Because geologic formations in the Aravalli hills are so porous and permeable, rainwaterthere would be absorbed quickly if the flow rate could be sufficiently slowed. Rather thanflow into saline areas, freshwater would instead percolate down to recharge the depletedaquifer and refill dry wells.Suri Sehgal considered building such a dam for the community but, recalling thefoundation’s primary imperative to help others help themselves, he instead reminded theteam, “If we create the dam for them, we will only be creating dependency.”Instead, the team presented an idea for the community to contribute 25 percent ofthe project cost. e villagers of Rangala Rajpur agreed immediately, and a pact wasmade. e foundation would fund and carry out the first three-quarters of the wateraugmentation plan, which entailed creating a 1.5-kilometer earthen embankment for thedam. e community would cover the cost of materials for the final water spilloverportion of the dam: a cement and concrete structure to allow the overflow water to bechanneled into ponds or wells. Construction of the embankment began immediately.Building the check dam water-harvesting structure in Rangala Rajpur became the firstproject begun by SMSF without collaborating with any other NGO. Lalit Sharma’sexpertise in water management was critical to the successful construction of check dams.Other projects eventually ran parallel with programs carried out by NGO partners aswell.As the Rangala Rajpur project moved along, the team initiated some focused, smallscale pilot projects in several other villages. ey dug and deepened wells; heldagricultural extension programs and trainings; conducted sessions on health issues such asHIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, menstrual hygiene, and immunizations; and sponsored youthrecreational activities.A caveat imposed on the SMSF team, and reinforced by Suri Sehgal at everyopportunity, was that any small-scale project must be evaluated based on cost,

deliverables, and impact. e team used the catchphrase “Small Interventions, BigImpact” to reflect their preference for small “fulcrum-like” projects with the communitythat made a big difference (the same way a small rudders change the direction of ships).ough SMSF was still assisting communities, indirectly for the most part, as anorganization supporting the activities of others, Suri and Edda Sehgal paid carefulattention to a larger development picture and made targeted donations from SehgalFoundation (SF) in the US. Donations were made on a holistic scale as the foundationestablished partnerships with a growing network of visionary organizations reclaiming theagriculture and ecology resources of India and assisting in rural development, cropimprovement, biodiversity projects, and conservation efforts.Seed money was provided for the development of the Dharma Vana Arboretum onthe outskirts of Hyderabad, where endangered species of trees and plants of the DeccanPlateau were being collected and preserved. e arboretum, when completed, also servedas an ecotourism site, welcoming everyone from local schoolchildren to internationalvisitors.A large grant went to Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment(ATREE), based in Bengaluru. Actively involved in conservation of biodiversity,protection of the environment, and sustainable use of natural resources in the WesternGhats and Eastern Himalayas since 1996, ATREE maintains a critical body of knowledgeabout India’s ecosystems.e William L. Brown Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis,Missouri, was funded and established. Named in honor of plant geneticist Dr. Willliam L.Brown, Suri Sehgal’s friend and “guru,” the mission was to “study, characterize, andconserve useful plants and associated traditional knowledge for a sustainable future.”Trees for Life International (TFL), based in Wichita, Kansas, received a largedonation to support its Global Circle of Knowledge program. TFL had been active inIndia since the early 1970s in education and promoting tree plantings.Recognizing that many other people in the US were originally from India, SuriSehgal reached out to other nonprofit organizations and individuals in the US who werealready doing work in India or were interested in partnering to alleviate poverty in India.As the SMSF team in Gurgaon visited the Mewat villages to monitor foundationfunded projects being carried out by partner NGOs, they became more familiar with theNGO field teams and the intended beneficiaries. e team wondered why meaningfulresults were not forthcoming. Sure that they could more effectively utilize resources andget more done if they could carry out the programs themselves, they became increasinglydrawn to projects and programs they could be directly involved in implementing.Field staff from other NGOs, though perhaps doing their best, were sometimesthwarted by their own organizations from doing the agreed-upon work, or by only

paying for a portion of the work. Some of the funded organizations turned out not to beas transparent as the foundation team had hoped.Sociologist Anjali Makhija initiated an experimental family life education project thatfocused on family health and hygiene and women’s reproductive health. Her small pilotproject yielded more noticeable participation and results than larger programs withsimilar goals being provided by their NGO partners.e SMSF team noted that other NGOs tended to think in terms of short-termprojects only rather than long-term or more-comprehensive strategies. Giving awaySMSF money to support others carrying out narrowly defined grassroots projects held lessand less appeal. e highly skilled foundation staff was like a team of horses being heldback, not allowed to run. ey wanted room to define their own strategies and evolvemore as an organization. ey were frustrated with the lack of measurable progress andtheir limited reach. e time had come to consider a shift in strategies.Empowerment was now a buzzword along with sustainability, and a statedcommitment was to build on those ideas to create an enduring impact. With wholesomefundamentals and open to continuous improvement, the SMSF team was primed andready to focus on direct work with communities in Mewat to put programs into actionthat would demonstrate value and provide evidence of impact.e way to accomplish this strategic shift was to bring together the best and mostcommitted experts on rural development and consider the possibilities. e Sehgals hadalways been entrepreneurial—thinking big but being realistic, carefully balancing riskwith opportunity, thinking long term but never neglecting the short term. Suri Sehgalwas known for taking a good look at the big picture before making any decision.By the middle of 2002, a bigger picture was becoming clearer.1. e Green Revolution period began in the mid-1960s with a huge increase in agricultural production that savedmillions in developing countries from starvation due to the adoption of high-yielding crop varieties and improvedfarm technologies.2. e often-divided province of Silesia was once part of the Kingdom of Prussia. After WWII, the PotsdamAgreement divided the region once again, designating that only a tiny part of Silesia remain German. Most of theregion became part of Poland, and a small region became part of the Czech Republic.3. Maize Genetics and Breeding in the 20th Century, ed. Peter Peterson and Angelo Bianchi, World ScientificPublishing Company, 1999.4. Originally called Sehgal Family Foundation, then simply Sehgal Foundation (SF), the nonprofit endeavors in theUS were pointed primarily toward India, with some modest efforts carried out elsewhere in keeping with a sharedoverarching goal of making a positive difference in the lives of those in need.5. Mewat was renamed Nuh in 2016.6. In 2018 NITI Aayog shifted the terminology for the district from most “backward” to most “aspirational” withthe launch of the Aspirational Districts Program, which aimed to transform 112 of the most underdeveloped districtsacross India. Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas aur Sabka Vishwas (Everyone’s support, everyone’s development, and everyone’strust.)

