Building a 100-Year Decentralized Organization: The RSS

Transcript

All right, Prateek. So, welcome. Um you actually are part of a uh very large, long-running organization India that's been around for more than 100 years. Um you've you've mastered institutional succession and so on and so forth. Do you want to say a little bit about yourself and what you're building and so on? >> Sure. First of all, thanks you so much for having me here, Balaji. Uh as you rightly mentioned, I'm a part of one a movement in a form of an organization which is trying to strengthen the community and society from within. Uh fairly young organization in Indian history. We are just 100 year old and uh very small in terms of we never raised any capital from outside to run the organization. It is a complete

self-funded and hence we have only 10 millions of the members in the organization. Uh so, yeah. I mean, it is a unique of its kind of a socio-cultural organization what RSS it is in India. I've been working for last 100 years. Uh every time, you know, the concept you say is of exit in network state, what we believe is primarily being in the community, how can you strengthen individual? Cuz the fundamental unit of any society is an individual. And if you strengthen and change that individual, it will eventually become the great community. And that's what we have been doing for last 100 years in India. We

got a daily gatherings. We call it's something like a node, a daily nodes of a 89,000 places. So, 89,000 places, one ground, one hour, same group of people coming together, playing, doing great stuff, discussing the societal challenges that they face and how they can contribute to solve that problem. So, it is uh offline, but of course, nowadays we have a very uh big group of online people joining the organization. So nearly >> So, those 8, 9,000 locations, how do you get people to come back frequently? Because it's hard to get people to go back to the gym even. You know, Starbucks is one of the very few

places that has recurring revenue in a sense where people keep coming back for coffee cuz they're quasi addicted to it, right? So, how do you, you know, was it ritual? Is it community? What, you know? >> Yeah. So, So, the reason is, of course, the whole community is a purpose-driven similar to what you are trying to do in network state. Why everybody is joining? Because we say something like a society before self. What we are trying to promote is you can do great stuff in your life as an individual. What you can do for the society. So, of course, the activities are interesting. We have a network of people who are pretty much decentralized in every states and the villages of India and

they do this daily routine. So, they reach out to the people. They go to the homes. They invite them to the shakha. We call it's literally meaning the branch. And then they this one hour is is something that they they get a training of doing something good for the society in rest of the 23 hours in their day-to-day. So, it is, of course, every you know, it's is pretty much stuff. >> One thing about that is it means it's a producer society more than a consumer society because, you know, if you're going to Starbucks, you're just buying something. But to something like this, you're building something together.

That's what people feel even if they get some individual value out of it. They're they feel they're building something together. It's a most important piece. >> Absolutely. I mean, see, so what we say is this, while you come here, you won't get anything. Whatever you have, you may lose it. So, you come and give back to the society. See, the primary belief is because in it has one civilization understanding that every being has a divinity and we all are interconnected. So, what we say in India, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, often we say that world is a one family, it's not a mere slogan for us. It is a conviction for us and that we have kind of because if you go to the bit of the India history, the recent past of 800 years, we were continuously

invaded. So, of course, just like any any any other society, if this happens, you forget about your history, about your great thing of cultures and whatever available around the world. So, this organization what is trying to strengthen the society. So, you strengthen the people, people will contribute to the society, nation and the global well-being. So, that is the main aim and of this movement, I would say cuz it has a structure of an organization, but if you look at the scale, you know, like 89,000 daily, there are weekly nodes, there are monthly meetups, the number of diverse activities. Now, once these individuals become the part of organization, they go and contribute to their different fields. So, we says come, do something for the society. Do something in your

field or your expertise. Do something wherever you find the calamities or any challenges that society face. So, be it, you know, in COVID, we had a 340 hundred thousand volunteers like >> Also, on that, COVID is something which is like top-down thing, right? >> Yeah. >> But, when you said just any challenge your community faces, does each person figure it out themselves? Is it prioritized at the place level? How does that work? >> Yeah. So, it is we don't have to basically give a command that, "Okay, you do it." That's the beauty of the organization. This is a OG of a network, I would say, you know, that this value which we inculcate in our day-to-day processes, that makes sure that anything happens, we don't have to tell them

