Invisible Entrepreneurs

September 7, 2026 Leave a comment

Across rural India and much of the developing world, millions of women wake up before dawn, manage households, tend to livestock, cultivate small plots of land, process food, stitch garments, rear poultry, trade locally, and keep families economically afloat through a variety of income generating activities. Despite their relentless productivity, most of this work does not count as ‘business’ in policy frameworks, financial systems, or even social imagination. These women are workers, contributors, and risk takers, but are rarely recognised as entrepreneurs. Their labour remains invisible, undervalued, and structurally excluded from the very systems meant to promote enterprise and growth.

The invisibility of rural women entrepreneurs is not accidental. It is the outcome of deeply entrenched economic definitions, gender norms, institutional biases, and measurement failures that collectively erase women’s work from formal recognition. To understand why rural women’s enterprises remain unseen, one must look beyond individual capability or ambition and examine how ‘business’ itself is defined, counted, and legitimised.

Entrepreneurship has a narrow and exclusionary definition. In mainstream economics, a business is typically imagined as a registered entity, operating from a distinct workspace, producing for markets beyond the household, employing labour, and generating measurable profits. This definition immediately excludes most rural women, whose enterprises are often home-based, seasonal, informal, and interwoven with domestic responsibilities. When a woman processes grains, sells homemade snacks, stitches clothes for neighbours, weaves handloom products, or rears goats for periodic sale, her work is seen as an extension of household duty rather than economic activity. The fact that it generates income is treated as incidental, not central.

This conceptual blindness is further reinforced by national accounting systems. Gross Domestic Product calculations and labour force surveys systematically undervalue or exclude unpaid and semi-paid work. Women’s labour in family farms, household enterprises, and informal trade is often categorised as ‘assisting’rather than ‘ownership’ work. Even when women contribute substantial labour and decision-making, land titles, business ownership, and enterprise registration are typically in men’s names. As a result, women disappear statistically, even when they are economically indispensable.

Social norms further deepen this invisibility, as in many rural societies, men are perceived as breadwinners and women as caregivers, regardless of actual income contribution in the households. When a man sells produce in the market, he is seen as doing business. When a woman does the same, it is often framed as ‘helping’ the family. Earnings generated by women are frequently pooled into household income, while men’s earnings are recognised as individual contribution. This asymmetry strips women of entrepreneurial identity and reinforces the idea that their work lacks independent economic value.

The location of women’s work also plays a critical role in its invisibility. Because women’s enterprises are commonly home-based, they blur the line between productive and reproductive labour. The home, traditionally associated with unpaid care work, becomes a site where economic activity is rendered invisible simply because it does not conform to spatial norms of business. While a shop has legitimacy, a kitchen does not; a workshop is considered productive, but a courtyard is not. This spatial bias penalises women whose mobility is restricted by safety concerns, social norms, accessibility, or caregiving responsibilities.

Most rural women operate outside formal regulatory frameworks, not as their choice but by necessity. Registration processes are complex, documentation-heavy, and poorly aligned with women’s realities. Limited literacy, lack of identity documents, absence of land titles, and dependence on male family members make formalisation difficult. Formal financial institutions, in turn, rely on formal registration to extend business credit, insurance, and market linkages. This creates a vicious cycle, where women remain informal because systems exclude them, and systems exclude them because they remain informal.

Despite extensive evidence that women are reliable borrowers and effective managers of small enterprises, rural women face disproportionate barriers to credit and access to formal business financing. Collateral requirements favour land and property ownership, which women rarely possess. Credit histories are tied to formal transactions that women are excluded from. Even microfinance, often celebrated as a solution, has limits. Loans are frequently used for household consumption rather than enterprise expansion, and women bear repayment responsibility without gaining corresponding control over assets or profits. Financial inclusion without entrepreneurial recognition risks turning women into financial intermediaries rather than empowered business owners.

Rural women tend to operate at the lowest end of value chains, engaged in production rather than aggregation, branding, or marketing. They sell in local haats (markets), through informal networks, or to middlemen who capture most of the value. Because their scale is small and operations fragmented, their economic contribution is dismissed as marginal. Yet, collectively, these micro-enterprises form the backbone of rural economies, sustaining food systems, crafts, services, and local trade.

The development sector itself has played an ambivalent role in reinforcing invisibility. Programs targeting rural women often frame entrepreneurship as a social development or empowerment intervention rather than a serious economic strategy. Women are encouraged to ‘supplement’ household income, and not to build scalable enterprises. Training focuses on skills rather than markets, confidence rather than capital, participation rather than profit. While these interventions have value, they inadvertently reinforce the idea that women’s enterprises are secondary and subsistence-oriented and not engines of growth.

