Connecting the Dots: So what’s the big picture at BCIL?

So what’s the big picture at BCIL? Why does BCIL do what it does?

We had pulled up off the highway for a well-earned coffee break on our return from a visit to a small town in the hills of the Western Ghats where we sought to implement a system for greater efficiency in water supply, with the consent of the Urban Local Body. A new-found colleague turned around and asked, “So what is the connection at BCIL between an urban water supply development programme that we do in a small town in Coorg or Goa, and all the Green Residential Developments that we offer in cities?”
I was quite foxed. It seemed obvious to me that to 'connect the dots' that will draw up the bigger picture seemed to be beyond many of us right here at BCIL. A water supply project in Polibetta, a bustling, little planter’s town, or in an urbanized village to the South of Goa... and a residential or tourism project that BCIL, as a company, was promoting in Goa, or Coorg or Bangalore, in a sense, demonstrates the sort of business vision and impact the organization aspires to make into the future.
If there is one thing that we were clear about in the early 90’s, when we spun ourselves into an enterprise called BCIL, it was that we will be a company, alright [no donor funds, please], but will think of a 'single bottom line' in a way that it covers what a new generation of planners are calling the triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic success.
So how do we achieve such a single bottom line where we have both our financial balance sheets and our ecological balance sheet achieving much the same in terms of success, was the challenge before us then, and continues to be now. How do we reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable faces of Cause and Money, in a world where even the effective fulfillment of higher values is only measured by the yardstick of economic success?
BCIL has been basically driven by a single plank that addresses concerns of water and energy. All our Projects that offer eco-homes have drawn from this plank to relate to earth materials and embodied energy, to vegetation and water-saving species, as well as the impact of solid waste on land if we don’t take care of them sustainably, with or without interventions from the state government or state infrastructure--and doing all this, with technologies that are relatively new and seen to be 'unconventional', and therefore pushing the membrane of business possibility.
It would be the easier route, as regular builders adopt, to not worry about what we put out as waste from the residential townships that we create. It would be as easy as for us to not worry about water supply for such townships and tell our customers to sort their challenge out in a way that they take up those 'concerns' with local authorities or with other government agencies that are linked to water and waste management.
The important thing that BCIL has recognized is that every single project has to demonstrate possibilities of construction as well as management of these resources of energy, water and waste, in a way that other regular builders can see the practical 'do-ability' of these values, while at once being profitable.
An urban water supply programme in Polibetta helps us expand our own strengths in technical management of water resources, while the tourism destination in the District gains from the fact that it will be seen to be a responsible initiative that pays tribute to the region that has hosted the Project, and in the bargain wins the company new customers who are discerning, sensitive and secure a 'feel good' on their association with BCIL, while having their investments pay off handsomely. For, after all, as a business our prime objective is to grow the wealth of our investors.
If one were to look at the water supply project in Goa, for example, the idea is to see that successful implementation of the Project will bring the attention of the government to what it could be enabling other agencies to be doing, while with such positive community impact, BCIL’s commercial projects in the state [or in the neighbourhood of the community-developed water project] will gain in terms of possibly a more sympathetic position that the government will take--on the values and intent of such Projects into the longer term future.
The important thing for us all to realize is that BCIL has to be economically efficient, for its own long-term good. The talent and capacity of its professionals need opportunity for expressing their ability in these areas of infrastructure.
The group's professionals are aware of the challenges of dealing with heterogeneous groups of people when we work with larger, disparate communities that a regular urban town involves. It is, of course, easier to work with homogeneous groups of people who are “customers” and who clearly are on one page with us on what values and benefits or amenities will be delivered for the money they exchange with BCIL.