that, "Yes, you go and do this." For example, the recent incident if you have heard, there was a air crash in Ahmedabad, Gujarat of Air India going to London. You know, there were like incidents is before the the government officials reach to help, there were volunteers of RSS reaching and helping, you know, that situation. So, this is what we try to teach, you know, in our day-to-day learning. So, it is interesting, it is fun. They It is a fulfilling. It's It's a 1 hour of giving. That's That's what we do. >> So, So, you know, it's it's paradoxical because you would think of India as I mean, it's rising very quickly, but it's not yet a wealthy society. So, how is there so much time budget for call it volunteer work or is it not

conceptualized that way? >> Well, it is maybe a civilizational uh understanding that the society has. Of course, India is emerging, you know, economy, fastest GDP. What India is doing in terms of the tax, semiconductor manufacturing is amazing. And uh But yes, uh I think that what the challenge that world is facing of work-life balance, you know, I think the >> Well, not work-life balance, happy. It's more that if, you know, if people are are still rising economically, yeah, something like this organization, it takes a fair amount of their time.

>> Yeah. >> And that's time that they might normally spend at work or focusing on work or just relaxing after a hard day at work and so on. So, you know, but yet you still find a lot of people signing up to do things, you know, for example, somebody who's got a hard, you know, 9:00 to 5:00 for them to then go and volunteer to help with a plane crash or something like that. Is is Don't get me wrong, it's honorable and it's good. It's a little surprising that a poor country or still rising country can can get that level of volunteer, you know.

>> You know, because interestingly, what I feel is this process of Shakha is something like going to the gym or having a lunch. However busy you are, you will go to the gym. This is something which is strengthening your inner self. It doesn't mean that you come to the 1 hour and then, you know, you give up your work. You come strengthen yourself, and then that's why I was saying that, you know, >> So, it becomes part of your routine. >> Exactly. And that helps your day-to-day life. That helps because, you know, you meet with the great people. You get that mental stability you know, something to do, learn from the surroundings. What unique thing I think what we have done, I feel, you know, I just give this funny example. If, you know, I am let's say a fitness freak, I'll just look at

Cristiano Ronaldo, you know, that look how fit he is, you know, he just got like 8% of fat and I should be like him. But what the second thought come in mind is, well, no, look, he is kind of a OG of football. I mean, he's one of them. I can't be like him. I'm just normal human being living in my neighborhood. But if next to me, uh my neighbor goes to gym and he is a fit, he is in a good shape, what I'll think, "Oh, if he goes there, he do that, I can do that." So, what was the difference? The role model was very far from me. So, I was not able to relate that. So, I think what we have done in the 100 year of history in India, we have made these role model available in our neighborhoods. So, while going to the shakha, we don't

really find the conflict between the work and this because we mind-like-minded people, we do great stuff. Even the coming together, see, we have a groups of people who are very interested in tech. So, therefore, in Bangalore, we have a lot of initiative where they come together and building community for experience centers, for science centers, for culture centers. We have some community who want to work on the health care. So, through that, we developed nearly 40 plus organizations in the last 100 years. So, you know, one of the umbrella organization called Vidya Bharati which run 29,000 schools in India. So, these are the people who are very much, uh you know, into the education. They realized that we need far better institutions in India. So, they started this organization of Vidya Bharati. Now, they are all

self-sustaining organi- uh schools, one of the finest schools in India. Likewise, there's a health care, there is tech, you know, there is a service activities. We run 153,000 service centers, which means these are all decentralized centers where on different education, health care, people are providing support to the society. So, because it is a purpose-driven, everybody find it, you know, fulfilling to come be It is not a burden some. >> Interesting. So, okay. So, just to summarize so far, so it's um your 89,000 places, you've got people who are coming on a sometimes daily basis.

