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Daan Utsav: Investing For A Better ‘Samaaj’

From the beginning of October and through the end of December, our minds are more attuned to giving and sharing. The giving season starts with Gandhi’s birthday and goes on well past Christmas. In between, there are many festivals of sharing, and gratitude, including Dassera and Diwali.India’s Daan Utsav is well-timed to enhance the feeling of fellowship and to encourage people to open up their hearts, minds, and pockets.

This year, the pandemic gives us even more reason to share the burdens of others, and to practice kindness to strangers. We have learned in these past few months what the state and the markets can and cannot do for us. We have also learned what the samaaj or society can do. We have seen generosity pouring out across the country; we have seen a rise in the philanthropy of ordinary citizens, both in terms of their time and money. We have seen the civil society sector, and the voluntary sector, rise up to stem the worst of the suffering.

This is a beacon of hope in these bleak times. It is the signal in the midst of all the noise. It tells us that when people engage in concerted action to help others, then we are on a strong foundation to nurture a society that all of us, not just some of us, would like to live in and belong to. I have personally always structured my philanthropy around this simple idea. If we can continue to build a good, resilient samaaj, which derives its energy from a moral leadership; which is inspired by the interconnectedness of our fates; and which is driven to co-create positive change, then we can face any future with the optimism that is unique to our human species.

So how do I help this idea along? Luckily, there are hundreds of organisations in India that are trying to do something similar: they want to help people become part of the solution rather than remain part of the problem. They want to unleash innovation, find change-makers, and support them to become leaders and institution builders. They want people to engage as citizens, especially at their local level and figure out how to come together to resolve societal issues. These cover a wide spectrum from water, health, education, livelihoods, public infrastructure, environment, and also issues of access and voice.

With my amazing team’s help, I try to find and support ideas, individuals, and institutions that resonate with the vision of building a strong samaaj, a good samaaj, through personal action. We call this portfolio – Active Citizenship. Citizenship is typically seen through the lens of voting during elections, making claims of the state, and sometimes of active resistance.

But there is ample space for deepening this idea of citizenship. Here’s just one example. We are a young nation coming of age in a digital era. This can upend the traditional imagination of citizenship and citizens’ engagement. Emerging digital technologies, now widely adopted around the world, increase the possibility and space for participation. They can allow you to better understand your community’s issues but also your own rights and duties. They can help find allies outside one’s narrow circles. They can increase the discovery of other people’s solutions.

Luckily, India’s voluntary sector is just beginning to tap into this potential. There are many initiatives, both urban and rural, rising up from the samaaj, to expand citizen participation. There are instances of new, diverse institutions of the people – from neighbourhood societies to digital, issue-based affinity groups.

I have been able to support about a dozen wonderful organisations, most led by young, dynamic leaders. Organisations like India Rising Trust and Reap Benefit work to build more opportunities for civic engagement at scale, to solve hyper-local problems. Jhatkaa works to mobilise citizens around issues and help them take action. Other grantees work to reduce the friction between the citizen and the state. Civis is a platform that helps citizens understand and give feedback on drafts of legislation and government policies. Nyaaya works on the other side, helping citizens understand laws and regulations. Socratus Foundation for Collective Wisdom looks to understand wicked problems and bring all stakeholders together through a deliberative, outcome-oriented process.

I find great inspiration from the work of these leaders and institutions, no matter their size. I do believe that this space needs to be better seeded with magnanimous philanthropic capital. I hope much of it will come from small givers giving big. I hope some of it will come from big givers giving big. During and beyond Daan Utsav, we must support organisations that activate people to become better citizens – first for themselves, and then for society. So that we can all thrive in a better samaaj.

Bloomberg Quint

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Distributing the Ability to Solve

Water is the key sector when it comes to climate change related challenges. It is ever changing and complex, with equity, quality and quantity issues rising routinely. Usually, water issues have to be dealt with locally, in context. For example, even if you planned to bring water from a faraway river to a city, it is the city planners who need to engage with how equitably that new water will be used; they will have to design to carry away excess flow and sewage and so on.

For that, you need local talent. You need communities to come together along with trained professionals and local leaders to understand how THEIR water behaves, both above and below the ground. They must be able to find granular solutions that accommodate upstream and downstream solutions created by others. For example, to manage groundwater sustainably in one panchayat, you need to find out if you are sharing an aquifer with another panchayat, and co-create an equitable system.

This means that we cannot push for one size fits all solutions. Instead, we must design capacity building in order to distribute the ability to solve. A technology backbone, which is unified but not uniform, which allows local, contextual problem solving at scale is the need of the hour. Our teams at Societal Platform.org and Arghyam are beginning to build just such an open, digital, shared public infrastructure.

