As a nation today we need many social entrepreneurs. We need a revolution from people in different walks of life in creating and implementing effective, innovative, and sustainable solutions to battle social and environmental challenges. These solutions include services and products for profit or as non-profit initiatives. India needs numerous social entrepreneurs with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. Areas such as sanitation, education, water, gender bias, primary health, female feticide, environmental problems need attention because these problems are persistent in nature.

Usually, people leave the societal needs to the government or the business sectors. Nevertheless, social entrepreneurs tend to identify areas that are not working efficiently in the current system and try to solve the problem by changing it, spreading the awareness about the solution, and influence people to be a part of the change. For example, let’s look at Dr. Govindappa Venkatswamy’s Arvind Eye Hospitals. Its business model is highly social yet sustainable. It runs on its own revenue. The founder’s mission was to eradicate redundant blindness among the poor population in India especially in rural India living with a minimum daily wage and who can’t afford medical treatment. Arvind Eye Hospital provides large volume, high quality and affordable care. 50% of its patients receive services either free or at steeply subsidized rate, yet the organization remains financially self-sustainable. Much importance is given to equity – ensuring that all patients are accorded the same high quality care and service, regardless of their economic status. The model’s core is economies of scale.

As a common trait, social entrepreneurs are passionate with their ideas and commit their lives to change. They are visionaries since they envisage a society without problems. They almost dedicate their lives for a social cause. They also present ideas which are user-friendly, ethical, and easily understandable engaging widespread support. This ensures that local people stand up, grab their idea and implement it. In simple words, every leading social entrepreneur is a mass recruiter of local change makers. He is a role model who tells people that their action can do anything. In the last two decades, social entrepreneurship has grown based on the understanding that a new idea in the hands of a good entrepreneur is a powerful tool.

Octogenarian Aabid Surti is a national-award winning author, cartoonist and artist. He has 80 books to his credit. On every Sunday morning he visits the topmost floor of his apartment complex in Mumbai’s Mira Road district. He rings the doorbells of all 56 apartments in the complex, asking residents a simple question: “Do you have a leaking tap in your home?” Aabid is accompanied by a plumber and a volunteer. The plumber gets to work, plugging leaks in the homes of those who answer with a yes. Aabid apologizes to those who say no. Over the years, Aabid Surti’s efforts have helped save 10 million liters of water. He is obsessed with the cause of saving water!  

While most entrepreneurs are motivated by the potential to earn a profit, for a social entrepreneur the profit does not come as the first motive. As Adam Smith explained in The Wealth of Nations (1776), “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” Adam Smith believed that when individuals pursued their own best interests, they would be guided toward decisions that benefited others. The baker, for example, wants to earn a living to support his family. To accomplish this, he produces a product, bread, which feeds and nourishes hundreds of people.

How social entrepreneurs play the role of change agents? They adopt a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value). Further, they recognize and relentlessly pursue new opportunities which serve the mission. Santosh Parulekar another social entrepreneur worked to create job opportunities for the unemployed youth in rural India. He started ‘Pipal Tree’, a company that aims to impart formal training to the youth and provides them with reputable jobs in companies across the country. Operating since 2007, Pipal Tree has trained over 1,500 workers and intends to open training centers pan India in the coming years. He engages in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning.

Social entrepreneurs act boldly without being limited by the resources in hand. But they do exhibit heightened accountability to the community served and also the outcomes created. Examples of social entrepreneurship ventures include microfinance institutions, educational programs, providing banking services in underserved areas and helping children orphaned by epidemic disease. Their efforts are connected to a notion of addressing unmet needs within communities that have been overlooked or not granted access to services, products, or base essentials available in more developed communities.

Shirish Apte has successfully rejuvenated a traditional water system in Maharashtra which is caught in between the Malguzaars (the local Zamindars or landlords) and the state government, the Malguzari tanks were left to die many years ago. Shirish Apte decided to change the situation and, since 2008, he has been successfully rejuvenating these tanks. His efforts and hard work have made the district administration restore 21 more such tanks. This project has helped many local people get employment, the irrigation output has increased in the area, the farmers have reduced the use of fertilizers in the farms and, above all, you now get to witness a great sight as many animals come and quench their thirst at these tanks.

A social entrepreneur might also seek to address imbalances in such availability, the root causes behind such social problems, or social stigma associated with being a resident of such communities. The main goal of a social entrepreneur is not to earn a profit, but rather to implement widespread improvements in society.

Oddoor farms near Mangalore, Karnataka, provides an inspiring example of the efforts made by Rajesh Naik to transform 120 acres of barren land into a lush green farm through his persistent efforts of creating a 2 acre wide and 50 feet deep lake, which has not only transformed the surrounding area, but has also helped in improving the water table in the surrounding village, besides helping in the development of a self sufficient organic farm and a dairy. It took a lot of financial resources and time to create a lake that gradually started filling up with water and now it generates around 40,000 litres of water that is used for irrigating the whole farm. This has not only helped in creating and developing greenery in the area, but has also helped in increasing the water table in the surrounding areas of the farm.

Contemporary economists and management writers like Baptist Say, Joseph Schumpeter, Peter Drucker and Howard Stevenson have defined entrepreneurship with slight variance but the same perspective that entrepreneurs are individuals who create value, those who are innovators, those who are change agents in society etc. Social entrepreneurs are close to all these definitions created by various economists. The only difference being that of social entrepreneur is entrepreneurs with a ‘social mission’, for a social entrepreneur social mission if explicit and central theme.  This affects how they perceive and assess opportunities. 

