Building Demand for Development

July 13, 2026 Leave a comment

India’s rural development dialogues have treated health, education, and income as parallel priorities often pursued through separate policy silos. Budgets are allocated, schemes are launched, infrastructure is built, and targets are set, all with good intent. However, one foundational truth remains insufficiently acknowledged, that increasing rural incomes is not merely an economic goal but one of the most effective demand-side interventions for health and education. Without income security, even the best school education systems and local health facilities struggle to translate access into outcomes. With income growth, aspirations gain purchasing power, the choice basket expands, and human development accelerates in ways no standalone welfare program can achieve.

The constraint on health and education in rural India is rarely a lack of awareness alone. Most families understand the value of a healthy body and an educated child, but they cannot act on that understanding consistently. Irregular incomes, seasonal employment, debt cycles, and exposure to shocks force households into a constant state of prioritising needs and what is immediately affordable. In such conditions, preventive healthcare is postponed until illness becomes unavoidable, and education becomes negotiable once opportunity costs rise. When incomes increase, particularly when they become predictable rather than sporadic, this calculus begins to shift fundamentally. I have witnessed this change countless times among the families from rural livelihood and entrepreneurship development programs across multiple states of India, from the north to the northeast.

The first visible change that accompanies rising rural income is in health-seeking behaviour. As disposable income grows, households move from reactive to preventive care. They begin to spend on nutritious food intake, diagnostics, maternal health, and timely treatment rather than relying solely on home remedies or last-resort interventions. This is observable across rural belts where livelihoods have stabilised through dairy cooperatives, non-farm employment, or entrepreneurship opportunities. Increased income reduces the psychological cost of seeking care. A doctor’s visit no longer feels like a financial gamble, and medicine is no longer a choice between recovery and indebtedness. Over time, this shift translates into lower morbidity, higher productivity, and a virtuous cycle of income and wellbeing.

Education follows a similar but slightly delayed trajectory. At very low-income levels, schooling competes with survival. Children’s labour, whether on farms, in family enterprises, or in caregiving roles, has immediate economic value. As incomes rise, the opportunity cost of schooling declines. Families are more willing to keep children in school, invest in better quality institutions, often private schools in their own villages or neighbouring towns, and support supplementary learning such as tuition or digital tools. Crucially, income growth often changes learning outcomes and ambition, and not just enrolment. Education stops being about literacy alone and starts being about mobility, including English proficiency, technical skills, credentials, and pathways beyond the village economy.

This transition from survival to investment is critical as human capital investments respond strongly to income thresholds. Below a certain level of income, households simply cannot afford to plan long-term, and above that critical level, behaviour changes rapidly. Rural India today stands at precisely this inflection point. Decades of infrastructure expansion, electrification, and digital penetration have laid the groundwork. What remains uneven is sustainable income enhancement pathways at scale. Where it happens, demand for health and education services rises organically, often faster than supply systems can respond.

However, increased income alters expectations and does not merely increase consumption. Rural households with higher incomes begin to demand quality, accountability, and outcomes. They compare schools, question teaching standards, seek second medical opinions, and are willing to pay for reliability with profound implications. It challenges the assumption that rural citizens will accept poor service quality indefinitely. It also creates space for private, social, and hybrid service models like low-cost clinics, diagnostic centres, skill academies, and ed-tech platforms that were previously unviable due to weak demand. Income growth can enable choice for households, who would increasingly adopt mixed strategies of using public facilities for some services and private providers for others. This duality can, if managed well, improve overall system performance. 

The ripple effects of income-driven demand can extend beyond individual households. As spending on health and education will increase, local economies will diversify. Teachers, health workers, lab technicians, transport providers, and service support staff will find employment closer to home. Women’s participation in the workforce will rise as care responsibilities will reduce and aspirations will expand. These multiplier effects will strengthen rural markets, making income growth more resilient and less dependent on a single sector like agriculture.

However, income growth alone is not sufficient, as demand without supply will lead to frustration, not development. In many rural areas, rising incomes have resulted in out-migration for services, with families travelling long distances or relocating temporarily to access quality healthcare and education. This is not a failure of income-led development, but a failure to anticipate and respond to it. Both public and private supply systems must be designed to scale alongside income growth. Physical access, skilled personnel, digital connectivity, and trust are essential if local ecosystems are to capture the benefits of rising demand.

