Reached the Auroville ECR junction – and decided to follow instructions in the welcome mail related to hitchhiking. Every two wheeler seemed to be carrying three people – so started walking. As the evening progressed, and I had only walked 3 km, was not sure if I would finish the 8 km before nightfall. So hailed a passing auto. He wanted 150 bucks to get to the gate. I preferred walking. The auto driver magnanimously gave me a lift till his house. Got down, and immediately thumbed one more – and got dropped about half a km from the guest house. Walked again the rest of the way.
The history of Auroville starts in 1968. The plan was to have a self sustaining, self governed international township. Hyderabad was one of the places which had been shortlisted, but finally a tract of barren land about 15 km from Pondicherry was chosen. Deforestation and over grazing had led to all topsoil erosion. In the monsoon, the sea adjoining this land would be red, as the loose soil would leach in. The first residents, about 300 of them, came in at this time. They built houses for themselves – in a typical village style. The first few years they struggled with water – and then electricity. They busied themselves with tree plantation. Over 2 million trees have been planted since then – and sustained. As a result, Auroville today has a forest cover which is more than 50%.
The other hallmark of Auroville is their economic model. All land and houses are built by individuals – but owned by the community. Also the economy is more kind than cash. Decision making for the community is by consensus. Consensus does not mean vote power here; it means tapping into the collective wisdom of the community. Practically it means prolonged discussions – and struggles to move ahead. As with the rest of us, Aurovilleans are also good at analysis and bad at synthesis.
50 years later, the population has increased to around 2,500 (not including tourists!). We debated whether this is a sustainable number for the community to survive. Given the very healthy lifestyle at Auroville, one gets see to see many of the original inhabitants still merrily cycling around the mud roads of the commune. Immigration is a way of helping out ageing communities. Quite a few of the residents are from neighbouring localities. Earlier, their reason for joining was mostly economic. Now it is not so. What about the Auroville youth? Are they choosing to stay on? One thing that hinders is education. Although parents are usually committed, grandparents have their doubts. Auroville has infrastructure till school level – but kids have to go out for college. Some of them do come back to their roots after a few years. Yet, out of 100 young people who experimented with community living in 2016, only 8 have stayed on in 2017. Part of the reason could also be lack of adequate housing for young people and the inadequacy of initial personal capital.
The Auroville master plan has been designed for about 50,000 people. Land is being purchased even today to get to that stage. I am not sure if it really needs that kind of population. Probably one of the things that can help is to have a large floating population – which comes in for a few months to a few years – and then goes back again to the outside world, having renewed themselves. On a philosophical note, what the Earth needs to sustain itself is not more people, but many fewer. Till the 19th century, we had a population which had stabilised at a very sustainable 1 billion. So the challenge today is how do we get back there?
Here are some links for seeing some films on Auroville:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqS47AntQtA
The Gurus
The session started on Sunday evening. Rajagoplan, Alan, Tineke and David were the main faculty for the program. We started with Faculty Introductions. Rajagopalan is a Mechanical engineer who started his career with HEC, Ranchi. He spent some time in the USSR, learning the Russian language – and some engineering for some time. After half a decade at Ranchi, he switched over to academics – joining IIT Kanpur as faculty. In his 6 year stay at IITK, he finished his M.Tech and Ph.D. Had to shift to IIT Madras for family reasons. Was not too enthralled with life at IIT, till one day out of the blue, the Director gave him an assignment to head the newly created department of Oceanology. That was the turning point in the Prof’s life – and the beginning of his involvement in Environmental studies. He has since written more than 15 books on this topic. He attended the Sustainability workshop at Auroville after his retirement. And he has stayed on as a faculty – going strong at 77.
Alan Herbert was teaching at a university in UK. For him the turning point was when one of his students dropped out of his graduation program, saying that he wasn’t enjoying it. Alan shifted to teaching in a school. A few years later he made the exploratory journey to India – chanced upon Auroville – and never went back.
Tineke was a music librarian in Amsterdam. Was a borderline hippy in her days. She came to India in an overland trip which took 9 months – and stayed back. She remembers her initial days in Auroville – she had to climb her windmill, when there was no wind, to rotate the blades to operate the pump to draw water from her well..
David works with ONGC in their hospital. He participated in the program a few years ago. Applied again – and reparticipated. He has now become a regular fixture at the programs. Stays over at Tineke’s place after taking leave every year from ONGC to attend. He is an activist – having taken part in protests against the nuclear plant in TN (which has spent more time in shutdowns than in operations). He is also a trustee in a social reform NGO.
One of the hallmarks of the program has been constant feedback every day. The faculty group has been running this program for since 1993. The program has been attended over the years by more than 150 people. These group members have now started to build their own community. They have been tinkering around with the design every year. The program started by talking mostly about the technicalities of solar energy when it started – and has now transitioned to more about the philosophy of sustainability. This year’s tinkering was to deliver the lessons through extensive use of stories. We all live by the stories we have. We started with Auroville’s story. This was shown through a film made by the younger generation Aurovilleans. A lot of what they said can be read about in Auroville’s Wikipedia page. But expressed very creatively. The opening shot was 7 kids in the Nandanam school holding alphabets from W to E, to WELCOME you. One of the more interesting practices was to have dinner at 1900 hrs – after which the sessions continued till 2100 hrs. Breakfast was also early at 0730 hrs – and the sessions would begin at 0843. The professor threatened that we would clap for everybody who walked in after that time. The threat worked – and there was no clapping through the program. Another practice worth adopting in classrooms is to get everyone to take out their phones in the first class – and get them to either turn them off – or put them into silent mode. What helped even more was that there was no coverage for most networks in the classroom area! Participants chatted up till late at night – but Simrat and yours truly, being early sleepers, would hit the sack by 2130.
Music
The typical morning session would start with music. The choice was eclectic.
We had TM Krishna, who was awarded the Magsaysay award for healing using carnatic music – he organised concerts in Jaffna during the post LTTE days. He sang Vaande Mataram – a version written by Subramanium Bharati. Like Aurobindo, he too had sought refuge from the British in the French territory of Pondicherry.
There was Abida Parveen from Pakistan, singing Dama Dam Mast Qalandhar – a composition by Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandhar. This is a song I had heard many times – without knowing what the Sindhi lyrics mean. Btw, there is also a lot of interesting music coming from Coke Studio Pakistan. After hearing Abida speak, am piqued to know what kaifiyat and mausiki mean in Urdu.
Then there was Johann Bach’s symphony in D Minor. Basically two violins – playing two different tunes – but almost as if two angels are conversing.
Another interesting western classical that was played was Ludwig von Beethoven’s 9th symphony in D Minor. This was by Sabadell.
Here are links to some of the other inspiring music we heard:
| Dama Dam Mast Qalandhar – Abida Parveen | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYTtNcfp3RQ |
| Coke Studio Pakistan Playlist | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PePGHi6IeZQ&list=PLnd4jOArhsT8um5H94HqKWJZlqtI8pW-9 |
| Ekla chalo re – Amitabh Bachchan | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcaiUOmjDQ |
| Bob Marley – Get up, Stand up, Don’t give up the fight | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F69PBQ4ZyNw |
| One Day – Matisyahu Matthew Paul | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcHOvbySGK8 |
Inspiration
The session immediately following the music was the first story of the day which served to inspire you about the Power of One – what individuals could do to change the world.