Underpromise and Overdelivere people of Mewat had plenty of experience with individuals and organizationsshowing up, promising great things, but delivering very little. Over many years, peoplehad often come with religious or political agendas along with their offers to “help”villagers in some way. Suspicious, and not particularly welcoming to more strangersmaking familiar promises, the people of Mewat were understandably skeptical.e foundation team gathered development documentation from governmentsources and other groups that had attempted to address the region’s poverty. Earlierprograms were largely ineffective. Some NGOs and others had unfairly labeled Mewat“development resistant,” even concluding that trying to educate Meo people was a “wasteof time.” ese narratives overlooked the region’s potential and reinforced harmfulstereotypes that hindered meaningful progress.e compiled reports showed long lists of recommendations for what needed to bedone in Mewat, but offered no ideas on how to actually create the desired results. edetails were reviewed and studied carefully by the new SMSF executive director, Rajat(Jay) Sehgal, throughout the fall of 2002 as the foundation team gathered togetherregularly for brainstorming sessions to discuss a shift in the organization’s strategy.Jay Sehgal, nephew of the founders, had been promoted to his new role upon theretirement of Arvind Bahl. Jay had proven his skills and leadership acumen while workingfor more than a decade at Proagro Group. He had worked at the foundation for about ayear, serving as an information technology consultant. ough he had no concreteexperience or training in rural development work, Jay took to his new role with energyand enthusiasm, eager to immerse himself in the work.

Jay spent several months going into the villages daily with members of the foundationteam to meet local people, hoping to understand their needs and aspirations. e staffnow included a few people hired from local villages who served as a field team. Field teammembers provided valuable coaching and offered insight into the character of the region.Jay felt like the “new kid on the block” during those visits, though poverty issues werenot new to him. He had visited similar villages as a child and worked in several localvillages during his years at Proagro. e poverty and deprivation were familiar to him,but now he approached the circumstances he witnessed with more probing questions andconcerns. He was there to learn. He wanted to figure out exactly what was beingaccomplished by the foundation’s NGOs partners.e small team walked from house to house, determined to convey respect in everypossible way with the people of Mewat. Sociologist B.R. Poonia instructed Jay in advance,“If you are offered water, you drink it. You may suffer later with gastric distress, but youmust remember that, if you refuse what these people offer, it is felt the same as refusingthem.”Jay observed the close feel of the village environment. e streets were narrow. Abrick path of sorts, about five feet wide, circled a cluster of homes and marked theboundary of each village or hamlet. Trash-littered paths inside the periphery branched offto different houses. Care was taken to avoid stepping in muddy wastewater. e teammade their way around the occasional cow or buffalo tied to a post in front of a house, ora child squatting to defecate in the path.Jay Sehgal introduced himself only as Jay. He left most verbal exchanges to the rest ofthe team. If invited inside a home, the team accepted any courtesies graciously. If thevillagers sat on the floor, so did the team. Whether meetings with families were held insideor outside on the veranda, conversations were only with the men, and gestures ofhospitality were extended by the male head of the family.Women villagers did not speak in mixed company. Women on the team, includingthe physician, usually moved a few feet away to speak quietly with female familymembers.Conversations with villagers were casual efforts to get to know people. Team membersasked simple questions such as, “How many children do you have?”In Ghaghas, the first village Jay visited with the field team, only two of the 300households had latrines. People used the surrounding fields as open-air toilets; childrendefecated anywhere. Village schools were nearly deserted. Every family talked about theirdesperate need for water. Scarce drinking water also meant no water for bathing,cooking, or sanitation purposes. Lack of clean water was a serious health issue, as so manyinfectious diseases in India are waterborne. Conversations among women villagers, AnjaliMakhija, and the physician were often about the care of newborns, how to have safedeliveries, or how to help a sick child.

