Arbind Singh—Nidan

Safai Mitra at work. She is a member of Swachhdhara a collective enterprise, promoted by Nidan, that is owned and controlled by the rag-pickers and sweepers themselves. Image courtesy of Nidan

The Organization

Founded by Arbind Singh in 1995, Nidan builds profitable businesses and ‘people’s organizations’ that are led by assetless, informal workers. A range of cooperatives, Self Help Groups (SHGs), trade unions, and individual and community businesses launched by Nidan have positioned unorganized workers as legitimate competitors in globalizing markets of India. Nidan works in Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and Rajasthan.

The Innovation

According to the Arjun Sengupta Committee Report of 2006, there are over 340 million (or 92 percent of the country’s working population), in the unorganized sector in India. They contribute 60 percent to the national economic output. Yet, they constitute the poorest and most vulnerable segments of our population.

Nidan taps into the wealth of the poor—primarily their numerical strength—and then aggregates them into economies of scale. This process of ‘collectivizing’ generates social capital, representation and ‘voice’ for the unorganized poor, which they then leverage to launch their own businesses and shift policy to be recognized as wealth-creators.

Nidan’s innovation is based on the following tenets:

• The poorest can be competitive and ethical market players if provided with access to technologies, social security and financial services.
• The poor require infrastructures for aggregation and scale.
• Institutions run by the poor must quickly become financially sustainable.
• Businesses led by the poor must manage strong balance sheets while stopping corruption and civil rights violations.

In 12 years, Nidan has launched and promoted 20 independent businesses and organizations that are governed and owned through shares by 60,000 urban and rural poor members. The enterprises include 4618 SHGS, 75 market committees, 19 co-operatives, two societies and one company—all envisioned and led by a complex of waste workers, rag pickers, vegetable vendors, construction labourers, domestic helpers, micro-farmers, street traders and other marginalized occupation groups.

Arbind’s vision for change is grounded in the ethos of “letting a 1000 flowers bloom.” Thus, all enterprises incubated by Nidan function through executive committees that are elected from their member-base. All strategic business decisions are made from the front lines by the shareholders. To illustrate, the Nidan Swachdhara Private Limited (NSPL) was set up as an urban waste management company with initial capitalization from 1606 rag pickers and waste workers who collectively decided to bid for business from the Patna Municipal Corporation. This Dalit-dominated business has gone on to win multi-crore contracts from the Patna and Jaipur Municipal Corporations. In 2008, NSPL recruited its first CEO from the business sector, as demanded by its shareholders.

According to Arbind, the poor need multiple and synergistic services, to seed gains in a rapidly globalizing climate. Nidan thus offers access to technologies, business trainings, market information, bank linkages, credit and social security products to its members and their companies. Nidan’s composite insurance product—the Ekatra Bima Yojana—offers life, health, asset and property insurance to more than 35,250 members (as of 2008). Nidan also partners with child rights groups to manage creches and schools for children of women entrepreneurs.

100 percent of Nidan’s partners and clients are self-employed in professions that have been severely criminalized by the state. Arbind believes that enterprises owned by the poor will move only if individuals break through mindsets of fear and arrest the corruption that corrodes their everyday lives. Thus, Nidan’s service continuum expands to legal aid, advocacy initiatives, campaigns and on-going, one-on-one redressal of individual and group rights violations. In 1995 the Nidan-initiated National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), a platform of 300,000 vendors across 20 states, successfully eliminated the hafta or contract system in Patna and ensured legal status and licenses to more than 2000 street vendors.

The multiple services of Nidan interlock into a comprehensive web of securities. A vendor, for example, can be the member of her occupation-based co-operative, but can access trainings, bank linkages, insurance, loans, child care services and advocacy initiatives through Nidan’s on-going programs. She can be part of NASVI, and market her products through Angana, a retail brand launched by Nidan. In the event of a face-off with an exploitative client, she can access the criminal justice system through Nidan’s legal aid services. In total, she can grow her income and sustain her business without interfacing with the exploitative regime that had determined her daily wage in the pre-1995 years of survival.

The Impact

Women street vendors in Patna, Bihar. Image courtesy Nidan.

Once ‘ultra poor’, but now entrepreneurs, shareholders and advocacy champions, Nidan’s members are reporting income growths of 100 percent and more. Two thousand children of Nidan members who could not access education, now go to 24 community schools launched by Nidan. Most significantly, Nidan is returning to Bihar a culture of accountability and honest enterprise. The NSPL contract was secured at competitive market rates in a clean, above-board manner—a fresh departure in Bihar’s history of governance. This has soldered the confidence of the poorest in transparency and collective action.

Advocacy has seeded a new fearlessness. Through NASVI, Section 34 of the Bihar Police Act, which allowed for arbitrary arrests of vendors (ostensibly on grounds of removing obstruction), was eliminated. Today, 1891 street vendors in Patna carry formal identity cards. NASVI, has also lobbied for the passage of the first National Policy for Urban Vendors under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. The policy is en route to becoming a law.

The Entrepreneur

“It pains me to see informal workers living in poverty despite long hours of hard labour which actually builds and sustains societies.”

Arbind Singh

Arbind was born in Muzaffarpur and spent his early years in Katihar, a district in North-east Bihar, which is a hub of first generation migrants. As a child, Arbind was perplexed by the routine eviction of his neighborhood vendor friends. In the 1990s, armed with degrees in sociology and law from the Delhi University, Arbind returned to Bihar. His work in the NGO Adithi was a turning point, where he was deeply inspired by its founder Viji Srinivasan. He started work with vendors under the aegis of Adithi, before registering Nidan as a separate entity in 1996.

Arbind’s goal, with great urgency, is to ensure greater numbers and scale of businesses run by the poor. He lives in Patna with his wife and two children. Under Arbind’s leadership, Nidan has received the first Bihar Innovation Forum Award from the state.