Um they come because it's not purely recreational. They get something out of it. They're building something bigger than themselves. Um they are um the It's not seen as a as a trade-off versus work. It's something that you do. It's almost like, I don't know, not like this is a This is a silly analogy, but for an American analogy, uh the gun club. You know, people >> g u n >> Oh, like >> Like people who are Second Amendment enthusiasts in America, they'll go and hang out and they'll go to the gun club and they'll hang out with their guys and shoot guns and so on. Or other kind There's many kinds of clubs like this that used to be a bigger part of civil society in America that have melted down. Gun clubs are one of the few that are still around. Um obviously, tech has

this as well in a non-violent way where there's hackathons and coding events and so on and so forth. So, you know, the kinds of things is like yoga, meditation, that's kind of things that people do at the shakhas. >> Yeah. >> So, we have number of activities So, one is the physical activities where you do yoga, meditation, exercise to be a physical fit, something like that you say. >> burn >> Um we have uh intellectual discussions about, you know, about everything, what is happening around the world. Primarily, the challenges you see everybody sees challenges, love to discuss the problems, but how many of them take initiative to solve? So, that's what we discuss. We discuss about the problems in the society in terms of what I said, the values to help each other. These are the primary work that

we do in our day-to-day shakha. Eventually, why I joined because, you know, I I was looking for something which was very interesting at that age of my school, you know, which was apart from our day-to-day routine education thing. We were just teaching me a lot more about a different perspective about life altogether because it takes you from an individual to be to make you a part of a wider community, which is, you know, from your town to society to part of the nation and the global well-being. That understanding and gives by a mere small sports some activities, you make understand that, you know, now you're not alone in terms of an individual identity, but rather you're part of a

big family. >> You know what you just made me realize is uh you know, there's a David Sacks and a few folks like this. There's this a genre like this in tech, which is the the titan of industry case study, you know, like uh how did Steve Jobs do what he did? How did this person do what he did? And what I realize is that actually maps onto what you're saying, where you find examples from history or from the present day of a community of people who've done something that's actually applicable to your own life and you can pluck some lesson from that as kind of a whether they're a role model or an exemplar. They could be really great or they could just be a normal person doing something and you can learn from that.

So, it's that there's kind of a self-improvement aspect to that life experience, right? When it's cuz anchored in a human story, it's also more memorable. Yeah. And and if in tech, people are listening to it because they want to be like those guys or improve themselves, you know, in tech. Here, they're doing it because it's a life lesson that's not necessarily tech, but it's like uh I don't know, how to how to relate to you know, uh like your community or family or something like that. Is that roughly Yeah.

>> Yeah, it is. I mean, so it has people of all walks of life, so it has people interested in tech as well. But primarily what we have done is we have started a process. So what is the uniqueness about the organization? Maybe you know, you would think that there are number of organizations starts and then it's you know, the existence never you know, exist by another 5 years. Why this exist for the 5 the 100 years evolving? Because we started a process. What we have done is we have made sure that people we want we don't want to build a cult in a society. We want to strengthen society itself. So that process is allowing that flexibility about evolving itself and that makes it more interesting. So we never stop people of thinking new ideas or let's

say you know, you just do this for this 1 hour. It is a kind of a gym where we go, we be fit and then you do what you want to do on the with innovative ideas. Whatever you get from around the world and you work for the society. So this is a interesting and evolution model of an process. >> And how do you, you know, like once in a while somebody flunks out, you have to expel them or you recruit and so on so forth. So you maintain you know, how does it grow? People recruit people in and so on so forth. Roughly? >> That's an interesting part. We don't have any membership. So this is 10 millions of members. We never have a membership and membership fees. That's a pretty interesting.

>> So how do you have the locations? People are just donating them? >> Pardon? >> The locations are just being >> Oh no. So these are the open spaces. Mainly grounds, some open public grounds which are available and that this activity take place. Anybody who become part of that gathering, they are the members. How they become members? By daily showing up to this activity. [clears throat] That's all. And our network make sure that they are into their local >> So it's informal membership. >> It's informal membership. You become member by values, by living by the ideas. That's the interesting part of it.

