At the Hearth Summit Bangalore 2024, Rohini Nilekani (Chairperson, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies), underscored the importance of building robust support systems for changemakers, social sector professionals & leaders committed to betterment of samaaj. She articulated the progression from empathy to action, distinguishing empathy as the understanding of others’ suffering and compassion as a vital next step that enables purposeful and impactful action.
Concluding her keynote address, Rohini urged individuals to prioritize well-being—beginning with themselves, extending to their organizations, and ultimately fostering it within their communities.
Transcript
00:00:00 Rohini Nilekani: Ellarigu namaskara…everybody doing well? Good. So, I know it’s been a wonderful two days. I know you’ve had all kinds of workshops, a lot of breathing, a lot of singing, a lot of sharing. And first let’s just call out the Wellbeing Project and everybody who participated to make the Hearth Summit so great.
[applause]
00:00:29 Rohini Nilekani: Thank you all. It’s very important. I’m very proud to be part of The Wellbeing Project, on its advisory board. It’s a global institution funded by several donors – with a single purpose of understanding that changemakers, social sector leaders and those who work to leave society better than where they found it – themselves need some support and help. And I think it’s really time to shine that spotlight because all the surveys that I have seen where social leaders and people working in those nonprofits around the world or even frontline workers, whether it is nurses, doctors, teachers, the levels of stress that they admit to are really off the charts more than in the corporate sector, more than in any other sector because it’s not been a topic that’s been brought into the sunlight for too long.
00:01:32 Rohini Nilekani: So I’m very glad that that is finally out in the open. Many organizations are now talking about it around the world and I think it’s part of a movement for all of us understanding and creating tools to manage stress when we are working at the frontlines of social change. So, I’m very happy to be part of this and to see the response of the Hearth Summits all over the world where people are themselves coming to curate, themselves coming together to find safe spaces to share, to feel safe and brave enough to talk about what is bothering them, to open up without having any fear of being rejected or misunderstood.
0:02:17 Rohini Nilekani: So, first of all, I’m so happy that this space is there. I was just in a workshop on competition and we were able to talk through our fears of competition, through our hope that the social sector will also learn to see that competition exists and not to have so much aversion to some things which are real but not necessarily so much part of our world. So, I’ve come to say, we all hear you, those of us…the donor space is opening up to this all over the world which is very important where donors are beginning to understand that unless the people of the organizations that we are funding are themselves not well, how do you expect them to look after the wellbeing of society? So, you will hopefully see more of that but you also need to bring better ideas to donors on exactly how do you present the idea of supporting wellbeing. So, it’s beginning the movement. I hope more ideas will come out, more, I hate to use this word but that’s how the real world operates, more investable opportunities for the wellbeing of social sector professionals and that should be a continuing journey.
00:03:31 Rohini Nilekani: So, I’m here to talk of the way I am seeing the world. I think one thing most people have realized is that to do the outer work, you have to do the inner work ’cause otherwise you’re going to hit a wall, you’re going to hit your own wall, you are going to become the limitation to the ambition of working for society. So, I’m sure you’ve had many of these discussions. I’m not going to give you advice but two things I will say. One is, I think we need a global movement for body intelligence and what I mean by that is, this thing is actually the only thing that you come with and go with in the whole world but so little we know about our body.
00:04:14 Rohini Nilekani: No, I’m not talking about my clothes, I’m talking about my body. That’s what you’re born with, that’s what you’re going to die with and yet too many people don’t understand how it functions. There is enough medical knowledge to now even know what to do to make your brain function better but we haven’t…we talk about all kinds of intelligences but not enough about body intelligence because rooted as we are in our body, and the self is the body, the brain is in the body, the more we learn about our body, the more we can first of all be kinder to it, which I’m still learning to do, and we can also use its miracle.
00:04:52 Rohini Nilekani: The human body is an absolute miracle. Use this miracle to help us to be more stable, more calm, more efficient. And also to understand things like, that’s very much there in the Buddhist literature, the difference between what all of us feel, that’s why we have chosen to be in the social sector, all of us feel empathy. You all feel empathy? Raise your hands, those who think you feel great empathy. Yes, exactly, all of us feel a lot of empathy but we also know that empathy by itself is not enough.
00:05:29 Rohini Nilekani: Sometimes empathy can take you in the wrong direction because you can feel pain too sharply, you can feel other people’s pain too sharply, you see yourself in that sufferer’s shoes and sometimes that makes you less able to act. So the difference I think between empathy and compassion is – empathy is a starting point. Empathy helps you to understand the suffering of others but then you need between empathy and action, you need compassion which is a little bit of detachment from empathy. You need to step back a bit so that you can show compassion through action to actually be able to help.
00:06:07 Rohini Nilekani: You know in the old days when I used to go and be in many situations of extreme poverty, whether it was Bihar or Bengaluru, in every part of the country when I started, there was poverty. Now in South India, you don’t see so much poverty and in fact in much of India. But I used to literally come back shattered, I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know how to care for myself when I came back from those field trips.