Nurturing community capacity and resilience in the face of climate change is critical. In the water sector, for life and livelihoods, it is especially so.

[Written for the September 2020 issue of the ICC Newsletter]

How to Leverage Trained Water Professionals

If we have to effectively tackle the current and future pandemics, and collectively address climate-related emergencies, flexibility, adaptation and resilience are not just words. They are critical skills that communities must build quickly. The water sector is a good place to innovate in service of this imperative

Water is a key sector to overcome public health, livelihood and climate crisis-related challenges. To create lasting water security, the State has to actively engage with empowered local communities and innovative markets to enable the improved flexibility, adaptation and resilience that the sector demands.

Water projects can be imagined at any scale, but contextual, local responses remain critical. For example, even if you planned to bring water from a faraway river to a city, you would need to understand how that new water will be used, design for excess flow and for sewage to be carried away.

For this, you need trained professionals, local leaders and citizen volunteers who understand how local water behaves, both above and below the ground. They must be able to find granular solutions that accommodate upstream and downstream solutions created by others.

Over the decades, successive governments have become more and more ambitious about scaling up water infrastructure. The ministry of jal shakti (MoJS) has budgeted ₹30,000 crore for water-related works in this year alone. And the Jal Jeevan Mission hopes to cover all the 145 million unreached rural households with Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) by 2024. The Atal Bhujal Yojana aims to improve groundwater management in 8,353 gram panchayats in five years.

Tens of thousands of people across the country have been trained for such programmes. Across the country, they may be called bhujal jankars, dhara sevaks, or jal surakshaks. This excludes all the rojgar sahayaks, krishi mitras and swacchata doots who work in allied areas.

Yet, if we had to map where all these trained people are, we would be in a fix. Nobody has a comprehensive idea of how effective the training has been either. What has been the impact on the livelihoods of these trainees? How has the knowledge transferred taken root in communities for ongoing problem-solving? There is no system to understand the latent, dispersed knowledge about water. There is a societal memory loss.

These millions of skilled workers are hard to discover, but even if we could find them, there would be little trust in their prior knowledge and experience. So each training effort starts afresh, rarely building on the foundations that exist.

How can we change this?

What if we could “light up” all the people who have already undergone training in a way that programme leaders and also communities know who and where they are; what they already know; and what they have already done? Everybody would then have the ability to seek out exactly the people they need. Equally, trained practitioners would have the agency to access this information for their own purposes.

Such discoverable, certifiable water leaders could be critical to create verifiable impact at scale in any water initiative. If done right, we believe that this can contribute to half a million jobs across the country.

As we make skilled people more visible, what if we also digitally map and attest resources that they engage with, use and produce? There could be electronic registries of master trainers, teaching modules, water security plans, and water assets such as wells and farm ponds. Capacity-building budgets could then be redirected to fill only the gaps in training. The money saved could be used to pay for services delivered. This would incentivise people to remain in the sector, and both receive and provide value across time.

Arghyam has recently funded the deployment of one simple digital attestation service, to begin with, in a few large programmes being implemented in some states together with non-governmental organisations. The pandemic has forced some physical training to go virtual. Interestingly, people are now experiencing the convenience of any time, anywhere, atomised learning sessions with expert trainers. Through this process, the trainees receive a digital attestation that they can own, access and share to leverage new opportunities. Our efforts are aligned with the tech design and the principles behind capacity-building platforms adopted by the government such as Diksha, ECHO and iGot.

The early results are promising. Open data sets and a shared digital infrastructure can be very powerful in restoring the agency of samaaj through community institutions, of sarkaar through local government, and of bazaar through new livelihoods for skilled workers.

Hindustan Times

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Kabini:A Heritage to Conserve

The Japanese have long propagated the joys of Shinrin-Yoku, or ‘forest bathing’, as a meditative practice, especially for urbanites. I was very lucky to spend a few days in the Kabini forest, just before the parks closed. Though partially work-related, it was my most healing experience since the pandemic emerged.

The forest was lush green, and the dreaded lantana weed was flowering profusely, adding a blaze of joyous colour through the occasional shafts of sunlight that pierced the rain-drenched canopy. The lantana’s beauty let us forget, for the moment, just how much it has invaded territory and crowded out other species of flora.

We were incredibly lucky with sightings, especially because we saw five bears in a high-decibel interaction full of tree-rubbing and running! There were hunts, and kills, and wounded tigers. There was a face-off between a herd of mighty gaur and a young leopard. There were majestic elephants, some familiar, some new.