e more Jay saw and heard, the more he understood the field team’s dissatisfactionwith what they considered insufficient progress in providing real help to the villagers. eneed was enormous and urgent.He agreed with his colleagues, “We must do more.”In visits with partner NGOs about funded initiatives, NGO staff members usuallyseemed anxious to impress SMSF representatives with the work being done. ey gaveexaggerated summaries of “successful” interventions with young people, but providedlittle or no observable evidence of their claimed achievements. e frustration felt by theentire foundation team was verbalized by Anjali Makhija, “We can do this betterourselves!”at sentiment grew with each subsequent meeting. What their partner NGOs weredoing in the villages simply did not correspond to the business credo the Sehgals espoused—Always underpromise and overdeliver. What the team observed in Mewat was the otherway around, plenty of overpromising and underdelivering.ese issues, learnings, and frustrations were discussed in depth during brainstormingsessions with the full staff team. Lively conversations were about how they could create agreater impact in Mewat if SMSF implemented all programs directly.e team was challenged, encouraged, and invited to think big and imagine thepossibilities. If SMSF accepted responsibility for all direct programming, what was thearea of greatest need? What might the selected programs look like? Which issues would beaddressed first? How would the team ensure that a real difference was being made withinitiatives they attempted? Would villagers be motivated to contribute to and participatein projects of partnership with the foundation?e team had already observed from their own small-scale pilot programs that, ineach case, the needs were so great, they appeared to be endless. How would they choosewhich initiatives were most important?To use SMSF resources to the greatest effect without being spread too thinly, SuriSehgal stressed that the best strategy was to focus on programs with the greatest demandfrom the community—those that could have the greatest impact, and where significantaccomplishments could be made. Once success was achieved in any given area, the nextstep would be taken to build on that success. Hence another catchphrase was born:“Success builds success!”e crucial ingredient to any true success had to include an investment in theoutcome on the part of the people in the communities of Mewat. Ongoing struggles thatdeveloped with the check dam water-harvesting project begun in Rangala Rajpur in 2001were a cogent reminder of the need for a tangible commitment from individualcommunities for any project carried out with them.

e foundation team was provided with useful insights into the minds of villageleaders as issues were brought to light about the types of complications that could easilyderail a development initiative. An important lesson for the team was that the villagers’enthusiastic agreement to take part in a project was not the same as having the means, orthe intent, to actually follow through.B.R. Poonia and the project implementation team had continued over weeks andmonths to ask the community to fulfill their part of the bargain in the check dam project.But the rainy season came and went, and the work wasn’t completed. Village leadersexplained that they were serious about wanting to carry out their part of the agreement,but they had no money.Maintaining the foundation’s position that the community must contribute, the teamsuggested that community leaders approach the local Member of Parliament (MP) to issuefunds for the project from the Local Area Development Fund. Under the Member ofParliament Local Area Development Scheme, an MP could suggest that the districtcollector release funds, in specific amounts under specific guidelines, on behalf of theconstituency, for work to be done. SMSF staff mediated a meeting between the MP andcommunity leaders, and the MP sanctioned the required funds. But the money was notreleased. Various hurdles and complications kept the project in limbo.A complex water-augmentation project proposed the same year in Ghaghas had beenhandled very differently. at project and all future projects with expenditures requiredcommunities to follow through with their portion of a project before the foundationbegan work on the greater portion. e community’s commitment had to be tangible. Asstrategy discussions continued, the team kept these learnings in mind when consideringany new program choice.Water management was an obvious need in every village. Every visit to everycommunity included a conversation about the need for water. Water scarcity in theregion had become much worse in recent decades due to overexploitation ofgroundwater, ecological degradation, and the unmanaged water supply.Water collection, conservation, storage, equitable distribution of water, and the linkbetween drinking water and health were discussed at great length. e entire regionneeded rainwater-harvesting systems, groundwater recharging, more check dams andponds, ecological regeneration, resource planning, and the all-important strategies forengaging the community in the responsible management of their water supply in the firstplace. Water management would now be a key program of S M Sehgal Foundation.Because agriculture was the main form of income for 58 percent of the population ofMewat, improving agriculture and farming practices held the most promise for incomeenhancement in the district. People in Mewat had been living the same way and plantingtheir crops the same way for centuries. e only asset for most of these rural villagers wastheir land, and the usual plot size was very small.7

Two-thirds of the farms had no groundwater for irrigation and few sources ofunderground sweet water. e brackish water in most areas was not fit for irrigating themain crops that could be grown in the region. e bordering Aravalli hills run parallel tothe monsoon winds, which ensured that rainfall was always sparse. Farmers without anyother source of irrigation could be wiped out financially in a year if there was little or norain, and few job opportunities existed elsewhere in the area to help supplement theirincome.Agriculture development was a necessity in tandem with water management. Aproposed income-enhancement program had a concrete goal of raising farmers’ incomelevels by a specific percentage within a defined time frame. Objectives includedimproving farmers’ business skills, introducing higher-value crops, and using farmingpractices to increase crop productivity and diversification.e SMSF team facilitated start-up activities to develop linkages between farmers andmarkets to add to the farmers’ share of the retail price for their produce. Early efforts toform a Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association in the village of Ghaghas already lookedpromising. Income-enhancement possibilities would be strengthened by the promotionof environmentally sound and sustainable farming practices.No other NGOs were working on agriculture development or water management inMewat; SMSF had a perfect opportunity to make a difference in areas of its greatestexpertise as well as the communities’ greatest needs: water security and food security.As government was and is the largest delivery system for healthcare and education inIndia, SMSF would serve only as a catalyst for promoting awareness and access ofalready-existing services in those areas, and fill gaps at the village level when possible. eSMSF team helped create linkages to medical care and mobilize local communities toseek out health services they were entitled to use.An educational program in rural health was designed to promote preventive care,with information on good nutrition, hygiene, and safe health practices. SMSF also beganproviding assistance to government schools in the form of small interventions to helpfacilitate student enrollment, and the retention of girl students in particular.ough the team agreed that creating awareness about the relationship betweenhaving a large family and not having enough food and water could be a valuabledeliverable, the idea of encouraging young girls to postpone marriage, delay childbirth,and have fewer children was rapidly quashed. Such topics were taboo in thepredominantly conservative Muslim community. In addition, adolescent girls had nochoices or power in their own families. ey could only do what their parents allowed.e parents in Mewat did not want their daughters to learn about birth control or other“sex” education topics.e only way to address the barriers to this issue would be indirectly as part of aFamily Life Education program, which was similar to projects the field team had already