Livelihood programmes and social sector investments are often conceived independently. Income-generation schemes focus on outputs like jobs created and enterprises supported, while health and education programmes focus on inputs like schools built, staff hired, and beneficiaries enrolled. What is missing is an integrated demand-supply lens. Rural income enhancement should be explicitly recognised as a human development strategy, with parallel investments planned in service delivery capacity. When livelihoods improve in a region, health and education infrastructure should be strengthened proactively, not reactively.

For corporate social responsibility (CSR) and philanthropy, this insight could be particularly valuable. Rather than choosing between livelihoods and social services, funders should see them as sequential and reinforcing investments. Supporting rural entrepreneurship, value chains, or digital livelihoods creates the conditions for sustained demand for health and education. Complementing this with investments in service quality of teacher training, primary healthcare strengthening, telemedicine, or skill education will maximise impact. Fragmented interventions will yield fragmented outcomes, while integrated strategies can create lasting change.

When rural citizens earn more, they become more vocal stakeholders in the local political economy. They demand better governance, transparency, and responsiveness. Health and education, being highly visible services, often become focal points of this demand. Income growth thus strengthens democratic accountability. It shifts the relationship between the state and citizens from charity to entitlement, from gratitude to expectation. 

India’s development journey offers ample evidence of this dynamic. States like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra that have successfully diversified rural incomes through improved irrigation, manufacturing clusters, or services consistently outperform others on health and education indicators. The lesson is that the effectiveness of social spending is amplified when households have the means to engage with it meaningfully. Supply creates possibility, and income creates participation.

As India looks ahead to the next phase of rural transformation, the question is no longer whether to invest in health, education, or livelihoods, but how to sequence and integrate them. Treating income growth as the foundation of demand generation reframes the debate. It reminds us that people are not passive recipients of services, but active decision-makers whose choices shape outcomes. Empowering those choices through income security may be the most humane and pragmatic development strategy to have. This has the potential of unlocking a chain reaction that will turn latent needs into effective demand, services into systems, and welfare into wellbeing. Healthier bodies and educated minds do not emerge in isolation, but they grow where households have the freedom to choose them. And that freedom, in rural India, begins with income.

If this essay made you reflect on how income shapes opportunity, choice, and human potential, subscribe to my blog for one new article every week in your inbox. It’s free!

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the views or opinions of any organisation, foundation, CSR, non-profit or others.)

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Digital Literacy vs Digital Confidence

June 15, 2026 Leave a comment

The digital divide in rural India is often described as an access problem. Smartphones are becoming increasingly common, data is becoming more affordable, and women are increasingly present on digital platforms, sharing messages, watching videos, and making video calls. However, this apparent inclusion masks a deeper exclusion. When it comes to using technology for business, like sending payments, managing accounts, registering enterprises on platforms, or selling online, many rural women hesitate. The contradiction is striking as access and skills exist, but ownership and confidence do not. The real barrier to digital inclusion is not digital literacy, but digital confidence.

Consider the experience of a rural woman entrepreneur who runs a home-based food business. She owns a smartphone, uses WhatsApp comfortably, and receives digital payments from customers. Yet she avoids sending money digitally, hesitates to use business apps, and depends on a family member for anything that she thinks is ‘important.’ Her fear of ‘what if something goes wrong?’ is not about a lack of knowledge, but about a lack of trust in oneself. Across rural contexts in India, women are digitally present but not digitally empowered. While they are users of technology, but unfortunately not the decision-makers within it.

Most development programs approach this challenge through the lens of digital literacy. Literacy is usually defined as the ability to operate a phone, navigate apps, recognise icons, or complete basic digital tasks. Training programs, device distributions, and short workshops are designed to tick these boxes. Once completed, women are counted as digitally included. However, literacy does not translate into agency. Knowing how to open an app does not mean feeling confident enough to transact independently. Watching a demonstration does not prepare someone to make decisions in real situations. Literacy teaches what to do, whereas confidence determines whether one dares to do it.

Digital confidence, unlike literacy, is rarely named, measured, or funded. It refers to a person’s trust in their own ability to use technology without fear, their willingness to make mistakes, and their sense of belonging in digital spaces. This confidence is more psychological than technical, emotional rather than instructional. For rural women, digital confidence is shaped by years of social conditioning that discourages experimentation, independence, and risk-taking. Without this confidence, technology remains something to be handled carefully or delegated to others.