Most measurement surveys and impact assessments rely on indicators that fail to capture women’s economic realities. Metrics such as revenue, employment generation, or formal registration overlook non-monetary contributions, seasonal income, risk mitigation, and household-level decision making. Women’s enterprises are often judged against male norms of entrepreneurship, setting them up to appear less productive or ambitious, when in fact they operate under entirely different constraints. When women’s work is not recognised as business, they are excluded from policy support, denied access to finance, overlooked in market development initiatives, and marginalised in economic planning. This exclusion perpetuates gender gaps in income, assets, and agency. It also represents a massive loss to economies that fail to harness the full potential of half their population.

There is growing evidence that recognising and supporting rural women entrepreneurs yields significant economic and social returns. Studies show that women are more likely to reinvest earnings in nutrition, education, and health, creating intergenerational benefits. Women-led enterprises contribute to local resilience, especially in contexts of climate stress, migration, and economic shocks. Yet, without recognition, these benefits remain undervalued and underleveraged. Changing this reality requires a fundamental shift in how entrepreneurship is conceptualised and operationalised. Definitions of business must expand to include informal, home-based, and collective enterprises. Economic contribution should be measured not only by scale and formality, but by sustainability, resilience, and impact. Data systems must be redesigned to capture women’s work accurately, including unpaid and semi-paid labour, joint ownership, and household enterprises.

Institutional reforms are needed to lower barriers to formalisation without penalising informality. Simplified registration, group-based enterprises, and recognition of alternative forms of collateral can help bring women into formal systems on their own terms. Financial products must be tailored to women’s enterprise cycles, risk profiles, and asset constraints. Credit should be linked to capacity building, market access, and asset ownership, not just repayment discipline. Market interventions must move beyond production to address value chains holistically. Supporting aggregation, branding, digital access, and collective bargaining can help women capture greater value. Technology, if designed with women’s realities in mind, can play a transformative role by reducing mobility constraints and expanding market reach. However, as experience shows, access alone is insufficient without confidence, trust, and institutional support.

Finally, social norms must be confronted directly, as recognition is not only a technical issue but a cultural one. When communities, families, and institutions begin to see women as entrepreneurs rather than helpers, power dynamics shift. Legal recognition, public visibility, and role models matter, and so does language. Calling women ‘business owners’ instead of beneficiaries is a political act, and not just semantics. Invisibility is not a natural state, and is produced through choices about what counts, who counts, and whose work is valued. Rural women have always been entrepreneurs in practice, even if not in name. Making their work visible is not about charity or inclusion alone, but it is about economic realism. Until rural women’s enterprises are recognised, measured, and supported as legitimate businesses, development efforts will continue to underestimate both the problem and the potential.

If this essay made you reflect on rural development, women’s entrepreneurship and human potential, subscribe to my blog for one new article in your inbox every week. 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.)

The cover image is generated using AI

Filed under Opinions, Social Impact Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Why rural digital entrepreneurs matter

August 10, 2026 Leave a comment

When policymakers in India discuss infrastructure, they usually refer to roads, electricity, telecommunications, railways, and industrial corridors. These investments are undeniably important. Yet there is another form of infrastructure that receives far less attention despite its growing importance in connecting citizens with markets, government services, and economic opportunities, which is rural digital entrepreneurship.

Across India, thousands of rural entrepreneurs are quietly performing functions that neither government offices nor private companies can efficiently deliver on their own. They help citizens access digital services, complete applications, make online payments, obtain certificates, access welfare schemes, receive medical advice, connect with markets, and navigate an increasingly digital economy. In doing so, they have become an essential layer of last-mile infrastructure.

India’s digital transformation has been remarkable, especially in the last 10 years or so. Digital public infrastructure, including Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker, and numerous online government services, has created unprecedented possibilities for inclusion. However, access to digital platforms does not automatically translate into digital participation. Millions of citizens still face barriers related to literacy, language, confidence, connectivity, documentation, and procedural complexity.

For many rural households, the challenge is not the absence of technology but the absence of trusted intermediaries who can help them use that technology effectively. This is where rural digital entrepreneurs play a critical role. A villager seeking to apply for a government scheme, update land records, register a grievance, obtain a certificate, access telemedicine, or complete an online transaction often relies on a local entrepreneur who understands both the technology and the community. These entrepreneurs bridge the gap between sophisticated digital systems and the realities of rural life.

Their contribution extends beyond service delivery. They generate local employment, build trust in digital systems, reduce transaction costs for citizens, and create pathways for financial and social inclusion. In many communities, they serve as informal advisors, helping citizens navigate an increasingly complex administrative landscape.

The importance of this role is likely to increase rather than diminish. As artificial intelligence, digital governance, online education, telehealth, e-commerce, and digital financial services continue to expand, the demand for local assistance will remain substantial. Contrary to the assumption that digitalisation eliminates intermediaries, experience often shows that new technologies create demand for new forms of facilitation and support.