00:06:33 Rohini Nilekani: And I think I developed very poor coping mechanisms and I’d get short-tempered or angry with other people who have nothing to do with the cause of that problem. And it took me a long time to realize this difference which I’m sharing with you because if you want to be efficient caregivers of society, then you know that we all have to learn better to care for ourselves. And so just keep reading on what I just said, even I’ve just started reading about the difference between empathy and compassion. Let’s develop our compassion better so that we can act and not get drowned in our empathy which we seem to have a natural talent for.
00:07:15 Rohini Nilekani: The second thing I want to talk about is hope. I’ve been saying this everywhere, that sometimes and I think young people are showing this with very high incidence of mental stress, depression, anxiety, fears, insecurities, especially the one billion young males of the world who are at extreme risk because the world has changed so much especially for men in the last 50 years. I think there is a sense of deep anxiety and it always shows up in the politics developing around us. I think though that it is very important, especially for all of us.
First, of course, you have to learn in your own way to care for yourselves and The Wellbeing Project has a lot of tools, suggestions, frameworks that are being put out. But secondly, can we make hope the new religion? This is a religion which does not divide. It can only unite. And when I say hope, keep the faith in hope, I don’t mean it as some kind of false optimism or even some very false cheerfulness or anything or even a false cynicism, to counter a false cynicism. That’s not what hope is.
Hope is the energy, the fuel inside you that gives you every morning the energy to do right action. It gives you the humility to know that no matter what things are going wrong, even the smallest action, we can’t understand the consequences. Whichever right action you can do with your conscience, with your heart, it will eventually go into a pool, a sea of right actions by others.
00:09:01 Rohini Nilekani: We can’t 100% say what the outcome will be but doing that right action with hope is always going to save you from hopelessness, is going to save you from the dark of despair. So if we can keep hope as the new religion and develop the faithful around it to support each other, as we see darkness emerge and as we see things going wrong, there is injustice in the world. Our job is to put out a little more justice wherever we can. There is going to be darkness in the world. Our job is to light a few lamps.
00:09:38 Rohini Nilekani: That brings me to my third point, which is I have been seeing, yes, I have known thousands of people and hundreds of organizations in the social sector, first as a journalist and then myself as a social entrepreneur and then as a philanthropist. I have met the most marvelous people in the world in all these organizations. Many of my mentors are leaders of organizations that have created real positive change. But sometimes I think looking at the world today, looking at what’s going on, I want us all to also think about, yes, we want to light lights in the darkness and we should.
0:10:21 Rohini Nilekani: Nowadays I wonder, maybe we need to look at the quality of light that we are putting out. Is it the bright lights of the urban city where even owls can’t nest at night? Is it what is called light pollution, where the real light of the stars is not allowed to filter through? Is that the kind of light we are creating when we are trying to create light? Not intentionally, but unintentionally. Maybe we need to think a little about this.
And what I mean by light pollution, we all do work with right intent, but sometimes we don’t have the right grammar of our intent to take the power of our intent forward to the right place. So how can we together do that more consciously? Because otherwise to me light pollution is all the polarization that we see in the world.
00:11:15 Rohini Nilekani: Light pollution from the social sector may be that despite our desire for justice, equity, fairness, opportunity, etcetera, are we also by mistake, contributing to judging the other side too harshly and therefore breaking the pathways to bridging the gaps between all of us. That’s what I am, and I won’t elaborate on all the other pollution, but maybe you all can start thinking about it. What kind of light do we want to put out in the world? Because if we put out the wrong light, the polluter also is affected by the pollution as much as those who are affected by the polluter’s pollution.
00:12:00 Rohini Nilekani: So maybe we ourselves, because we are talking about our own wellbeing, maybe if we are putting out the wrong quality of light, it is too harsh back on us. Every time in my life when I have judgingly pointed out a finger at everybody and I get angry easily, so I do that a lot. I’m trying to be smarter at 65. By the time I’m 65 in my next life, 100% I’ll have got there. But I always find three fingers pointing back at me and I have to stop and say, that’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to create a chasm between me and another person, another idea, another institution, another thought. I want to create a bridge. And my world, how I hold myself, is going to make the difference between whether it’s going to be a bridge or it’s going to be a broken down highway.
00:12:51 Rohini Nilekani: So let’s think carefully about the light that we spread. Because the real light possibly we want to see is the light coming from the stars above. Please do look after yourselves. Look after the people in your organizations. Create small spaces to talk about this light that we all try to light. And let wellbeing become a cornerstone. Every time you discuss budgets for the year, talk about your plan for wellbeing for the year. Let’s make this a global movement for changemakers to first be well so that they can take care of the wellbeing of the Samaaj.
Wonderful. So now that all of you have been part of this summit, you’re all now certified to take the idea of wellbeing forward in your organizations, first for yourself, in your organizations, and then into the community. Let’s keep the flag flying. Let’s keep the gentle light burning. And, also never forget that we can retreat into nature to give ourselves the most solace. It doesn’t matter if you live in an urban slum. At least in India, there will be one bird and one tree, definitely a few cockroaches, ants and spiders. They are also part of nature. We can learn a lot from them. So let’s find in this ancient country of ancient stories, let’s each find our own story to tie to so that we can weave a web of stories and connections for everyone to work on their own wellbeing.
Dhanyavad. Namaste. Thank you very much.