The reasons for low digital confidence among rural women are structural and gendered. Financial fear is a major factor, with stories of fraud, which are often exaggerated, circulating widely. A single mistake can lead to loss of money, blame from family members, or public embarrassment. Cash, by contrast, feels safe and visible as it can be counted, corrected, and recovered. In this context, avoiding digital tools becomes a rational choice rather than a sign of ignorance.

Gendered control over technology further weakens confidence. In many households, men act as informal gatekeepers of digital systems. Even when women own phones, passwords, banking apps, and registrations are often managed by husbands or sons. Over time, this creates dependence and reinforces the belief that digital decision-making is not a woman’s responsibility. What begins as ‘help’ slowly turns into exclusion.

Men are often allowed to experiment, fail, and learn, while women, especially in rural settings, are not afforded the same grace. A mistake made by a woman is quickly interpreted as evidence that she should not be engaging in business or technology at all. This low tolerance for failure discourages curiosity and reinforces caution. When the social cost of error is high for women, playing safe becomes the only viable strategy.

Design and language barriers also play a role, as many digital platforms are not built for first-generation users. Interfaces are cluttered, English-heavy, and filled with technical or financial jargon. For women with limited formal education, each unfamiliar term reinforces a sense of exclusion. Technology begins to feel alien, designed for someone else, and confidence erodes further. The consequences of low digital confidence are visible in how rural women run their enterprises. As a result, businesses remain informal, small, and dependent on intermediaries. Family members or middlemen step in to handle digital aspects, capturing control and value. Instead of reducing inequality, technology ends up reinforcing existing power structures.

Evidence from the ground suggests that when confidence is addressed, outcomes change. In India’s SHG networks, women who participate in repeated, hands-on digital practice sessions gradually begin to transact independently. Rural women entrepreneurs who learn in peer groups adopt digital tools more confidently than those trained in isolation. The turning point is rarely a new app or feature; it is the moment a woman completes a task on her own and realises she can do it again.

Building digital confidence requires a different approach. Repetition matters more than certification. One-time trainings raise awareness, but confidence grows through continued practice. Peer role models are powerful, especially when women see others from similar backgrounds navigating technology successfully. Safe spaces for failure are essential, allowing women to learn without fear of financial or social consequences. Trusted human support through community facilitators, SHGs, or NGOs provides reassurance and continuity that technology alone cannot offer.

For policymakers, donors, and practitioners, this demands a rethinking of program design. Success should not be measured by the number of women trained or devices distributed, but by independent usage, decision-making, and willingness to explore digital tools. Budgets must allow for handholding, follow-ups, and time. Behavioural change cannot be rushed, and technology should not be treated as a shortcut to empowerment.At the policy level, digital public infrastructure holds enormous promise, but only if it is designed with gendered realities in mind. Women-first user experience, local-language interfaces, and community-based support systems are essential. Digital inclusion must be understood as a question of agency, not just access. Until rural women believe that the digital world belongs to them and they are confident to click, transact, and decide, technology will remain an accessory rather than a catalyst for entrepreneurship and change. The future of rural women’s enterprise will be built not just on smartphones, but on the transformative moment when a woman says to herself, ‘I can do this,’ and acts without fear.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the views or opinions of any organisation, foundation, CSR, non-profit or others.)

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Coffee and Concept Notes

May 18, 2026 Leave a comment

There is a very specific kind of person who measures time through cups of tea/coffee consumed, number of smokes, and versions of concept notes. I am that person. My day does not begin at 9 AM like everybody else. It begins when the first sip of tea and a puff of grey poetry hits my bloodstream and convinces my brain that solving structural poverty through a two-page document is a reasonable life goal. By the third sip/puff, I am ready to change the world. By the fourth, I am opening last year’s concept note and renaming it “Final_Updated_Latest_UseThisOne_v3.0.”

There is something deeply optimistic, almost delusional, about writing a concept note. It always starts innocently: ‘Let’s improve livelihoods in rural communities.’ Twenty minutes later, I find myself writing sentences like, ‘This integrated, community-led, multi-stakeholder convergence model seeks to catalyse sustainable socio-economic transformation…’ At this point, I pause and admire my own ability to say absolutely nothing in 21 words. Concept notes exist in a strange parallel universe where every problem is solvable, every intervention is scalable, every outcome is measurable, and every budget is ‘indicative.’ Of course, the reality is sitting quietly in the corner, waiting for implementation to begin so it can laugh.

