Pivoting to Meet the World’s Changing Needs: A Hallmark of Moral Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic shook up the world in countless ways—including challenging the moral imagination.  One of the ways we can honor those we’ve lost is by amplifying those who’ve done so much to help—like Gayathri Vasudevan, whose leadership stands out as an example of the best of moral imagination in crisis.  

On the day Prime Minister Modi declared a state of lockdown in India, LabourNet, Gayathri’s workforce development organization that aims to provide livelihood to India’s informal sector workforce, had 100,000 workers in training.  Mostly boys, these individuals were far from home, some of them thousands of kilometers away. And they were suddenly stranded. They had no way to get home, no money with which to try, and nowhere to stay. 

In that moment, Gayathri realized she was witnessing firsthand how our current capitalist system, when truly threatened, was willing to leave behind an entire segment of society.

Gayathri Vasudevan, co-founder of LabourNet, in one of the organization's new worker housing models

Gayathri’s decades of leadership experience—including time spent working at a United Nations agency, building a grain bank run by women, and earning her PhD—had had laid the foundation for the intense sense of duty she felt to take care of the individuals who were, even temporarily, part of her organization, and her responsibility. She operated with the unwavering belief that, if humans didn’t care for one another in times of crisis, who were we?

And then, another crisis struck: Gayathri’s co-founder, business partner and dear friend Rajesh A.R. contracted a serious case of COVID that left him hospitalized and near death.  Holding one of the most painful personal crises of her life while needing to show up daily to hold her organization challenged Gayathri to the core. Yet she is a spectacular mix of empathy and resilience, softness and toughness. Her silvery laugh and love of saris manifest the joyful part of her, and they only reinforce and give strength to her steely, determined core.

To meet the unexpected needs COVID had wrought, she pivoted her entire organization. That entailed first reimagining how LabourNet could serve her community, and then building consensus and support from Labournet’s network.  The team reached out to every person and every organization they could think of – every company, temple, mosque, community center.  Ultimately, the team raised more than a million dollars, putting it to use to help feed and shelter those who had been abandoned.  

Meanwhile, Rajesh recalls coming to a bit of an epiphany.

“I realized that I only had one in regret in life: we should have grown LabourNet faster...There is so much to do and so little time.” 

Once Rajesh was healed and the initial crisis, averted, the two founders got down to creating a refreshed vision for LabourNet, one that would meet the community’s new demands both during and after the COVID crisis. The team realized they could not solve workforce problems alone: they would instead partner with government schools, provide earlier training to young people, and sow within them the seeds of lifetime learning which would be so essential to the future.  LabourNet offered a new set of courses more attuned to the new world, a combination of “earning and learning,” which would enable LabourNet’s youth to earn real income as they trained. 

Ashraf Hm, a civil engineer at LabourNet

Today, two years after their refreshed vision, LabourNet operates in 320 schools and works with more than 27,000 young people. The company is on its way to reaching their goal of partnering with 1,500 schools and training 1.5 million youth within the next five years.  And that’s not all: the company also has established 70 training centers in partnership with leading corporate houses and is extending its branches into building businesses that provide entrepreneurial and work opportunities to its trainees.

I recently had the privilege of visiting with Gayathri and Rajesh to see the results of one of a different kind of project, this one focused on constructing housing for unskilled workers.  

Through a grant from IKEA, LabourNet is now experimenting with unique approaches to provide skills training to construction workers, including building dignified housing for 100 migrant workers in Bangalore. The housing is far superior to anything I’ve seen among worker hostels in India.  The rooms are light-filled and airy, with good ventilation and high ceilings. Workers enjoy simple designs that are too often forgotten: thick mattresses on the bunk beds, cupboards that close for storage, and hooks on the walls to hang wet clothing for drying.  Each bed also has built-in shelving and electrical sockets so that each worker can plug in his phone while he sleeps. 

Moral leadership means seeing beyond what is and imagining what could be. Clean, functional housing should be a baseline expectation for workers. And LabourNet is showing how this can be accomplished in ways that also train young people to be part of the solution.  While the project is in its early days, LabourNet is confident that this approach to worker housing ultimately will increase productivity, pay for itself, and provide dignity to essential workers.  

LabourNet co-founder Rajesh A.R.

In the 21st century, all work should carry within it a sense of dignity.  Many of us seemed to understand this anew during the COVID crisis when the world relied on low-income workers to keep things moving while more privileged people isolated in their homes.  Gayathri and Rajesh are carrying forward the principle of dignity in work and showing what is possible. 

Finding a new vision and having the dedication to stick to it even as the world feels like it’s falling apart isn’t easy. But for Gayathri and Rajesh, they couldn’t imagine a LabourNet that didn’t respond to the crises affecting their community. And that is true moral leadership.

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