experimented with alongside NGO partners. From the beginning, the foundation teamsheld strongly to a principle of remaining nonreligious and nonpolitical in all interactions.Program sessions with parents and community elders highlighted connectionsbetween large family size and poverty only as part of a larger discussion about the costs,risks, and benefits associated with family size. e consent of elders was sought for theparticipation of girls in programs that taught useful skills. Sewing and tailoring centers,similar to those already created in partnership with NGOs, served as a platform forexpanded forums for empowering young women and building their self-confidence andcommunication skills.Each program proposed and selected was created with sustainability in mind in orderto make the most impact. ese were opportunities to create viable models with thepotential for a wide reach across India.Having decided on four possible programs (water management, incomeenhancement for farmers, health advocacy, and family life education), the team discussedhow to narrow the number of villages being served at one time. Focusing on a limitednumber of programs in a limited number of villages sounded sensible. e decision wasto shift from thirty or more villages at the time to only four.Criteria for choosing the four villages was discussed in detail. e selection methodaddressed factors that the team identified as essential for the maximum success potential,considering every advantage that could ensure the most fruitful interactions with villagers.e most important selection criterion was that each village had an active panchayati raj(local government) body with an honest, pro-development sarpanch (the elected head,similar to a mayor) of the panchayat (village council), and village elders and leaders whowere favorable to development.Many panchayats were barely functional, and some were resistant to any type ofchange. e field team had visited dozens of villages while monitoring the family lifeprograms and had worked directly in a few. ey already had some ideas about whichvillages might be more interested in partnering with SMSF.Accessibility was the next criterion in the village selections. e communities chosenhad to be reachable on navigable roads by Jeep or motorcycle, so the team workingwithin the community would not be hampered by distance or access barriers.A third factor was sweet groundwater availability, or the potential for building morecheck dams to slow monsoon rainwater flowing down the Aravalli slopes, and direct it toareas at the bottom of the hills to percolate into the ground to recharge the aquifers. Onlysixty-three of the more than 500 villages that were part of Mewat at that time had sweet(potable) groundwater.8 e sweet water in those villages was being depleted because theadjoining villages with saline groundwater needed it as well.

To address the over-exploitation of the sweet water, the foundation team adopted anapproach whereby the limited sweet-water pockets located in the foothills would berecharged by slowing runoff from large catchment areas higher in the hills and directing itto the sweet-water pockets. is would check (slow or stop) the depletion of sweet-waterpockets and, at the same time, check the recharging of saline groundwater that causedsalinity encroachment over sweet-water areas.All four villages chosen had to be located close to where water-augmentation systemscould be constructed in watershed areas of the Aravalli hills. e technology was essentialfor the future of Mewat. ough some difficulties had occurred with the first two checkdam water-harvesting projects, the SMSF team would not allow anything to stop progressagain.Population size was the final factor in the choice of communities. Villages in Mewatranged from a few hundred to more than 10,000 people. Trying to work in a village of10,000 sounded unmanageable. For real impact to be possible, the team agreed thatvillages with about 3,000 people were reasonable.Four possible villages that met the identified criteria were suggested: Agon, Dhaula,Ghaghas, and Goela. Each had three or four neighboring villages or hamlets that wouldalso benefit from their proximity to the chosen villages. A goal of this concept was to scaleup the project to create a cluster of up to twenty villages, with a community center closeenough to each village to be used as a convenient meeting place.Once the specific programs and village partners were discussed, more expert opinionswere needed. Plans were made to bring together SMSF staff from Gurgaon andHyderabad to meet with key representatives from prominent nonprofits doing credibledevelopment work in rural India. e combined teams wanted to present their intent tochange development strategies and find out if other specialists and stakeholders indevelopment would endorse the ideas that came out of their brainstorming sessions.e gathering was held in November 2002 in a conference room at the IndiaInternational Center in Delhi. About half of the twenty attendees were developmentindustry representatives knowledgeable in areas of information technology (IT), watermanagement, agriculture, education, and rural health. e rest were from SMSF,including Suri and Edda Sehgal, staff from Gurgaon and Hyderabad, and a consultanthired to mobilize individual and nonprofit resources in the US.Excitement could be felt as participants were energized by fresh ideas and newpossibilities over the two-day event. e first day began with Suri Sehgal presenting areview of what SMSF had been doing since 1999. A frank discussion included theobstacles and hurdles the team had faced, and the important learnings thus far.Illustrating the complex combination of social, cultural, and economic factors, Suriidentified the proposed new model as “Integrated Sustainable Village Development.” Adiagram displayed connections between the key issues to be addressed by four proposed

