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Abhijit Pawar based the Delivering Change Foundation and Tanishka Foundation on a concept of “return on respect,” evaluating all initiatives based on social impact. 
 
The Tanishka Foundation is one such initiative, whose main goal is to empower women and change the perception of their roles within the society. Tanishka provides a peer-to-peer platform for women to connect, share and champion the cause of socio-economic transformation by addressing emotional, physical and financial security. 
 
• Emotional security is based on an integration of self-acceptance and self-confidence, social and political understanding and a personal ability to take a significant part in decision-making and in control over resources in the environment. 
 
• Physical security centers around fundamental human rights, including equal protection under the law, freedom from all forms of discrimination, access to the highest standard of physical and mental health, complete freedom from abuse at the domestic or community level and zero level tolerance for any form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 
 
• Financial security reflects the critical need in society, that in order for women to have a dignified life and fully harness and galvanize their potential, it is paramount that they have stable incomes on par with men in their socio-economic strata. Additionally, they must be provided with the skills and education required to earn secure and continuously enhanced incomes, with rights to optimal control over land and other critical monetizable resources and equal access to all entitlements and services available in society. 
 
Below, Pawar, who joined YPO in 2004 and is a Global Impact honoree for his work through Tanishka, recalls some of his favorite achievements, stories and life lessons. 
 1. What is one thing you know now that you would teach your younger self about business and <keyword id="34454" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="leadership">leadership</keyword>? 
 
If I were to teach my younger self, it would be the following: I know now that you should start with thinking of society’s challenges and issues, and when you do, your own individual problems become insignificant and the ability to reach out to people increases. This in turn creative business opportunities to solve that greater issue. Usually people start with the business objective and link to a social issue but if you start with that purpose that opens business opportunities. 
 
Today, I have an integrated model where philanthropy and social enterprise is at the core. I made a conscious decision to follow this model about five years ago when I decided to use my resources and skills for helping solve social issues, as part of the business. I thought I would lose money but it resulted in the opposite. It opened up more business opportunities. The privileged one percent of the population have to introduce change to make the world a better place. They can do it and have the responsibility to do it. 
 
2. What is your favorite achievement? 
 
The creation of the ‘Rally the citizens of Pune’ by Delivering Change Foundation. Seven million citizens across a wide spectrum of backgrounds including politicians, NGO’s, industries, judiciary, schools, colleges and the disadvantaged traveled by bus for a day to raise awareness of public transportation and ultimately help reduce pollution, accidents and traffic. Every stakeholder of the society was united, and we all traveled together in a bus for one day on 1 November 2012. We celebrated this as the Pune Bus Day. 
 
3. What is one of your favorite transformative stories about the women you’ve worked with? 
 
The Tanishka women’s group is the Matori Village story. The Matori village is one of the poorest villages in India. A 78- year-old woman, who is a Tanishka member, took the initiative and rallied other women in the village to ensure that they got 50 percent of the land transferred to their names, as many of their husbands were alcoholics and they indulged in gambling (therefore many men would lose their belongings and land). Not only this, but they also rallied to stop physical and domestic violence in their homes. They further moved on to make the village drought-free by working on the desilting project. This was all done by a group of Tanishka women, many of whom were illiterate. 
 
4. How has being in YPO positively affected your business or leadership? 
 
Being in YPO has allowed me many opportunities to meet members whom I can trust, and with whom I can partner in business. Some members helped us to verify information of companies or individuals with whom I was looking to either partner or take help from in social as well as business projects. 
 
5. What is one must-read book for business leaders? 
 
“Citizenville” by Gavin Newsom. This book has many innovative, interesting and practical ideas and initiatives, which can be easily replicated across many cities of the world. 
 
6. How do you make time for ongoing learning in your busy schedule? 
 
I don’t dedicate a specific time for learning. Everything is learning. It’s a state of mind and a full-time activity. I cannot not be a student. 
 
7. What are three insights you would like to share? 
 
• The world truly has become small. Increasingly, people across borders are connecting with one another in an unprecedented manner. The problem one faces in his country might be similar to problems faced in another country, especially when it comes to women’s issues, family, lifestyle, culture, etc. ‎Problems today can be solved through the digital world by almost anybody on the planet who has the capability and inclination, therefore, people of the world are increasingly relying on each other. It is now evident that the digital world is a reality and either you embrace it and take off and fly to a better future or else the possibility of falling off the cliff is very real. The digital divide will increase substantially if proper steps are not taken by the government. The global equations of the world will drastically change. 
 