For me, Kabini is a very special place. It defies many notions of wilderness. It challenges ideologies of pristine perfection. While it is part of a continuous protected area of 2,600 sq. km., the Kabini forest is as much man-made as it is wild. For one, it is adjacent to the backwaters of the approximately 13,000 sq. ft. reservoir built in 1974. With dead tree stumps littering the waterscape, and remnants of shrines surfacing in the summer, it is a constant reminder of the true cost of the submergence. Secondly, the natural dry deciduous and moist deciduous forest is dotted with teak and eucalyptus plantations, an old practice that the Forest Department has now mercifully abandoned. Add to that the invasive species of lantana, cassia and parthenium, among others, and you might be fooled into thinking there is little biodiversity in the Kabini forest.

You would be wonderfully wrong. Kabini is thriving with flora, and especially fauna. It is a haven for big cats, elephants, gaur and, of course, the ubiquitous langurs and chital deer, along with innumerable other species. Kabini nurtures sustainable livelihoods for its forest-dwelling tribal communities, like the Jenu Kurubas, who live there despite all odds. Though less than 10% of it is open to the public, it attracts adoring tourists from around the country and the world, creating a thriving local economy. There is much work ahead to realise Kabini’s exceptional potential for responsible eco-tourism, and tourists from Karnataka can lead the way.

The Kabini safari has surfaced at the top of people’s bucket lists partly because it is home to the world’s most famous living black panther. Because of his beautiful coat, he is simply referred to as ‘kariya’. This black panther is as elusive as he is magnificent, and I belong to the humbled hordes that have not seen him despite several attempts.

Chronicling this wonderful jewel of a forest is another tribe — that of documentary filmmakers and wildlife photographers. In Karnataka, and especially in Bengaluru, we are lucky to have several extremely talented, globally renowned lensmen, who have spent months and years patiently capturing the beauty, fragility, resilience and danger in the Kabini forest.

Just recently, three of them have released documentaries that include many stars from Kabini. Sandesh Kadur of Felis has filmed Wildcats of India and India’s Wild Leopards (Disclosure: I am part of the team). Amoghvarsha and Kalyan Varma created Wild Karnataka in partnership with the government. And then there is Shaaz Bin Jung’s ode to the “The Real Black Panther.”

I have missed others too numerous to name, and we should support and celebrate them all. Some reveal the histories and predicaments of forest-dwellers, the expert stewards of the jungle. Others let the world get a peek into the rich natural treasures of our state. They exhort us to realise that even if we cannot witness these wonders ourselves, it is enough that they exist and thrive. These photos and documentaries awaken us to our intergenerational responsibilities as well – that we all have a role to play to protect and enrich our bio heritage.

Many of these intrepid photographers spend hundreds of hours in dangerous, rough conditions to capture just the right light, angle or behaviours in the jungle. The most unexpected and dangerous encounters are usually with tuskers, who can flip over a jeep with one angry swipe. And sometimes do. There are unpredictable bears, tigers and leopards as well. One mistake could cost you your life.

These risks are ever-present for forest guards and officers. Every day, they must walk through the jungle, be it in sweltering heat or pouring rain, to keep fires and poachers at bay, among other gruelling tasks. Admittedly, they can be overzealous against locals, and there is a robust dispute about whether some fires should be allowed to regenerate the forest floor. Yet, the Forest Department has played a critical role in Karnataka topping the list of states that showed significant gain in forest cover, as per the recently released India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2019.

That is good news for these terrible times. We cannot go at will into the forest anytime soon. But we can invite Kabini into our homes through its many documentaries. Our virtual, vicarious Shinrin-Yoku could be a rehearsal, so that we can later return, not just as tourists, but also as trustees of this remarkable forest.

Deccan Herald

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Digitisation Makes Welfare Schemes Possible. It can be Discontinued When Pandemic Ends

In a welcome move, the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, which targets 800 million people for free rations through the Public Distribution System, has been extended until November. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, a massive effort is being undertaken to minimise the economic impact on our most vulnerable population. Schemes such as Jan Dhan, PM Kisan and PM Ujjwala aim to transfer Rs 532 billon to 420 million people. These efforts have proved to be reasonably successful. With this success, and with so many people now in danger of slipping into poverty, it is imperative to create a regime, even with a sunset clause, of universal benefits.

We have commissioned a multi-round survey of 47,000 households, mostly below poverty line, across 15 states. The surveys explore whether relief schemes have been working as intended, who is missing out and what more is needed. Our data revealed the immediate, and likely long-lasting ,nature of the economic shock. Primary income earners in two-thirds of the households have lost their jobs or wages. The average family has lost more than 60 per cent of its pre-crisis income and is now making just Rs 4,000/month.

