‘Let’s Bring Knowledge Back to Knowledge Industry’
Jayanta Debnath
June 14, 2024, 12:12:41
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‘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)