Orbit Change Conversations

Let’s say you are a social entrepreneur who had setup a successful textile company that not only revived traditional weaving and hand block printing and introduced more modern designs, but also succeeded in marketing these products in the West. What do you do next?

If you are Faith and J.C. Singh, founders of Anokhi (see Hindu Business Line story here), you take on the bigger challenge of reviving Jaipur. They have setup a Jaipur Heritage Foundation – a private charitable organization – to promote “heritage-based social and economic development”. Rather than simply trying to conserve a threatened popular culture as a form of museum curiosity, they are trying to organize and empower artists and those working in the crafts so that they could join the modern economy.

Jaipur Heritage Foundation organized a successful festival recently. Alan Riding has written about this in IHT. He says that…

“the festival’s principal function is less to provide entertainment than to forge a strategy for survival… The festival… offers this backward region of northern India its best — and arguably its only — chance of joining this country’s rush toward development.

I am always happy to see social entrepreneurs replacing ineffectual government efforts. I feel that the climate for entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship, in India is rapidly improving. Chime in especially if you feel otherwise.