Jadhav Molai Payang – The Forest Man of India. He is a resident of Manjuli island in Assam. One hot day many years ago, he was taken aback by the death of a lot of snakes on his island. On consulting with the village elders, he found that it was because of excessive heat. In his simple mind, what happened to snakes today could happen to humans tomorrow. Almost Single handedly he converted 1200 hectares of eroded land to forest. Today this forest is a migratory route for a hundred elephants, apart from being home to a few Royal Bengal tigers. Fittingly, it is called the Molai Forest Reserve.
Abdus Surti is a one man water conservation army. He is based out of Mumbai – and runs Drop Dead. He moves around housing societies on Sundays – and repairs leaking taps for free. 1 drop per second amounts to a 1000 liters a month. He believes that we can save the world – one drop at a time. Here are other inspiring films that we saw:
Sustainability
Alan Herbert was forced to learn Latin in school. He hated it then, but made full use of Latin whenever he had to introduce any subject. Appropriately, the first subject was sustainability, derived from the Latin Subtenye – which means to hold on. The question is – what are we holding on to? The most common answer was – our lifestyle, more so the material one. The West has always viewed our world as a series of progressions up the ladder of comfort. Most traditional societies don’t subscribe to this linear view. Instead they think of themselves as running in cycles – constantly dying and being reborn.
The linear progress era started from the time of the industrial revolution and ended somewhere in the 1960s – 1970s. Since then, parents in the West are not so sure whether their kids will actually lead lives which are materially better than theirs. Films like Silent Spring, which questioned wonder insecticide DDT in 1962, The Population Bomb, released in 1968 and Limits to Growth in 1972 were the first to question our standard definitions of progress. Stockholm in 1972 saw the first global meet which started worrying about what is happening to our environment. It ended in what is referred euphemistically to as the Stockholm Disagreement. The developed country (read North) felt that the biggest challenge facing the globe was Population. The South felt that it was Poverty. Indira Gandhi has been quoted as saying: ‘Poverty is the worst form of pollution.’
Coming back to our attempts to defining sustainability – is if we can meet the needs of our present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This still leaves us with how do we go about defining needs! An interesting thought experiment – tomorrow using a magic wand you convert the world into a garden of Eden. The question is – how will it be day after? The answer is with Einstein: ‘You cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.’ The answer is with the Iroquois Confederacy. Their philosophy is that decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.
The current story in sustainability is – we are at the top of the food chain. We have a Right to take from nature. Nature is separate from us. Its resources are illimitable – and of course, continuous growth is good for us. Happiness is accumulation of more material possessions. The environment is a subset of the economy. We need to change this story. The problem is we don’t know the new one. The only part of the story we are clear are: unless there is an internal transformation, there cannot be any external action!
This is the graph that shows what happens to students in a session. Hence, Professor designs Mullah breaks every 20 minutes in his talk. This was the first one:
Mullah Nasruddin is invited to a village to give a talk.
He addresses his audience:
‘Do you know what I am going to talk on?’
‘No’
If you don’t even know what I am going to be talking on, why am I here?
Mullah goes away.
The village calls him the next week.
‘Do you know what I am going to talk on?’
This time the audience has wisened up.
‘Yes’
‘If you already know, then you don’t need me here.’
Mullah goes away.
The village again calls him the week after.
‘Do you know what I am going to talk on?’
Half the audience say ‘No’; the other half ‘Yes’
‘The ones who do, please tell the ones who don’t’
Here are two more:
Mullah was enjoying himself at the banquet with his wife. So much so, that he had already made three trips to refill his plate.
His embarrassed wife asked him – what will people think of you?
‘Don’t worry, darling. I told them that I am getting it for you.’
Mullah lost his key on the road somewhere. He was busy searching under a streetlight. A passer-by asked him – did you lose your key here?
No, said the Mullah.
Then whey are you searching here?
Because the light is here.
Economy
The Auroville Economy
Eco-nomy literally means caring for the household. Divya Kapoor looks after Land acquisition at Auroville. We started with a discussion on limited liability companies – and how they had aided the growth of greed, as the individuals got divorced from risks. In the name of free market, the financial industry has been kept mostly unregulated globally. But whenever it fails, the people who pay up are the tax-payers. A lot of the economy works on two underlying psychologies – greed and fear.
The objective at Auroville is not profit maximisation, it is welfare maximisation, or maximising an individual’s self worth. Work is a way to express oneself. We are all communicators. At Auroville, all businesses are owned by the foundation. 1/3rd of business profits go towards running the city. People who work at these businesses are volunteers, not employees. The attempt is to pay all volunteers almost equally; yet there is inequality due to private money.
Social Entrepreneurship
Gijs (pronounced Ghais) is a social entrepreneurship enabler. He lives in an Auroville forest, and part of his job is to take care of the forest. In addition, he also is a full time teacher at the school. A social entrepreneur is a person who has an eye for opportunity to fix stuff that is not working. Someone who creates something bigger than herself. She could even be an artist.
At 18, Gijs came down to India to learn about agriculture in Rajasthan. Went back to study agriculture engineering in Holland – where he designed his own course on farming. Back in India, he started work with farmer co-operatives. The biggest grudge of the Indian farmer is low income – probably because there is no direct connect to the customer. He could connect one cotton co-operative directly with a cotton textile mill Things worked pretty well till 2008, when the financial meltdown led to a loss of orders from US customers at the mill – and they reneged on the contract with the co-operative. Since then Gijs has been involved in incubating social entrepreneurs in Auroville, the oasis of mavericks, as he fondly calls his village. Unlimited TN, the NGO he started, has seeded more than 40 projects – 8 from Auroville, the rest from different parts of TN. We asked him what does he looked at before he decided to take up a project.
I – Individual. Is she committed to change? Systematic not cosmetic. Does she have the capacity to see it through.
I – Idea. Does it have legs?
I – Impact. How do you assess impact? Is it going to reach out to a large number (Typical bureaucrat fetish – but is Ok in some cases) Is it really going to change a few people (Granular Impact implies don’t scale beyond what you can’t comprehend.)
We believe in community. Members who believe that Planet and Purpose come before Profit. We need learners who can share learning. Can become mentors. Having an institutional memory is important. Some of the projects that got into incubation:
- Washable sanitary pads
- Wasteless by Ribhu
- Conflict resolution group – Kudam
- Farming therapy – for autistic people
- Water harvesting – getting farmers to manage their water wisely aka Kheti Virasat
The incubation group would Huddle for 3 days after every 3 months. There would be sessions arranged for the group from external experts – eg how to account for hybrid firms – which have aspects of both profit and non-profit. Most important was the peer to peer learning – which would make each of the members accountable to the rest for the targets that they had publically proclaimed. In between the huddles, would be monthly coaching sessions.
Unfortunately this program was closed in March 2017 – as the Auroville group had a fall-out with the larger Unlimited India group, which had decided to change direction away from social entrepreneurship – and move away to a traditional donor base.
Gijs talked about presencing. Here is something that I picked up from www.presencing.com
In exploring this territory more deeply, we realized that most of the existing learning methodologies relied on learning from the past, while most of the real leadership challenges in organizations seemed to require something quite different: letting go of the past in order to connect with and learn from emerging future possibilities.
We realized that this second type of learning—learning from the emerging future—not only had no methodology, but also had no real name. And yet innovators, entrepreneurs, and highly creative people all express an intimate relationship with this deeper source of knowing. Otto started referring to it as Theory U and “presencing.” Presencing is a blended word combining “sensing” (feeling the future possibility) and “presence” (the state of being in the present moment): presencing means “sensing and actualizing one’s highest future possibility—acting from the presence of what is wanting to emerge.”
