Wagner’s Ramdoss Seeks Equality in His Native India

By Jamie Acker

Santhosh Ramdoss, who graduates today from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, was raised in rural India, where he was guided by Ghandian principles of simplicity and self-reliance and by his mother, a single parent and social worker. He majored in business management at college and attended one of his country’s top business graduate schools.

      But in his studies and thoughts he kept returning to India’s dramatic economic disparities—the isolation and poverty of villages such as the one where he was raised, in contrast to the glittering wealth in the nation’s urban centers.

      “Once exposed to the growing economic inequity between urban and rural areas in India, I couldn’t remain in my private sector job,” he says.

      In response, Ramdoss went on to co-found Profits for People, helping the rural poor create and invest micro-loans in interdependent strings of small enterprises. Its premise was that as businesses grew, co-investors could earn a share of the profits—along with jobs for themselves and others—giving rural communities a means to participate in India’s modernizing economy. The organization won the Technology Business Plan Competition that was held as a part of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup in 2005 and was the recent co-winner of the social venture track of the eighth annual Business Plan Competition conducted by the Stern School of Business.

      Ramdoss’s research and work at the intersection of business and social change attracted him to Wagner, which he attended for the past two years as a Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. He leaves with an M.P.A. in public and nonprofit management and policy with a specialization in international development.

      “I came to Wagner with a lot of luggage,” Ramdoss says. “It didn’t take me too long to realize that my strongly held beliefs were resting on some pretty shaky ground. Wagner challenged me on a daily basis, not only in terms of my skills but also in terms of what I believed.”

      Along with Vinay Ganti, who is graduating with a J.D./M.B.A. from NYU, Ramdoss has started a new blog called ThinkChange India. It is a clearinghouse of information on social entrepreneurship ventures and fresh ideas about the country. The name of the site was inspired by Think Coffee, the NYU-area café where the two students had their first brainstorming session about the blog.

      Says Ramdoss, “This has clearly been a transformative experience for me.”