Twenty four per cent of low-income households have run out of money and supplies. Forty per cent families are in debt. In some states, as many as one in five primary income earners do not expect to find work in the near future.

In this dire situation, government relief has been an important lifeline. Ninety four per cent of eligible families had received extra PDS rations by end May and 80 per cent had received cash entitlements averaging close to Rs 2,000. Our data also suggests that about five million households could have both run out of savings and not received any cash transfer from the government.

We estimate that over 55 million workers, who were earning above poverty line incomes, have lost jobs, temporarily or permanently, during this crisis. Many such workers would not show up as eligible under standard lists. The scale of current urban-rural migration makes this challenge worse. If we shift to universal benefits we can minimise a situation where millions miss out on critical relief. Whoever turns up to a ration shop needing free/subsidised rations should be able to get it. People should be able to sign up for a cash relief transfer with minimal paperwork. The good news is that now it’s more possible than ever before.

Digitisation has created efficiencies that can be leveraged to expand the welfare net. The vast amount of leakage in the welfare system was not due to fraud by citizens, but because of fraud and inefficiency by those delivering the benefits. Successive governments should be applauded for the steep reduction in such problems. Implementing the JAM trinity has helped lower transaction costs, reduce leakages and reach beneficiaries quickly. Aadhaar can prevent identity frauds. Our sophisticated payments infrastructure enables direct benefit transfers. The speed at which MGNREGA payments are made to beneficiaries has improved more than threefold since 2015. Pilots for the One Nation-One Ration Card project have shown that inter-state portability is possible.

Several states have experimented with a more universal approach with positive results. Tamil Nadu’s PDS system has strong coverage and equitable pricing, delivering 20 kg of rice at Rs 1/kg every month to all families who need it. More recently, Chhattisgarh universalised PDS to provide for their returning migrants with encouraging results. MGNREGA has always been open to all rural households.

We could factor in voluntary opt-outs. The “Give up LPG Subsidy” campaign offers many lessons. By highlighting the real intended targets of the relief effort and the adverse impact on millions of people, others could be inspired to give up their own benefits. This could reduce some of the burden on the exchequer.

We are in a marathon when it comes to this pandemic. People will need support for longer than anticipated. During a crisis, the emphasis needs to be on including those who really deserve the help rather than making sure the wrong people are kept out. It’s precisely because the current systems are largely working that we can contemplate a universal benefits approach. This approach can be discontinued once the pandemic ends and the economic shocks abate. The PM’s recent announcement is a strong starting point.

Let’s extend that further by making it universal — free basic rations to whoever claims to need it.

Indian Express

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Democracy’s Handmaiden: Humour. In today’s India, we need more of a funny bone in our public life

In these dark times, there is no harm in easing up with some sharp humour. Like the coronavirus, humour is infectious, but can spread much needed joy. The world over, social media is lighting up with witty memes around the pandemic. Bumbling politicians have been prime targets, and especially President Donald Trump. “Calm down, everyone,” reads one meme, “A six-time bankrupted reality TV star is handling the situation.”

But that is the US, where comics can get away with a lot, without political backlash. Where in fact, politicians themselves can create the humour.

In 1985, I was lucky to be a reporter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where former President Gerald Ford hosted a three-day conference on ‘Humour in the Presidency’. Ironically, Ford was hardly known for his sense of humour. When asked why he had hosted a conference where he himself might be the butt of many jokes, he disarmingly said, “I thought a look at the lighter side of politics may help us to realise that perhaps sometimes we take ourselves too seriously.”

This is the crux of the issue, then and now. When politicians take themselves too seriously, and when the public takes its politicians too seriously, unintended yet harmful consequences can emerge. Imagine if more people had laughed outright at the self-important demagogues of the past century. Could that have prevented some from taking their own absurd and dangerous ideas to fruition? We don’t know; but it is worth thinking about.

The Ford conference was a refreshing change after the humourless years of the Nixon presidency, where America had perforce to look into the dark soul of its politics and its president. There was a steady stream of jokes about US presidents, with Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and John F Kennedy as the favourites. Conference speakers remarked on how the smarter politicians would make self-deprecating jokes before others could mock them.

President Kennedy had the best flair for it. Criticised for bankrolling his campaign with his father’s money – he retorted, “I just had a telegram from my famous Daddy: Dear Jack. Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.” Similarly, Reagan was very skilled at winning over crowds and critics with his jocular manner. “I’m not worried about the deficit,” he famously said. “It’s big enough to take care of itself.”

