‘Let’s Bring Knowledge Back to Knowledge Industry’

Jayanta Debnath

June 14, 2024, 12:12:41   

‘Let’s Bring Knowledge Back to Knowledge Industry’

‘Let’s Bring Knowledge Back to Knowledge Industry’- Need for Proper, Justifiable and Equitable Selection Criteria and RFP Documents in Tune with the Needs of Today’s Knowledge Economy.      

Knowledge consulting in Agri and livelihood domain is all about the ability to bring in deep domain expertise and design implementable solutions. Knowledge assets of an organization are the most important criteria to assess the eligibility of an individual and an organization in Agri and livelihood knowledge consulting domain.

The fundamental needs of Agri & Livelihood sector related knowledge consulting and knowledge service is also distinctly different from other sectors like IT, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Medical Services etc. Agri & livelihood sector needs localized flavor in terms of grass root level socio-cultural nuances, inherent influences of local topography, agro-climatic conditions, communication style of local stakeholders, subtle localized needs at grass-root level of the particular area and other allied aspects. In such a condition, providing a level playing field for localized small and medium knowledge service and consulting agencies becomes even more important. This approach also syncs in perfectly of the call for ‘Vocal for Local’ approach by Hon Prime Minister Modi for a long time which now needs further implementation and proliferation in real terms. It also perfectly fits with the development strategy of State Government of Tripura under the leadership of Hon CM Dr. Manik Saha whose greater emphasis is to usher in development which is more local people centric, in other words, a vision for development which is ‘for the people of the State of Tripura, by the people of the State and of the people of the State’. Hon CM Manik Saha is also passionate about trying to have the talented and highly educated people of Tripura settled outside the State and he wants them to come and contribute to the overall development of Tripura, which under his able Leadership is already on an ambitious growth path.

According to the need and nature of various Agri and allied sector and livelihood development related consulting assignment; the knowledge assets needed in this sector are usually in the form of:

·    Past demonstrated long experience of implementation of systems and solutions of the experts in the team and not just paper based ‘research, recommendations and suggestions’. After all the world has moved into a different phase where an expert / consultant just can’t appear like his or her job is to give expert advice, paper based recommendations and suggestions and it’s for someone else to implement those on ground.

·       Ability to translate techno-economic nuances into bankable and implementable financial nuances.

·      Practical understanding of Agri-marketing nuances (even may be hands on experience of selling Agri commodities / inputs etc.) going beyond the ability of doing good research, analysis, producing good graphs and charts and report writing etc.

·   Demonstrated experience of having worked at field and farmers level in the particular geography in concern (like if its in NER, demonstrated experience of having gone to even the remotest places / villages of NER and worked with the farmers / stakeholders).

·    Proper understanding of the existing business models of players in the Agri value chain starting from input (seed. fertilizer. plant protection inputs) manufacturers, dealers to processors.

·     Experience in financial analysis, business modeling and development of Detailed Project Report (DPR) of agribusiness projects, some of which have been ultimately initiated as business ventures and did not remain as DPRs just on paper for years even after completion of the assignment.

·      Proper understanding of the specific requirements expected by private equity investors / impact investors / deep tech investors etc. from the mindset of an investor just like the manner an investor would do due diligence of a prospective business before taking final investment decision.

·     Demonstrated experience of raising funds/private equities is also being considered as an added advantage in contemporary consulting space.

·  Experience handling projects/activities directly related to rural entrepreneurship development including hands on experience of developing cooperatives /FPOs/SHG / establishing Agri startups etc.

·     Experience of working at field level with rural enterprises, Rural Women Enterprises (RWEs) in the particular region, demonstrated understanding of value chains of various important crops in the particular region, proper knowledge of the price margins at each stage of the value chains etc.

·     Agri sector is diverse within itself and a student of agriculture sciences quite rightly studies in detail a plethora of applied science subjects which includes agronomy, horticulture, genetics and plant breeding, Agri engineering, Agri meteorology, agri-extension, agri-economics, post harvest management, soil science, Agri-statistics etc., unlike any other education stream. This aspect of diversity of applicable knowledge of Agri sector should be adequately demonstrated as one of the important knowledge assets of any knowledge consulting entity (individual consultant / agency / large consulting organizations etc.) from time to time.

·      Agri and allied sector is intricately related to various welfare schemes of the Government and sound knowledge of various scheme convergences is an indispensable need along with knowledge of the latest scientific innovations in the sector- both technical and commercial.

The entire knowledge consulting sector has drastically evolved and changed in recent times as compared to what it used to be in the recent past. Unfortunately, what comes to the notice of many stakeholders is that the selection process of consultants in Agri and allied sector and livelihood development sector is still based on out-dated selection criteria and Request for Proposal (RFPs) or tender documents which are not always in sync with the dynamics of present times and are many a times outdated. The RFPs are more or less same what it used to be in the past and the selection criteria do not justify the cause and the ultimate objectives of a study or assignment. Some of the changes that can be envisaged as a comparison of past and present contexts are:

Past Practices

Present Scenario

Individual knowledge assets in the past were less important than organizational domain expertise. A consulting organization in the 90s or early 2000 used to have mostly permanent employees from various sub-domains of agri sector value chain.

