Anish Kumar (TRIF) his Failure: Closing your eyes to needs of the community

Are most of our failures merely a failure of understanding a particular problem? What does one do when they realise they’ve tread the wrong path too far down the line?

These are some of the questions Anish Kumar faced early on in his career.

The Context

In the late 2000’s, there was a significant decline in mulberry cultivation and India’s two silk powerhouses Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were undergoing a dry lull. It was at this time where efforts were made to make up for this deficit of silk production.

It was decided that the cultivable lands of Madhya Pradesh might make for an ideal, new hotbed of mulberry cultivation, one that could significantly help the community. TRIF had a plan in mind, to incentivise mulberry cultivation by providing water by means of drip irrigation and other methods of water conservation.

Many farmers were taken in by the idea of incentive of irrigation systems, but the results didn’t go the way Anish had intended.

The Failure

What Anish soon came to realise was that farmers were not particularly interested in cultivating mulberry. They preferred to grow their own crops with the infrastructure that had been provided to them.

It soon became apparent that this was a failure in understanding the needs of the farmer, taking for granted that they would follow a prudent route devised by someone else and a failure in taking into account the needs and desires of the farmers.

Diagnosis

To overcome this specific failure, Anish made the selection criteria more stringent, opting for farmers who already had the infrastructure for irrigation and water.

However, the fundamental question remains- should there be a responsibility to study and understand the needs and desires of a community in a local context?

Desires certainly cannot be regarded in static terms, a subjective, fluid human tendency that varies across many cultures, conditions and contexts. Going by many failures, it would seem wise to address this at the very outset in order to avoid running into roadblocks.