The proposition of Theory U, that the quality of results in any kind of socio-economic system is a function of the awareness that people in the system are operating from, leads to a differentiation between four levels of awareness. These four levels of awareness affect where actions originate relative to the boundaries of the system. Consider the example of listening.
We call the first level of listening downloading. Downloading describes habitual behavior and thought and results in “same old, same old” behaviors and outcomes: This type of listening originates from the center of our habits, from what we already know from past experience.
In contrast, level 4 listening, called presencing, represents a state of the social field in which the circle of attention widens and a new reality enters the horizon and comes into being. In this state, listening originates outside the world of our preconceived notions. We feel as if we are connected to and operating from a widening surrounding sphere. As the presence of this heightened state of attention deepens, time seems to slow down, space seems to open up, and the experience of the self morphs from a single point (ego) to a heightened presence and stronger connection to the surrounding sphere (eco).
Gijs has written an interesting book on his experiences – Yatra. He mailed me the txt file.
Here is the feedback that I shared with him:
The Idea of a book as a conversation or a chat is great. What helps is that the two have some similarities but significant dissimilarities.
Could have been carried out further by shared links and photographs. One idea we can explore is treating this book as a purely digital document. This would help get more hyperlinks in place – or better still the book can be giving the reader a choice at the end of every section – about what she would like to do next..
Probably the authors are trying to compress two lifetimes of learning into a single book. Maybe it requires 10 books. So what should be left out? And what elaborated? Let’s say we are not preaching the converted – which means that the target is people who are wanting to get into the space of social entrepreneurship, but are currently unsure. This will make the target broad enough to get the readership that every author aspires her book should have. The filtering can be looked from this perspective.
What detracts is when the text lapses into a series of numbered bullet points. It cuts away from the story.
Here is one excerpt from his book Yatra on How to achieve Change in your life. Loved it. Have used it without his permission. The bullet points are arranged in descending order of importance
- Change the paradigm
Epic impact. Once you change the mental map of the people you change everything through a cascade of transitions. Super powerful but rare. How many paradigm shifts have you experienced?
- Change the goal of the system
Replace the aim of the game – for example: school is not meant to teach a specific syllabus, but to teach students how to learn. Everything below changes once the goals are reset.
- Change the structure
The elements in the system itself can be rearranged. You can include new actors for example (individuals / groups / institutions). Or introduce new relationships between actors that used to be disconnected.
- Change who gets to make the rules
This refers to the capacity of part of the system to participate in its own eco-evolution, or more simply put: to change the structure and functioning of the system it’s a part of. For example a population re-writing its own constitution (like the people of Iceland tried in 2013), or farmers on the board of a cooperative deciding about policies that affect their lives.
- Change the rules
Kids love this one. “OK, now everyone plays without using their hands!” or “Nobody can say the words Yes, No, Black and White.” Powerful and well practiced. This is the realm of law and politics.
- Change who gets which information
Surprisingly effective: information flows help the system see itself and adapt. The Right To Information Act is a famous Indian example. Transparency forces parties to take responsibility, or at least be seen to do so.
- Reward/incentivise wanted behaviour (add reinforcing feedback loops)
Awards, prizes, celebration. How can systemic change be more fun than this?
- Punish/discourage unwanted behaviour (add balancing feedback loops)
Clear examples are raising the cost of pollution by tax or fine or shame and humiliation.
- Change the size of flows and buffers in the system
This is where you increase the overflow area of rivers to reduce flood damage or you ensure you have savings in the bank to reduce vulnerability. As many have experienced this has limited power.
- Change numbers (parameters, constants)
This is where the government sets a target at x % of growth in Gross Domestic Product. Or teachers aim for x% of students hitting a minimum score. Unless the indicators are smartly connected to other leverage point these efforts are pointless.
The Economics of Happiness
We watched a very interesting documentary by Helena Norberg Lodge on Ladakh. When she first started working in Ladakh, the people there did not know what unemployment or hunger was. They lead a joyous and rich life. The 70s saw Ladakh opening up to tourists – leading to an inflow of consumerist messages to the local population. Ladakh was now part of the global economy. It wanted to be bigger and better. Comparison and competition are the crude tools consumerists use to exploit. Educationists started creating insecurity in the children against traditional knowledge: If you don’t learn multiplication, you will go feed the pigs. This was the monoculture that started being cultivated in Ladakhi minds. As Ladakh urbanized, the per capita costs of infrastructure started going up. Conflict, which had never been seen in Ladakh, reared its ugly head as more jobless youth migrated to cities, and found themselves in competition for very few jobs. In the casino of the global economy, all Ladakhis turned out to be losers. Interestingly, developed nations, under the guise of globalisation, end up importing and exporting roughly similar amounts of the same commodities!
The solution to the problems caused by globalisation is simple – localisation. It is to operate on a more human scale, where you can see the impact of your choices. Local newspapers carry local news which discuss community problems – renewing lost connections. Don’t leave the economy to the experts!
The Gift Economy
We heard a TED talk by Nipun Mehta, who runs a beautiful NGO called Service Space. His role model is Vinoba Bhave, who walked 70,000 km and got people to donate almost 5 million acres of land – in his Bhoodan movement. Nipun believes that we need to redesign our systems for generosity. We need to practise generosity. We need to move form consumption to contribution. Service space is totally funded by and operated by volunteers. The philosophy is that it is better to have 50 volunteers working 5 hours a week rather than 5 employees working 40 hours a week. They don’t raise funds – adding value is more important than sharing them J It is the circle of gifts which leads to vitality of the economy. Doing acts of generosity anonymously – and leaving behind only smile cards helps ‘Keep the Change.’ Every small act of kindness needs to be honoured, as we move from transaction to trust. Service Space has experimented with Karma Kitchens – where the bill is always $$0.00, because the previous guy has paid for you. A very good quote from Nipun. It is the connections that make the difference between graphite and diamond.
Nero’s Guests
We watched a very provocative film by P Sainath: Nero’s Guests. It was basically to discuss the problems of Indian farmers. Sainath was for many years the Rural Affairs Editor at Hindu. (He laments that no media house anywhere in the world has a full time correspondent for poverty.) The perspective that Sainath chose was through farmer suicides. The backdrop poetry was of a farmer poet – who had committed suicide under a burden of debt. His poems were read by Amole Gupte. The title was chosen quite appropriately. Nero was the emperor of Rome, who we all know fiddled while Rome burnt. What we don’t know is that he fiddled in what was the Roman empire’s biggest party till date. The who’s who of the empire was attending. The question Sainath posed was not about what Nero did when Rome burnt, but what did his guests do when Rome burnt? We all felt like we were Nero’s guests, who are watching the agrarian empire of India burning in poverty and debt, where we continue to be ensconced in our comfortable air-conditioned urban cocoons. The link to the film is attached. Do watch it – in the company of friends. Discussions should be held after allowing everybody the night to mull over the ideas of the film.
Danny’s Paper unit – Wellness
He runs a 6 month program to train local women to become entrepreneurs. Women are trained to work with paper. They weave newspaper baskets and make papier mache items. For making papier mache, you add 250 g of maida to 1 kg of paper pulp. (Not sure if it is wet or dry paper pulp). The mixing is done in an idli-batter making machine – interestingly the only machine that is used! The unit uses only the Hindu newspaper – which uses hot press technique that ensures that the ink does not leak after converting to papier mache. The paper is directly sourced from the Hindu Chennai press rejections. Newspaper baskets are woven using tightly wound cylinders which are extended in length by joining them with glue. Fabindia is the unit’s biggest customer.