Starting a concept note is a ritual that starts with my caffeine fix, opening a blank document, and staring at it as if it owes me money. The blinking cursor is not neutral as it blinks with judgment. ‘Go on,’ it seems to say, ‘design systemic change.’ So I begin with writing a suitable title, then change it, make it sound more ‘strategic,’ add the word ‘transformative,’ remove it because it feels too ambitious, and then add it back because the funder likes ambition. Thirty minutes later, the only thing I have finalised is the font.

At some point in my career as a fundraising professional, I have accepted that coffee/tea is a programmatic input and not just a beverage. Without caffeine/nictone fix, there is no Theory of Change, no LFA, no pathway to impact. With the ‘fix’, there are frameworks, diagrams, and a dangerous amount of confidence. This fix makes me believe things like, ‘Yes, we can align community aspirations with institutional frameworks through participatory convergence.’ Without the fix, I would simply say, ‘We will try our best and see what happens,’ but that is not a fundable language.

Every concept note reaches an uncomfortable moment, usually around page two. I have written the problem statement, objectives, and proposed intervention, and now I am staring at the section titled ‘Expected Outcomes.’ This is where things get philosophical. Will this actually work? Are we solving the problem, or just describing it better? Is this impact, or just well-structured optimism? I leave my desk, go for a quick fix, and look at the skies as if answers are stored there, but they are not.

If you have written enough concept notes, you develop ‘the donor voice’ in your head as your second personality. It appears uninvited and asks uncomfortable questions like, ‘Can you make this more scalable?’ ‘What is the innovation here?’ ’How will you measure impact?’ ‘Can you reduce overheads?’ The last one hurts the most. So I return to the document and start adjusting reality. I make things more efficient on paper, outcomes more certain, risks more ‘mitigated.’ At some point, I realise that I am not just writing a concept note, instead I am negotiating between truth and fundability.

Have you heard about a fine art in fundraising called strategic vagueness? You must say enough to sound intelligent, but not so much that you become accountable. Instead of writing, ‘We will train 1000 farmers,’ you write, ‘We will build the capacity of local stakeholders through targeted interventions.’ Who are these stakeholders? What interventions? That is a journey for another day.

One of my favourite moments is when a concept note meets the field. In the document, community participation is enthusiastic, systems respond efficiently, and timelines are respected. In reality, the meeting starts late, half the participants are confused, and the system is ‘on leave today.’ And yet, the report will still say, ‘The intervention was successfully initiated with active community engagement.’ Because technically, there was engagement, and someone did show up!

Concept notes also have a strange relationship with time, as they do not end, but they evolve. There is Draft, Final Draft, Final_Final, Final_Reviewed, Final_Reviewed_Updated, and the legendary ‘Final_Reviewed_Updated_Latest with version 1.0 to versions n.n. And just when you think you are done, someone sends an email saying, ‘Can we make a few small changes?’ This is how legends are born.

What concept notes really offer is the illusion of control. You design inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impact, and everything flows neatly in arrows and boxes. But development work is not a flowchart; it is more like a messy, unpredictable, human conversation. And yet, we keep drawing boxes, because boxes are fundable.

Every now and then, after multiple cups of coffee, endless sticks of ‘(un)holy smoke’ and several minor existential crises, something magical happens, which is clarity. I suddenly see the program for what it is, what matters, what is unnecessary, what is real. I delete half the document, simplify, and write something honest. For a brief moment, the concept note feels true, and then, almost instinctively, I complicate it again. My colleagues say that I write in Russian! (No offence to Russians here). Because honesty is risky, I add a framework, a diagram, and a few strategic words, and just like that, I am back in the safe zone.

Despite everything, including the caffeine and nicotine dependency, the document gymnastics, and the existential crises, we keep writing concept notes. Somewhere in between the jargon and the formatting, there is a real intention. A belief that things can improve, systems can shift, and people can live better. The concept note is simply the translation of that belief into a language that institutions understand. At the end of the day, I close my laptop. The concept note is sent, the cup is finished, and the existential questions remain unresolved. And still there’s satisfaction, not because the document is perfect, but because I tried to make sense of something complex. Tomorrow, there will be another concept note, another fix, and another moment of staring at a blinking cursor. And I will begin again because this is what we do. We drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, we write concept notes, and occasionally, we question the meaning of it all, preferably before the next deadline.