programs. He cited many examples to show how the key issues were intertwined. Waterscarcity in a village meant that girls missed out on school to help their mothers fetchwater, or care for younger siblings while their mothers sought water. With no water in theschools, those children who were able to go to school went home by the middle of the dayto get a drink of water. ey rarely returned. Daily sanitation and wastewater issues atschool and at home were an ongoing health threat since so many illnesses were caused bycontaminated water.Water, education, health, opportunities for girls . . . the overlap was multifaceted witheach issue and extended to agriculture issues, such as the shortage of water for cropirrigation, poor crop production, and the resulting lack of income. Suri demonstratedhow these combined factors kept small farmers in poverty. An integrated approach wasneeded to confront these seemingly intractable issues.SMSF leaders presented the rationale behind their program ideas, as each initiativewas discussed thoroughly. A communications plan to mobilize communities in Mewatwas described along with strategies to engage individual villagers as role models andvolunteers within their communities. Plans included the pursuit of IT connectivity tobring the villages into the twenty-first-century access to knowledge and resources.By midday on day two, experts were talking about overarching issues in villagedevelopment, not just one aspect or another. Conversations now centered on how toachieve genuine impact and measurable results. Enthusiasm was mounting as experts inthe wider team could envision far more progress being made by establishing targeted,integrated grassroots programs within a few specific villages.By the end of the meetings, a list of recommendations had been developed andapproved by the entire team as a blueprint for the work to be done over the next fewyears. e formal decision was made: S M Sehgal Foundation would no longer bepromoting the activities of others. SMSF would now be an active “implementing”organization.With that, a jubilant cheer erupted: “YES!”e team agreed to “learn by doing, then evaluate how well we do.” Successes andlearnings would continue to be observed and built upon as the organization movedforward. An added intention in every effort was to collect experiences and shareknowledge with others interested in development. e new Integrated Sustainable VillageDevelopment (ISVD) model would integrate all aspects of village development.Before the meetings came to a close, the team more-clearly identified four programsubjects to be implemented in four villages:(1) water management,(2) income enhancement through sustainable agriculture,(3) preventive health, with emphasis on sanitation and hygiene, and

(4) family life education focused on adolescent girls, to include reproductive and childhealth.Each program would be designed to be replicable, scalable, and sustainable, with thegoal of demonstrating satisfactory levels of transformation (impact) in four villages withinfour years. Projects would depend upon available funds; and costs and timelines would becarefully tracked. e most effective and sustainable programs would be expanded tomore villages.To spur on the goals of the ISVD model, the team created a catchphrase, “Four, Four,Four,” representing four villages, four programs, and four years to demonstrate results.As the phrase was announced, the room again erupted in cheers.7. Per the Census of India 2011, the population of Mewat was 1,089,263 (up from 789,750 in 2001), of which 88percent was rural. Forty percent of households were landless, 40 percent owned less than 2.5 acres, 8 percent owned2.5 to 5 acres, and 12 percent owned 5-25 acres. e region had no large landowners.8. Prior to 2005 Mewat district included 512 villages. Some villages were transferred to nearby districts when Mewatwas formally made the twentieth district of the state of Haryana, comprised of 431 villages.

Build TrustIn the 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi advocated for the panchayati raj system as the preferreddecentralized form of village self-governance, which he termed Gram Swaraj (grammeaning village, and swaraj meaning self-rule in Sanskrit). He and Jawaharlal Nehrushared the view that poverty would be addressed more effectively by putting power intothe hands of the people. Prime Minister Nehru inaugurated the establishment of thepanchayati raj system of self-government throughout India in 1959.Village councils were not seen as political bodies until years later with the launch ofthe Integrated Rural Development Program in 1978, which assigned a budget to eachdistrict to generate self-employment opportunities for the rural poor. Assistance wasprovided in the form of government subsidies, bank credit, and loans from financialinstitutions to help lift people above the poverty line by acquiring income-generatingassets, education, training, and upgraded skills. However, much of the assistance did notreach many of the villages in Mewat. Panchayats were often inactive and in some casesnonfunctional.e 73rd and 74th Amendment Act of 1993, passed by India’s parliament, was anattempt to revitalize local rural government. is landmark legislation providedconstitutional status to the panchayati raj institutions. e Act mandated regular timelyelections for locally elected bodies, with the inclusion of disadvantaged groups, includingwomen, lower caste members, and indigenous populations. e Act also called upon thefederal government to enact further legislation to devolve power and resources to localdistrict panchayats so they could in fact function as local government bodies.

Panchayats could now plan and implement their own development activities, receiveregular financial aid, play a central role in providing public services, and create andmaintain public goods. ey could play an active role in political parties and voluntaryagencies.However, the transfer of power (functions, functionaries, and funds) to thepanchayats did not occur as consistently as required by the Constitution of India. ewide variation across the states influenced how the devolution of power reached andaffected local government.Self-help was addressed more directly with the creation of Swarnajayanti GramSwarozgar Yojana (Golden Jubilee Village Self-Employment Scheme) in 1999, a Ministryof Rural Development program to organize the rural poor into Self-Help Groups(SHGs) to promote self-employment and income generation. Clusters of people couldcome together based on their aptitudes and interests. NGOs and other institutions andagencies provided training and assisted in funding each cluster’s microenterprises. eprogram focused on skill development, financial assistance, and creating market linkagesto enhance livelihoods and reduce rural povertyDespite the existence of these programs and amendments, the villages in Mewat didnot benefit as intended. In addition to reasons already noted, many governmentprograms suffered due to a lack of effective delivery systems. Villagers did not necessarilyknow how to tap into their benefits. As a result, panchayats remained fairly dormant.ese issues formed the backdrop for the challenges the foundation team faced in theirefforts to engage local villagers in their own development.e most important goal for implementing any program in Mewat was to establishSMSF as credible with the people in the selected communities. After so many years ofneglect and betrayals by other NGOs, villagers had to be convinced that the foundationwas a trustworthy organization. Transparency was essential for building trust. Approvaland consent from elected members of the panchayats were needed before any foundationprograms could be launched in the communities. e first place to try to create amutually respectful rapport that could lead to trust was with the panchayats in the fourvillages chosen based on the selection criteria for the Integrated Sustainable VillageDevelopment model—Agon, Dhaula,9 Ghaghas, and Goela.e multidisciplinary SMSF team doubled in the coming months as more programleaders were hired to launch the new model. Many of the new staff lived in or came fromvillages in Mewat. A few had previously worked with SMSF partner NGOs in the area. Incomplex communities that were highly deprived yet culturally rich, grassrootsimplementation teams and program leaders were required to speak the same dialect as thevillagers to assure good communication and appropriate responsiveness. Field staffmembers were well trained and supported in all aspects of their work within thecommunities.