• Change is constant. We can help deliver change by collaborating with each other, learning from the best and sharing. 
 
• Women must play a significant role in helping build better societies. This is being demonstrated in every field of life when they receive more opportunities. 
 
(The article is authored by Erin Enberg, YPO writer) 
 
(YPO is a global community of chief executives dedicated to becoming Better Leaders through Lifelong Learning and Idea ExchangeTM. The YPO platform provides more than 24,000 members in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit www.ypo.org.)

Return On Respect: 7 Questions With Abhijit Pawar

Managing Director of Sakal Media Group and founder/chairman of Delivering Change Foundation, <a href="https://www.ypowpo.org/Member.aspx?memberid=15DD2578-7AE3-DE11-8D75-005056923298">Abhijit Pawar</a> (YPO Pune, YPO Bombay North Star)based the Delivering Change Foundation and <a href="http://www.tanishkafoundation.org/">Tanishka Foundation</a> on a concept of “return on respect,” evaluating all initiatives based on social impact. The <keyword id="3186533" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tanishka-foundation">Tanishka Foundation</keyword> is one such initiative, whose main goal is to empower women and change the perception of their roles within the society. 
 
Tanishka provides a peer-to-peer platform for women to connect, share and champion the cause of socio-economic transformation by addressing emotional, physical and financial security. 
 
Emotional security is based on an integration of self-acceptance and self-confidence, social and political understanding and a personal ability to take a significant part in decision-making and in control over resources in the environment. This ensures every woman has a feeling of self-worth and an aspiration to a better life, leading to self-actualization. This thereby enables women to come together to formulate goals for societal improvement and act as change agents to positively transform their collective situation. 
 
Physical security centers around fundamental human rights, including equal protection under the law, freedom from all forms of discrimination, access to the highest standard of physical and mental health, complete freedom from abuse at the domestic or community level and zero level tolerance for any form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Physical security allows women to operate from a standpoint of fearlessness and self-respect, empowering them to take control of their lives and initiate positive change in society. 
 
Financial security reflects the critical need in society, that in order for women to have a dignified life and fully harness and galvanize their potential, it is paramount that they have stable incomes on par with men in their socio-economic strata. Additionally, they we must provide them with the skills and education required to earn secure and continuously enhanced incomes, with rights to optimal control over land and other critical monetizable resources and equal access to all entitlements and services available in society. This ensures that they have a stable and secure base from which to act in the interests of societal transformation. 
 
Below, Abhijit recalls some of his favorite stories and achievements through his work at Delivering Change and Tanishka. 
 
1. What is one must-read book for business leaders? 
“<a href="http://citizenville.com/">Citizenville</a>” by Gavin Newsom. This book has many innovative, interesting and practical ideas and initiatives, which can be easily replicated across many cities of the world. 
 
2. What is your favorite achievement? 
The creation of the ‘Rally the citizens of Pune’ by Delivering Change Foundation. Seven million citizens across a wide spectrum of backgrounds including politicians, NGO's, industries, judiciary, schools, colleges and the disadvantaged traveled by bus for a day to raise awareness of public transportation and ultimately help reduce pollution, accidents and traffic. Every stakeholder of the society was united, and we all traveled together in a bus for one day on 1 November 2012. We celebrated this as the Pune Bus Day. 
 
3. What is one of your favorite transformative stories about the women you’ve worked with? 
The Tanishka women's group is the Matori Village story. The Matori village is one of the poorest villages in India. A 78- year-old woman, who is a Tanishka member, took the initiative and rallied other women in the village to ensure that they got 50 percent of the land transferred to their names, as many of their husbands were alcoholics and they indulged in gambling (therefore many men would lose their belongings and land). Not only this, but they also rallied to stop physical and domestic violence in their homes. They further moved on to make the village drought-free by working on the de-silting project. This was all done by a group of Tanishka women, many of whom were illiterate. 
 
4. How has being in YPO positively affected your business or leadership? 
Being in YPO has allowed me many opportunities to meet members whom I can trust, and with whom I can partner in business. Some members helped us to verify information of companies or individuals with whom I was looking to either partner or take help from in social as well as business projects. 
 