The success of India’s digital future therefore depends not only on technological innovation but also on human infrastructure. However, rural digital entrepreneurs continue to operate largely at the margins of policy discourse. While considerable attention is paid to startups, MSMEs, and technology companies, relatively little focus is placed on strengthening the ecosystem that supports last-mile entrepreneurs. Access to affordable finance, business development services, training, digital tools, market linkages, and growth pathways remains uneven.

Women entrepreneurs face additional challenges in the form of social norms, mobility constraints, and limited access to resources, which restrict their ability to expand their enterprises. However, where these barriers are addressed, women-led digital enterprises often become powerful catalysts for household income growth, community trust, and social change.

Therefore, a more deliberate policy approach is needed. Rural digital entrepreneurs should be recognised as a strategic component of India’s development architecture. Their role goes beyond commerce, as they enable access to rights, services, and opportunities. Entrepreneurship development programs should move beyond one-time training and focus on long-term business viability. Mentorship, market access, technology support, and peer learning networks are often more important than short-duration capacity-building interventions. Partnerships between government, civil society, and the private sector can create sustainable service ecosystems. Rural entrepreneurs are uniquely positioned to deliver a wide range of services, from financial inclusion and digital literacy to telemedicine, skilling, and e-commerce support. Finally, impact measurement frameworks should capture not only income generation but also the broader social value created through improved access, reduced exclusion, and enhanced citizen participation.

India’s development story has often been driven by investments in physical infrastructure. The next phase may depend equally on investments in human infrastructure—people who connect citizens to systems, opportunities, and institutions. As India advances toward a more digital, inclusive, and knowledge-driven economy, these rural digital entrepreneurs deserve greater recognition not merely as service providers but as builders of development infrastructure. Their work may not be visible in satellite imagery or national construction statistics, but its impact is felt daily in villages where citizens gain access to opportunities that were once beyond reach.

The future of inclusive development will not be determined solely by the technologies we create. It will also be shaped by the people who help others use them.

If this essay made you reflect on digital infrastructure, rural entrepreneurship, and human potential, subscribe to my blog for one new article in your inbox every week. 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.)

(Photo: A rural digital entrepreneur from Jharkhand)

First published in LinkedIn on 9th June 2026

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Opinions Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.)

The cover image is generated using AI

Filed under Opinions, Social Impact Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Circular economy solution for India’s cooking crisis

May 11, 2026 Leave a comment

For the past decade, India’s clean cooking revolution was symbolised by a powerful image in the form of a woman in a rural village receiving her first LPG connection under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY). It represented dignity, health, convenience, and liberation from the unpaid drudgery of firewood collection, respiratory illness, and smoky kitchens where women spent hours inhaling toxic fumes while cooking over firewood and dung cakes. And to be fair, it was a transformational policy intervention because it solved a critical access problem by expanding LPG connections to millions of low-income households. But as is often the case with development policy, solving access did not fully solve sustainability. 

The recent conflict in West Asia has disrupted global energy supply chains and exposed India’s dangerous dependence on imported cooking fuel. With tensions around Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, India, where nearly 60% of LPG demand is met through imports, and over 90% of those imports typically transit through Hormuz, has found itself in an avoidable crisis. LPG supplies have tightened, transportation costs have increased, and delays in refill deliveries have become common in many rural districts and smaller towns. In several places, households are reportedly waiting over 40 days for a cylinder refill. Prices have surged, black market sales have flourished, and many low-income families are being pushed back toward firewood, charcoal, and kerosene. India is facing its first wave of ‘energy migrants’ as LPG shortages and soaring fuel prices have triggered reverse migration from cities to villages, especially from the major industrial hubs, including Delhi, Mumbai and Surat. A clean cooking transition built on imported fossil fuel has suddenly begun to look alarmingly vulnerable.

India imports a substantial share of its LPG requirements, and a large portion of these imports move through geopolitically sensitive shipping routes. While India is considered a leader in clean cooking access, millions of households remain dependent on an international supply chain shaped by wars, shipping disruptions, currency fluctuations, and global oil politics. The rural poor, as always, bear the highest burden of this volatility. A delayed LPG refill in an urban apartment may be an inconvenience, but in rural India, it often means a family returns to collecting wood, spending additional hours on unpaid labour, or cutting back on cooked meals altogether. Small roadside eateries reduce their menu options, and migrant workers spend more on food. Development gains achieved over the years begin reversing quietly, one delayed cylinder at a time.