Bamboo works
There are 1500 varieties of bamboo. The fastest growing ones can grow up to 4 ft in one day. From an ecological perspective, bamboo absorbs 35% more CO2 than other plants. Flowering intervals range from 30 to 100 years. 4-5 years ago there was a major flowering in a species in the Wayanad forest. (The flowering is DNA encoded into a species – all plants of the same species flower together, no matter where they have been planted .) Bamboo seeds are quite nutritious – and you can get flour made by grinding these seeds.
Bamboos have two kinds of propagation roots – the clumping and the running root. In the running root, new shoots come up at the nodes. Clumping roots come out only from the seed. In fact one seed is enough for up to 1 acres of bamboo plantation. Roots grow to an average depth of 2 feet – hence they are good soil retainers – recommended to grow them next to rivers to prevent erosion. The bamboo also does a good job of regulating humidity in the soil surrounding it. Bamboo being a grass, does not grow by adding annular rings. You can find the diameter of a fully grown bamboo by measuring the diameter at the base of a newly sprung shoot. The Outer diameter remains the same as it grows, but the inner diameter becomes smaller – making the wall thicker. Bamboo requires a combination of shade and sunlight for good growth.
Usually for furniture purposes, we use bamboo which is 2 years old. For construction 3 year old bamboo is preferred. You can estimate the age of bamboo by looking out for the sheath covering the node. Before use, bamboo has to be treated to take out the sugar in it. This can be done by keeping it in water for 30 days – or by heating it. There is also a particular season when the sugar gets sent from the shoot to the root. If you harvest during that time, then no treatment is required. In Japan some houses built from bamboo have lasted more than 400 years. The walls of the bamboo are quite tough – resistant to water and termite. However the base is not. So when you make a bamboo house, it is best to put the root side of the bamboo into concrete.
Energy
Toine van Megen is Auroville’s energy guru. He helped set up the electrical system for Auroville in the eighties. Since then, he has divided his time between Auroville and the corporate world.
If we look at CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the graph starts rising in the 18th century – having stayed constant for many millennia before that. The culprit – the steam engine – and the Industrial Revolution starting 1769.
We started civilisation ten thousand years ago as an agropolis; the last two centuries have seen us become a Petropolis. The time now has come to transform ourselves to an Ecopolis. Every city has to have a green belt. This is what regenerates the city. You need cities that are walk-able, or cycle-able. We need citizens to treat cycles with the same respect as the lal batti cars of our past. (I am told that this happens in Holland.) Today the car has become necessary armour in our city’s battles that take place on her roads every day. Hopefully the warriors will start renting armours from Ola/Uber instead of buying it – leading to a reduction in the scale of hostilities.
We had a very interesting chat on energy utilisation in mobility. There were 50 m cars in 1950. Today the number is more than 600 m. If all of us started copying the American life – we would require 4 more planets. If we look at energy used per 100 passenger km, we find that it is 80 units for a typical car, 32 for a bus and around 5 for a train. The question we got asked was why are the energy consumption figures so low for a train? Our initial answers were related to the fewer stops a train makes and the lower friction of its wheels. But it turned out the answer was more to do with wind load. A train cuts through the air like a knife cuts through butter. Its length helps reduce the average wind resistance.
Although the installed capacity of renewables is much more, in terms of kWH generated, they only account for 7% of global energy today. (Don’t get fooled by MW figures)
Eventually, all energy comes from the Sun. Coal, Oil and Gas can be seen as 3 compartments of the same energy battery. Auroville generates 160% of its energy requirements – all from renewables. They have a wind farm which is located some distance away – where the wind speed is higher. (Did not see too many of the windmills of Auroville churning during my visit.) Transmission and distribution losses in India are around 21%.
With the rise of renewables, what can be impacted is grid stability. With wind and solar, there is a lot of fluctuation in supply side – to add to the already existing fluctuations in the demand side. A cloudy day can reduce solar generation. Lack of wind can reduce wind energy generation. One of the solutions is to have diversity in loads and a larger grid. Today India actually has 3 independent grids. The plan is to have one national grid. Today we are deciding on load despatches by sampling the load at 15 minute intervals. With renewables the sampling frequency has to go up to at least once a minute.
Intelligent inverters use voltage levels to decide how to switch between solar and grid. A good analogy is with water flow. More than 50% of the energy is lost when we convert it from one form to another. One of the devices that is amongst the least efficient is the inverter. It has an efficiency of only 55%. And the funny thing is that you don’t even have star ratings for inverters!
The best energy is not from renewables – it is when we reduce our energy use or conserve energy. A few tips: Read in natural light. If not, use LED lighting. 9 W is good enough to read. Have a design which uses cross ventilation. Here are a few other things that individual families can do:
Make an energy budget for a house. Target a reduction.
Have a meeting of family members. Record the Minutes of the Meeting.
Another potential area for a family energy management could be use of electric vehicle batteries for energy storage for use at night.
Solar Energy
Solar operated streetlights have a lot of issues in batteries and panels getting stolen –street light robbery. So nowadays the strategy is to have the panels / batteries in a cluster – and wire the batteries from there.
Would be interesting to explore the Selco model for energy. It works on a combination of donations and subscriptions which are collected by Self Help Groups. Individual contributions are typically Rs. 10 per day.
We saw a very interesting solar system installed near the solar kitchen. It is basically parabolic mirrors attached to double sided solar panels. The outside is covered by a glass sheet – which is coated with 3M anti-dust coating. One unit has panels of about 250 W. These panels are cooled by a closed loop water system. This water, through a heat exchanger, heats the kitchen water. The overall system operates at a thermal efficiency of 16-17%. Cost is about Rs. 1 lakh per unit.
Life of solar panel is about 10 years. We have still not come up with a system of panel disposal. The glass and the panel itself should not be a problem – what could be is the laminate that is used as backing sheet.
Electric Vehicles
On the last day of the workshop, had lunch with Maathias – thanks to Tineke.
He came on his Auroville manufactured motorcycle. It had a 2200 Ah battery – 48 V, 43 A. Energy usage per km was 20 Wh. He has a 2 kW solar panel which he uses to charge it up. The bike has a Wattmon monitor. This is made again by another Auroville company run by Debu and Aakash. It costs around 2500. Like the E20 it shows how much of battery charge remains. This is done by constantly multiplying voltage and current over time. The bike is designed to run 100 km on a single charge, so the percentage of battery remaining is roughly equal to the km that the vehicle can still run. The bike has regenerative braking. Maathias is also testing the Hullikal and Spero. The plan is to buy another 100 bikes for Auroville this year for use by residents.
Food
Our first field visit was to an organic farm – Solitude. Krishna, a Brit educated in Krishnamurti School, UK, is the guy behind this farm. His interest in nature started with the school garden. A meeting with Masanobu Fukuoka at Vandana Shiva’s farm, Navdanya, in Dehradun confirmed that only the bakka (fool in Japanese) will understand natural farming. Krishna turned out to be foolish enough. He has been at it for more than two decades. Is now totally desi, with his lungi and his impeccable Tamil. Am sure the fact that his in-laws are from the Tamil heartland also helps.
Krishna’s philosophy is – Take care of the soil, the farm then takes care of itself. The real profit for him is not the money that he makes selling the produce or running the restaurant at the farm – it is the organic matter that gets added to his soil. As this builds up, even the types of weed change. More water is retained – the more porous the soil becomes – the more shallow the weed roots become. He practises permaculture: most of what the farm generates goes back to the soil. The farm needs to be nurtured as much as the human body. You need to decide the mix of plants that will work – looking at the physiology of the plants. For example, sweet potato, corn and bean integrate well. The other integration is on a time scale. Fruit trees are the long haul warriors of the farm. Then come shrubs like Haldi, followed by tomato and ending up in coriander.