Three insights I would like to share to my fellow members: 
 
1. The world truly has become small. Increasingly, people across borders are connecting with one another in an unprecedented manner. The problem one faces in his country might be similar to problems faced in another country, especially when it comes to women’s issues, family, lifestyle, culture, etc. ‎ Problems today can be solved through the digital world by almost anybody on the planet who has the capability and inclination, therefore, people of the world are increasingly relying on each other. It is now evident that the digital world is a reality and either you embrace it and take off and fly to a better future or else the possibility of falling off the cliff is very real. The digital divide will increase substantially if proper steps are not taken by the government. The global equations of the world will drastically change. 
 
2. Change is constant, and we can help deliver change by collaborating with each other, learning from the best and sharing. 
 
3. Women must play a significant role in helping build better societies. This is being demonstrated in every field of life when they receive more opportunities.

Transformation Through Respect: 5 Questions with Abhijit Pawar

<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">REUTERS/Aung Hla Tun A <keyword id="16488" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jade">jade</keyword> merchant inspects the most valuable jade lot that will be auctioned at the Mid-Year Emporium in Yangon November 13, 2007.</div></div>
HPAKANT, Myanmar (Reuters) - Tin Tun picked all night through teetering heaps of rubble to find the palm-sized lump of jade he now holds in his hand. He hopes it will make him a fortune. It's happened before.
"Last year I found a stone worth 50 million kyat," he said, trekking past the craters and slag heaps of this notorious jade-mining region in northwest Myanmar. That's about $50,000 - and it was more than enough money for Tin Tun, 38, to buy land and build a house in his home village.
But rare finds by small-time prospectors like Tin Tun pale next to the staggering wealth extracted on an industrial scale by Myanmar's military, the tycoons it helped enrich, and companies linked to the country where most jade ends up: China.
Almost half of all jade sales are "unofficial" - that is, spirited over the border into China with little or no formal taxation. This represents billions of dollars in lost revenues that could be spent on rebuilding a nation shattered by nearly half a century of military dictatorship.
Official statistics confirm these missing billions. Myanmar produced more than 43 million kg of jade in fiscal year 2011/12 (April to March). Even valued at a conservative $100 per kg, it was worth $4.3 billion. But official exports of jade that year stood at only $34 million.
Official Chinese statistics only deepen the mystery. China doesn't publicly report how much jade it imports from Myanmar. But jade is included in official imports of precious stones and metals, which in 2012 were worth $293 million - a figure still too small to explain where billions of dollars of Myanmar jade has gone.
Such squandered wealth symbolizes a wider challenge in Myanmar, an impoverished country whose natural resources - including oil, timber and precious metals - have long fueled armed conflicts while enriching only powerful individuals or groups. In a rare visit to the heart of Myanmar's secretive jade-mining industry in Hpakant, Reuters found an anarchic region where soldiers and ethnic rebels clash, and where mainland Chinese traders rub shoulders with heroin-fueled "handpickers" who are routinely buried alive while scavenging for stones.
Myint Aung, Myanmar's Minister of Mines, did not reply to written questions from Reuters about the jade industry's missing millions and social costs.
Since a reformist government took office in March 2011, Myanmar has pinned its economic hopes on the resumption of foreign aid and investment. Some economists argue, however, that Myanmar's prosperity and unity may depend upon claiming more revenue from raw materials.
There are few reliable estimates on total jade sales that include unofficial exports. The Harvard Ash Center, which advises Myanmar's quasi-civilian government, has possibly the best numbers available.
After sending researchers to the area this year, the Harvard Ash Center published a report in July that put sales of Burmese jade at about $8 billion in 2011. That's more than double the country's revenue from natural gas and nearly a sixth of its 2011 GDP.
"Practically nothing is going to the government," David Dapice, the report's co-author, told Reuters. "What you need is a modern system of public finance in which the government collects some part of the rents from mining this stuff."
<h3>HIDING STONES</h3>
Chinese have prized jade for its beauty and symbolism for millennia. Many believe wearing jade jewelry brings good fortune, prosperity and longevity. It is also viewed as an investment, a major factor driving China's appetite for Burmese jade. "Gold is valuable, but jade is priceless," runs an old Chinese saying.
Jade is not only high value but easy to transport. "Only the stones they cannot hide go to the emporiums," said Tin Soe, 53, a jade trader in Hpakant, referring to the official auctions held in Myanmar's capital of Naypyitaw.