In India social entrepreneurs face some critical problems such as: enterprises need a strong grounded business plan to help achieve milestones. The rigor of building and following a plan that is based on market realities and customer insight is critical, they need support of lawyers, chartered accountants, senior entrepreneurs to help them develop good business plan. We have all heard of a great social enterprise doing good work, but limited to specific geographies. The primary reason they are not able to scale up is lack of funds or the founders’ limited bandwidth. I appeal readers of this article to strengthen hands of social entrepreneurs in whatever way we can.

Sanitation is a vital part of daily human life. Our body needs to flush out waste and toxins as a matter of routine, physiological process. Urine and feces are the end products of our metabolism. It is, however, also very important to properly dispose-off this bodily waste, for both aesthetic and health reasons. Properly disposed off feces and urine ensure a clean, odorless environment, as well as prevent diseases due to microbes. Improperly disposed off waste, on the other hand, will cause a poisonous odor and be a breeding ground for diseases. Therefore, it is important to have proper sanitation facilities and toilet for everyone.

Biggest fact of our country and world is more people have access to a mobile phone than a toilet. The World Bank estimates that nearly 75% of the world has access to a mobile phone, while only 64% has access to a toilet. Millions of people have to travel long distances away from their homes just to find a place to relieve themselves. Toilets save lives; it’s as simple as that because lack of sanitation spreads disease, like diarrhea and intestinal parasites. A child dies from diarrhea every 86 seconds. A single gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses and 1 million bacteria. The best place for human waste is down the drain and therefore, we should love our toilet, we should care for it! When women and girls have access to sanitation, they are less vulnerable to physical and sexual assault. When women and girls have to travel to find some privacy, they are vulnerable to sexual assault on their journey. That’s because they often relieve themselves late at night or before dawn to avoid being seen, awful men take advantage of this situation.

More than 50 per cent of Indians do not have access to safe and private toilets, some of the latest studies have mentioned. A report titled ‘It’s No Joke – State of the World’s Toilets’ by WaterAid (WaterAid is an international non-profit organization that was set up in 1981 as a response to the UN International Drinking Water & sanitation decade (1981–1990) states that “If all 774 million people in India waiting for household toilets were made to stand in a line, the queue would stretch from Earth to the moon and beyond.” India is second largest country in world, where people are forced to defecate in the open.  Stop for a minute, imagine, if you don’t get to visit the toilet for few hours……how would you feel? How many times do you use the toilet in a given day? Three times; Five times; four times; six times??  One of the first things we do in the morning and the last thing we do before going to bed, using the toile. Urinating and defecating is most essential part of living life. If toilets are removed from our daily life, what are we left with?

Toilet cleanliness is very important for all the human beings. If they are not clean, it is the place from where all the germs and bacteria start their attacks on the human body. That is the reason why the toilets need to be sanitized daily. If toilets at home and workplace or wherever you visit are unclean, it affects the health immediately. Unclean toilets can cause various illnesses. Having a clean toilet is a privilege for many of us.

A news item in Wall Street Journal in 2014 says that India has a mental block against toilets: every second person relieves themselves outdoors; this is Indian’s century old practice that contributes to child malnutrition, economic loss and violence against women. Sanitation experts say that only building more toilets will not solve the problem, first, people need to learn to love using the latrines.

Many Indians regard open defecation as part of a natural, healthy, honest life; a recent study conducted in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh found. This mentality is more observed among rural North Indians. Those five northern Indian states account for 45% of the country’s households without a toilet, according to data from the 2011 census. But even in homes where toilets were installed, many people still prefer to go outside.

United Nations (UN) observes World Toilet Day on November 19 each year. According to a study of UN, 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to proper sanitation.

According to a recent survey, more than 140,000 children younger than five years die each year in India due to diarrhea. Nearly 40 per cent of India’s children are stunted; this will affect both their life chances and the future prosperity of India. India also has high rates of maternal and newborn mortality linked to sepsis. It’s a big issue even for women. Schools and colleges toilets are dirty and unusable. Most girls avoid using the filthy toilets holding back their urge of urinating for hours. And, girls in rural areas and urban slums lack access to clean toilets and sanitation and this is a big cause of dropping out of school, or not going to school at all. It’s the difference between education and independence and being locked into poverty and conquest.

‘Toilet ek premkatha’ is a 2017 Indian Hindi film directed by Shree Narayan Singh, co-produced by Akshay Kumar (actor of the movie) and Neeraj Pandey. The film stars Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar in the lead roles. The film was released on August 11, 2017, is a satirical comedy in support of governmental campaigns to improve the sanitation conditions, with an emphasis on the eradication of open defecation, especially in rural areas. The movie doesn’t come off as preachy, but yet highlights the need for a toilet, especially for women in every household. This movie has now received recognition from the UN Environment Cell.

Bollywood movies have often talked about subjects like sex, HIV, sexual violence and other sensitive topics. Now, filmmakers are addressing issues like sanitation, hygiene and menstrual hygiene. The new movement is seen as a forefront of a new genre of Indian movies that attempts to tackle issues more subtly and sensibly than the current crop of blockbusters. Movies like ‘Toilet ek premkatha’, ‘half girlfriend’, ‘Phullu’ and ‘Padman’ are very perceptively made; they handle the social issues of defecation, menstrual hygiene with sensitivity.