The Maverick
ai Nangla village is a tiny speck on Haryana’s map. As far as the state’s administration goes, the speck probably doesn’t even exist. For several decades this little village in Mewat district languished in misery. Apparently, since Independence, no administrator bothered to visit the village. Until recently, there were no roads leading up to the village. The poor remained poor, access to healthcare was limited, there was no clean drinking water, illiteracy was rife, and women were downtrodden.
But something changed last year. The village, as a collective whole, clocked a Rs. 40-lakh increase in income (Rs. 80 lakh to Rs. 1.2 crore) from agriculture and allied services in one year. For the 200 village households, 80 percent of whom depend on agriculture, this is a lot. The extra cash allowed the villagers some degree of freedom. The little school in Nai Nangla saw enrolments increase from 250 to 320 children. From 23 percent literacy in 2003, today the village enjoys 95 percent literacy.
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Image: Madhu Kapparath for Forbes India
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Mehmood Khan quit his high-flying global career to focus fully on transforming his poor village in Haryana | |
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Nai Nangla owes it all to one man — Mehmood Khan, the former global leader of innovation process development at Unilever. Khan is an unlikely son of Nai Nangla. Unlike his peers who remained trapped in the village, he “escaped” — as he puts it — and led a life that people in Nai Nangla can’t even dream about. Khan got a good education, including an MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad, and worked for Unilever across the world. He launched Unilever’s brands in Cambodia, Mongolia, Vietnam and Laos before becoming the innovation head at the company’s London headquarters.
Each time Khan came to India to visit his family, he could feel the difference between him and his brethren. He decided to do something about it. Charity wasn’t the answer — at least not a sustainable one. “Look at the Lee Kuan Yew model of development. The only resource he had was people,” says Khan. And so he set upon the task of improving the lives of these villagers through education, skill development and better access to the basic amenities in life.
The income rise is due to a Mother Dairy milk collection booth that Khan has been instrumental in bringing to the village. It was the first time that the villagers got a chance to break away from the stranglehold of local milk vendors who gave them absurdly low prices. The villagers were forced to accept it because they had no other avenue and also because they had taken loans from these milk vendors and were, in a sense, ‘bonded’ to them.
Other changes are visible in the village. A ‘common facilitation centre’ came up here with a computer training facility and a sewing centre around a year back. Basic literacy classes for women were held. A lot of the village women took up sewing as a vocation and earn between Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 2,000 a month. If things work out as planned, they will soon be sewing garments for a Gurgaon-based manufacturing unit. Some of the men, after having been trained in computers and basic English, have been hired by insurance company Aviva, Max New York Life and ICICI Bank.
Geoffrey Probert, Executive Vice President, Deodorants Category (Unilever), sees parallels between what Khan did at Unilever and what he is doing now. Probert was the business director for Unilever International and Khan’s boss when he launched Unilever in Cambodia and Mongolia. Probert says, “Mehmood knows how to create a market where none exists.” Khan launched Unilever brands in Cambodia in 1993 which was a time of political unrest and great uncertainty. Khan remembers landing at Phnom Penh airport and filling his immigration form in candlelight. Probert says, “There was no rulebook at that time. You had to just use your wits and Mehmood was an incredibly good resource for us in these markets.”
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All the best.
Matteo