In today’s India, perhaps we need more humour in our public life. Are our politicians able to joke about themselves? Or do they mainly use ridicule? And what about us? Do we lack a political funny bone?

India has had a long, strong history of political satire. The kingdoms of India appointed court jesters or vidushaks to lighten the atmosphere. They would take pot shots at the public, at visitors and sometimes at the king himself. Remember the stories of Tenali Ramkrishna, Birbal, Gopal Bhar and Gonu Jha? Their job was to bring wit and humour to expose oppression and injustice.

Through India’s freedom struggle too, there were many lighter moments. Sarojini Naidu’s descriptions of the Mahatma as Mickey Mouse and Little Man did not anger him. Instead, he signed off as Little Man in his letters to her.

Today, too, we have a burgeoning number of stand-up comics, especially in Hindi. At increasing personal risk, they take sure-fire aim at our politicians, who manage routinely to generate great material for satire. But in India, this is still a cottage enterprise compared to the full-fledged industry in the US, now in full spate through Trump’s term.

Arguably, today, there has been a chilling effect on our humorists. Cases of sedition have been initiated on cartoonists and others, for criticising the government or the ruling party. Intensive trolling and threats have inundated those who raise important issues in jest. Certainly, today’s humorists have to be braver than their profession should require them to be.

As citizens, we should renew our understanding of why political humour is critical to society. Historically, too much power and secrecy has often coincided with a lack of tolerance for satire, leading to a breakdown of trust between the public and the government. Humour can provide a safety valve when social pressures are building. It can inform us about social relations.

Concentrated power without feedback loops is dangerous. We all know the story of the emperor’s new clothes. When they mock elites, humorists can hold leaders accountable. They create safe space for us to think through things, to question our beliefs and to change our minds.

That’s precisely why governments and politicians don’t like humorists. They hate to be challenged. But it is also why the samaj must support humorists. We need mirrors held up to us; we need new ways to refract reality.

Of course, there is a Laxman Rekha that is crossed at great peril to both humorists and society. Comics need to practice both restraint and sophistication. They need sensitivity to local histories and culture. But offence is taken, not given. Even if some humour makes people in power uncomfortable, it may simply be because the truth sometimes hurts.

The best example often comes from the top. At the White House, when Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt was asked where the President was, she said, “Where the laughter is.”

Would that we could say the same, here, and soon.

Times of India

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Lockdown: Online Classes – Let’s Plan, not Ban

In its wisdom, the state has recently banned all online teaching for classes 1-5. The state comes with honourable intentions. The arguments being made are on the grounds of equity, public health and learning.

The equity argument is that online learning necessitates reliable access to digital devices, which not all children have. The health argument is about the ill-effects of screen time on young children’s eyes, and more importantly on their minds and behaviours. The third argument is that young children do not learn well online. They need physical, hands-on learning opportunity in a social setting.

A fourth concern comes from parents, and teachers. Parents do not want to pay extra for poor imitations of physical classes. It is also hard to supervise children online, especially with more work at home. For teachers, it is tough in online classrooms to gauge the learning of distant and distracted children.

All these arguments have merit. In a perfect world, we would want universal access to the internet, and for young children to be protected from damage to their eyes or minds. We would want them to be in caring, engaging classroom settings and learning well, too.

Unfortunately, we were not in such a world before the pandemic and we are certainly not in such a world now.

Through the 20 years of my deep engagement with Pratham, Akshara Foundation, Pratham Books and EkStep, which have together worked with tens of millions of young children, there has never been a time when physical proximity itself was considered dangerous for children.

In the short term, we do not know when schools can reopen. In the long term, we do not know when the next pandemic or climate change related event would create the next disruption to the school system. Yet, data from around the world suggests that such events are more probable now than even 10 years ago.

Together, we now need to think ahead and plan for an uncertain future. We must build a flexible and resilient learning infrastructure. We must help teachers, parents and learners to acquire new skills to keep children learning, no matter what.

We need plans, not bans. For the state, bans are the easiest exercise of its authority. But it is a blunt, ineffective instrument. This ban will not prevent the elite from giving their children the best online resources the world can offer. It will not prevent any children from accessing too much screen entertainment.

For months now, young children have had to limit their social interactions, especially in urban areas. They cannot go to school; meet their teachers or their friends. They cannot go into parks and playgrounds. Now, the state government has banned them from resuming their social interaction online, which was better than no interaction at all.

Instead, the government could post guidelines on the size of the online class, the amount of screen time children should have, and the preferred methodologies for making the screen time engaging. Online classes need not count for academic grades; they could be voluntary, not mandatory. There are many possibilities for positive regulation.

