Executive Interviews: Interview with Reuben Abraham on Bottom of the Pyramid
November 2008 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Prof. Reuben Abhraham
Reuben Abraham is a Professor and Director of the Emerging Markets Solutions Initiative (EMSI) at the Indian School of Business.

• What kind of role do you see for an institution like ISB in terms of public policy?
  I definitely think that public policy should be a core part of our initiatives. I can talk at great length about small business, infrastructure and urbanization. Ultimately if you don't have the buy in from the government this is pointless. I want the public policy to change. What I can do to exert is one thing and other thing is to demonstrate. For instance, how can I demonstrate that the Government need not be in education sector?

  I can prove to them that corporate money will come into education; The single biggest case of great change has been the success of the telecom industry. There was deep fear that the entry of the Private Sector would cause the costs go up with little benefit to the poor. Such fears have been blatantly disproven. It is time to take cognizance of the fact that a lot of such ideas people had for 50 years have been blatantly disproven. Now where do you go from here? Where does an institution like ISB have a role? As I said showing of these demonstrations require working with the government; there is a lot of good people including the CM, but the question is do they want to work with us. Can we work with them? ISB is more than happy to work with them.

  I think themore important question is why is that the people have lost their will. CK Prahalad when he came to ISB a couple of weeks back, made a fairly simple point. He basically asked the audience whether they have been to Sabarmathi Ashram. Now what is Sabarmathi Ashram? It's basically 4 or 5 huts that's what it is and out of this 4 or 5 huts came a movement that overthrewthe greatest empire on the planet, without ever picking up a gun. Now that is our history. We don't as a nation have an excuse that things cannot be done, that this is the way it is and nothing can be done to change it. If there is collective will to change things, things can be changed.

• Do you see an institution like ISB having some progress on that front?
  No, not really.We are at the top end of the market. The best case we can really do is to make a very strong case for policy. But can we change the will of the people? Absolutely not! That's a political question.

• Do you see any positive signs and signals in that direction?
  I hope so. I can't predict the future. I am hopeful that the younger leadership of all political parties are a lot savvier, and a lot more sophisticated than the old guard. To a large extent the old guard just needs to go away. There should be retirement age in politics and if you are above 65 years, you should not be allowed to be in politics.

• This is how things are as far as India is concerned. How do you plan to work when you go to other emerging markets where you may not have this much of a say?
  That's where our global network kicks in. When you work with a Google or Soros foundation, they have enormous global clout and you can work with them on a bunch of these issues.