The best part of the tour to the farm was the live salad that we got to eat. Our ignorance leads to our food arrogance. When we don’t see what is around us, we are conditioned to buy what we eat solely with coin. Almost every second plant at the farm was munched on. It was Ayurveda in action: Pipli (long black pepper), Tulsi, Leaf ginseng (or chicken spinach), raw green papaya in Thai Salad, Young beans of the Gulmohar tree, Papaya seeds as pepper substitutes, ajwain leaf juice applied for headaches, brahmi leaves for the brain, Shatavri (asparagus) roots, passion fruit, micro jamuns …
One of the ideas that Krishna is testing out is the weekend farmer. A lot of urban folk want to do farming, but have problems committing time. So the idea is for farmers like him to come up with small patches. The last two monsoons have not been good at Auroville. So the patch is basically a circular trench of about 3 m dia. The excess soil is dumped in the middle to make a hillock. And a small forest is created in this. The trench is filled in with fallen leaves – which help retain moisture. The weekend farmer comes in to take care of the plot. He is assisted by the mainstream farmer in the maintenance of this patch for the rest of the week. The weekend farmer makes a payment of Rs. 500 per month for this service. He gets to take the produce – and is also helped with the recipes that can be made using this produce. In addition there is a social event every month, where all the weekend farmers come together for an evening of music. The mainstream farmer can do about 40 plots in an acre – and this concept of weekend farming can help him get a steady cashflow of 20,000 per month – which is enough to sustain his family!
Nammalvar used to be a research unit head in the agriculture department of TN. He worked there for 6 years and realised that he needs to be more hands on. Spread the message, not in words, but in deeds. So he quit and joined an NGO, Peace Island to alleviate farm poverty. They sunk a lot of borewells, but at the end of it all, he realized that the chemical way of life was not sustainable. So he switched over to organic farming, healing without medicine and schools without walls. His philosophy has been don’t think for others – make them think for themselves.
Since 2006, per capita output has dropped in the least developed countries. Reserve food stocks are also down. Although we have a feeling that farmers can change their crop based on market demand, the reality is that he is constrained by:
- the climate
- the kind of land his farm is on
- Access to market
- Access to finance
- Government policies
The Great Famine of Bengal in 1943 was not because of the failure of the crop, it was because food was diverted to Europe to feed the British Army.
Here are two interesting exercises from Gijs’ book. Again used without permission.
Phenomenology is a way to study phenomena and can be clearly differentiated from the Cartesian method of analysis which sees the world as objects, acting and reacting upon one another. Champion of this more holistic approach is Wolfgang von Goethe. He believed that through unbiased keen observations within the sphere of phenomena the secrets of nature would declare themselves.
Exercise
* Find a plant. Any plant. Best is a young one that you can observe in its transformation from seedling into adult. Make an appointment with the plant to sit with it and observe it for 20 minutes every day. If you can’t make time every day you can do it every week.
* Then take a sketchbook and draw the plant with all the details that come to your notice. Don’t start drawing before you have looked at the plant for at least 5 minutes, just taking in the information it is sharing with you.
* When you start observing first see the outline. No need to focus on the details, try and keep the image general and blurry. See if you can see the field that the plant wants to grown into?
* Once you have tried with plants you can apply the same for animals and humans.
As Stephan Harding suggests: spending time outside in the open is the best gift you can give yourself. What is the place in your neighbourhood that you can go to and be in for a while whenever you require a break, a reboot or reconnect with life at large? Even in the most concreted urban jungles there are gaps in the pavement where life comes peeking through the cracks.
Exercise:
1. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with greenery this is easy. If you are stuck inside get out of the building and go find a space where you can sit or stand for a while without attracting too much attention. A park bench? A rooftop?
2. Observe and share your attention with the living creatures. You can practice your phenomenology skills here: trying out different ways of seeing. Or you can just let the sensation of being in nature caress you like gentle lapping waves. If you can stay there for a full day Good for You! I assume you have other things to do, so that may not be possible. But at the very least
3. Come back to your Gaia place every week for a month and notice changes. Changes in the part of the earth system you are engaging with, and changes inside yourself.
In his book Animate Earth, Harding helps us build a relationship to our planet, not just through furry creatures such as polar bears, but by seeing everything as animated including sticks and stones and air and water. Instead of the planet being a collection of objects we can look at it as a communion of subjects. Even atoms and molecules have personalities in his view. Oxygen for example is like the passionate Italian engaging in heated relationships with many other molecules, Carbon is like a cooperative Swedish prince, making long chains of molecules, Calcium is the excited princess that needs to be conquered in the granite castle deep under the ocean. This implies a very different approach to chemistry which starts to sound more like fairy tales and less like formulas.”
Waste
Ribhu is one of the new generation entrepreneurs of Auroville. He has made waste management his focus area – he runs a company called WasteLess.
You come home to find the floor full of water. You just realise that you have forgotten to turn off the tap when you left home. What would you do first? Take the Mop or Close the Tap? The obvious answer is the Tap. Yet most of us do the reverse for Waste. We are more concerned about getting it out of our way, out of our sight. We do not pause to think about what could be the cause of all that waste that we generate. 90% of the funds spent in the garbage area, are in the collection of the garbage – the Mop.
75% of waste is industrial.
18% relates to mining and energy production.
3.5% is because of construction and demolition
2.5% is municipal solid waste.
What is interesting to note is that there is a 30X multiplier between municipal and industrial waste. Which means that a 1 kg reduction in municipal waste will lead to a 30 kg reduction in industrial waste.
The waste production of an economy goes up with the increase in per capita GDP. The average Indian produces about 0.42 kg of waste. Ribhu has done waste audits across social spectra. He found that a poor fisherman generates only 70 gram of waste per day.
Composting is better than recycling in environmental terms. Recycling and incineration (which happens at 800 C) cause similar damages. The worst damages happen because of open dumping. Our landfills are very interesting places to visit. We generate something like 250,000 tractor trolley loads of waste every day – enough to line the road from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. The Chennai landfill is 500 acres – and has waste dumps which reach heights of 56 m. Scavengers roam the landfill with magnets and matchboxes. The magnet we can understand is for hunting out metals. But what about the matchbox? One of the more valuable metals lying in dumps is copper wire. Now separating the wire from the plastic can be a time consuming job. So here is all that needs to be done – set the wire on fire. What helps immensely is the copious amounts of methane being released by all the decaying organic matter in the dump.
Ribhu has an interesting model of behavior change. We start by being wrong and unconscious about it. The next step is to be conscious about the wrong. We then move on the conscious right and end when we are unconsciously doing the right things. The best people to target for this change are children. They have no established habits. They are also people with amazing pestering power – which can be useful to drive change in their parents. One entire class in a school changed over to SS lunch boxes from plastic after Ribhu’s first class. Sessions for kids usually start with building a mind map. The central cloud asks – What is Waste? The kids’ answers are then connected to this cloud. The lessons are available on the website. The first lesson is free. One great kaizen in Garbology 101 is that the second lesson gets activated – only when you give feedback for the first lesson!
He faced problems when reaching out to the lower income kids. Garbology did not hit them as much as it had been a hit with the higher income kids. One of his village heads came up with the punch line – ‘Pick it up.’ The idea was further stretched to connect the school to the local ubiquitous kabbadi wallah. If you can monetize something for the lower income kid, she loves it – Cash for Trash. A typical household throws away between 150 to 300 Rupees worth of value in its garbage every month. The value of the garbage depends on the logistics cost of getting it to processing / recycling centers, most of which are located close to metros.
