To me it is enterprises and anti-enterprises. It’s not about enterprises and social enterprise. Every enterprise should be a part of society. I think the people inspired me in terms of the street vendor or a cobbler or a local blacksmith.

Everybody was running an enterprise that was socially sustainable, and so why not create more that used solar panels?

Absolutely, and would you agree then Harish that the term social enterprise should just simply be business?

No, a business is just a semantic that we use in any language. Whether it’s an enterprise, whether it’s an NGO, all the legal forms that different countries have, is it respecting all three parts?

That is on two parts definitely the social sustainability, and the second is environmental sustainability. The third is somewhere that needs to be linked to financial sustainability, and financial sustainability could be at a project level, could be at the program level or could be at a state level. For example, health and education.

I believe the financial sustainability of health and education should be at the state and federal level. As long as the loop is closed at the social sustainability level per se, then any form of organisation should be able to do that.

It’s a great point there Harish. Tell us a little bit more about your work. You’re CEO of the SELCO Foundation. What is SELCO’s purpose, and tell us a little bit about the work you do?

The SELCO Foundation’s work is to create an ecosystem in a manner that uses sustainable energy as a catalyst to democratise the delivery of health, education, livelihoods, and other essential services for the poor and by the poor.

The whole philosophy of SELCO Foundation is, “is it truly grassroots level, in a manner that’s completely decentralised, and do we believe that decentralised energies like solar can do it?”

What I mean by an ecosystem is, are we truly democratising it? In fact, today what happens is we centralise grids, hospitals, and make everything central, and we force the poor to become employees. We only use their hard labour.

What we are trying to do is make sure that we utilise the intellectual potential of the poor, and use sustainable energy to harness that. Why can’t there be an Einstein or a Madame Curie from the poor? Why? Because we do not create that ecosystem where a poor kid in Orisa, or Tanzania or in Brazil does not have an equal opportunity that you and I have. Because we confuse between intellectual poverty and financial poverty, and that is SELCO Foundation’s [purpose]; to destroy those myths and say ‘let’s equalise it.’

Is it more of, ‘how do you create an ecosystem that is inclusive?’ It [seems to be] very much taking a systemic approach in understanding some of the deeper root causes of those issues and looking to tackle those as well.