If this article made you think differently about development, work, or life choices, subscribe to my blog for one article every week in your mailbox.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the views or opinions of any organisation, foundation, CSR, non-profit or others. This is a humorous attempt, and not angst, and certainly no disrespect for fellow fundraisers, donors and funders of social impact.)

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Why good projects struggle for funding

April 6, 2026 Leave a comment

The social impact sector’s irony is that some of the most thoughtful, community-centred, transformative projects struggle to secure funding, while others that are not so well designed, and sometimes even superficial, find their way into donor portfolios. This contradiction is often explained as a failure of proposal writing or organisational capacity, but such explanations only scratch the surface. The deeper truth lies in understanding donor behaviour, including the incentives, constraints, and biases that shape funding decisions. Good projects are overlooked not because they lack merit, as ‘merit’ is not the primary currency in the funding ecosystem, but because of factors like alignment, risk perception, measurability, and institutional incentives.

At the core of the problem is the simple fact that donors do not fund the ‘best’ projects; instead, they support those that align with their priorities. Every donor operates within a specific thematic, geographic, and strategic framework, often influenced by board directives, political factors, or institutional legacy. A project that is highly relevant to a particular community may still be rejected if it does not fit neatly into a donor’s current focus areas. This creates a subtle but significant distortion in the sector, as organisations begin to design projects around donors’ language and preferences rather than the lived realities of communities. In this process, genuinely valuable ideas can become invisible, not because they lack worth, but because they are misaligned with funding narratives.

This is further compounded by the deeply risk-averse nature of development funding. Donors are not neutral actors, and they are accountable upward to their boards, governments, shareholders, or trustees. This shapes a cautious approach to funding, where the emphasis is on minimising risk rather than maximising impact. Established nonprofits with proven track records are preferred over emerging grassroots organisations, even when the latter may have deeper contextual understanding. Similarly, tried-and-tested models are favoured over experimental or innovative approaches. The consequence is a filtering mechanism that systematically excludes many high-potential projects simply because they appear uncertain or difficult to manage. Ironically, the very qualities like innovation, localisation, and adaptability that make a project transformative are often the ones that make it seem risky.

Now there’s a growing emphasis on measurability in funding decisions. Donors desire clear metrics, defined outputs, and quantifiable results for results-based management and data-driven accountability of projects. While this has enhanced transparency, it has also created a bias toward interventions that can demonstrate immediate, tangible results. Projects focused on infrastructure, service delivery, or training programmes tend to perform better because their outputs are easily measurable. Conversely, initiatives aimed at changing social norms, empowering communities, or strengthening institutions struggle to articulate their impact within the same frameworks. The most complex and deeply rooted development challenges are often the least measurable within the funding cycle, and therefore the least fundable. Good projects operating in these areas are disadvantaged not because they are ineffective, but because their effectiveness cannot be readily quantified.

The nature of donor engagement further complicates the picture, despite frequent references to ‘partnership,’ much of development funding remains transactional. Organisations submit proposals in competitive, opaque processes with limited opportunity for dialogue or feedback. In such an environment, relationships matter enormously. Organisations with prior visibility, networks, or access to donor ecosystems often have a significant advantage, even if their projects are not fundamentally stronger. Trust, built over time, can outweigh the intrinsic quality of a proposal. Conversely, new or lesser-known organisations, particularly those operating at the grassroots level, find it difficult to break into these networks. As a result, good projects often fail not on their own terms, but because they are evaluated in isolation, without the benefit of relational context.

This dynamic is closely tied to a broader structural bias within the global development ecosystem. Local organisations, despite being closest to the communities they serve, receive only a small fraction of direct funding. Donors frequently cite concerns around compliance, financial risk, and administrative capacity, which leads them to channel funds through larger intermediaries. While this may simplify management from the donor’s perspective, it creates a distance between resources and realities. Local initiatives, which may be highly effective and deeply embedded, often remain underfunded or entirely excluded. This is not merely an operational issue, but reflects an implicit hierarchy of trust, where proximity to power and familiarity with donor systems are valued over contextual knowledge and lived experience.