Here is when the kids want to get educated. Which kind of plastic gives me the most value? (Btw, the answer is PET.) How do I recognize it? Each of the molds used for plastics has a number embedded in it. Sintex tanks for example are made from HDPE – (number 2). Here is what the codes look like..
We may continue to throw away the garbage – but at some time we will realise that there is no away. We need to move from the mop to the tap. At least 50% of our energies need to work on the tap. One of the ways this can happen is by pressurising the government to pass enabling legislation for this. We sometimes feel whether how can we alone do it. Then you need to remember the story of Margaret Thorsborg. She was fighting to prevent the commercialisation of Fraser Island. But the rest of the island was not too keen about it. One day, at the age of 80, she decided to swim from the coast of Australia to the island 5 km away in shark infested waters. Her swim got the attention of national media – and finally because of her efforts – Fraser Island was declared an eco-heritage island. Think Butterflies!
Local effluent treatment plant at the Center Guest House. One thing that struck me is that I passed it every day for 3 days – only on the 4th day I realised something fishy – when I saw a little lather in one of the ponds. The best part was that it did not smell bad at all. One of the reasons is the use of Effective Microorganisms (EM). The waste from the laundry and bathrooms is sent to a collection tank. The tank has ceramic beads which have been treated with EM. After spending some time in the collection tank, the water is pushed to a 7 chambered super septic tank. Baffles are used to create chambers. Additional use is made of vortexes and cinder stones for aerating the water – this helps the multiplication of aerobic bacteria. In rivers the aeration happens as they meander through their course. EM is directly added to the kitchen water so as to help in the cleaning of the utensils – and later on aid breakdown of kitchen waste. Finally, the use of acquatic plants and guppy fish in the polishing pond make the water treatment complete. It is then off to the gardens. Would have been happier if it were going back to the bathroom and kitchen. Hope that time will come soon!
Excerpts from Story of Solutions:
Collabrative consumption can be a solution to reducing waste.
If we incentive people for recycling, we are incentivising waste creation. If we have policy measures like banning plastic bags, we will end up striking at the root cause. Good solutions are those that account for all costs and lessen the wealth gap.
Good solutions make the market move from more is better to changing societal goals.
Health
The current stories in health:
- Organ based specialisation
- Tests will reveal everything, irrespective of context
- Microbe killing drugs will be the perpetual heroes
- The body can’t cure itself
- The mind has no curative role
- The focus is on illness, not health, acute illnesses, not chronic
The Nun Study: Ageing with Grace. A study was done in a monastery where nuns lived. Permission was taken to do brain autopsies after they died. This was to check the affect of Alzheimer’s. Some of the nuns were affected by the disease, those who were active till the very end – it was assumed that they had not been affected by Alzheimer’s. The study proved this hypothesis wrong. Even the active nuns has brains which looked like they had had Alzheimer’s. So it was actually mind over matter!
Another case in point is Mr Wright and Krebiozen.
Many doctors know the story of ”Mr. Wright,” who was found to have cancer and in 1957 was given only days to live. Hospitalized in Long Beach, Calif., with tumors the size of oranges, he heard that scientists had discovered a horse serum, Krebiozen, that appeared to be effective against cancer. He begged to receive it.
His physician, Dr. Philip West, finally agreed and gave Mr. Wright an injection on a Friday afternoon. The following Monday, the astonished doctor found his patient out of his ”death bed,” joking with the nurses. The tumors, the doctor wrote later, ”had melted like snowballs on a hot stove.”
Two months later, Mr. Wright read medical reports that the horse serum was a quack remedy. He suffered an immediate relapse. ”Don’t believe what you read in the papers,” the doctor told Mr. Wright. Then he injected him with what he said was ”a new super-refined double strength” version of the drug. Actually, it was water, but again, the tumor masses melted.
Mr. Wright was ”the picture of health” for another two months — until he read a definitive report stating that Krebiozen was worthless. He died two days later.
If the mind can indeed cure, then probably yoga, meditation, music, laughter therapy will help more than allopathy. We need a holistic therapy system. How about ayurveda, acupuncture, acupressure, detox, Chinese medicine, psychotherapy, naturopathy and maybe even fish therapy. We need better metrics for health. How about creativity?
Homeopathy’s founding principle – like cures like. Homeo – means same, btw allo – means other. And pathy means suffering. How about states of non-pathy? What role does food play. Indians are big fans of milk and overcooked food. Here is some counter-gyan from Vijaya Venkat:
Dr. Vijaya Venkat was a health activist and pioneering founder of the Health Awareness Centre in Mumbai. “Don’t separate food from life – use it for adding life to life. This happens when you eat ‘living’ food. Only raw food can be best absorbed by the body. All other organisms, apart from humans, do so. We have separated ethics, ecology and the environment because of food. We’re no longer in tune with the natural needs of the body and discard bodily intelligence. An ailment is disharmony in the body. I refuse to call it an ‘illness’ – it is an energy fluctuation.”
She asserts that what really nourishes us is not just food but an attitude of gratitude. “Get up with awareness and focus on all the blessings you have. I never use the terms – if, but, sorry, trying and procrastination. I use – thank you, so what, trust, faith. Tension is misplaced attention. Bring your focus back to your breath and thank God the body is alive! Take the journey from fear to faith. The saddest part of my life is having to prove something so clear.”
Her dietary ‘don’ts’ encompass all things bottled, tinned and packed, including medicines. “I have been living in awareness for 40 years,” she explains. “I am a biochemist and a nutritionist and I thought I’d be flourishing with all my knowledge as a mother. But my heart faltered when I had my first child, because microbiology made me fearful of a whole world full of germs that would kill my baby.”
So she began her odyssey into the natural world instead, and has integrated it into her lifestyle. Till eleven in the morning she eats only fruit. Then gives a gap of an hour before she has her pre-lunch vegetable juice with fresh herbs. At 12.30 she eats lunch comprising a big salad, sprouts and some veggies cooked without oil. And pretty much the same for dinner. No milk or milk products.
And no indulgences? She smiles, “I do have some wine or chocolate cake or ice cream occasionally. But my fundamentals are strong: sleep when you feel sleepy, chew when you are thirsty (there is no need to drink water – when you drink water, prana goes out of the body), eat lots of fruit when you are hungry. Eat a cooked meal an hour later, but make sure three-fourths of it is a salad with lots of lemon. The balance one-fourth can be anything you like!”
She is big on lemons, consuming six to eight on an average day, and going up to 22 lemons on days when she feels the need. She is a great proponent for managing one’s own health. “How many more hospitals are you going to build?” she asks, adding, “Celebrate when you are unwell. It’s the body’s signal that it is still alive – let the body do what it’s doing without trying to suppress it with medicines. If you try to prevent disease you will end up preventing health. The root causes of disease are lack of mental poise, not enough sleep or rest, and poisonous foods.”
Also watch the TED talk by Dean Ornish on healing through food. Interestingly, Prof Rajagopalan had a heart attack in 2009. He did not get admitted to hospital – did not take any treatment. Rested at home for a couple of weeks – and touch wood, has been in good health ever since!
We had an interesting chat with Sumit, an allopathic doctor and surgeon, originally from Mumbai – and now an Aurovillean. His point of view is that treatment should be related to patient goals. What exactly does the patient want out of her life? He believes that 80% of diseases are psychosomatic – or in simple language – diseases that originate in the mind. So if you take fear away from your mind, you have a solution to 4 out of every 5 diseases you will face. To do this, we need to constantly monitor our thoughts and feelings. We have to help our body take care of and heal itself.
