Yatra - Gram Vikas

I picked up what ever newspaper was available in the small shop on the platform and rushed towards the waiting buses. We were on our way to visit Gram Vikas, in Ganjam district of Orissa. I opened the newspaper with a smile on my face, it had been 8 days since I read a newspaper. The smile did not last long as the front page presented news of the death of a group of five elephants which had been hit by a fast train yesterday night in the near by forests. The news paper referred to it as the man-animal conflict. After listening to Joe Madith, I realized it I should have said, animal - 'civilized' man - 'native' man conflict.

Joe Madith addressed us on the importance of promoting housing solutions for the poor with water and sanitation considerations. Poor people don’t deserve poor solutions, he said.

To a question from one of the Yatri's on why he did not consider joining politics as a good way to bring about change, he said he would be more interested in educating and bringing awareness to the poor on the democratic processes of our country, so that they could participate in it effectively.

He also spoke on why a tribal selling land (to the mining industry) was very different compared to others selling land, as the idea of private property was not really understood by the tribals. How the compensation currently paid by the government was unjust and why the new forests act, giving the tribals a 10% share in profits earned  in the land they moved out from made sense. Forest rights act was trying to correct a major anomaly, unjust,  practiced by us for the last couple of hundred years, he said.

On NREGA, he was of the opinion that it had multiple loopholes. But one of the good things that came out of it was the significant reduction of destitution among the poor, as people were now not dependent only on their landlord for work.

Growing Jatropa in areas currently used for food crops was a bad idea, he said. It only made sense to grow it on land unused land.

We visited some villages and saw the water and sanitation solutions Gram Vikas had helped the villagers implement. At the end of the day  we interacted with students in the residential school run by Gram Vikas.

Yatra - Kuthambakkam

We started our discussion on the ToeHold Artisans initiative (Athini, Belgaum),  we had interacted with a few days back as we waited for the Yatra train at the station in Whitefield. It soon became clear that discussing (and arguing) in a group as large as 20, would be a real challenge. So we decided to split ourselves into smaller groups. Our presentation the next day was crisp, we conveyed our thoughts well and was entertaining. Smaller groups seemed to work better.

We should not feel bad for the inconvenience rain has caused today, said Mr.Elango. It was a very small inconvenience for us, but a happy moment for the rest of the area as rains were the life line for farmers there.  We were visiting Kuthambakkam village near Chennai. This village was supposed to have gone through tremendous change, both socially and economically, thanks to the efforts of Mr.Elango, who quit his job as a scientist and headed back to his village and became a sarpanch about 15 years back.

When Mr.Elango said it is was at the level of the panchyats that one must work to bring about real change, it seemed to make sense. Our personal experience was also that smaller groups worked better. This seemed to be true of our workplaces also.

Mr.Elango spoke of creating self sustained clusters of villages/panchyats who would only sell value added products based on indigenous knowledge and not just export raw materials like now. This he said would help make villages economically independent.

Visual Minutes by Rowan Watts & Marcel O'leary

He also spoke of the twin houses concept they experimented with, where the two parts were occupied compulsorily by families of two different castes.

Decentralization of energy generation and distribution was the other subject he spoke passionately about. It makes a lot of sense to generate and consume energy in smaller pockets. A hybrid model of large scale power generation, wide spread local renewable energy generation and usage of appropriately rated appliances, seems like a possible solution to the energy crisis in the rural areas.

But most importantly it made sense when he pointed out that sensible enterprise building considering these issues would bring in a larger sense of purpose helping address these multiple problems.

Yatra - Aravind Eye Hospital

It is ourselves we are helping, it is ourselves we are healing.

These were the words Dr.V said in the video presented to us.

This was one of the role model visits I was really looking forward to. Had read about this innovative model first in the book Change by Design. And after watching the TED talk on Aravind's contribution to eye care in India my admiration for Dr.V and his team was sky high.

The very idea of trying to replicate McDonalds in a sensitive field such as eye care, that involves peoples' sight (and their lives), does not only sound not feasible but also scary.

But, they did it. And how well have they managed to do it ?..The biggest risk one feels about such a assembly line operation would be quality. But when it comes to quality, they are better than hospitals in US and UK. And cost ? At one tenth of the global costs. Their model is now replicated in , or rather, has inspired more than 300 places in various countries.

It is, I guess, not straight forward to understand the idea until we visit them.

Visual Minutes by Rowan Watts & Marcel O'leary

The courage and the belief they must have had in themselves to even dream, imagine, and think of starting a lab/research centre  to manufacture complex things like ocular lenses on their own (since importing lens was prohibitively high) is indeed very inspiring.

To be in the place where they did all this, to hear them narrate their story, to experience the humility in the whole place was wonderful. It felt very different from a normal hospital. Different from both the government hospital kind and different from the five star hospital kind. It seemed to resemble a spiritual place. A place where a strong 'why' of what they did was very visible.

Dr.Aravind's presentation gave us a very holistic picture of the health care sector in India and why five star tertiary hospitals were not the answer to our health care problems. Why we could not blindly replicate the west. What opportunities were available in the areas such as palliative care.

Later in the day we had to choose a visit to one of their four operational areas, based on our area of interest to better understand their organization. I had a choice to visit their sophisticated lab where made the occular lenses or to visit their meditation centre. Could choose only one. I was surprised with my choice…

Yatra - SELCO

We spent the day understanding SELCO s business model, of making relatively expensive solar technology financially accessable to people who dont have good access to convential energy sources, esp electricity.

Their ability and passion to cater to sections of society which the general 'markets' igonre was really inspirational.

Visual Minutes by Rowan Watts & Marcel O'leary

Yatra - Flagging Off

 I stood with an empty cup in my hand waiting for the guy beside me filling his cup with tea. He filled his cup, gave me the filled cup, took my empty cup, filled it and just walked away.

It was for him a transaction not worth thinking about. It was for me, a small gesture that set the tone for the day at the TISS campus.

The registration desk reminded me of my days in college, young energetic guys running around,  - collecting and sorting luggage, registering participants, serving food, managing the stage - basically, running the entire show.

450 people, 14 roles models, 9000KM, 1 Train - Jagrithi Yatra

Soon people were shouting out letters from A to V in the registration hall, resembling a market. In a couple of minutes though the Yatris had begun to come up with various tricks..processes…methods… to sort themselves into the 22  pre assigned groups.

Sitting together in the groups turned out to be more than an ice breaker. Two student politicians, couple of grads who had paused their student careers to volunteer for teaching initiatives, one studying English literature, a person who had designed a low cost AC for Indian conditions, a lawyer, a clarinet player, a guy who was pursuing a research fellowship in the area of rural development, students studying mechanical engineering, and a few software engineers formed the team. There were in the group a couple of people who had started and were running their own enterprises, a few more who were considering starting one, but many others who were truly confused with what (and why) they really wanted to do in life. The seriousness and the passion with which each of the persons presented their ideas and views on life really surprised me.

After a sumptuous lunch and a brief presentation of the history of the Yatra, it was time for our first role model to address us.  A "Flow Logic " diagram depicted the coding system used in the complex supply chain operations (and short time targets) of the Mumbai Dabbawala was flashed on big screen. The Dabbawala Raghunathji  admitted that he did not create the "complex" diagram, instead it was made by the MBA students who came to study them. And he was not hesitant to add that the Dabbawala was indeed puzzled as to why a diagram was necessary, why was there a need to 'intellectualize' their operations. It was also good to learn that the Dabbawalas worked on a equal profit sharing model, all partners in the organization. The presentation for me raised important questions on the need of technology, its adaptation and use in a real world problem.

The train was flagged off from the station in the evening at 11:30.

First Stop - SELCO

Naturally Nepal

Mirrors in the sky ?

REFLECTIVE DUST (dispersed in the atmosphere), GM CROPS (whose leaves are designed to be more shiny so that they can reflect more light), REFLECTIVE BALLOONS (launched into the higher atmosphere), SEQUESTRATION (storing CO2 underground), OCEAN FERTILIZATION (sprinkling iron dust to bloom photosynthetic plankton) and SPACE MIRRORS (in orbit to deflect sunlight away from earth).

We must be crazy. Where are we are getting all this fancy, "innovative" ideas from? More importantly “why” are our human minds coming up with such “wonderfully brilliant” ideas?

Is this how we are planning to "fight" global warming? It seems some of the best of the intellectuals (around the world in various universities, companies, and other organizations) seem to think so. I wondered if all these people needed some lessons on “life”, as I read the article in the latest issue of Down to Earth.

Of course, I am not an expert on climate change, yet can Technology (alone) solve all our problems? Should we not show materialistic technology its place, never overplay it ?

Does it simply not make sense to worry about the root cause of the problem? And just develop new, fancy, quick fixes for a problem we have created in a system which we don't fully understand (which we probably will never fully understand). 

And we do not even seem to have the humility to accept the limitations of human ability to understand, and intervene in natural systems that are far too complex for our minds to ever comprehend. True, human thinking, imagination, creativity, has no bounds, but the way we do science (and all other things), learning (“discovering”) by analysis, that is by systematically breaking down systems into comprehensible (for the limited human mind) parts, and repeatedly experimenting with it, to understand it, does not seem to be sustainable. Coz we have just one planet to screw up. We simply cant reverse engineer it.

What is the root cause of global warming?  In one line, we are producing too much green house gases, majorly C02. Does not this one line pretty evidently indicate the solution. Should we not produce less of it, start living a sustainable life? Simplistic, non materialistic approach to life, like a lot of wise people suggest.

Instead we seem to have these brilliant ideas. True, these are wonderful ideas people have come up with, if we just look at it in a narrow context of technology. Looking at them we can marvel at the ability of the human minds` intellectual ability. But we must stop at that. In the larger context, it is just a half baked fix (which might end up creating more problems). 

These are problems related more to our approach to life, world, and humanity, which need a holistic approach. Why do we think we can solve them by sending mirrors up into the sky?