When building any team, Suri and Edda Sehgal also considered it essential thateveryone on staff have “connectivity and mobility.” Employees were reimbursed monthlyfor cellphone use and offered interest-free loans to buy vehicles. People hired from thevillages would otherwise be less able to afford these vital tools. Many of the womenpurchased scooters or motorbikes.In some cases, certain personal behavior changes were required from field staff. Youngmen hired from the villages had been raised to believe that speaking before elders in theircommunity was disrespectful. ey had to recognize that respectful conversation withelders was appropriate and necessary for good communication in their new positions.Young women trainers had a tough time at first in their role as a professional. Somehad to endure taunts and criticism for stepping out of their homes and engaging inunconventional roles and activities. e bravery, persistence, and higher vision of theseyoung women role models were eventually rewarded with admiration from thecommunity.ose early days of personal growth were challenging. One young woman remarkedin retrospect, “In order to lead the community, we had to first bring about our own innertransformation. After all, we were brought up in the same culture. At S M SehgalFoundation, we were taught to remember what Gandhiji said: ‘Be the change you wish tosee in the world.’”10People from the area had never before known an organization that believed in takingcare of their employees. Jay Sehgal’s leadership style was in full agreement with thefounders’ approach. Like Suri and Edda, he brought his business practices to socialservices. He encouraged creativity and independence in the team, along with goodplanning and communication. He took a straightforward approach to problem solving,bringing the staff together to involve everyone in discussions. Empowering teammembers was consistent with the work in Mewat villages. He explained, “We must feelconfident first, if we want to empower others.”Jay found that, at the end of the day, some decisions were his alone to make. But byusing the “consortium” approach with the core management team and all field teams,most decisions were arrived at through discussions. Staff was involved and invested in theoutcomes.Respect and support for employees was a standard at SMSF just as it had been inevery part of the Sehgals’ previous work. Treating employees well and empowering themin their creativity made everyone more creative and more dedicated to their work. issupportive-of-growth approach had the added reward of developing talent for larger roleswithin the organization.Sociologist B.R. Poonia, now the leader of Community Mobilization, was responsiblefor meeting with the sarpanch and panchayat in each of the four selected villages to

explore and mobilize potential partnerships. e core team attending each meetingconsisted of Pooniaji (the respectful honorific ji now added to Poonia’s name), sociologistAnjali Makhija, and executive director Jay Sehgal, as well as the specialists in watermanagement and agriculture, and the original physician. e combination of expertsinvolved in each meeting varied occasionally. Sometimes another social scientist or arepresentative of a different NGO came along. A second female physician was hired in2003.Treating people with courtesy and respect was the highest priority in efforts to developrelationships within the communities. Care was taken to approach local elected officialswith great consideration and listen to them carefully.Team members introduced new people, shook hands, asked many questions, and paidclose attention to the thoughts and opinions voiced. e meetings were often held outsideunder a shade tree. Sarpanches provided chairs to the team to show their respect, butPooniaji had again advised the team ahead of time to sit on the ground with the villagersto further minimize barriers between them. He led the discussions during the firstmeetings in each village.After initial greetings, Pooniaji began each conversation by asking questions aboutwhat was going on in the village. Elders were asked what they thought about the familylife education instruction that had been presented to young women in their villages. eteam wanted to get a feel for what the people in the community knew about theprograms—good and bad. A typical exchange with village elders began this way:“What happens in the Family Life Education sessions?”“ey teach girls sewing and stitching.”“Do the girls learn anything useful? Is the program beneficial or not?”“Oh yes, girls can fix our clothes at home now.”Some elders were less positive about the programs, even though they agreed theirfamilies had benefited. Having occasional naysayers was not a surprise. A few eldersadmitted being fearful that, if their young people learned too much, they might “standup” against their elders and community leaders.Team members assured elders that any programs proposed or embarked on by SMSFwould have no religious or political components. e message that S M SehgalFoundation was not affiliated with any religion or political viewpoint had to be reiteratedfairly often.To find out villagers’ greatest concerns and interests, Pooniaji asked, “If we startprograms in your village, what do you most need?”As people began to think about their true needs, they tended to suggest big projects: ahospital, English language schools, a high school for girls, but always, most importantly,water. Access to water was the most crucial need in each village.

