In the Interest of the Poor.......

On one of my recent visits to a microfinance institution (MFI) for an assignment, this incident set me thinking.
This NGO was very worried about competition from other financial service providers in the area due to which they were in fear of losing their market very rapidly. The competitors were providing much better quality services at a much lower price, and providing much better customer service than the current NGO.
Now, it was very recently (about 1.5-2 years) that the NGO had started its microfinance operations, otherwise it used to work on other development issues like health, education, advocacy, gender issues etc. They started out with a concern that poor people do not have access to good quality financial services and they started their microfinance operations to address the same. Ofcourse they were not starting microfinance operations to earn money or because it was the latest fashion and everyone else was doing it!!! They were doing it out of their concern for the poor.
After these couple of years, the development activities have taken a backseat and microfinance is their major activity. With the entry of new players in the market and banks lending directly to a section of their clients, they are fast losing their market share. This organisation also realised that all these organisations had deep pockets and can afford to provide better services to the clients than themselves, and they would not be able to match the same even with their best efforts in quite some time to come. This has them worried. They just wished that these players were not there in the market. And this has me perplexed.
If, as the organisation claimed, it was only concerned with the clients getting access to quality financial services, why would they wish that the other players were not there in the market? When these players are providing services better than themselves? When they know they cannot match the other players services for a very long time. Why do they want their clients to still get these services at a lower quality, higher price as long as they take it from them?
Is it not better that the organisation go back and do the development stuff that they did earlier? Now that the reason why they had started microfinance operations were fulfilled? But the organisation did not seem the least interested in going back to the development activities, neither were the staff.
Paisa kamana hai isliye microfinance kar rahe ho, to aisa bolo na yaar.......why this garb of charity???
God save the poor from these "development" organisations.

Attrition Blues

Any organisation I see today, is plagued by the problem of attrition among staff. However hard they try to retain their staff, the staff, especially the younger ones, move out to look for better opportunities. The funny thing in the microfinance sector is that, since the sector is so small, people move in circles in the same organisations. So, for example, if an employee from organisation A is leaving it to join organisation B, another employee from organisation B leaves it to join A. Both leave for better opportunities. Now, if an organisation is not good enough for one, how does it become better for another person?
And the timing of someone leaving the job is amazingly predictable. Going by trends, most people leave the organisation in a period of 10 - 14 months of joining it, and they do it every 10 - 14 months. This is soon starting to become the 'one year itch'. Looking at this phenomena, I once jokingly told my friends that our educational system is to blame for this. We move from one class to the next higher class every year, and if we do not, it means there is a failure. We have grown up with that psyche. So, even in the jobs, we try moving after a year. Does not make much sense, but the only reason I can see why people would be so desperate to leave their jobs after a one year stint.
Probably also the times we are living in plays a factor. So many options and choices for everything we do, so many television channels, so many entertainment options, our attention spans are getting lesser and lesser. We cannot focus on one channel in a TV for more than a few seconds. We get bored too soon and too often. We all need change more than the previous generations ever did. Also, the pace of life has gone so high, we burn out sooner. The pressure of work, untimely shifts and then equally exhausting and physically draining ways of partying, means we work and party in one year what the earlier generations would probably have done in three. So, we get bored of our jobs and need a change.
One more reason I see is that in these days, loyalty to an organisation pays much lower rewards than shifting continuously. You will see that you get your normal increments every year when you stick to one organisation, whereas when an offer is made, you negotiate and bargain a much better deal. Organisations also offer much higher packages and profiles to people who they are trying to poach from others than what they would pay to their own existing employees.
Times are changing.
In the earlier generations, people would join a job after college, and then retire from that job. This was pretty much the norm. At that time, it was strange for people to quit and switch jobs, sometimes even scandalous. Nowadays its just the opposite. Even when a person is perfectly happy with a job and is with a good organisation, it is common for his friends to ask him, so, how long do you plan to stick in this place, or, What? You are still with the same organisation? Its more than a year man, whats wrong? ..........
I have not added here the various other internal institutional factors that are there why people switch their jobs so frequently. There are many. But probably you all know all that already. Just though I will add on a few of my own points.