The rest is smuggled by truck to China by so-called "jockeys" through territory belonging to either the Burmese military or the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), both of whom extract tolls. The All China Jade Trade Association, a state-linked industry group based in Beijing, declined repeated requests for an interview.
Hpakant lies in Kachin State, a rugged region sandwiched strategically between China and India. Nowhere on Earth does jade exist in such quantity and quality. "Open the ground, let the country abound," reads the sign outside the Hpakant offices of the Ministry of Mines.
In fact, few places better symbolize how little Myanmar benefits from its fabulous natural wealth. The road to Hpakant has pot-holes bigger than the four-wheel-drive cars that negotiate it. During the rainy season, it can take nine hours to reach from Myitkyina, the Kachin state capital 110 km (68 miles) away.
Non-Burmese are rarely granted official access to Hpakant, but taxi-drivers routinely take Chinese traders there for exorbitant fees, part of which goes to dispensing bribes at police and military checkpoints. The official reason for restricting access to Hpakant is security: the Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have long vied for control of the road, which is said to be flanked with land-mines. But the restrictions also serve to reduce scrutiny of the industry's biggest players and its horrific social costs: the mass deaths of workers and some of the highest heroin addiction and HIV infection rates in Myanmar.
There are also "obvious" links between jade and conflict in Kachin State, said analyst Richard Horsey, a former United Nations senior official in Myanmar. A 17-year ceasefire between the military and the KIA ended when fighting erupted in June 2011. It has since displaced at least 100,000 people.
"Such vast revenues - in the hands of both sides - have certainly fed into the conflict, helped fund insurgency, and will be a hugely complicating factor in building a sustainable peace economy," Horsey said.
The United States banned imports of jade, rubies and other Burmese gemstones in 2008 in a bid to cut off revenue to the military junta which then ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma. But soaring demand from neighboring China meant the ban had little effect. After Myanmar's reformist government took power, the United States scrapped or suspended almost all economic and political sanctions - but not the ban on jade and rubies. It was renewed by the White House on August 7 in a sign that Myanmar's anarchic jade industry remains a throwback to an era of dictatorship. The U.S. Department of the Treasury included the industry in activities that "contribute to human rights abuses or undermine Burma's democratic reform process."
Foreign companies are not permitted to extract jade. But mining is capital intensive, and it is an open secret that most of the 20 or so largest operations in Hpakant are owned by Chinese companies or their proxies, say gem traders and other industry insiders in Kachin State. "Of course, some (profit) goes to the government," said Yup Zaw Hkawng, chairman of Jadeland Myanmar, the most prominent Kachin mining company in Hpakant. "But mostly it goes into the pockets of Chinese families and the families of the former (Burmese) government."
Other players include the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL), the investment arm of the country's much-feared military, and Burmese tycoons such as Zaw Zaw, chairman of Max Myanmar, who made their fortunes collaborating with the former junta.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">REUTERS/Minzayar Hand-pickers search for jade through rubble dumped by mining companies at a jade mine in Hpakant township, Kachin State July 8, 2013.</div></div>
<h3>THE CHINA CONNECTION</h3>
Soldiers guard the big mining companies and sometimes shoot in the air to scare off small-time prospectors. "We run like crazy when we see them," said Tin Tun, the handpicker.
UMEHL is notoriously tight-lipped about its operations. "Stop bothering us," Major Myint Oo, chief of human resources at UMEHL's head office in downtown Yangon, told Reuters. "You can't just come in here and meet our superiors. This is a military company. Some matters must be kept secret."
This arrangement, whereby Chinese companies exploit natural resources with military help, is both familiar and deeply controversial in Myanmar.
Last year, protests outside the Letpadaung copper mine in northwest Myanmar triggered a violent police crackdown. The mine's two operators - UMEHL and Myanmar Wanbao, a unit of Chinese weapons manufacturer China North Industries Corp - shared most of the profits, leaving the government with just 4 percent. That contract was revised in July in an apparent attempt to appease public anger. The government now gets 51 percent of the profits, while UMEHL and Myanmar Wanbao get 30 and 19 percent respectively.
China's domination of the jade trade could feed into a wider resentment over its exploitation of Myanmar's natural wealth. A Chinese-led plan to build a $3.6 million dam at the Irrawaddy River's source in Kachin State - and send most of the power it generated to Yunnan Province - was suspended in 2011 by President Thein Sein amid popular outrage.
