How Can We Activate Citizen Agency Again?

Whoever still believes that social networks are just ancillary in connecting people is a fool.

This week I was invited to address the MBA students of IE Business School. Rachida, assistant professor in charge of social entrepreneurship, read my blog on the trip to Pakistan and decided I was the right key note speaker to close the  module on the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP).

If you are not familiar with BoP concept it is the theory on poverty eradication through a market economy approach targeting the poor. Those whose income is below $2 a day generally are considered neither valuable clients nor business-minded.

Thanks to the irreplaceable Emily, my intern, I gave quite an engaging Prezi presentation about the Pakistani social entrepreneurs and innovators I met on my recent trip. I argued that in a country where the basic public services such as health and education are neglected by the state, people don’t complain but respond to social injustice. They act by developing solutions for their most dispossessed fellows.

This is a lesson for Europe where I believe people have lost their agency expecting the state or market to answer social injustice instead of solving problems for themselves. Europeans are spoiled, complacent within a culture of rights entitlement as drug-addicts, but without responsibilities. They blame the system and lay back on their sofa watching disaster unfold in the news.

You might call me harsh but I’m fed up with whiny middle class crowds wasting all their time, energy and money to have fun at the weekend. It’s time to rediscover our agency and act.

During my lecture one question stood out in this regard. When I encouraged the students not to donate or invest but become entrepreneur for society or take a non-executive position in a NGO at the end of my presentation, a student asked me: ‘How can you mobilize the people who don’t want to be heroes but just have a job from 9 till 5?’

That was the question I couldn’t have desired more. I promptly replied:  ‘Yes, that is the challenge. We can’t win with financial incentives alone. There is not enough money to buy the good will of people. We need a cultural revolution to change what society prioritizes and values the most. We need ethics back in business’.