Politics of Exhaustion

I want to build an organisation that is not tired, but I am. I cannot remember the last time I wasn't. In this newsletter edition, I want to share a peek into the politics of exhaustion I have navigated (and continue to navigate) for #BuildingOneFuture. There is a certain joy to being a founder that is unmatched: the ability to create and bring to life an idea that rests in the corner of your mind is a beautiful thing to experience. It allows you to shape not only your work but how you work. With some of these freedoms, some periods of increased demands and related exhaustion are normal. However, a certain political exhaustion must be navigated daily to truly be able to do what you started out for, especially when you work with complex, messy subjects. I promise you that while this newsletter may read of exhaustion, it is a (re) finding of myself, my voice and my claim on my time and agency + a lot of questions!

Hyperaccountability, boundaries and going for the low-hanging fruit

The exhaustion of navigating the expectations of perfection and sacrifice has been immense in this journey. As anyone who works with people knows, what makes the work beautiful is what makes it messy. In my work of running a feminist organisation, trying to do and be better, I encountered a certain form of hyper-accountability that demanded I sacrifice myself not just for the greater good but for the good of the other person in every single interaction, ignoring my needs. I remember when an employee told me I/OFC was at fault for not being able to provide more leave after providing an additional 30 days of paid leave and several months of unpaid leave within a year [anonymised and shared]. Of course, they were in a tough situation and needed support, but I had limited resources as a small organisation. Their paid leave had come at the cost of me working weekends because there was no additional money to cover paid leave outside of an existing generous policy. However, this became an expected norm from me, drastically impacting organisational culture. I also struggled with setting boundaries. During the pandemic, I worked 20-hour days during periods of immense grief because it felt like I owed others something - even if it had not been asked of me. If an employee needed more than organisational resources or policy could allow, it started coming from my salary and resources. My guilt with the very structure of how work exists today (as a form of coercion tied to your existence) started to play out more and more, and I held myself responsible for issues I could not solve alone. I started believing that I was the cost of building a feminist organisation. While I had to take several steps for boundary setting, it has persisted as a cultural issue for any new employee who hopes to join a feminist organisation. I understand how difficult the world is and why we seek this, but the advocacy gets misplaced, and sometimes I wonder if it gets easier to make these asks of a small organisation that is trying. We don't get future funding if we don't deliver to funders. We advocate for better policies, pay and benefits daily but are limited in our realities. At some point, accountability shifted from systems towards a few individuals who were willing to be held accountable. Why do we not advocate for better disability protections and stipends from the government? Are we (nonprofits) not accountable to donors as we would expect the government to be accountable to its people and taxpayers? Why do we not demand universal health coverage of good quality not tied to a job? Can we hold multiple realities together and advocate for more at different levels?

Visibility politics, branding and the question of when do you get time to do your work?

The international and Indian development panders to the systems it intends to dismantle and rebuild. Here, I encountered the race for visibility politics and how that shapes how far your work goes. We continue to participate in thankless hours of free work on networks and groups for organisations that pay two of their staff members the salary that could keep my entire organisation running for a year. This work often does not amount to much, but it lends visibility and a borrowed credibility to the people in these 'hallowed' spaces. In the first few years of starting out, I stayed steadfastly away from these, but then I started to give in. I saw that OFC's work would not advance unless I could attach these brand tags to it. It exhausted me. Hours spent speaking and working for free - not so that any cause gains traction, but so that work that should comprise a paid job could be offloaded to people like me seeking stamps of credibility. I recently had an experience where many of us were brought together to provide a certain type of advisory and advocacy support but were eventually expected to execute projects that should be paid. This was not by a small community-based organisation. I am left with questions of: Who can afford to do this for free? Who does the care work at home for these people? When do I do the work I started out to do if this is a big part of what I am expected to do? How do I move my work ahead without this? Why does everyone want to do thought leadership but not the actual work required to cement your foundation as a thought leader?

Always a big one: money

I started working at 16, not because I wanted to but because I didn't have money. Even when I started OFC, I didn't have the money to do it full-time because I had no safety net (I did have a lot of oppressor caste and other capital that played a big role). Globally, the development sector pays less than other fields, but the gap is not as immense as in India. In India, many organisations often pay below mandated minimum wage laws by changing the nature of employment. The money funders would give organisations in the global minority world to merely explore an idea that would not be given to one in my country to execute the entire project. As someone without a financial safety net, I could not afford the luxury of a social sector job (at OFC). I worked multiple jobs alongside and only truly went full-time with OFC about a year ago, greatly aided by the Chevening Awards . Working 20-hour days to realise a dream should be a choice, not the only way it can happen. This is an exhaustion that persists. How will someone without some form of generational wealth be able to do this work when they have gained an education they stand a chance to get better-paid work? Is it necessary to merge our political and professional lives? Does just leadership have to come at the cost of yourself? [something I always tell people I work with - it is important to advocate for change, but this may not happen in the next few years. If you need more money than the sector can pay, don't join; it will not change overnight, and you will be left unsupported.]

I share this last segment because I remember when they brought in a nonprofit leader to be the CEO of Lyft, everyone applauded the ability of this person to do more with less. I was appalled by this narrative. How do you do more with less? You only do it by reducing quality, grossly underpaying people and/or exhausting yourself to burnout.

A mix of resource, visibility and hyper-accountability politics almost makes exhaustion something you must navigate to emerge victorious and only then can you call yourself a leader.

A mix of resource, visibility and hyper-accountability politics almost makes exhaustion something you must navigate to emerge victorious and only then can you call yourself a leader. I do not want my story to be one that is sold to someone else, saying you can do this because Vandita did it. I hope you do not have to. Seeking basic financial freedom and safety can and should exist alongside our ability to fight for justice and liberation.

A lot of the politics of exhaustion is rooted in the inability of people to understand its politics - how it is shaped, who it affects and who can escape it. I see myself and other feminist founders/folks in India struggling with it daily, some even more than others, given our other intersecting identities. When I started OFC, mentors told me that saying no is just as important as saying yes for building something with strong roots. However, people didn't seem to hear a no whenever I did say no. They either took it as a personal affront, kept pushing for me to say yes or carried on as though I had said yes. I wonder if, more than us learning to say no, people around us needed to learn to hear and respect a 'no'.

We plan on changing things in our lifetime and are counting on you to help make it happen. If you feel called to act, make a tax-exempt donation here or email me at vandita@onefuturecollective.org. I thought of starting this newsletter one year ago. It is telling that it took me this long to get it out there because I didn't have the time to write it. Rights-based non-profits in India have reduced funding, burnout in our teams and an unsupportive ecosystem. If not to us, make a decision to support one such non-profit today.