Consulting organizations are becoming lean in terms of experts who are permanent on the rolls of the company and are hiring / empanelling domain experts for short terms basis for the duration of the assignment. As a result, domain experts / individual consultants are working more entrepreneurially, while the consulting houses, even the likes of the Big 4s are working more like manpower suppliers, earning a ‘commission’ in the process (at the cost of tax payers money if the projects are publicly funded).

In the past, the importance was more on an established entity which can be made accountable and can be tracked as an organization.

In today’s world of technology, it is possible to track project activities on a real time basis, work progress and tracking is possible even on a daily basis if needed with very less efforts using technology and latest communication tools, including the availability of video communication. As a result, the dominance for having large consulting houses is coming down fast and even smaller, domain specific, location specific and particular socio-culture based consulting entities can also be tracked and managed conveniently.

In the past, turnover of a consulting organization might have been important as an indicator of the presence of the particular agency in the sector.

Today, as the world have clearly moved ahead and has become a ‘knowledge economy’, need to have a high turnover (sometimes asked for even seemingly smaller localized assignments) cannot be an important criteria. In any case, consulting agencies are empanelling individual experts from project to project basis and the ability of the organization to galvanize an outstanding project team of domain experts and knowledge consultants.

RFP documents in Agri and allied sector in the past used to be more production driven, skewed towards the downstream of agri-supply chain.

To be able to do justice to the need of the current knowledge economy, RFP documents increasingly need to ask for market driven implementable solutions. Usually such solutions can even come from a smaller organization which works more closely at field level for various market driven activities involving latest market dynamics.

High turnover was justifiable in the past to understand the ability of a knowledge consulting organization to sustain a team of full time consultants on the rolls.

Today, high turnover as a criteria has no correlation to the credential of a particular consulting organization. Organizations are hiring short term based experts which does not involve a high working capital requirement. In reality, smaller consulting agencies are more efficiently managed, have a lean structure, humble offices and more well networked compared to even the bigger organizations.

There were not much Small and Medium Enterprises in the past in knowledge consulting and the space used to be dominated by a select few, thus high turnover might have been a ‘popular’ selection criterion in the past in knowledge consulting domain.

In the recent times, a number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the knowledge service sector has come up across the Country who are more dedicated to the needs of the sector. Keeping unnecessary high turnover as a selection criteria does not do justice to the mission of the Government to promote home grown SMEs as they are just not able to participate in the selection process.

Agri value chains in the past were not that developed and experience of working in a different region or another country could have been a criterion for selection of a consulting agency.

Today, Agri value chains are highly localized with local socio-economic-cultural dynamics impacting the local value chains of Agri sector commodities (particularly in a socio-culturally diverse region like NER in India for example). As a result, asking for experience of a different region and sometimes even a different Country setting may not do justice to achieve the actual objective of a project. Need is for localized agencies in consulting which may be more insightful and practically oriented.

 

To summarize, ill conceived and needless selection criteria which are out of sync with the actual need of today’s knowledge economy are unfortunately leading to the following adverse impacts:

·     Not providing equal opportunity and a level playing field for smaller consulting organizations who otherwise could have provided better and localized solutions.

·    In the context of knowledge economy, resulting in direct discrimination of many talented experts and knowledge consultants who otherwise could have been a part of the process for the ultimate interest of all the stakeholders including the farmers.

·    Since the RFP documents are not in sync with actual objectives envisaged for a particular assignment / study and are more or less copy-paste of past similar RFP documents circulating for many years, most of the consulting outcomes and reports are ending up as ‘another report’, recommendations and suggestions are mostly generic and are not implementable. In the process, a huge amount of tax payers money gets improperly utilized if the projects are funded by various Govt. agencies.

·    Requirement of needless high turnover and / or requirements which may not have any direct bearing on the actual techno-commercial and domain expertise needed for a particular assignment is actually discriminating and depriving home grown SMEs and going against the policy of promoting the MESME sector.

·     As bigger consulting houses (usually charging very high for any consulting projects) are merely playing the role of ‘manpower providers’ in today’s consulting and knowledge economy space in agri & allied sectors, there is no justification to spend public money in creating ‘commission agents’ at a needlessly high cost to the tax payer. Smaller organizations might also have the same or better ability to provide the service at a lower cost.

·     Ultimately, all these are causing a huge injustice to the cause of the farming community, who ultimately are the intended beneficiaries resulting from the outcome of the studies / consulting assignments.

 

*(Author is a senior journalist and Managing Director www.tripurainfo.com and the statement given here is the author's own and personal. However, in the changing situation, and based on the Prime Minister and Chief Minister of Tripura's Vocal for Local slogan the whole analysis has been done based on the practical observation and constructive opinion of the state and non-state experts in the Agri and livelihood sector.) 
   (Tripurainfo)