We cannot level down in the name of equality. We must level up. Perfection will not happen overnight. But the goal must be a progressive realisation of universal access. Let’s spread abundance, not scarcity.

Governments are already improving access through television and radio. As they continue to expand broadband access, online teaching can also be re-imagined. One private school has broken up its online training into smaller, cohesive groups at the parents’ mutual convenience. States like Himachal Pradesh have tried to include those without connectivity by sending students weekly physical copies of online course material. In Jharkhand, government schoolteachers make house visits to demonstrate the use of digital links and content.

This crisis can be a genuine opportunity. It is inevitable that we will need digital technologies to re-imagine learning beyond physical schooling. Instead of clamping down completely on online classes for young children, can we allow the flourishing of experimentation and innovation? That will enable the system to learn rapidly and deploy that knowledge equally quickly.

Ironically, the Union government and many states, too, have embraced digital technology for education in a big way during the pandemic. Diksha, PM E-Vidya, Vidyadaan and Swayam Prabha are all innovative platforms that scale up the convergence between the education system and the community. Adoption has grown exponentially.

With the heavy-handed ban, the Karnataka government may lose out on opportunities. There is a real danger of rapid and cumulative learning loss for young children after months of separation from their accustomed learning environment. With no proper plan to resume school routines, we must find other ways to keep children curious and learning. Online interactive sessions could be one element of this journey.

I pray that my state government will have a rethink on the total ban on online learning. I hope it will see digital classrooms as a gateway into the future; as an opportunity to innovate and experiment; to keep what works for children; to discard what does not, and to try again and again.

For the first time in my 20-year engagement with education, I truly believe that digital and other innovations allow us to finally equalise access to quality education for every single child.

Let’s not close the window of opportunity to create a safe, creative online learning environment for young children in all schools, public or private. The future is digital, but the digital divide is deep, and we simply cannot let disadvantaged children fall further behind.

Deccan Herald

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Reimagining Abundance in Post COVID-19 India

As people return to life and work post the lockdown, some predictions point to a mad rush to do even more than before. Travel more, buy more, meet more people, eat out more — do more of more. The government too is expected to do more to restore economic growth and livelihoods. Much more is anticipated from the State. Some see it as an opportunity to overtake China.

To achieve this, many states might roll back labour laws that took decades of human rights movements to build, and push aside hard-won environmental protection.

If we succumb, will we return to the old normal, or an even older 19th century normal? Will the “more” being planned heal the economy or plunge us faster into the next disaster? Is there another imagination to achieve the common goals of opportunity and prosperity for all?

This crisis has demonstrated that prosperous, healthy and well-governed communities can tackle public health emergencies well. But how do we define prosperity and move towards such a society?

For centuries, prosperity has been easy to define in material terms. At a personal level, by how much one earns; how much one has. At a societal level, through Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a computation of all assets and interactions within an economy. GDP cannot discount products and services that are bad for society, such as the output of polluting industries, or of sweatshops. Several attempts to retool GDP have made little headway.

However, during the pandemic, most people, including the elite, experienced different forms of frugality, simplicity, and dignity associated with personal labour. After decades, urbanites also encountered purity — of air and water, and diversity — of flora and fauna. Simple things acquired fresh value for many. The time may be ripe to retool GDP. We now hold a brighter vision of how things can be, and can converse creatively with our future from an altered present.

One pathway is to shift from a mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance. For there is abundance everywhere, if only we look for it. If this profusion of resources goes from being just abundant to being effective, perhaps we could lean away from economic choices that appear inevitable, but that destroy natural capital and human well-being.

Let’s list some things that are abundant in India.

At a societal level, India has the world’s largest working population. At 13 million, it also has the most number of teachers. It has health care professionals, from super-speciality doctors to accredited social health activists (Asha).

At a physical level, India is blessed with a rich biodiversity of flora and fauna. We have a predictable monsoon, and a vast network of rivers and water bodies. We have one of the longest coastlines. We have enormous access to solar energy.

We also have among the world’s most sophisticated digital infrastructure, and an increasing penetration of Internet services and smartphones.

At a spiritual level, we have a plethora of practices and leadership across religions. And we enjoy the affluence of volunteer energy, as evidenced recently. This is not just an inventory of our assets, but the robust foundation for what we want to achieve.

During the pandemic, food bloggers came up with a simple and potent idea. They asked what was left in people’s refrigerators, and helped them cook up wonderful new recipes with existing ingredients. They re-purposed what existed, and allowed people to experience plenty from paucity.

