1. Could you tell me a bit about yourself and what your role is as the founder and director of the Indian School of Development Management? 

I’m an engineer MBA by training. I spent a few years in the corporate sector before I moved into the social sector. Now I’ve been working here for the last 15 years, largely as a consultant and someone who’s looked at programs. I’ve been in the area of education for the last 11 odd years and my role as a founder of the Indian School of Development Management has largely been in setting it up, in really contributing to multiple areas from building strategy to building partnerships to raising money and funds to setting up the institution, to hiring people and managing the organization and running the organization.

2. Could you provide a brief overview of the mission and vision of the ISDM and how the institution has evolved since its establishment? 

The idea of ISDM is very simple. We are a one-of-a-kind management school for the social sector set up to improve the lives of millions of people living in poverty by transforming the way organizations in the social sector are built, led, and managed. So the idea of management is fairly well established in the government sector. It’s called public administration. It’s very well established in the business space. It’s called business management. But the social sector, which is the third pillar of society, has somehow not evolved its own brand or its own mantra of management. And so the vision of ISDM is to really catalyze an entire ecosystem for this new profession and this new discipline called development management, thereby blending the practices of management and of development into creating a form of management that is more contextual to the development sector in response to the needs of the development sector. We are about seven years old, Rohan, and we do three broad things. We create young management talent through a one-year postgraduate program in development management. We build senior and mid-level management capabilities in sector organizations through capacity-building programs. We do a lot of research, knowledge creation, and dissemination work through a vertical called the global knowledge hub.

3. How does the ISDM incorporate the values of environmental, social, or governance principles into its curriculum and educational initiatives?

Right. The idea of ESG largely evolves from a belief that business has responsibilities to stakeholders beyond their shareholders. So for a very long time now, the corporate sector or private sector has evolved with a belief that the business of business is to do business or to generate profit. And I think there is a growing realization and belief that the role of business is way beyond that. Therefore business needs to be concerned about the well-being law of not just their stakeholders, their shareholders, but of the wider set of stakeholders, including their employees, and their communities, they work in the government, society, and the planet at large. And that’s where the idea of ESG or environmental, social, or governance really comes in saying that one needs to look at delivering not just profit, but also on the planet and on purpose and on people. And therefore you need to do business in a manner where you take care of the environment and make sure that it does not get harmed or damaged. You take care of all the stakeholders I’ve talked about, and you also conduct business in a manner that is ethical, transparent, honest, and done with integrity. So these are things that are an integral part of our one-year post-touchment program. From a values lens, we believe in fairness, dignity, and inclusive growth. And from a content lens, this is something that is thought of as part of the program.

4. Does the ISDM actually have a mechanism in place for reporting or communicating its own ESG performance and impacts? 

Yeah, I think that’s a great question and we don’t as of now. So ESG even today is largely a corporate concept. ISDM is a non-profit so a lot of our contribution to ESG is on the knowledge, awareness, dissemination, and capacity-building side. But I think going ahead, the idea of ESG needs to be more broad-based and needs to go beyond just the corporate sector to all kinds of organizations. And I think that’s a great point. I think going ahead, it is important for all kinds of organizations to start thinking about the effect that they are having on the environment or society and the way they do their work. Yeah, so you mentioned how the ISDM is a non-profit and it’s more so encouraged in dissemination of ESG values and ideals.

5. So considering the evolving landscape of ESG, how does the ISDM usually anticipate and adapt to future trends in ESG education or development professionals? 

We do espouse some of these conversations, these topics, and these values through our one-year program. But there are considerations of actually picking up both ESG consulting as an area of work where we work with corporates to put in place their ESG frameworks, their reporting and possibly influence the way they do business, but also do a lot of ESG capacity building work with corporates going ahead, building their own ability to deliver on their ESG goals better. Also, there could be future potential in creating an entire program on the idea of sustainable development, which focuses much, much more on ESG and creating professionals to do ESG kind of work. So right from the work we’re doing currently to developing longer-term programs to continuing to do more capacity building and consulting work.

6. Do you think that modern corporate institutions have frameworks established to ensure transparency regarding their ESG practices? Or do you think that the current global trend is looking towards more carbon neutrality? And if not, what solutions would you have in place to maybe ensure more sustainable and ethical practices? 

The fundamental requirement to move to a more authentic approach to ESG is changing the belief even within corporations and among society at large towards the purpose of corporations. Why do corporations really exist? Because if we start believing that corporations exist to serve a larger purpose beyond profit, then, we will as a society start demanding certain accountabilities from the corporate sector and corporates will start delivering on them. Because you talk to the corporates, I think even today, ESG is more of a compliance framework that corporates are following because of a lot of investor communities and a lot of large, private funds. And asset management companies have started demanding better performance on these. So a lot of the conversations are driven by compliance. But if we need to do better, and as a society and the corporate sector specifically, then the belief in it needs to change. And the belief will change once our entire articulation of the role of the corporate sector really, really changes. So those are some of the things that we really need to work on. And things are moving. It’s not that things aren’t moving. There are a lot of conversations. You can talk about the BCOP movement in the US, where a specific legal registration for corporations called BCOP or Benefit Corporation has also been established. So that’s something that countries in Southeast Asia should also move towards where corporations can legally register themselves as benefit corporations, where they publicly announce and demonstrate that they have a responsibility to society at large and not just to their shareholders.

7. Do you believe that the scale and structure of a large company versus a startup influence the integration and impact of ESG initiatives? So does the size of the company really have any play towards ESG?

I think from an intense standpoint, if things are in place, you will make a move toward integrating ESG. But I’m guessing it could work both ways. In some senses, it could be easier for smaller companies because they are, from a cost perspective, they could make this move and this transition much easier. Larger companies have a lot of legacy issues and obviously for them to come on board might be a little bit more difficult. Having said that, larger companies may have more resources available to them compared to smaller companies. And so they may be able to put these resources in place, especially on the environmental side, to make things happen a lot quicker and for them to adopt newer and more environment-friendly technologies, which might be more expensive for smaller companies to do. So yeah, I think it’s a bit of a mix. In some areas, it might be easier for smaller companies to adopt it because of their size. In other areas, it might be easier for bigger companies just because of the resources that they have.

8. Considering your expertise in development management education, what specific insights would you offer to students, especially high schoolers, aspiring to promote sustainable practices within today’s economy?

I think one of the things we always talk about is the importance of looking at your own life through a lens of collaboration and not competition. And all of us in society really have been continuously taught to compete with each other. But if one has to look at solving some of sustainable development, a more carbon-neutral world, or saving the planet, it’s hard to do any of that by competing with each other. So unless we develop a more collaborative thought process and mindset where we don’t look at everything in time as a zero-sum game, where, oh, I can only win because you lose. And we try to find positives where we can actually come together to solve a common societal problem. It’s very, very hard to do any of these. That’s one. The other really is the importance of starting to look at the entire economic processes we run in our world through a circular economy lens rather than a linear economy lens. That’s very, very important. And so the waste or the byproduct of one process becomes the input of another process. And how do we develop a world which is much, much more circular than linear? How do we reduce waste? How do we move towards more sustainable resources and inputs? Those are things that high schoolers should definitely start thinking about.