Equally important is what might be called the ‘proposal illusion’, with the tendency to compare the quality of a project with the quality of its documentation. In practice, donors assess proposals, not projects. This places a premium on articulation, structure, and the ability to translate complex realities into donor-friendly language. Organisations with access to skilled writers, consultants, or international exposure are better positioned to succeed, even if their fieldwork is not exceptional. On the other hand, grassroots organisations that may be doing outstanding work often struggle to present it in ways that resonate with donor expectations. The result is a system where storytelling can overshadow reality, and where good projects are overlooked because they are not packaged effectively.

Time horizons further skew funding decisions as donors tend to operate within short funding cycles, typically ranging from one to three years, with success evaluated within this limited timeframe. This creates a preference for projects that can demonstrate quick wins, rather than those that require sustained engagement over longer periods. Yet most of the development challenges, like education reform, livelihood transformation, and social cohesion, are inherently long-term and demand patience, continuity, and iterative learning. When funding is short-term, even well-designed projects can struggle to show meaningful results, making them less attractive to donors. This leads to what is often described as the ‘pilot trap,’ where innovative ideas receive initial funding but fail to scale or sustain due to a lack of long-term commitment.

Another big challenge is the persistent reluctance to fund organisational overheads. Donors often prefer to allocate resources directly to programmatic activities, placing limits on administrative costs such as salaries, systems, and governance. This undermines the very foundations that enable effective implementation. Strong organisations require robust systems, skilled personnel, and institutional stability. When these are underfunded, the quality of implementation suffers, reinforcing donor perceptions of risk and inefficiency. This creates a vicious cycle in which organisations are unable to build capacity, and good projects become difficult to execute at scale.

Underlying all of these factors are the incentives that shape donor behaviour. Funding decisions are rarely neutral as they are often influenced by a range of external and internal considerations. Corporate donors are often guided by brand alignment and visibility, favouring projects that can be showcased or communicated easily. Philanthropic foundations may be influenced by leadership vision, legacy goals, or thematic interests. In each case, the logic of funding extends beyond impact alone. Good projects that do not align with these broader incentives may struggle to gain traction, regardless of their potential.

Bilateral and multilateral donors operate within geopolitical frameworks, where aid allocation may reflect strategic interests as much as development priorities. In the wake of global economic slowdowns, traditional sources of Official Development Assistance (ODA) are shrinking. The U.S., U.K., and several European governments have all announced significant cuts to their ODA budgets. These reductions should have sparked debates about the failures of the aid system, but they largely passed with little reflection. The outcome is a development finance environment that’s simultaneously more selective and more risk-averse. Funders now prioritise large-scale, measurable, and politically ‘safe’ projects that can boast short-term, quantifiable results. Small-scale social initiatives, particularly those addressing systemic or cultural issues like inequality or governance, find themselves outside the funding radar. Even when progressive funding streams exist, for example, climate justice or inclusive innovation programs, they come wrapped in new conditionalities of alignment with national development strategies, ESG benchmarks, or private-sector co-financing. These conditions further alienate grassroots actors who can’t meet such formal requirements.

It is also important to acknowledge a more fundamental constraint of scarcity, as the pool of available funding is limited, while the number of worthy projects is vast. Even in a perfectly functioning system, not all good ideas can be supported. This introduces an element of competition that is not purely based on merit. Projects must not only be good, but must also be timely, visible, and strategically positioned. In such an environment, marginal differences in presentation, alignment, or relationships can determine outcomes, leaving many strong proposals unfunded.

Projects that are technically sound but insufficiently rooted in community realities often struggle to convince donors of their sustainability. Funders have been increasingly looking for evidence of participation, co-creation, and local ownership. However, these elements are difficult to demonstrate within conventional proposal formats, leading to a gap between genuine engagement and its representation. Good projects that are deeply participatory may still fall short if they cannot adequately convey this dimension to donors.

These dynamics suggest that the funding ecosystem does not necessarily reward the intrinsic quality of projects. Instead, it rewards alignment, clarity, measurability, and perceived reliability. This does not mean that donors are acting in bad faith; rather, they are responding to their own constraints and accountability structures. The system, in many ways, is functioning as designed. However, the consequences are significant, as innovative, context-specific, and potentially transformative projects often remain unfunded, while safer, more conventional interventions dominate.If we are serious about tackling poverty, inequality, and climate injustice, we must start by rethinking how funding itself operates. It is not enough to design good projects, but one must also learn to translate them into the language of donors without diluting their essence. This requires strategic proposal architecture, effective communication, and relationship-building. For donors, the challenge is more profound as it involves rethinking risk, expanding definitions of impact, and creating funding mechanisms that are flexible, inclusive, and long-term. Without such shifts, the sector will continue to produce good ideas that never see the light of day, not because they are unworthy, but because they do not fit the system that is meant to support them.