For clearer insights, follow-up questions encouraged villagers to think in practicalterms, e.g., “Can you describe exactly what you envision?”Managing expectations was critical. Pooniaji was careful not to suggest that thefoundation could or would provide all necessities suggested. He was clear that he and theteam would take the ideas back to SMSF to see which ideas were possible. He explainedthat the goal was to work with the community (within the bounds of the foundationteam’s expertise) and not to do things for the community.He assured them, “Whatever we do, we will do together.”e team quickly learned to be careful and selective about who accompanied them onvisits with panchayat leaders. On one occasion, a particular NGO representative whocame along made several promises to the people that he had no actual ability to keep,saying he would “take care of ” an issue being discussed. Such promises, sometimes evenmade by team members, were usually the result of an enthusiastic desire to help, but suchwishful assurances could easily sabotage the team’s efforts. People of Mewat had heardplenty of (what turned out to be) empty promises from other NGOs. So the team beganto enforce a policy that no one could come with them into the villages until fully briefedand reminded ahead of time about what, and what not, to do or say.Everyone was told, “Make no promises. e people will describe many needs andrequirements, but you must not give them false hope. If we promise, we must deliver.Building trust is paramount.”As ideas for potential programs were discussed further in meetings with panchayatsand villagers, the suspicion and resignation in the people were obvious, as though theywere thinking, Hamari kaun sunta hai? (Who listens to us anyway?)To address their concerns and suspicions head-on, team members answered questionswith as much clarity and detail as possible, being careful to keep in mind, like a mantra:“Underpromise and overdeliver.”e important concept of partnership was another topic that required frequentreminders. For good-hearted people who wanted so much to help, the temptation wasstrong to want to fix problems for those whose needs were so urgent. e SMSF teamunderstood this and insisted from the beginning that any venture had to be a partnershipto be successful. Joining with villagers was the only way for villagers to assume ownershipover the work results.e same lesson had been underscored for Jay Sehgal early in the process of visitingvillages when he thought he could easily solve a street trash problem by supplying rubbishbins for each block. e idea seemed simple enough to him at the time. However, uponreturning to the village the following week, he found the neighborhood children usingthe bins for swings.Pooniaji explained to Jay then, “We cannot expect to solve any problem, no matterhow seemingly simple, without fully engaging the people involved.”

Jay said in retrospect, “at was when I learned to rely on the wisdom of thecommunity mobilizer.”Villagers had to be part of the decision-making process in order to care about an issuein the first place. ey had to understand all the circumstances involved in a project, aswell as the solutions being offered. e best results could only be assured if those involvednot only believed in it but also participated in the implementation of the outcome.Pooniaji described the process as needing to be “end to end” to make sense—the sameconcept Suri Sehgal frequently referred to as “closing the loop.” e learning wasunderlined by obstacles that had emerged in the attempt to provide that first check damfor the village of Rangala Rajpur. Another monsoon season came and went before thatwork finally continued with partial funding assistance from the local government. eproject was again left unfinished as costs escalated.SMSF was fortunate to have the skills of Lalit Sharma as an on-site engineer todirectly handle water projects. Since beginning as a volunteer in 2002, he was involved inevery water project. Lalit was strongly influenced by the foundation’s vision. When hefirst saw the vulnerability and suffering in the villages of Mewat, he wanted to dowhatever he could to make life easier for the villagers.ough Lalit was a civil engineer, with a master’s degree in technology managementand systems, and a postgraduate diploma in construction management, he had beenconsidering whether he should become a social worker for SMSF. However, he was calledupon as a consultant and coordinator for the foundation’s water construction projects,including designs for the check dam water-augmentation projects in Ghaghas andRangala Rajpur. Suri Sehgal considered him an excellent fit and was pleased when Lalitagreed to take a position as the leader of the foundation’s Water Management program inApril 2003.As it had from the beginning, water dominated every conversation as the greatestneed in each village. In some villages, water connections were outside the homes, andwater was available for an hour or two at a time. But frequent failures and pipelineleakages rendered the system unreliable. Villagers had to find other sources of water,usually from some distance away.Lalit was concluding a meeting with a group of women in the village of Karhedaabout the construction of soak pits for the safe disposal of domestic wastewater, when anelderly woman stood to speak. She said that getting water in the first place was far morecritical than its disposal. Her village’s piped water supply was unavailable for weeks at astretch, requiring women in her community to walk four kilometers to Ghaghas to fetchwater.e woman’s face contorted in pain as she said, “Being old, I am not able to walk andcarry water so long. So I take water from a nearby source, a village only one kilometer

away, that is somewhat saline. But this saline water causes diarrhea and other problems. Ican’t drink tea of my liking, as boiling milk with this saline water spoils the milk.”With that, her tears came.Lalit recalls, “I was deeply shaken that whole day. I kept thinking, What is the use ofmy being so quali ed and holding the position of program leader of Water Management if Icannot help these people have access to potable water? I decided to do something innovativeto create a local source of potable water.”For immediate relief in Karheda, Lalit and the water team developed three wells overthe next few months and diverted the infrequently piped water supply into those wells.People in the village helped with the digging. Now they could collect water from thosewells when their water was turned off. ough this was not the long-term solution, thesame elderly woman told Lalit afterward how thankful she was for SMSF. She told him,“Every day in my prayers, I pray for God to bless you all.”Lalit said later, “ese were the most motivating words of my life.”He was now committed to finding more solutions for solving water problems forpeople living in saline groundwater villages.e team proposed a new design plan for a water-augmentation system in Ghaghas,explaining the plan in detail. Decades earlier, the Government of India built a smallcheck dam in the nearby foothills. Over the years, the soil walls of the dam structure hadwashed away due to water pressure. A new check dam would be an effective first step inhelping to recharge the aquifer. e villagers were required to contribute a smallpercentage in cash or in-kind goods or services, equal to about 20–25 percent of the costof the endeavor, and take part actively in that or another project undertaken on theirbehalf.Suri Sehgal had participated in some of the early conversations with the panchayatand saw the expressions on the villagers’ faces when he explained why they would have topay a percentage of the cost of a new dam. An elder said in disbelief, “You said you cameto help us, and now you are asking us to contribute money?”e elders did not like the idea of any demand being made of them.A senior admitted, “We have only ever been taught to accept what is given to us. Wehave never learned to contribute or create for ourselves.”Suri Sehgal, or “Dr. Suri” as some villagers and staff had begun calling him, remindedthe people again that the foundation had not come to Mewat to do things for them—butto work alongside them, with them. His voice was kind but firm as he repeated, “If youdon’t contribute, we won’t build it. If you contribute, you will own it.”e team was prepared to demonstrate how the village money would be safeguarded.ey assured the elders that any money collected would only go toward the agreed-upon

