1. How did Sohan Lal effectively manage village affairs, despite any formal education in management? Support your answers with specific situations from the case.
How did Sohan Lal, the chairman of Sitara managed to become an important person in the village despite his lack of education? With creativity. Sohan Lal is a very creative person not only does he manage to resolve different kinds of situations but also manages to get the support of different entities, organisations and people with persuasion and determination. Sohan Lal always keeps in mind his main objective which is to: “ensure the sustainable rural development of the village”. A good example of persuasion and determination is when Sohan Lal personally went to visit some
However, the villagers where no trilled with this decision because they thought that it was a lost of money. Sohan Lal dilemma with the pond renovation project is whether or not he starts the process of building gravel roads not to loose the money the MNREGA has gave him, or continues investing some money for the reparation of the JCB machine to renovate the pond and to finally give a chance to all villagers to have access to clean water.

4. Carry out a base-of-the-pyramid competency analysis to suggest the competencies that were reflected through Sohan Lal’s way of approaching issues and making decisions in the Indian context.
The base-of-the-pyramid model introduced by Prahalad proposes the idea that: “The poor present a vast untapped business opportunity, and if companies serve the poor, they can help eradicate poverty and also make a profit, revolutionized business thinking1”. In fact, if we analyse Sohan Lal’s approach about the various issues he faced during the pond project, we can observe some similarities with Prahalad base-of-the-pyramid model. Not only does Sohan Lal encourages the local community to innovate and to participate in the development of the village, but also does he always think about integrating them first and developing specific projects for this low class of people to enhance the durability of these projects.
As seen in the case,