So what is the future and why does BCIL have to take these positions which seemingly are not in consonance with hard commercial objectives? To us at BCIL, no enterprise into the far future can actually succeed without social validation. There is no getting away from the fact that commerce and conservation have to go together with an eye trained constantly on the impact, positive, that we make on the people in the neighbourhood of projects that BCIL or any successful company creates. Yes, there will be the Doubting Thomases in the regular world who will not trust us. Their question will be: ‘So what’s in it for them? They won’t do it if they are not gaining.’ Or ‘This is a hoodwink act; they want to make money, while making us believe that they are being socially responsible.’
The immense learning that BCIL carries in terms of project execution prowess in these areas of infrastructure, only get sharpened with greater doing. The challenge of creating greater efficiency in urban water supply in heterogeneous communities is all the more exciting, therefore.
That is the reason we have broken our own management structure to see that we have two different divisions--one to serve the Company's commercial imperatives that offer value to customers who are home-owners; the other division, to those other beneficiaries of projects that the organisation promotes among communities at the urban planning level.
These two arms, BCIL Homes and BCIL Alt Tech Foundation, make for synergies with sharing of technical knowledge and expertise in a way that we are able to strike at both demands that are made upon our organization with projects in both the spheres. Remember that even a powerful business house such as the Tatas has over 50% of its ownership vested in a Trust.
An extension of such thinking on community-led activities has led us, beyond water supply, to look at commercially viable projects for the setting up of an exciting series of Energy Information Centres that will soon be reality. Further on, the group is contemplating offering Consulting inputs for cities which are seeking to look at Sewage Treatment at the city scale. For example, a town of the size of Hubli, will have, today, the challenge of treating as much as a 100 million litres per day. If the city fathers are able to sensitize themselves to this challenge early in their growth phase as they are now, the city will then be able to grow without the pangs of unorganized infrastructure and growth that cities like Bangalore are currently seeing.
If we look at the country at large, you will see that the fastest growing towns are those in the tier-2 and tier-3 categories. The cities at the top of the heap, including Bangalore and Hyderabad, confront challenges of far larger dimensions which need political will and technological expertise that is more formidable than in cities like Hubli or Rajkot or Dehradun. The rate of annual growth of these smaller towns is far higher than those of the larger cities/metros.
Companies like BCIL who are in the infrastructure business, cannot afford to lose sight of the potential that lies for business -- water and housing infrastructure, among other things -- into the future in these smaller cities and towns. And the impact that a BCIL can make with its central mission objective of ‘mainstreaming sustainability’ can be easier achieved with lesser resistance in the smaller towns than in the larger cities.
The balance that one strikes between business growth and the innovation agenda that one sets for the organization is a tricky challenge that can only be met with proper strategic perspectives, long-term planning, and with orientations of our professionals in a way that we are able to bring synergies between our innovation agenda with communities-targeted work, and the more lucrative business agenda and growth prospects that emerge from homes and other buildings created in larger cities which have a greater consumer propensity to spend.
The recent addition of Green Idea Lab as a Division of BCIL that extends such expertise from Green Buildings to other corporate entities or institutions that seek to build homes, offices, hospitals and hotels, emerge fundamentally from [a] our understanding of the rapid growth and therefore potential for such consulting opportunities for GIL as well as [b] the fact that, as pioneers, BCIL will stand the risk of being overtaken by larger players who will inevitably come into the picture in the next 2-3 years ahead.
Having consolidated its own resources, and found, happily, the world turning around to offering greater acceptance to these directions of 'sustainability', BCIL is now turning to the deeper challenge: How can it go about imagining the future it wants for itself, and figure out ways of getting there. Back in 1995, when BCIL set foot on this journey, many dismissed its vision as pie in the sky. No longer. But then, it pays to remember as Krish Murali Eswar, a core colleague at BCIL says, "A customer pays what you deserve, not what you desire. And the future belongs to only those who can demonstrate value."
Into this future, all BCIL has to do is [a] continue to believe, as strongly as it has done in the past, that it can be done, and [b] go after it single-mindedly! Incremental stuff isn't what dreams are made of.
And when I take a long ride these days and have colleagues around who talk shop, I am in an easier mode. There is a quicker understanding and a better 'connecting of dots' than I saw over that cup of coffee on a noisy highway some years ago.

- Hariharan