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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the views or opinions of any organisation, foundation, CSR, non-profit or others.)

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Why India needs a circular textile reuse revolution

March 30, 2026 Leave a comment

The clothes we wear have a hidden afterlife. Even after a garment is worn a few times and forgotten at the back of a wardrobe, its environmental footprint remains in landfills, waterways, and the atmosphere. The global fashion industry today has a material and emissions footprint so large that it rivals that of entire nations. Each year, around 92 million tonnes of textile waste are generated worldwide, most of it ending up in landfills or incinerators, even though a large share of it is still wearable or recyclable. This is not just a lifestyle problem; it is a climate, water, and waste crisis rolled into one. In countries like India, Brazil, and the United States, the scale of textile waste varies, but the pattern remains the same, with fast fashion fuelling overconsumption, linear disposal systems leaking value, and communities paying the price through polluted land, stressed water systems, and rising emissions.

A practical alternative exists, and it is already visible in the reuse models emerging across cities and communities. The ‘collection-sorting-reuse-recycling model’, where clothes donated by households are graded and channelled into resale, regional redistribution, or material recycling, offers a rare triple win. It can save energy and water by avoiding virgin production, reduce landfill pressure and carbon emissions, and create dignified livelihoods across the value chain. In a world searching for climate solutions that also create jobs, textile reuse is a low-hanging fruit hiding in plain sight.

The environmental logic of reuse is powerful. Producing new clothing is energy and water-intensive, especially when fibres are grown, dyed, finished, shipped, and marketed across continents. Cotton alone accounts for massive freshwater use, while polyester is derived from fossil fuels and contributes to microplastic pollution. The fashion sector contributes an estimated 2–8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the most carbon-intensive consumer industries.[i] When a garment is reused even once, a large portion of that embedded energy, water, and carbon footprint is avoided. Lifecycle assessments consistently show that resale and reuse pathways can cut emissions per garment by more than half compared to producing a new equivalent, while also sparing thousands of litres of water per kilogram of clothing.[ii] In practical terms, every shirt reused is a shirt not produced, and every kilogram diverted from landfill is methane not emitted during decomposition.

India’s case illustrates both the urgency of the problem and the promise of the solution. The country generates around eight million tonnes of textile waste every year, which is 8.5% of global post-consumer textile discards. India’s textile and apparel sector generates close to four million tonnes of post-consumer textile waste annually, making it one of the country’s largest contributors to landfill, water consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. While an estimated 57% of used textiles are reused or recycled, these processes take place almost entirely through informal, fragmented, and unregulated channels. The remaining 43% ends up in landfills or is incinerated, reflecting an unsustainable linear ‘buy-use-discard’ consumption pattern that continues to accelerate with the growth of fast fashion[iii].

While India has long traditions of repair and hand-me-downs, rapid urbanisation and fast fashion consumption are overwhelming these cultural buffers. The result is a growing stream of clothing waste in municipal dumps, often mixed with organic waste, making recycling harder and environmental harm more acute. Yet India also hosts some of the world’s most innovative reuse ecosystems. Organisations such as Humana People to People India is demonstrating how urban surplus clothing can be collected and sold through retail channels, and income used for funding social development outcomes[iv], and Goonj collection channelled to rural communities in dignified ways, linking redistribution to community development and livelihoods.[v] Informal networks of sorters, repairers, and traders already keep a significant portion of textiles in circulation, proving that reuse is culturally and economically viable when supported by the right infrastructure. 

Brazil presents a parallel story shaped by urban consumerism and rising awareness. The country generates millions of tonnes of textile waste annually, with a large fraction still going to landfills due to limited formal recycling and reuse systems.[vi] Yet a growing thrift and resale movement, especially among younger Brazilians, is reframing second-hand fashion as both affordable and aspirational.[vii] Community cooperatives and small recyclers are beginning to integrate textile waste into circular micro-economies, creating jobs in sorting, resale, and upcycling. The lesson from Brazil is that cultural acceptance of reuse can shift quickly when affordability, sustainability narratives, and local entrepreneurship align.