Today, the villages struggling with LPG shortages often possess enormous untapped energy resources sitting in plain sight. Across rural India, cattle dung, agricultural residue, poultry waste, kitchen scraps, and other organic materials are abundantly available. India has one of the world’s largest livestock populations, producing massive quantities of dung every single day. Much of this waste is either left to decompose openly, releasing methane into the atmosphere, or converted into traditional dung cakes that burn inefficiently and create harmful smoke. What if this waste could instead become a reliable source of clean cooking fuel? That is precisely where biogas emerges not merely as an alternative, but as a strategic necessity.

Biogas is produced through anaerobic digestion, a process where organic waste decomposes in oxygen-free chambers and releases methane-rich gas that can be used for cooking. The leftover slurry becomes high-quality organic fertiliser. This is an excellent circular economy model where households generate fuel from waste while simultaneously reducing fertiliser costs for farming. For rural families, this means lower dependence on LPG refills, lower household expenditure, improved sanitation, reduced smoke exposure, and additional agricultural benefits. Unlike LPG, biogas is hyperlocal as it does not depend on international shipping routes, refinery outputs, or geopolitical stability. Unlike firewood, it burns cleanly. Unlike solar cookers, it works regardless of weather or time of day. Unlike electric induction stoves, it does not depend on stable electricity supply, which remains inconsistent in many rural areas. In a world increasingly shaped by supply chain disruptions, biogas offers resilience.

India does not need to invent this model from scratch because proven examples already exist. In parts of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Punjab, and several other Indian states, communities have successfully adopted household and community biogas systems. Villages linked to dairy cooperatives have demonstrated how cattle waste can be transformed into reliable cooking fuel. Some communities have significantly reduced their dependence on LPG altogether. During recent supply disruptions, such villages and farming households were largely insulated from shortages because their cooking fuel was produced locally. No waiting for gas agencies, no inflated black-market prices, and no dependence on international conflict. Their kitchens continue to function because their fuel is local.

What makes India’s underinvestment in biogas particularly frustrating is that the policy architecture already exists. The government has long operated biogas programs through the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, and initiatives like Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) have promoted compressed biogas (CBG). Yet these efforts have often remained fragmented, underfunded, and treated as niche rural welfare programs rather than core components of national energy security. India tends to think big when discussing energy with large refineries, strategic petroleum reserves, international supply agreements, and mega infrastructure. These are important; however, true resilience often comes from decentralisation. A household biogas unit in a rural village may seem small compared to an oil refinery, but millions of such units can collectively create enormous national resilience.

Imagine if even a quarter of India’s livestock-owning rural households had access to functional biogas systems. Or village-level community digesters serving clusters of homes where individual ownership is not feasible. Imagine schools, Anganwadis, hostels, and community kitchens using biogas generated from local organic waste. Think of self-help groups running maintenance services for biogas units as local enterprises. Imagine MGNREGA funding village-level renewable energy infrastructure. Suddenly, biogas can move from being a sustainability experiment to becoming a serious economic and strategic asset.

The climate benefits further strengthen this strategy. Methane emissions from unmanaged livestock waste contribute significantly to global warming. Capturing this methane for productive use helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Every cubic meter unit of biogas reduces 2 tons CO2e/year. Reduced firewood usage can lower deforestation pressures. Bio-slurry reduces dependence on chemical fertilisers, moving towards sustainable agriculture. Lower LPG consumption reduces fossil fuel imports. Biogas sits at the intersection of climate policy, rural livelihoods, women’s empowerment, waste management, and energy security, a rare policy intervention that solves multiple problems simultaneously. Biogas directly contributes to SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), and Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL). It also delivers results that contribute to SDG 1 (Poverty Eradication), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), and SDG 13 (Climate Action).

The current LPG crisis should serve as a warning. The war in the Middle East did not create India’s vulnerability, merely exposed it. A country aspiring to become a global economic power cannot allow millions of household kitchens to remain hostage to international conflict. Energy security cannot only be discussed in terms of crude oil imports and electricity generation. It must also include the daily cooking needs of ordinary citizens. The woman waiting 40 days for an LPG cylinder in a rural village is experiencing energy insecurity in its most human form. India’s future energy strategy must become far more diversified. LPG will continue to play an important role, particularly in urban areas and transitional markets. But it cannot remain the singular answer for rural cooking energy. Biogas offers India local control that imported LPG can never provide. It transforms waste into wealth, dependency into resilience, and vulnerability into self-reliance. In a century likely to be shaped by geopolitical instability, climate disruptions, and fragile global supply chains, the most strategic energy resource may not be buried deep underground or shipped across oceans. It may be sitting quietly in rural backyards, waiting for India to finally recognise its potential.

If this article made you think differently about energy security, sustainability, or India, subscribe to my blog for one article every week in your mailbox.

(Cover image has been generated using AI)

(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.)

Filed under Green, Opinions Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

(Cover image generated using AI)

(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.)

Filed under Opinions, Social Impact Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts