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? 

The less we have, the more we share ...(?)

Sitting in Cubbon park that morning, i just could not believe that such a calm, quite, colorful, beautiful place still existed in Bangalore. And that too in the heart of the city. Agreed, the park (like all other other parks) is not maintained well. But i still think any Bangalorean who visits the place (especially early in the morning) will be very glad to know such a place does exist in this chaotic city.

I had reached there very early, would now have to spend at least an hour before the entire skit team arrived and we started work on the new skit.

I found a spot - a stone bench, a little away from the main pathway, spread out the newspaper i had picked before entering the park, reminded myself that i was very much in Bangalore, and started reading.

As i sat enjoying the silence, i saw a couple of rag pickers, moving around a little away from me. They were literally in rags, their dress (in no way close to one) barely covering their body, with unkempt hair, looked as dirty as one could imagine. They were carrying couple of big plastic bags, full of "something". As i watched them, i noticed they were being followed by a big group of street dogs. At least ten of them. It is not very uncommon to see rag pickers being followed/chased by street dogs. After all, they both have to fight it out, to claim their share of food from the dirty bins.

Nowadays, i don't think i am bothered much by such things, have got used to the city. I went back to reading my paper. As i flipped the newspaper over to the sports page, i looked up momentarily. What i saw amazed me, i put the paper down and started watching the rag pickers and the dogs.

The two rag pickers had found a spot on a huge boulder. One of the guys climbed on top of it, pulled out some old newspapers, tore them uniformly into a number of pieces and placed them one beside the other even as the other guy below tried to keep the dogs away. I noticed he was not chasing them away, he was just trying to keep them at a distance. The guy on top pulled out from the two covers, "food", probably stale, probably accumulated over a period of time. He then spread out the food on all the pieces of paper. What happened next i had never expected.

The two guys now got down and started isolating one dog from the entire group at a time. They then fed it with one part of the food they had spread out. The two rag pickers, like this, ensured that each of the  the ten dogs got its share. For the dogs that were looking a little weak, they stood guard until it finished eating. This went on for the next twenty minutes. Once they had fed all the dogs, they got on top of the boulder, themselves ate, packed the remaining food in their bags and left the place.

The two rag pickers probably owned nothing in this world. They probably had no place to stay, wore only torn clothes, and probably did not even know when, how, or where (if at all) they would eat next. Yet...

Change by Design

The moment i looked at the contents page of the book, i felt i was holding a typical management book (advising readers on how to get better at everything in life for/from a "profit" perspective). It turned out to be exactly not that.

For a while now, i have been following this guy, Tim Brown, his blog, TED talks, IDEO etc, and all his "ideas on ideas".  

The book is very well written. The story telling really awesome. Tim Brown does it beautifully, "preaching" his religion of design (based thinking), providing pure gyan, seamlessly mixing it with opinion, real life examples, case studies, insights into the human behavior and the ability of the human brain to improvise and innovate, not to forget his thoughts on building sustainability into everything in life. He is able to do all this and more by connecting easily with us, the reader, and provoking us to think about a lot of things we would not have considered important.

The best thing about the book, i think, is that all kinds of people can relate to things he is talking about, coz he is talking about a holistic approach to problem solving, an integrated, multidisciplinary, thought based thinking (Design Thinking as he calls it).Understanding human needs and thereby humans ourselves (what he refers to as human centered design).

The book can be read like a text book, full of management fundas. But i thought it was a lot of fun reading it like jus any other story book, the flow is awesome. After all, story telling is one of the most important things that makes us human....and Tim Brown is really good at it..one of the best books i have ever read...