I raised a point here that nowhere in the world, are patients ready to pay you when you are healthy. Our other health guru, Linda Grace, jutted in and mentioned that in traditional Chinese therapy, you pay when you are healthy – and don’t pay when you are sick.
To end with an interesting observation. A lot of Aurovilleans are vegan – and suffer from anemia as a result. One of the points made by Sumit, am not sure if it was in jest, was that most vegetarian Indians, unlike Aurovilleans, do not suffer from Vitamin B12 deficiency because they drink bacteria-ful water. And these bacteria actually secrete Vitamin B12!
Water
The Stories we believe in:
Water is what we get when we open a tap, or a bottle.
Desalination plants can fulfil whatever needs we have.
Interlinking rivers will ensure the distribution of water throughout the country.
Worst comes to worst, we can always go the Antartic and ship in a few icebergs.
The Real Stories:
It is both plentiful and scarce.
80% of diseases are because of water.
Finite and not replaceable.
Most of what we get is through rain.
It rains about 40,000 cu km a year on the land.
The per capita availability today is 5,500 cu m a year.
We need 1700 cu m per year of water to lead a comfortable life.
As of 2007, the annual per capita availability of water in India has already dropped to 1800 cu m.
At the rate at which water is becoming scarce, only Canada and Scandinavia will not be hit by water scarcity in 2050.
Bangalore water is sourced from more than a 100 km away already.
Good use of rainwater harvesting can ensure that more than 6 months of a household’s water needs can be met without tapping the municipal supply.
Most countries are involved in water conflicts – with their neighbours and also within themselves.
Arsenic has always been present in the ground – but as our borewells get sunk deeper, we are finding that the ground water is being contaminated with arsenic.
If you were to buy a wada-pav for Rs. 100,000, you would complain of being ripped off – yet you don’t think twice of paying 10,000 times the price for bottled water.
There is also an interesting water export industry – when we look at what is called as virtual water.
A kg of potato has used up 25 liter of water.
One loaf of bread – 40 ltr.
A cotton T shirts has used up 4,000 ltr
And a pair of leather shoes has used up 8,000 ltr.
Check dams are any time better than large ones – but the dam industry does not like them.
Group Dynamics
What is a group? It is a living being, which needs to be nurtured.
What are the types of groups?
- Goal oriented
- Social
- Theraupetic
A group can acquire its own language. It can have an identity, which is quite different from each of its individuals. (2 + 2 = 5) Groups have life cycles: Birth, adolescence, maturity and death. Or Forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
Successful groups have
- No hidden agenda
- Clear goals
- Some outcome
- Individuals who are valued and listened to
In goal oriented groups, creativity can be stifled. Scoring sheet for ship survival exercise.
Form pairs – one is A, the other is B. Both have to take turns – participating and observing in group contexts. Roles that members play inside groups:
- Task oriented
- Initiators contribute new ideas or encourage new directions
- Summarizers pull things together, recap or add perspective
- Information givers offer facts or background on issues
- Decision testers encourage group to make a decision
- Energiser: stimulates the group to a higher level of activity
- Recorder: Keeps a record of group decisions
- Maintenance
- Encouragers boost morale by commending others
- Gatekeepers ensure that everyone has a chance to contribute
- Resolver: moves group to another position that is favoured by all group members
- Individualistic (typically negative, self-centered)
- Blockers insist on their position and reject consensus
- Dominators attempt to exert authority by manipulating the group or dominating conversations
- Attention seekers want attention, do not necessarily contribute to group task
- Aggressors verbally attack other group members
- Avoiders withdraw
Depending on the circumstances, a group member can play several roles.
Groups require to balance task and maintenance members. Individualistic members need to be discouraged.
I got feedback from Devika Rani on our group work. She felt that I was an Information giver and Decision tester.
What should I do with the rest of my life?
This is a good exercise. We give participants an A3 sized paper.
On one side on LH corner write day of birth. On RH corner write today’s date. Plot on this timeline the significant events in your life. On the reverse side of the same page, on LH corner, write today’s date and on RH corner the year you expect to live to. Plot on this timeline the significant events that you expect will happen in this timeline.
Discussion questions:
Do you love what you do everyday?
What has surprised you most about mankind?
When you left college what were your dreams?
When you got your first job, what did you expect from it?
When you started a family, what did you expect?
Are today’s dreams different?
When such questions arise, we push them aside and carry on with the routine of life.
The sure shot way to change life’s perspective, is by having a near death experience.
Steve Job’s Stanford address is a case in point.
The Interview With God
I dreamed I had an interview with God.
“Come in,” God said. “So, you would like to interview Me?”
“If you have the time,” I said.
God smiled and said:
“My time is eternity and is enough to do everything; What questions do you have in mind to ask me?”
“What surprises you most about mankind?”
God answered:
“That they get bored of being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again…
That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health…
That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future…
That they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived.”
God’s hands took mine and we were silent for awhile and then I asked… “As a parent, what are some of life’s lessons you want your children to learn?”
God replied with a smile:
“To learn that they cannot make anyone love them. What they can do is to let themselves be loved…
To learn that what is most valuable is not what they have in their lives, but who they have in their lives…
To learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others. All will be judged individually on their own merits, not as a group on a comparison basis…
To learn that a rich person is not the one who has the most, but is one who needs the least…
To learn that it only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in persons we love, and that it takes many years to heal them…
To learn to forgive by practicing forgiveness…
To learn that there are persons that love them dearly, but simply do not know how to express or show their feelings…
To learn that money can buy everything but happiness…
To learn that two people can look at the same thing and see it totally different…
To learn that a true friend is someone who knows everything about them, and likes them anyway…
To learn that it is not always enough that they be forgiven by others, but that they have to forgive themselves.”
I sat there for awhile enjoying the moment. I thanked Him for his time and for all that He has done for me and my family, and He replied, “Anytime. I’m here 24 hours a day. All you have to do is ask for me, and I’ll answer.”
Suggestions from the Group about the Workshop
More hands on work
The staying place could have been less comfortable.
What would have helped – yoga session, exposure to architecture.
The project should have been given earlier.
We could have cooked our own food.
More outdoor classes
More technicalities as an option
More dialogue between participants
We could have washed our own dishes
Atul Gopal was singled out as a trouble maker.
Random Ideas based on Discussions in the Workshop
Integrating the quadrants of Social, Economic, Ecology and the Individual is important. If not then, we have a danger of specialisation. Some of the social projects that suffered from lack of integration.
Tree planting projects that ignore the local population
Social forestry which results in mono-culture
Raising money for products/services that increase social inequality
Integration is also how nature works – eg killing of snakes and multiplication of rodents.
India has some “immersion programs” like the Shodh Yatra, a journey across rural India to uncover innovation at the grassroots. Founded by IIM Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta, the cohort of yatris (travellers) walk approximately 250 kms in a span of seven to eight days. The route chosen has no regular road, rail or water connectivity – making it particularly challenging. Yatris meet villagers, farmers, artisans, micro-entrepreneurs, looking for oddball innovations. The Yatra is conducted during extreme climatic conditions – either at peak summers or winters – because most grassroot innovations seem to happen during the most adverse conditions.
