Social Inclusion and Social
Entrepreneurship
Case Study of Mirakle Courier, Mumbai
`
1. INTRODUCTION :-
Whenever we see disabled people, we say ‘poor fellow’, some
of us try to help him/her out for the time being, but we can see these people
are socially excluded for one and another reasons. Dr. Lynn Todmann, Director
of the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional
Psychology, Chicago suggests that “Social exclusion refers to the process in
which individuals and entire community are systematically denied rights,
opportunities and resources that are normally available to other members of
society and which is key to social integration. Problem of Social exclusion is
tied to lack of opportunities as disabled people are more subject to exclusion
than others” Most of the time they are not considered to be a part of the
mainstream of the society. Many time we assume that disabled people will live
their life wandering aimlessly without contributing anything to the society,
they depend on abled people to help them every time. Disabled people are also a
part of the society, they are not mere laggards created by the Almighty God.
They need to be socially included by some positive steps.
Social entrepreneurship is the recognition of a social problem and
the uses of entrepreneurial principles to organize create and manage a social venture to achieve a desired social
change.
Present paper will discuss Social Inclusion, Social
Entrepreneurship and relationship between these two. It will focus that how
social entrepreneurship can bring the change in society. I have taken Mumbai
based Mirakle Courier as a part of my
case study. It is creating job opportunities in its courier company by
employing Deaf and Dumb people and helping them to be self-reliant.
Global Scenario of Persons with
Disability
Some facts about People with Disabilities highlighted in the
International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. (UN, New
York, 14-25 August, 2006)
Overview
-
Around 10 per cent of the word
population or 650 million people live with a disability. They are the world’s
largest minority.
- 80 per cent of persons with disabilities
live in developing countries, according to UN Development Programme (UNDP).
-
In most OECD countries, women report
higher incidents of disability than men.
-
The World Bank estimates that 20 percent
of worlds’ poorest people are disabled and tend to be regarded in their own communities
as the most disadvantaged.
-
Women with disabilities are recognized
to be multiply disadvantaged, experiencing exclusion account of their gender
and disability.
-
According to UNICEF, 30 per cent of
street youths are disabled.
Education : -
-
90 percent of children with disabilities
in developing countries do not attend schools, says UNESCO. The global literacy
rate for adults with disabilities is a low as 3 percent and one percent for
women with disabilities to a 1998 UNDP study.
Employment: -
-
An estimated 386 million of the world’s
working age people are disabled, says the International Labour Organization
(ILO). Unemployment among the disabled is as high as 80 percent in some
countries. Often employers assume that persons with disabilities are unable to
work.
Even though persons with disabilities
constitute a significant 5 to 6 percent of India’s population, their employment
needs remain unmet, says a study by India’s National Centre for Promotion of
Employment for Disabled People, inspite of the “People With Disabilities Act”,
which reserves for them 3 percent of government jobs. Of some 70 million people
with disabilities in India, only about 1 lakh have been succeeded in obtaining
employment in industry.
- A 2004 United States survey found that
only 35 percent of working age people with disabilities are in fact working
compared to 78 percent of those without disabilities. Two-thirds of the
unemployed, disabled respondents said they would like to work but could not
find jobs.
- A 2003 study by Rutgers University found
that people with physical and mental disabilities continue to be vastly
underrepresented in the US workplace. One-third of the employers surveyed said
that the people with disabilities cannot effectively perform the required job
tasks. The second most common reason given for not hiring the disabled was the
fear of costly special facilities.
-
A US survey of employers conducted in
2003 found that the cost of accommodation was only $500 or less; 73 percent of
employers reported that their employees did not require special facilities at
all.
- Companies reported that employees with
disabilities have better retention rates
reducing the high cost of turn-over, says a 2002 US study. Other American
surveys reveal that after one year of employment, the retention rate of persons
with disabilities is 85 percent.
Message by Juan
Somavia, Director-General of the ILO on the occasion of International Day of Persons with Disabilities 3rd
December 2011 :-
New global estimates show that the number
of disabled persons is higher than previously assumed, making up some one
billion or 15% of the world’s population, the largest minority in the world. In
the lives of persons with disabilities, stigma, discrimination and neglect all
too often mean that they experience poorer health, lower educational
achievements, lower employment and labour force participation rates and higher
rates of poverty than the rest of the population. This evidence, combined with
ILO findings indicating the loss to GDP of up to 7 per cent due to the
exclusion of persons with disabilities from the labour market, should motivate
broad-based action to enable people with disabilities to be actively engaged in
development processes which yield benefits for all.
Enterprises, including small and medium-sized
enterprises which are the main source of job creation – play a key role in
expanding employment opportunities for women and men with disabilities. The ILO
has set up a Global Business and Disability Network comprising multinational
companies, employers’ organizations, business networks on disability,
representatives of disabled persons’ organizations and others. This network
supports enterprise efforts to take disability into account in the workplace
and in strategic business plans. Organization is indispensable to progress on
disability issues – trade unions are uniquely positioned in this regard. They
can draw attention to disability-related issues in national consultation and
negotiation processes and recruit, organize and integrate disabled persons into
the movement. And at workplace level they can promote positive action for
inclusion including awareness-raising among managers and staff, as well as on
required adjustments or adaptations.
Governments must give direction,
enshrining the rights and entitlements of disabled citizens to full
participation in the labour market and society as a whole, through appropriate
legislation, policy and implementation measures. This commitment should
translate into resource allocation, particularly in areas such as health,
education, training, and employment placement. Promoting opportunities for
decent work for people with disabilities is intrinsic to achieving a new era of
social justice. Working together we can create a better world for all.
Job Fair for Disable Person
In some part of the country, job fairs are organized specially
for disabled persons. Such fairs had been organized in last few years. This
year in Bangalore total 225 disable persons and 21 companies took part in such fair.
Last year in New Delhi over 350 persons and around 300 in Ahmedabad in year
2009 participated in the job fair. This is also one way by which we can provide
jobs to disable persons in the society. According to Shelly Bapana, event co-coordinator
at Ahmedabad fair, people with disability can contribute a lot to the economic
and social development of the country, but due to lack of opportunities,
disables people hardly get employed.
2. SOCIAL
INCLUSION & SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP:-
Social Inclusion
Social Exclusion is the state in which some part of society
is denied of their rights. Social Inclusion is the opposite of this. By way of
social inclusion efforts are made and see that those socially excluded people
are socially included or not. Sound policy needs to be developed for social
inclusion so that gradually matter of social exclusion can be handled with.
According to Anthony B Atkinson and Erik Marlier (2010), creating
a society for all is a moral obligation one that must reflect the commitments
to upholding fundamental human rights and principles of equality and equity.
There are also strong instrumental reasons for promoting social integration and
inclusion. Deep disparities, based on unequal distribution of wealth and/or
differences in people’s backgrounds, reduce social mobility and ultimately
exert a negative impact on growth, productivity and well-being of society as a
whole. Promoting social integration and inclusion will create a society that is
safer, more stable and more just, which is an essential condition for sustainable
economic growth and development.
Lana Ofak, Nenad Starc and Senada (2006) are of the view that
Social Exclusion is often perceived as a vicious circle with three components:
unemployment, poverty and social isolation. Social exclusion should be
understood as the relatively permanent, multiply conditioned and
multidimensional state of deprivation of an individual.
Social
Entrepreneurship
As per the report prepared by centre of Duke University “Social
Entrepreneurship is innovative and resourceful approaches to addressing social
issues. These approaches could be pursued through for-profit, nonprofit or
hybrid organization.” Social Entrepreneurship is having social objects having
commercial ingredients it.
According to J Gregory Dess (2001), Social Entrepreneurs play
the role of change agent in the social sector by:
- Adopting a mission to create and
sustain social value (not just private value)
- Recognizing and relentlessly
pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission.
- Engaging in a process of continuous
innovation, adaptation and learning.
- Acting boldly without being
limited by resources currently in hand and
- Exhibiting heightened
accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created.
Charles Leadbeater (2007) opines that demand for social
enterprise solutions will not lessen. They attack fundamental issues of how to
create public goods and solutions to social problems in an open market economy.
Social Inclusion and Social
Entrepreneurship
As we seen in the
definition of the Social Entrepreneurship, it addresses the social issues
alongwith commercial objectives also. With this we can socially include the
excluded persons of the society who have been excluded because of various
reasons. SE can bring the change in the society by creating job opportunities
for socially excluded persons and help them to be self-reliant rather than
depending upon others.
Challenges before Social
Enterprise.
Social Enterprise should be self-sustainable else it will not
exist for longer period of time. There should be a sound revenue model for its sustainability.
Social Enterprise surely will take some time to operate like any other
commercial organization established solely for making profit.
Following is the conclusion of research done on feasibility
of a Social Enterprise by Asako Matsukawa.
(Source
:-
http://beyondprofit.com/data-is-social-enterprise-a-financially-viable-venture/)
Through the survey we found
that there are more enterprises that are loss-making (34%) than those earning a
profit (25%). And 41% percent of enterprises are currently breaking even. If
you look at the profitability by measure of years in operation, you can clearly
see that making profit through social enterprise is no easy task. It is true
that the percentage of loss-making enterprises steadily goes down as the
companies get older. But there is virtually no disparity in the number of
profit making entities across age categories. Many enterprises stop making
losses as they grow older but do not begin to turn a profit; they merely start
breaking even. Surprisingly, even after 11 years or more of operations, the
percentage of profit making enterprises is only 27%.
3. MIRAKLE COURIER,
MUMBAI
Mirakle Couriers is a courier agency that provides employment
for the hearing impaired. Mirakle Courier is the only privately run, for profit
organization in India that employs only hearing impaired people. The company
hired men and women from underprivileged part of the city train them and deploy
them for courier service. Salary given to employees is competing to same
industry. For this work company has been awarded the National Award for the
Empowerment of People with Disabilities by the Ministry of Social Justice,
Government of India in the year 2010. It has also won the Hellen Keller Award,
Echoing Green Fellowship in the year 2009. In Jan 2011, U.S. based
entrepreneurial online magazine Springwise put Mirakle Couriers 4th in Top 20
business ideas & Opportunities for 2011. The award is given to outstanding
employers of person with disabilities as well as the most outstanding employees
with disabilities.
With the conversation Anupama Katakam (2011), Dhruv Lakra,
Founder of Mirakle Courier said that we are not a charity and do not help deaf
people, we merely help them help themselves. Most of them have grown up in an
over-protected environment or have been badly treated for being physically
different. We believe that to overcome this we must help bring out their true
inner potential. We do this by employing them in a highly competitive and
professionally demanding courier business where we push them to rise up to the
occasion. By working with us they gain high levels of confidence while also
gaining financial independence. Many of the employees have become bread winner
of their family.
Rohan Mehta, Marketing & Media person at Mirakle opines
that deafness is invisible disability. People who are deaf can read, write and
see so a courier company was a good idea as it does not require much
speaking. Besides, the deaf have an
excellent visual sense. They are very good at remembering roads, building and
even faces, which is a good skill to have in the courier business.
Lakra openly says that his organization is for profit so that
they will not be in any need of grant/donations. It can operate independently.
He stress upon the need of private sector to come forward to create job
opportunities for people with disabilities. If private sectors realize this,
then more and more person with disabilities can be hired and make them
self-reliant. Lakra also suggest that some benefits should be given to
organization who hires disable person as some foreign countries do by giving
tax benefits.
Genesis of Mirakle Courier….
Mirakle
Couriers was founded in January 2009. Started by Dhruv Lakra who combined his
education and experience in both the business and social sectors to come up
with a for-profit social enterprise. The idea to help the deaf was triggered by
one particular incident he experienced while traveling on a bus in Mumbai.
Once
upon a time, Dhruv was sitting on a bus next to a young boy looking eagerly out
the window. In fact he was not just eager but actually being very restless. He
was looking around anxiously, seeming slightly lost. Dhruv asked him where he
was going but the boy did not respond. It took him a few seconds to realize
that this boy was unable to hear or speak. He was deaf. Though the bus
conductor regularly announced the stops this boy still did not know where he
was. Dhruv took out a piece of paper and wrote to him in Hindi asking him where
he was going. Through the back and forth pen and paper exchange, it suddenly
dawned on Dhruv how difficult life was for the deaf.
It
is an invisible disability. You cannot know when someone near you is deaf as
there are no obvious physical attributes, and so it is totally ignored. It is
also a silent (voiceless) disability. There is very little public sympathy for
the deaf, and by connection, a severe lack of government support for them in
India. Particularly when it comes to employment there are no opportunities
because no one has the patience or the foresight to learn deaf
language and culture. This is how Mirakle Couriers was born.
Over
the next few months Dhruv spent time exploring the deaf culture and learning
Indian Sign Language. He focused on a courier business because it requires a
lot of visual skills but no verbal communication. The deaf are extremely good
at maps reading, remembering roads and buildings because they are so visually
inclined.
Lakra
says it has not been easy convincing companies to give his firm business.
“Corporates are reluctant to hire us as they are scared that parcels may not
reach the destination or that we do not have adequate capabilities to handle
important documents,” he says. “Furthermore, courier services are a ruthless
business. However, we are good at what we do and have landed some big clients
like Vodafone, Aditya Birla, Godrej and Boyce, and that has been extremely
beneficial. As companies begin to realize their corporate social
responsibility, they may show more interest in hiring us.”
Mirakle
Courier works meticulously to make the system error free. Courier boys are
specially trained to handle difficult situations. They work on the text
messages on their mobile phones. Company also trains them to reach certain level
so that they cannot be treated badly for any mistakes. Company also conducts
reading writing workshops for them. Initially Mirakle Courier used to approach the
school of hearing impaired to recruit staff but for last couple of years person
comes to Mirakle for jobs.
Mirakle Courier road ahead…
In the beginning Mirakle got his first office from
Thermax for their operation but now Aditya Birla Group has provided Mirakle
250sq ft of office space in Churchgate free of cost. Currently Mirakle has 4
Management Staff and 64 Deaf Employees where each of them has gained confidence
and been empowered with financial independence. Dhruv considered a courier
service ideal for the deaf as it requires a lot of visual skills such as map
reading, remembering roads and buildings which the deaf are extremely good at. The
company employs female who look after data entry, tracking, scanning, sorting etc.
at the branch. The male employees who operate as courier agents travelling on
public transport, avoiding traffic and remaining aware of their surrounding
environment. Communication between field agents and the branch staff is done
through text messages. Latha Suresh, Prabhakar K and Sadasivan (2012) mentioned
in their case study on Mirakle Courier that Corporate Clients have shown trust
in Mirakle’s Business and cause by availing their service. The growing
corporate list shows that their team members are doing their job well. However
it is not sufficient from Lakra’s point of view. Company has been making steady
growth since its creation and presently it is operating with its two branches
in Mumbai. It is delivering around 65,000 shipments per month. They are
currently planning to expand their services to other Indian cities.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS:-
Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of
India is doing their job for upliftment of the disabled persons in India by framing
various policies, laws, establishing different types of autonomous
organizations for welfare of disable person. It is not only government’s duty
to help the disabled but also of the society to participate in this journey of
upliftment. Some of the organizations are the admirable examples by showing
their path breaking work in development of disabled individual.
We have to think about the inclusive growth of the disabled
person not just by providing them basic facilities like food, shelter etc. but
we also have to work upon the overall growth of those people. We have to make
them self-reliant and independent. I always remember a quote given by
Confucius, a Chinese Philosopher “Give a
man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, you feed him for a
lifetime”. In our case it means that we have to create job opportunities
for these people so that they can be self-made. Government is performing its
duty at its own pace but as a citizen of India one should come forward to take
care of this segment of the society which is often neglected by us.
Need of Sustainable Social
Enterprise
Social Enterprise should be self-sustainable. It should not
be dependent on any grant or donations. Enterprise based on grant/donations
cannot sustain for longer period of time. As we discussed above that it should
have a sound and sustainable revenue model. According to Awasthi Dinesh (2010),
Professor & Director of Entrepreneurship Institute Development of India,
Gujarat, “In Some cases people set up a business involving physically
challenged persons or persons with some disadvantages and evolve a successful
business model. In such cases, a social entrepreneur could not be driven
primarily by social concern, bordering empathy; he/she is not likely to go
ahead unless it makes a serious business sense.”
References :-
Anupama
Katakam (2011), “A courier company in
Mumbai shows the way in providing
employment for the hearing impaired.” Frontline,
Volume 28, Issue 03, Jan 29-Feb11,
2011 retrieved from http://www.frontline.in/fl2803/stories/20110211280308500.htm
retrieved on July 20, 2012
Anthony B Atkinson and Eric Marlier (2010), “Analyzing and Measuring Social Inclusion in a Global Context”, Report
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retrieved on November 16, 2012
Asako Matsukawa (2008), “Data
: Is Social Enterprise a Financially Viable Venture” retrieved from at http://beyondprofit.com/data-is-social-enterprise-a- financially-viable-venture/
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Awasthi Dinesh (2010), “Promoting
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November 17, 2012
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