BackWhat do a scientist from Bangalore, a water quality champion from Chikkaballapur, and a social change leader from Chinthamani have in common? At first glance, maybe not much – but in a district-level meeting with INREM, these individuals came together with a shared purpose: to tackle water safety and community health. Through networks that span diverse expertise and locations, each of them plays a role in orchestrating solutions that no one group could achieve alone.
Sunder Rajan, Executive Director INREM Foundation writes about how they apply some of the Societal Thinking design principles and more importantly, why INREM orchestrates these networks. Here’s what he had to say.
A chance conversation with a friend Bishwadeep Ghose, a few weeks back, came to an important point. What will help a group of organizations get going and work together in Assam on local water issues there? A word came out of that conversation – porosity – and what it means for networks.
Collaboration through connected networks has the potential to accelerate changemaking. The Metcalf law talks about n2 (square of n) connections that can be made in a network of n actors. The Reed law stretches this further to 2n (2 to the power of n) possible connections.
However, all this is possible, only if individuals or groups of individuals within the network are open to, are enabled to, and are able to discover others within the network. The layer of interface between actors needs to be porous so that the exchange of information can take place.
We call this property of one actor (or set of actors) to be able to exchange information with another actor (or set of actors) as ‘network porosity’.
Let us take the example of INREM’s work on securing Water-Safe Communities. A health worker spots a child malnourished and constantly getting sick. She refers the child to a doctor, who has a conversation with a local water engineer, concluding that water contamination is making the child sick and malnourished.
Here we have the ‘porosity’ between the doctor and the water engineer, making it possible to exchange information.
However, the current architecture of people’s networks is more siloed, and the connector across information streams is absent.
The question here is: How can porosity be enhanced and are there design principles which can help us?
Orchestrating Porosity: Design Principles
Strategically designed connections within existing information streams can unlock powerful network effects, enabling more impactful collaborations across sectors.
1. Reframe roles to build mutual trust
Collaboration across sectors often falters due to mistrust or misaligned narratives. Transforming these interactions requires reframing relationships so that actors recognise how their efforts complement one another, enabling trust and collaboration.
In the early stages of INREM’s work, we fell into communication patterns that ended up causing more friction between actors. For example, the doctor spoke up saying ‘Failure of the engineer to supply safe water is increasing my problem’. The engineer, on the other hand, said, ‘The doctor not detecting diseases is causing people to make no effort for safer water’. Local media just played on to amplify these perceptions, causing greater dissonance.
We later started facilitating a cross-sector interaction between Water and Health with the communication that, ‘Water data can help doctors better target disease detection; Health workers can contribute to more focussed water supply’. This changed the perspective of both actors and seeing the value of cross-sector interaction.
2. Anchor collaboration on specific, localised goals
Networks thrive when actors are united by a common, actionable objective that is relevant to their local realities. These goals unlock latent value by enabling diverse stakeholders to contribute unique expertise.
District platforms designed by INREM intentionally bring together government and civil society actors, such as water, health, agriculture, and environmental conservationists, all with a common goal defined clearly and contextually. With a vision of locally achieving Water-Safe Communities, an incremental and first goal, is, for example, ‘How can we come together for Fluoride-free, safe water in Jhabua, MP, in 3 years?’.
District platforms created by INREM serve as intentional spaces for collaboration, drawing in government and civil society actors – spanning water, health, agriculture, and environmental conservation – with a clearly defined, local goal. By aligning these diverse stakeholders around a common objective, such as locally achieving Water-Safe Communities, we can start with incremental targets like ‘Fluoride-free, safe water in Jhabua, MP, within 3 years.’ This kind of focused goal-setting reveals unique opportunities where one actor’s resources or expertise can directly support another’s needs.
Such a goal statement brings out specific opportunities that only one actor can offer and is potentially useful to another. For example, The Govt PHED Department in Jhabua, MP was not able to utilise their Field testing kits (FTK) for Water testing and get data. NGOs were looking out for some ways of testing data and informing their communities about water safety. They saw mutual complementary value, and a new porous membrane opened up that helped NGOs use PHED FTK kits and produce more data from the district.
3. Balance intentional design with serendipity
At the scale of the network, not every porous membrane can be built up from scratch. By having some open-invite experiences, we make it possible to get unexpected connections.
Wide interest and curated sessions within the iECHO platform on wider interest topics such as rainwater harvesting, or plastic in water, help to bring people together and potentially form random connections.
While softening up the walls, and bringing in some lighter see-through curtains, we sometimes encounter resistance. A recent example is that of a polluting industry and an affected village community. While there are potential wins for both sides that are visible to an external observer, existing local power dynamics made it difficult to induce any porosity here.
Sustaining Network Effects through Porosity
Rituals are essential for building self-reinforcing interactions that sustain network effects over time. When held regularly, these gatherings create a continuum of engagement where relationships deepen, leading to greater porosity and enabling new connections across diverse actors. As networks evolve, these rituals cultivate an environment where unexpected collaborations naturally emerge. For example, several groups of actors are coming together in Chikaballapur, Karnataka, now to engage closely with lakes receiving treated wastewater from Bengaluru, and helping to protect the health, ecosystems and livelihoods that revolve around them.
Digital engagements support real-life relationships offering potential continuity during busier times, and being able to make connections, where none else is otherwise possible. Contexts are not just geographical, but they can also be about perspectives, and thereby ECHO sessions have helped to bring together and nurture relationships, with the ritual of mutually supporting problem-solving.
Fresh energy helps networks develop new nodes and increases the possibility of newer connections happening. One example of such orchestration is the quarterly online cohort of Water Quality Champions that we support, with a month-long course. This helps to bring in newer players, who keep revitalizing the network, as well as enhancing existing network nodes – geographical and thematic.
Apart from specific locally contextual porosity enhancement with district platforms, or with regional NGO networks such as Pravah in Gujarat that bind together naturally, we see value in pan-national or global relationships that get formed when cohorts of Water Quality Champions come in with fresh energy every 3 months.
Let’s say, 5 cups of structured and contextual local rituals, 3 cups of thematic problem exploration & solving, and 1 cup of fresh new cohorts coming in; making a bowlful of a delicious and juicy porous network.
Some ideas here could help:
- Begin by mapping your actors and see the state of current network porosity
- What rituals could help actors see more value, and increase porosity?
- How can fresh energy infuse new nodes and more connections?
Keep track of your challenges because they will keep coming. Metcalf and Reed might be far away, but let us remember that each small connection made could push large levers making it possible to bring unexpected change.
Every pore matters!