>> Interesting. And you know, you but you must have you don't have any formal membership. No, you have some. >> No, we don't have any formal membership in terms of we don't have any membership charges and all. >> Right. All the members who become part of this moment are the we call them volunteers. They are the members. >> That's interesting because, you know, that's one thing that definitely is very different than the Western way of thinking about it because you know, anything in the physical world does cost money in some ways. In theory, it could all be donated and then you don't have to raise money for it. In practice, it's interesting that that model scales as much as it does in India. Um that's very interesting. And you go ahead.

>> Yeah, because the reason is we interestingly say this organization is kind of, you know, working. It is designed to be deleted. What we are trying to do is as much as because once we have a membership, we have a great structure, then we want to continue it for like lifelong. What we want to be is we don't want to be food. We want to be medicine. The day we finish off the day we realize the society has to run. They are doing great stuff. Our existence itself will be in the part of society. That's why we say this we are there to be deleted as soon as possible. That's why we don't have that formal membership and all because we want to strengthen the 1.4 billion people and that's what we are trying to do.

>> Very interesting. Um and you know, what do you think like what overlaps between that and the tech world? Like what lessons in terms of organization building have you learned? Um >> I think a lot of things. First of all, you know, this is an organization running for 100 years. Only six we call chief of the organization because Sangha Chalak have been appointed so far. Nobody knows about the founder. Mostly, very few people know about the founder, but everybody know about the organization and the impact of it. So, how organization outlasts the founders?

That is I think the important lesson for any organization that whether it it in tech or any other industry. So, the organization made sure organize the founder made sure that how organization take place a process where it doesn't have to be known by him, but rather a people in a decentralized model in India. So, that is of course the first lesson. Second, you know, overall organizational learning managing these many people impact driven is something that I think everybody can learn about it. Yeah.

>> Very interesting. Okay. Um and you know, I I think you know, how did Outlast better? So, is it because everything is written down and so, you know, for example, Bezos at Amazon um effectively scaled himself by taking all of his the things that he wanted people to do and putting them in writing so that he only had 24 hours in a day, but the writing could be read 10,000 times a day so he could scale himself that way. And I think about this a lot now with AI in particular where you can write a bunch of prompts and you can take even fairly sophisticated matters of judgement and actually encode them so you can scale that. Is that something the organization think about

doing is like, you know, maybe scaling some of these things because, you know, I actually think that'd be an interesting experiment to run and just You go ahead. >> No, of of doing what? >> Well, so for example, you know, insofar as there's judgement calls that need to be made and the input to them is like, you know, is this you know, document keeping with the values or inconsistent with the values some fraction of things like that. You know, you can potentially scale a leader or a CEO or something even beyond them passing away because you've encoded a lot of those judgements. You know, what would Lee Kuan Yew do, right? Like that kind of thing. You could encode that. Have you thought about anything like that?

>> Well, I mean, see, to be honest, this organization function as something like I think somebody was mentioned about Solana of organizational mitosis. It is something like this. You know, we work as an organizational mitosis. So, we don't really, you know, a one guy sitting at deciding everything. Of course, there's a leadership driving, you know, the whole idea, but the idea is that these local level units, they become, you know, they start new community. They do because we are empowering individuals. Now, we have given that uh you know, uh work to that individual.

So, it basically grows a very naturally but very robust. So, it's not like, you know, you know, it can close down in a one day. So, that's a unique model of it. >> Interesting. So, it is it's really fundamentally decentralized, right? Okay, very interesting. Okay, well, I've learned a I've learned a fair bit. Um and um you know, I think uh one thing that is interesting from this is uh how is something I mean, the closest analogy to this in tech isn't something that's open-source, which also works on a pure sort of gift economy basis. There's no money going into it, but it's massive. Or there is money, but the money is on the outside of it rather than the inside of it. Um that's very interesting to think about how big something can get without any

kind of, you know, like uh membership dues coursing through it. >> Yeah, that's why I say, you know, it is a open-source social impact model, which exists and anybody can copy it actually, you know, because whatever happens in RSS, everything is open, you know, our activities take place in open ground. People come there. We do events with the community. So, this has become a model of a movement, which eventually if anybody copies will get succeed, you know? So, this is an open-source impact model, that's what I say. >> Cool. All right, well, thank you very much Prateek. >> Thank you so much, Balaji. Thank you so much.