This is a perfect analogy for what the nation could put into practice, and, is already experimenting with.

Using digital infrastructure, like Diksha, millions of teachers are creating and sharing better content and classroom practices, both physical and virtual. Parental creativity and peer groups, both plentiful resources, are also being engaged to help children learn better.

Using the Extension of Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) model, health care workers are receiving virtual, guided mentoring. This moves knowledge instead of people, to build faster, more sustainable capacity across the chain.

Overnight, you can overturn an apparent scarcity — the lack of good teachers or skilled health workers — into an abundance of distributed, empowered talent.

Opportunities are everywhere — in energy, in mobility, in agriculture, and in livelihood generation. If we can use this flipped thinking, it can create more headroom for those who genuinely need resources — more carbon for the energy-deficient; more land for the landless; more mobility for transport deficit areas, and more potential for sustainable and meaningful livelihoods everywhere.

For example, India’s ubiquitous building infrastructure can be re-purposed to harness solar energy, or for vertical and terrace farming. Work from home will relieve the pressure on urban infrastructure and land, which can be released for mass housing or public transport, and critical lung space.

Last but not least, let’s unlock our spiritual treasure trove. Most disciplines invite us to more mindfulness, and more contentment. Not by consuming more externally, but by harvesting more from within, and by sharing more without. Neurosciences and behavioural sciences increasingly corroborate this ancient wisdom — joy can come from giving, and unlimited happiness from bonhomie.

Flipping to an abundance mindset is a creative-yet-practical task for samaaj (society) first, but also for the bazaar (market) and sarkaar (State). We know now that we need to emerge from this crisis together. Let’s boldly use the stimulus to redefine prosperity and redirect resources to make abundance effective.

Hindustan Times

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It is Time to Rethink the way Humans Treat Animals

It is time to rethink how chickens are bred, treated and eaten, too. There is a whole new generation of people who care about where their food comes from, and how it is grown.

On May 4 each year, since 2005, a non-profit in the United States (US) called United Poultry Concerns celebrates International Respect for Chickens Day. It spreads the message that we need to rethink how we treat all food animals, especially chickens, since poultry is the most consumed meat in the world.

The rest of the world needs to join them in celebrating May 4 as International Chicken Day.

Astonishingly, 60 billion chickens are reared for meat globally each year. India produces about three billion, in an industry valued at close to $20 billion. The broiler and layer industry that perfected itself in the US has spread globally, and so have all its practices, both good and bad. In India, it has created economies of scale, given livelihoods to thousands of farmers, and become an important source of protein.

But animal rights activists have long tried to sensitise people that chickens are arguably the most abused animals on the planet. Broilers and layers undergo a lot of suffering so that humans can get low-cost protein. They also save other forms of wildlife from being trapped and slaughtered for food.

From the moment they are born, these birds spend all their lives in total confinement. Broiler chickens are born in large incubators with hundreds of others; crammed into small, often filthy spaces. They are fed and drugged to become very large very quickly. They can become crippled under their own weight; they can get heart attacks and have organ failure. Many die because their baby-sized hearts cannot keep up with their adult-sized bodies. Sometimes, they, especially the layer hens, can’t even move; sometimes, their bodies grow outside and around their tightly packed wire cages.

Broiler babies are slaughtered at around 42 days, though their natural lifespan can be 10-15 years. When they are ready to be killed, there is more agony waiting for them. They are roughly handled in small crates on the way to the slaughterhouse. Sometimes, they are immersed alive in hot water to remove their feathers. Sometimes, when there is no market for them, as during this pandemic, they are just buried alive in mass trenches.

Yet, there is enough evidence to show that chickens are inquisitive, intelligent and highly social animals. Mother hens spend a lot of time teaching young ones and vocalising to them. Some studies have shown they could feel empathy and also jealousy. In experiments, they have shown they can count, and can even recognise human faces. Certainly, they feel fear and pain.

Maybe it is time to rethink how chickens are bred, treated and eaten, too. There is a whole new generation of people who care about where their food comes from, and how it is grown. More people are turning vegetarian. There is also an increasing demand world over, and now in India, for humane meat, for free-range chickens and organic eggs.

The recent pandemic has reminded us once again, this time with deadly urgency, about the threat of zoonotic disease that spread from the animal world to the human. People deserve to know more about the connection between the industrial processes at poultry farms and the spread of diseases.

We now know exactly how much our well-being is intertwined with that of animals and birds. Maybe it is time to honour the sacrifice that they, and chickens especially, make for us all, including vegetarians. Let’s mark May 4 on our calendars, not just for the partial end of the lockdown, but for the end of misery for the animals we depend on for food.

