Every Maharashtrian village is traditionally structured along caste lines. With

the higher castes residing at the centre, near the resources, vis-a-vis the common well, the schools, the health care centers and the lower castes at the periphery. In the Konkan, the Katkari Adivasis are the casteless ones, and consequently, they reside furthest from the village centre, on the hills that make up the Western Ghats, far away from development. Geographically marginalized and socially discriminated against, the Adivasis are also politically excluded making them some of the most impoverished people in the country.

While working with Sarvahara Jana Andolan (SJA), a people’s organization of the Katkari Adivasis of western Maharashtra, I attended what was called the Activists School. This four day residential programme was conducted once every month for activists of both SJA and other organisations. It aimed at educating people and making them conscious of different realities with the mandate of generating action for social transformation. But most importantly, activists undergo a gradual realization of how much control they have over their own, their community’s, their country’s and the world’s destinies, slowly obliterating the fatalism that was so characteristic of feudalism. At the same time, they are infused with a newfound self-respect and self-confidence that the caste system had completely eroded. In four days, we learnt psychology, economics, civics, how to file an FIR (this was part of the ‘curriculum’ because it had currency and relevance for the target audience) and every night we sang and danced to indigenous tunes. Much of my fellow learners had barely passed the third standard. This was perhaps the most educative experience of my life.

The idea isn’t novel, really. The great Brazilian educator and pedagogue, Paulo Freire, spoke of educating for critical consciousness (and the Activist School is inspired from his writings).As far as my limited reading of Freire goes, the most significant aspects of conscientization are as follows.

1. To develop critical consciousness of the world and different realities
2. To use this critical consciousness to perform transformative action in order to liberate oneself from oppression (oppression can be of any kind, class based, caste based, urban-rural type, gender based, employer-employee type etc.)
3. To use critical consciousness and transformative action to create a new situation which is conducive to the pursuit of a fuller humanity

As a knowledge system, this is a deeply thought-out, radical philosophy based on critical theory. Moreover, it is also a difficult concept to grasp especially for those with a mainstream education (for the newly initiated it nullifies mainstream education- so the theory becomes personal as it threatens status quo)

But, let us just take the three objectives at face value. They are, none of them, antithetical to education as we, in the mainstream would perceive it. We do want our education system to develop in our children the ability to think and react critically. We do want it to help them liberate themselves from social, political and economic shackles.

Pedagogy of theoppressed

Infact, Freire in his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, briefly argues how the ‘oppressor’ is also leading a sub-human life. So this is not a ‘special’ kind of education for the poor and the marginalized. And finally, how truly rewarding to create a new situation to pursue one’s humanity unfettered?

Sounds like a lot of rhetoric?  Which is why the Activist School, in many ways, drives the point home. The idea, then, is to see if the Activist School can be extrapolated to the education of children and other groups. I believe it can.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Yes, we have all heard it enough times. However, the truth is that thought leadership still plays an important role in building and sustaining your company’s brand. Thought leadership involves impressing and convincing your customer that you have more than a sound understanding of a particular topic and can use this knowledge to forecast trends or come up with solutions that are beyond the normal.

One client that we are working with has made significant progress in starting a thought leadership program and scaling it. They initially mapped the stakeholders to target as part of the program and then devised a series of programs for  them. Simultaneously, they kept in touch with the internal context and showcased it effectively. Now, their footprint is wider and more importantly, they have created a scalable and sustainable platform and are being recognized for these efforts by the target audience.

Thought leadership should play an important part in your company’s marketing plan and initiatives will require concerted efforts to launch and sustain. However, the benefits are several and companies wishing to make a mark definitely need to consider it.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I was in a business meeting yesterday in Mumbai with a leading VC, when the person I was meeting asked me how the marketing role in an IT company would be different than one in, say a bank. His question had to do with banks focusing more on B2C marketing, and doing a whole bunch of programs around their typically large number of products.There is huge money on advertising, typically anathema in the IT industry and in general, life as a marketer is busy!

I explained to him, from my experience at Prayag and earlier at Infosys, that in this industry, the efforts are more focused- you have a few important stakeholders- customers and prospects, employees and prospective employees, influencers including business media, industry analysts, governments and trade bodies and so on. The company’s marketing efforts need to be highly targeted and impactful, and strike a chord with this audience. This would therefore not lead to ad dollars, as ads are typically a means to reach out to wider audiences, or frequent and fancy events.

On the other hand, B2B marketing, to be effective, needs high quality ideation. Be it capturing mind share as a thought leader, or conceiving a relationship program to engage continually with your customers who are usually decision makers in global corporations, the power of the idea comes into play.

So you would find companies in this space typically working with a few high impact, strategic programs through the year, which deliver great business value.

Of course, the challenges of hosting a world class global customer meet are not insignificant from an implementation perspective and will get you adrenalin pumping as much as 4-5 product launches in a B2C context.

The point is, each industry, market segment requires its own approach, and they are all equally interesting. It is for us as marketers to align the approach with the business need and deliver value.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Thought leadership is something that has received a lot of attention the last few years. What is worth examining is what can be classified as thought leadership – many a time what we see appears more like thoughtless leadership! There are many companies especially among the scale players who are making serious attempts to make a difference. Among the Indian players, Infosys made a mark with its “Flat world” theme. Wipro has also been making huge strides in this area – one initiative is their research council which comprises non-Wipro people who are experts in some field or the other. The council publishes research in topical areas. Now, what does this lead to? Companies who have invested quality efforts have reaped benefits that justify the efforts – it has resulted in better awareness among prospects leading to increased leads. And, this association with topical issues can lead to better pricing and so on.

The key is in making the right kind of noises and not pass off mediocre material as thought leadership. That will only be counter productive.

Popularity: 7% [?]