What corporate leaders can learn from the Swachh Bharat Mission

The buzz around Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing India is an open defecation free (ODF) country on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi later this week is founded on some staggering numbers around toilet coverage under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) launched by the PM on October 2, 2014. Mind you, the story is well beyond just the numbers being thrown around because a key behavioural change was brought about in a country where open defecation was historically ingrained.

First the numbers: More than 100 million toilets were constructed in rural areas; the national rural sanitation coverage which was 38.7 per cent in October 2014 reached 100 per cent in September 2019. Nearly 600,000 villages became ODF in the process. The government credits the mission's success to administratively placing the scheme under the mandate of two ministries of the government of India, working closely with the states with teams deployed at the various levels of governance, public participation, breaking the ultimate target into smaller targets with shorter timeframes in each state.

The sheer scale of accomplishment under the scheme has key lessons in leadership, project management and planning that can be taken straight to India Inc’s boardrooms, more so when it stares at a mammoth challenge in the form of a investment slowdown and consumer demand drying up. Abhishek Gopalka, managing director and partner, Boston Consulting Group, sums up the lessons for corporate India into three broader points: Hand-pick the leader, increase ownership via innovative levers (like social accountability) and enable the last mile.

“For critical missions, the leader(s) need to be hand-picked .Bringing in Parameswaran Iyer (an ex-IAS officer, brought in to lead the mission) was a masterstroke by PM Modi. Iyer brought a wonderful combination of relevant experiences and a very sleeves-rolled-up style, which enabled him to forge valuable partnerships with multiple departments and stakeholders,” says Gopalka.

Comparing the decision to rope in Iyer to bringing in Nandan Nilekani to lead the Aadhar project, Gopalka suggests: “In corporate India, if you are going for a new mission, say, a product launch or entering a new geography, ‘who is our best athelete’ will often elicit a different response from different people. So not just knowing the technical aspect of a job but also having the right people skills was critical in getting so many different departments to collaborate.” 

Next is the issue of accountability or social accountability in this case as Gopalka puts it. He cites the case of citizen-facing competitions associated with Mission SBM. “There are two approaches to make it more appealing. One by involving celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan or Akshay Kumar which creates a macro level buzz. But the buzz has to be at the town/municipality level also and that happened through citizen-facing rankings.” Social accountability approaches like rankings helped ownership percolate all the way from the states to districts to cities/villages. “Actors, sportspersons, faith leaders, corporates and many others played a significant part in furthering the goals of the SBM-G,” says a Department of Drinking water and Sanitation official.

In a corporate set up, Gopalka says the motivation can be increased via transparent dashboards wherein people can see how they are performing relative to each other. “Suppose I have a sales situation and we have five different areas of a city like Delhi, one can share results transparently, instead of keeping them in silos. So if social accountability was the lever in the Swachh Bharat context, peer ranking could be the one in a corporate context.”

Siddharth Shekhar Singh, an associate professor of marketing at the Indian School of Business, also credits the project team’s achievements to a blend of the two factors Gopalka mentions and adds that corporate India can learn how leaders must take their teams along and bestow on each member of the team a sense of ownership. Leadership was particularly critical in SBM's case — in making not just the officials but also the people on the ground work towards a target that must have caused them some inconvenience in the short-term. In the end, it was teamwork and the belief in the team leader that helped beat the odds.

Here’s the SBM team architecture: The SBM was administratively placed under the mandate of two ministries — the rural component is handled by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS), Ministry of Jal Shakti (erstwhile, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation), and the urban component is handled by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. (More about the overall approach can be read in the box).

This all hands on deck approach is critical for any large scale transformation.

The Mission, in 2016, also brought in over 500 young and bright professionals from various disciplines to work with the district administrations through the Zila Swachh Bharat Prerak Programme with the support of the Tata Trusts. 

And how were the time line and targets for execution determined? 

The Prime Minister had already set the larger goal of achieving universal sanitation coverage in five years, by October 2, 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Given that each state was at a different stage of sanitation progress, the target had to be broken down into smaller targets with shorter time frames in each state. Working with the states, the strategy was to first target the low-hanging fruits -- the districts with the highest sanitation coverage to become ODF on priority. "This created a demonstration effect for others to learn from, and created belief in the system, as nothing succeeds like success. Over time, the goals extended to the districts with lower coverage and one by one, each state and Union Territory of India declared itself open defecation free," says a DDWS official.

Now come to the third point mentioned by Gopalka, which related to adequate support for the last-mile -- whether it is resources or guidelines, including the right level of decentralisation. This, in a way, is the extension of the issue of ownership. “To me, the broad contours need to be consistent, such as the how detailed plans need to be. Earlier, the planning that used to happen (for projects of this scale) wasn't detailed enough. So they decentralised the planning and put it as close to the last mile as possible which made the plans realistic and pragmatic. If your plans are too centralised, it takes away the ownership.”

Similarly, one needs to decide how the last-mile needs to be enabled with funds. A lot of emphasis was given on the speed of fund transfer: Would you give multiple installments or fewer installments? Do you give them more flexibility to interpret the line items? "So once you have picked the right people, developed a sense of ownership, you are supporting them with the right funds and resources, and the speed is customised to the context. Because even if I have the right intent but not the right amount of funds or liquid cash flow, how will the toilets be constructed?” explains Gopalka.

ISB’s Singh says that earlier, the planning used to be more linear with straight channels in case of programmes like  the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme where there were no additional channels for feedback etc and information flowed through only one channel. In SBM's case, a lot was done to enable the project team implement targets and evaluate them against the time set for them -- starting with how payments were made, setting up infrastructure for that, getting people on board, going on creating incentives and all. In effect, there were multiple pathways for incentivising the mission, something the corporates can also learn.

"In sum, when you look at the whole canvas of issues and plan it accordingly, outcomes will be better," says ISB's Singh.

Key to success

DDWS ascribes the success of SBM to 4Ps

Political leadership: The biggest game-changer was that the prime minister lent his personal political capital to the Mission. Inspired by his leadership, various chief ministers (CMs) and district magistrates (DMs) emerged as sanitation champions — setting up the PM-CM-DM model 

Public funding: Over $20 billion were committed to the SBM-G

Partnerships: The SBM-Grameen partnered with implementors and influencers alike — state governments, national and international development agencies, media houses, civil society, celebrities and all ministries of the Government of India

Peoples participation: The mission trained over 600,000 swachhagrahis who triggered behaviour change in every village of India. Common people took the lead and inspired others to build and use toilets. Stories of sanitation champions emerged from every nook and corner of the country