Hindustan Times

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The World After Covid-19: Unless We Are Alert, The Pandemic Could Become The Last Nail In Individualism’s Coffin

For centuries, individualism or the notion that every human individual has intrinsic value has underlined ideas about societal organisation, the economy and justice. Recently, however, the primacy of the individual’s inalienable rights and freedoms has come under immense pressure.

Individualism in the West originated from the Enlightenment. It believes in the moral worth of the individual and that his/ her interests should take precedence over the state or the social group. This birthed laissez faire capitalism, in which the individual is a free market agent.

Western style individualism has had its greatest run since World War 2. Even with large parts of Europe behind the Iron Curtain, and even with China in pre-market mode, the sheer hegemony of the US ensured a bull run for the frontiersman idea of individualism – with the rugged, proud individual at its centre, spinning progress from the unbroken thread of his free will.

Another form of individualism was also at play in those same years, based on the belief system of Mahatma Gandhi and his mentors. Their individualism had spiritual roots. Gandhi recognised that Western style individualism could end up as mere materialism. He saw the individual as an autonomous moral agent, not just someone with the means to fulfil personal desires. The individual’s inviolable human rights are placed at the heart of societal progress. The focus is on the personhood of the last, most vulnerable human being, in whose name state and society would practice their dharma.

The first idea of individualism propelled furious innovation for three centuries. The entrepreneur, the creative artist, the public intellectual generated a global marketplace for ideas, products and services. Arguably, this generated more material prosperity for more people than ever before.

The second idea has driven the largest state and societal intervention of welfare and patronage to various vulnerable groups of individuals. It has been a grand experiment, though not fully realised, to leave each individual with social safety nets, while preserving his dignity and risk taking capacity.

However, over the past decade or more, individualism and the primacy of the individual have been seriously threatened.

There are three key reasons for this. The first is terrorism combined with economic collapse. When 9/11 happened, it changed things overnight, giving the biggest shock treatment to individual agency. People in the US, the absolute stronghold of individualism and libertarianism, had to give up many cherished freedoms and privacies in exchange for the promise of public safety. Then came the financial meltdown of 2008. In its wake, we entered a post-globalisation world, which coincided with the rise of authoritarian regimes that consolidated state power.

In many countries romantic patriotism, where an individual’s love for the country could be expressed as honest criticism, shifted to a harder nationalism of ‘my country, right or wrong’. Dissent was discouraged, and this nudged the independent individual further off the political stage.

The second reason is the rise of the internet giants with their massive social platforms. At first, these appeared to bulwark the primacy of the free individual. The anytime, anywhere, anything consumer was king. The labourer employee was now a self-employed entrepreneur; and the citizen was now a netizen, expressing his opinion around the world.

Unfortunately, individual choice turned out to be an illusion; a shimmering mirage. This was the beginning of what is now feared as surveillance capitalism, where the gig worker remains underpaid and overworked; the consumer is but a packet of data, and his free will can be bent by artificial intelligence. These same technologies also further enabled the surveillance state, shrinking the individual’s rights and privacies at an alarming pace. Even an individual’s vote, his most precious gift in an electoral democracy, has become an object of manipulation.

Third, the world has become even more interdependent. Climate change and air pollution know no borders, and antibiotics resistance respects no boundaries. Bacteria from Africa can make people in America sick. The burning of Indonesian forests can keep Asia gasping for breath.

Now, the Covid-19 pandemic might well be the last nail in the coffin of individualism, unless we are alert. It has quickly led us to surrender personal privileges and submit to the diktat of the state or the decisions of the proximate group – the apartment complex, the village and the city. We have rightly been willing to give up our individual freedoms, because we sense the danger from exercising this freedom willfully.

Frontiersman ideas of individualism stand exposed as we realise just how much our actions impact others.

But we must beware against losing the positive aspects of individualism. We must ensure that the individual identity is not subsumed by a coercive group unaccountable to larger structures or to the rule of law. It is one thing to obey a government order. It is quite another to succumb to resurrected irrational fears, especially of ‘the other’. We are already witnessing the rise of vigilantism, and even mob rule. Fearful villagers ban all outsiders; doctors are prevented from returning to their urban homes; the policeman wields a lathi with impunity.

Such reactions to this pandemic could bring about the end of positive individualism for the foreseeable future. Samaaj must act quickly and creatively to recover the balance between individual agency and the collective good. No man is an island, but let’s not undermine the intrinsic value of every individual human being. It is the foundation for all good societies.

Times of India

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