project. A village-level institution would be established to keep track of the assetsinvolved.Over the next several months, Pooniaji continued to speak with the Ghaghas elders,further explaining why it was in their best interests to participate in a project to benefittheir community rather than to just “take.” He reminded them that SMSF was there tohelp them help themselves. He explained again and again that villagers would not placevalue on something merely given to them. ey would only place value on somethingthey felt they owned, by being part of creating the outcome.Pooniaji illustrated his point by describing an action they could have taken, but didnot, related to their own check dam nearby, which had remained damaged for ten years.No one in the village had done anything about it in that entire time, even though theirneed for water was so dire.He asked the villagers, “Why did you do nothing? Why didn’t you care about thedam?”ey answered, “We didn’t create the dam; the government did. Why should we doanything?”Pooniaji pressed his point further, explaining that the villagers did nothing to repairthe check dam because it was given to them. When the government built that check damin the nearby foothills, responsibility for the dam’s upkeep was essentially handed over tothe people. e dam would either be sustained by the community, or it would be ignored.When it was damaged, the dam was ignored.“You see,” he explained, “if you pay in some way for a new check dam, that samething will not happen again, because you will own it. You will care about it, because youwill have placed an investment in it.”e elders remained unconvinced. e people wanted the water, but they did notwant to play a part in building the dam. e Ghaghas community still could not see whythey should take any responsibility for the dam. In their minds, it was the government’sresponsibility, and the government never came back to repair it. e villagers continuedto believe that it was the government’s duty to provide for their needs, even when thatdidn’t happen. e community had no buy-in with the original check dam from thebeginning. e loop had not been closed.Many of the villagers appeared to expect that the foundation would build a new checkdam for them anyway, as part of their new Water Management program, whethervillagers helped or not. But SMSF’s message remained firm: the dam would be built onlyif the community contributed and participated.e foundation team would always do what was promised, but the help was onlypromised in exchange for a true partnership. at partnership included villagers’ cash orin-kind contributions toward materials for any endeavor undertaken on behalf of theirdevelopment.

ough these particular villagers could see no reason or method to help themselves,the foundation team was confident that the people of Mewat would eventually get themessage and follow their own path to development. e team was committed tocountering the villagers’ self-destructive and dependent mindset.e process was slow, but B. R. Poonia understood how the villagers felt. He couldappreciate their concerns. He had grown up in a similar situation where water was scarce.He recalled his childhood in the 1950s, during the early years following India’sindependence. Everyone in his desert village in Rajasthan had always taken great care tocapture every drop of water. Each family harvested rooftop rainwater—something rarelyseen now in Mewat.Prior to India’s independence from British rule in 1947, the government had playedno part in helping people in the villages obtain water or meet any of their other basicneeds. In “old India,” people were more independent by necessity. Everyone had to dowhatever they could to get by, with no expectation of help from the government oranyone else. How expectations had changed since then!A subtle shift had slowly eroded the sense of community spirit and responsibility inmany of the poorest communities during the decades after India gained its freedom fromBritish rule. In the heady glow of freedom and egalitarian ideology, leaders told theirpeople about the wonderful things the government would now do for them. India’scitizens would be provided with water, electricity, education, and so on. Wells and tankswould be installed; schools, check dam structures, and roads would be built. But suchlofty promises were impossible to keep.In such a highly diverse and stratified society, eliminating social and economicinequities was no quick or easy task. e form of peaceful social democracy that Nehruhad envisioned would not come about with changes to a few laws. e people of Mewatremained deeply mired in poverty.e Government of India attempted to provide water and electricity connections andbasic health and education centers, but most services in the villages remained erratic andinadequate. A more all-encompassing approach was needed to mobilize villagers tounderstand that they could do for themselves what no outsider could do for them.Taking a step back, the field team continued their conversations on these topics withthe panchayats, with groups of village women, and with any special-interest groups in thecommunities.A vivid reminder of the necessity to “close the loop” occurred the same year inconjunction with a project SMSF initiated with the help of the Rural Development andSelf Employment Training Institute (RUDSETI) to provide young people withvocational training. High-demand trades were identified RUDSETI, such as general

business development, computer hardware management, beauty care, and air conditionerand refrigerator repair.Using their profile designed to identify competencies and talent with various skill sets,interested young people from one village were assessed. Four candidates who matched theprofile requirements were chosen for training in computer hardware management withthe potential for jobs in those areas. However, none of the four young men accepted fortraining ended up following through with the course.In evaluating the processes related to this initiative, SMSF staff concurred that a “lackof self-confidence” on the part of the four candidates must have been the primary reasonfor their lack of effort. But probing further, other aspects of the program were identifiedas factors in the young men’s change of heart. No study had been done to determine ifthe men had the ability to travel to the job locations if they were subsequently hired aftertraining. No transportation was available from Mewat to actually reach job opportunitieslocated at a distance.Closing the loop in this case required better counseling and preparation for thetraining, and more legwork in advance to make sure the team understood the associatedpractical and logistical challenges.Every project that didn’t work out as planned provided valuable and usefulinformation that was applied to new initiatives. Such were the growing pains of anorganization committed to development, and a team unwilling to give up on the longroad toward empowering rural India.9. As a result of redistricting, Dhaula was eventually substituted with Rangala Rajpur, where the team was alreadyworking quite a bit.10. Mahatma Gandhi. e honorific ji is added to his name in affection and respect.