Moral Imagination.

On March 23, 2020 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a national lockdown for the nation’s 1.4 billion people. Few were hit harder than the 100 million migrants working on construction sites and in tiny sweatshops. Overnight, these migrant workers, often thousands of miles away from home, were left without income, food or means to travel. The enormity of this human tragedy laid bare the harsh realities of inequality in a capitalist system that, when stressed, can leave the millions who toil in the basement of the global economy in dire peril.

Few saw the situation from a closer vantage point than Gayathri Vasudevan, co-founder of LabourNet, a company that has trained and supported more than a million low-income workers across India. When the lockdown was announced, LabourNet’s 2,000 person team was in the midst of training more than 100,000 migrant workers across the nation. Overnight she transformed all of her learning spaces into accommodation, sought out food suppliers and ultimately provided these 100,000 workers the food and shelter they needed to survive. When I asked Gayahtri what compelled her to move so quickly she responded.

“There was no one else there to do it.”

What sets Gayathri apart is not only her grittiness and determination as evidenced by this story, but equally her moral imagination — the humility to see the world as it is with all its faults, the audacity to see what it could be, and the commitment to act. 

Too many people use the lens only of their own imagination, even when trying to design solutions for those who are different from themselves. Moral imagination starts with empathy but doesn’t stop there. The next step is immersion and then analyzing the systems that hold people back. Moral imagination is not only about dreaming what could be, but also about moving with determination to make it so.

Gayathri’s moral imagination was catalyzed when, as a 16-year-old, she recognized the injustice of seeing people her own age toiling the laundry next door while she was preparing for university.

“The rules were unjustly different for the rich and for the poor. In India, education is the passport out of poverty.”

After university, Gayathri took her social work degree and moved for three years to a village area outside Pune. Immersion in village life taught her how much she didn’t understand.

“I was used to water in a tap,” Gayathri said. I’d never imagined if there’s no tap, then how do I get water?” 

Gayathri also saw how the education system provided insurmountable challenges to the vulnerable. Children are consigned to vocational or academic tracks, or they are left out of the educational system altogether. In a new economy, every human being requires access to lifelong learning because the world around us is changing so rapidly. But where to start? 

In 2006, Gayathri co-founded LabourNet to provide India’s informal workers with education, and employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. In the past 15 years her company has trained more than a million workers and created 7,000 businesses employing 70,000 people. LabourNet’s vocational training is now part of the Indian government’s educational curriculum. And yet for all of LabourNet’s success, the pandemic revealed that the economic system still abandoned its most vulnerable workers.

“Our staff were stranded, our trainers were stranded, the contractors were helpless what to do. There was this entire feeling of total loss,” she said.

Here again, moral imagination fueled Gayathri’s urgency in action. She raised more than a million dollars and partnered with government, civil society organizations and a global community of philanthropists. Through Gayathri, I saw the power of Acumen’s community: we were able to support her directly — and friends across our community came forth to help as well, extending the idea of belonging to incorporate our responsibility for one another. For in the end, we are our brother’s keepers, even if it sometimes feels we’ve forgotten that. But Gayathri never forgets.

“They were all people who just stepped out of comfort zones,” she said. “That’s when I realized it is so important to have social care. It is so important that you don’t forget human beings. The world that we live in has to change given what we saw. There is no way we can go back.”

As Gayathri looks to the future, she sees a world in which everything has changed. It is no longer enough for corporations to provide funds for basic skills training. Only 15% of India’s population receives social protection. LabourNet’s new vision is to secure contracts with corporations, ensuring not just consistent wages, but importantly, social protection of the workers. 

“We believe this is what is needed for someone who travels far away from home to work and corporations need to be transparent.”  

Why would we not insist on ensuring that corporations or government provide basic securities — health care, life insurance and the like — to our most vulnerable workers? Especially in a nation like India where the majority of people work in the informal sector. 

“Eighty-five percent of Indians work in the so-called gig economy,” Gayathri told me with a big grin. “I love the gig economy. Now that we’ve seen it for what it is, let’s build the right social protections to make it work for everyone.”

Gayathri’s moral imagination and hard-edged hope is a reminder that this is possible. We will see this new economy and the value that it brings with it when our societies insist on treating the poor as critical employees, not as inputs.

This is part three in Jacqueline Novogratz's monthly series on Moral Leadership, featuring a new generation of leaders for a new economy. The photos in this piece were created by Soumya Sankar Bose, a grantee of the Magnum Foundation, as part of a partnership to invite readers into the stories that are shaping our shared future.

About Acumen 

Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. We invest patient capital in businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives. 

About Magnum Foundation

The Magnum Foundation is a nonprofit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography, activating new ideas through the innovative use of images. Through grant making and fellowships, the Magnum Foundation supports a global network of social justice and human rights-focused photographers, and experiments with new models for storytelling.