The national and local governments should also get a greater share of Kachin State's natural wealth, say analysts and activists. That includes gold, timber and hydropower, but especially jade.
A two-week auction held in the capital Naypyitaw in June sold a record-breaking $2.6 billion in jade and gems. But jade tax revenue in 2011 amounted to only 20 percent of the official sales. Add in all the "unofficial" sales outside of the emporium, and Harvard calculates an effective tax rate of about 7 percent on all Burmese jade.
It is, on the other hand, highly lucrative for the mining companies, whose estimated cost of production is $400 a ton, compared with an official sales figure of $126,000 a ton, the report said.
"Kachin, and by extension Myanmar, cannot be peaceful and politically stable without some equitable sharing of resource revenues with the local people," said analyst Horsey.
<h3>THE PECKING ORDER</h3>
At the top of the pecking order in Hpakant are cashed-up traders from China, who buy stones displayed on so-called "jade tables" in Hpakant tea-shops. The tables are run by middleman called laoban ("boss" in Chinese), who are often ethnic Chinese. They buy jade from, and sometimes employ, handpickers like Tin Tun.
The handpickers are at the bottom of the heap - literally. They swarm in their hundreds across mountains of rubble dumped by the mining companies. It is perilous work, especially when banks and slag heaps are destabilized by monsoon rain. Landslides routinely swallow 10 or 20 men at a time, said Too Aung, 30, a handpicker from the Kachin town of Bhamo.
"Sometimes we can't even dig out their bodies," he said. "We don't know where to look."
In 2002, at least a thousand people were killed when flood waters inundated a mine, Jadeland Myanmar chairman Yup Zaw Hkawng told Reuters. Deaths are common but routinely concealed by companies eager to avoid suspending operations, he said.
The boom in Hpakant's population coincided with an exponential rise in opium production in Myanmar, the world's second-largest producer after Afghanistan. Its derivative, heroin, is cheap and widely available in Kachin State, and Hpakant's workforce seems to run on it.
About half the handpickers use heroin, while others rely on opium or alcohol, said Tin Soe, 53, a jade trader and a local leader of the opposition National League for Democracy party. "It's very rare to find someone who doesn't do any of these," he said.
Official figures on heroin use in Hpakant are hard to get. The few foreign aid workers operating in the area, mostly working with drug users, declined comment for fear of upsetting relations with the Myanmar government. But health workers say privately about 40 percent of injecting drug users in Hpakant are HIV positive - twice the national average.
Drug use is so intrinsic to jade mining that "shooting galleries" operate openly in Hpakant, with workers often exchanging lumps of jade for hits of heroin.
Soe Moe, 39, came to Hpakant in 1992. Three years later, he was sniffing heroin, then injecting it. His habit now devours his earnings as a handpicker. "When I'm on (heroin), I feel happier and more energetic. I work better," he said. The shooting gallery he frequents accommodates hundreds of users. "The place is so busy it's like a festival," he said. Soe Moe said he didn't fear arrest, because the gallery owners paid off the police.
<h3>MOVING MOUNTAINS</h3>
Twenty years ago, Hpakant was controlled by KIA insurgents who for a modest fee granted access to small prospectors. Four people with iron picks could live off the jade harvested from a small plot of land, said Yitnang Ze Lum of the Myanmar Gems and Jewellery Entrepreneurs Association (MGJEA) in Myitkyina.
A 1994 ceasefire brought most of Hpakant back under government control, and large-scale extraction began, with hundreds of backhoes, earthmovers and trucks working around the clock. "Now even a mountain lasts only three months," said Yitnang Ze Lum.
Many Kachin businessmen, unable to compete in terms of capital or technology, were shut out of the industry. Non-Kachin workers poured in from across Myanmar, looking for jobs and hoping to strike it rich.
The mines were closed in mid-2012 when the conflict flared up again. Myanmar's military shelled suspected KIA positions; the rebels retaliated with ambushes along the Hpakant road. Thousands of people were displaced.Jade production plunged to just 19.08 million kg in the 2012/13 fiscal year from 43.1 million kg the previous year. But the government forged a preliminary ceasefire with the Kachin rebels in May, and some traders predict Hpakant's mines will re-open when the monsoon ends in October.
When operations are in full swing, the road to Hpakant is clogged with vehicles bringing fuel in and jade out. Such is the scale and speed of modern extraction, said Yitnang Ze Lum, Hpakant's jade could be gone within 10 years.
"Every Kachin feels passionately that their state's resources are being taken away," a leading Myitkyina gem trader told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "But we're powerless to stop them."
(Andrew R.C. Marshall reported from Myitkyina; Min Zayar Oo reported from Hpakant; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing <a></a>

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