The United States, often seen as the epicentre of fast fashion consumption, offers a different scale of lessons. Tens of millions of tonnes of textiles are discarded each year, but the country also has one of the world’s most established second-hand markets, supported by charities, social enterprises, and commercial resale platforms. Organisations collecting used clothing divert billions of pounds from landfills annually, channelling them into domestic resale, international reuse markets, and recycling streams.[viii] Even in a high-consumption society, reuse systems demonstrate that scale is possible when logistics, sorting infrastructure, and consumer awareness are aligned. The American experience shows that reuse is not marginal, but can be commercially viable, and environmentally meaningful at the national scale.

There could be lessons learnt from Brazil and the USA, and good practices replicated in India. Beyond environmental benefits, reuse models unlock employment that matters deeply for India. Every stage of the circular value chain creates work, from collection crews and logistics managers, sorting centre workers trained in grading and repair, retail staff in reuse shops, resellers in Tier II and III towns, and recycling technicians handling end-of-life textiles. Unlike capital-intensive manufacturing, reuse and sorting are labour-intensive, making them ideal for employment generation in peri-urban and rural contexts. India’s textile and apparel ecosystem already employs tens of millions of people, and circular extensions of this value chain can add new layers of income while formalising parts of the informal economy.[ix] For women and youth, especially in low-income communities, reuse enterprises can offer accessible entry points into entrepreneurship and wage work, from operating neighbourhood collection hubs to running small resale outlets.

Such models fit well within India’s national climate adaptation priorities. The National Action Plan on Climate Change[x]emphasises sustainable consumption, waste reduction, and resource efficiency as pillars of climate resilience. Textile reuse contributes to mitigation by cutting emissions embedded in production and avoiding landfill methane, while also supporting adaptation by reducing pressure on water systems and urban waste infrastructure. In water-stressed cities, every litre saved through avoided textile production matters. In flood-prone regions, reducing landfill volume lowers the risk of waste-choked drainage and secondary pollution. Circular textile systems thus become part of urban resilience, not just waste management.

The social enterprise model further adds public value, where profits from resale and recycling can cover operating costs and fund social programs. By reinvesting surpluses into community education, skills training, or local environmental projects, reuse systems can close the loop between consumption and social impact. This can become an excellent example of regenerative economics, where waste becomes a revenue stream that sustains both the enterprise and the communities it serves. When scaled across cities through partnerships with RWAs, municipalities, and CSR programmes, such models can become a distributed infrastructure for circularity, embedded in everyday life rather than confined to pilot projects.

While reuse alone cannot solve fashion’s environmental crisis, overproduction must be addressed, and durable design, extended producer responsibility, and recycling innovation are all necessary. But reuse is the fastest, cheapest, and most socially inclusive solution available today. It requires no new technology breakthroughs, only better organisation of what already exists and conscious consumerism. 

Embracing circular textile reuse at scale in India is not just an environmental choice, but an essential development strategy. It aligns climate action with employment, urban resilience with rural markets, and consumer behaviour with community benefit. Brazil’s cultural shift towards thrift and the USA’s large-scale reuse infrastructure show that such transitions are possible across income levels and cultures. The question is no longer whether reuse works, but whether policy, capital, and civic will can come together to make it the norm rather than the exception. If India gets this right, it will not only reduce its textile footprint but also demonstrate how climate action can be woven into the fabric of everyday economic life.

(Post Images are generated using AI)

References 

[i] https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1161636#:~:text=The%20fashion%20industry%20is%20one,of%20global%20greenhouse%20gas%20emissions

[ii] Number Analytics. “The Impact of Recycled Textiles on the Environment.” Lifecycle assessment review, 2024.

[iii] https://reports.fashionforgood.com/report/sorting-for-circularity-india-wealth-in-waste/chapterdetail?reportid=813&chapter=3

[iv] Humana People to People India. “Reuse and Circularity in Textiles”, 2026

[v] Goonj (India). Organisational model and impact summaries, publicly available reports.

[vi] Upcycle4Better. “Textile Recycling in Brazil.” Country brief, 2023.

[vii] Greenbook. “The Thrifting Revolution in Brazil.” Market insight report, 2024.

[viii] Planet Aid

[ix] CSTEP. “India’s Textile and Apparel Sector: Ecosystem and Readiness for EPR.” Policy report, 2024.

[x] National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), Govt. of India

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