The Library of Things: Has everything but books. The idea is to reduce ownership – by sharing stuff. A typical person uses a drilling machine 5 times in her life – so why keep it rusting at home? So look out for something that is not being used too often – and keep it in this library. Instead of a physical location, objects can be grouped into a virtual location using an online database. In the Auroville trials of the LoT, tools, toys and travel gear are the fastest moving. There is no rent, but there is a security deposit, which is returned once it is confirmed that the object was sent back in good order. Electronics is something which the LoT avoids. Interstingly, the LoT makes money from shared transporation services – by selling car rides to Pondicherry and Chennai. In addition it also has a small fleet of bicycles that can be rented out.
Chemically ripened fruit floats in water, naturally ripened ones, sink. Caulliflower that has not been treated with bleach, should be yellowish. Try to eat vegetables of the season – summer and winter veggies are different.
For making Effective Micro-organism solution, take 300 gm of lemon peel and 100 g of jaggery. Add this to 1 liter of water. Keep this mixture in a 2 liter plastic bottle with the lid open. (A lot of gasification will happen). Keep for 90 days. The EM solution can be used as a natural cleaner, also for cleaning veggies, in washing machines EM will allow clothes to be cleaned in a single rinse.
If you want a design where everyone in the group has to pitch in, you can go in for popcorn style pitches. Basically in this the corns pop at random. This ensures that there is no pre speech tension in which the listener’s attention span plummets.
Eisenhower believed that with nuclear energy, we could be supplying electricity free!
A lot of Biogas plants are non-functional today because of bad construction. Domes have corroded totally. It requires annual maintenance.
Hubbert curve denotes peak oil.
Superfans, made by a Coimbatore based company, have an energy consumption of just 28 W.
Auroville helped draft the net metering policy for TN. Wires are not worried, if electricity flows from left to right, or right to left.
We have a virtuous circle when workers have beliefs in their goals.
Group think – if a group has been together for a long time, then the thinking becomes similar.
Diversity is important – but up to a point. So is the motivation of the group initiator. Have mixed teams – not just single area experts.
The social vice triplet: The Poor are not brave enough; the middle class does not have time and The Rich do not have any need to change.
Remove empty chairs from a circle – left in they reduce the energy!
Abundance is knowing what is enough.
The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems – MK Gandhi
The MP government is experimenting with a department of happiness – Project Anandam.
Millets are good because they do not require too much of irrigation. Caveat – they may not be good for those who have thyroid problems.
Have a weekly meet – where a book gets discussed. This is followed by a shared meal.
Of all the Jungle Lodges run by the Karnataka Govt, the most VFM one is at Kudremukh – Bhagwati Nature Camp.
Agar aata hai to bhi samjho ki humme kuch bhi nahi aata.
If you are open to learning, the universe will teach you.
Brian had attended a program – My Body, My Wisdom. In that a team of two has to navigate a course – of the two, one is gagged and the other is blindfolded.
Mullah Nasruddin makes for good breaks.
Verandahs make a world of difference to a room.
Mud roads, light vehicles, speed limits of 25 kmph – an ideal combo.
Growth is not important
Chalk type effect in a PPT looks great.
No chappals in classroom is a good idea.
Unbleached cotton shirts / T shirts look great. You also can make cloth from Bamboo yarn. Here is Tineke wearing bamboo slacks. And David in an unbleached shirt.
We all are fast food addicts, because today’s farmer grows his veggies fast – using fertilisers.
Collect scrap pens for art projects
In Denmark it is compulsory to have a buffer zone for forests – in this zone you have horticulture / floriculture plantations.
Auroville has often been compared to a kibbutz, a communal farm, which supports 250-300 families. Having the right mix of plants is important in a kibbutz.
Have a lot of forms / questions on A5 sheets. We will need to convert A4 to A5 by investing in a cutting machine.
In Tamil Nadu, like minerals, the water table is owned by the state. So private borewells are banned.
In Sikkim, there is a ban on bottled water.
Disposal costs should be factored into the life of the product.
In the gadgets world, Moore’s law was transliterated into More’s law.
Aloo Bhaji with lots of onions tastes yummy. Need to try it some time.
The pesticide consumption can come down drastically, if farmers start using a cone nozzle – which creates a good mist.
The average street cow has about 50 kg of plastic in its stomachs.
The MNC is the constraining middleman between the farmer and the consumer.
Death always happens to somebody else.
We spend half our life ruining our health in running after money. Then we spend the next half spending our money to get back our health.
Socrates: An unexamined life, is not now worth living.
The pursuit of happiness is self defeating.
The GP is a disappearing breed. Specialist doctors have no time to give to patient’s questions.
85% of diseases are self-limiting – which means that these are things that the body can heal itself – Franz Alexander, MD.
Doctors are pretty sure that stress leads to disease, yet they have no conviction that positive thoughts will lead to good health.
I would rather know what sort of person has the disease, rather than what kind of disease the person has – Hippocrates
Are medical test results affected by the patient’s mood?
The brain is the most prolific gland in the body – it has thousands of secretions.
Because no one owns the problem, nobody owns the solution either.
If you want to go fast, walk alone. If you want to go far, walk together.
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” —Malcolm S. Forbes
According to the late Narendra Dabholkar, ¼ of an acre is enough to sustain a family.
Reading List
| The Great Turning | David Korten | |
| The Gandhian Iceberg: A Non-violence Manifesto for the Age of the Great Turning | Chris Moore Backman | |
| The Oil Depletion Protocol | Richard Heisberg | |
| The Growth Fetish | Clive Hamilton | |
| Stuffed and Starved | Raj Patel | |
| How the Other Half Dies | Susan George | |
| Limits to Medicine | Ivan Ilich | https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/MedicalNemesis.pdf |
| Cured to Death: The Effects of Prescription Drugs | A Melville and Mudrooroo | |
| Anatomy of an Illness | Norman Cousins | http://www.downloads.imune.net/medicalbooks/Anatomy%20of%20an%20Illness%20by%20Norman%20Cousins.pdf |
| Too soon to say goodbye | Art Buchwald | |
| Dissenting Diagnosis | Gadre and Shukla (Interview link) | http://www.kractivist.org/dissenting-diagnosis-exposing-the-rot-in-indian-healthcare/ |
| Blessed Unrest | Paul Hawken | |
| Pillar of Sand: Can the irrigation miracle last? | Sandra Postel |
Resource Websites
| https://charleseisenstein.net | You can read his books online here |
| https://sustainablehuman.com | Good resource for videos |
| http://wastelessindia.org | Garbology guy – Ribhu |
| https://www.servicespace.org | Gift Economy |
| https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/10356.Woody_Allen | Woody Allen quotes |
| http://oshosearch.net/Convert/Articles_Osho/Meet_Mulla_Nasruddin/Osho-Meet-Mulla-Nasruddin-00000001.html | Mullah Jokes |
| http://www.otoons.com/joke&game/mulla_nasrudin.htm#sthash.edDwH18r.dpbs | Mullah Jokes |
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying | The Top 5 regrets of the Dying |
Interesting Story of Ashok Sharma, Workshop participant
Ashok’s family shifted to Kutch from Punjab some time in the fifties. His dad was a civil contractor, who helped build Kandla port. Kutch is amongst the biggest districts in India – it takes 8 hours to drive from one end of the district to the other. 60% of India’s salt is produced in this district. It has two ports – Kandla and Mundra (Adani). Ashok is a multi-faceted person with interests in manufacturing, farming, real estate, hospitality, social service and construction. The extended Sharma family has petrol pumps, plywood factories, resorts and farms. Interestingly, the resort is a zero waste one, and it has its own biogas plant.
What was interesting was his 2001 experience in the Bhuj earthquake. He had just finished building a 7 storey building at the resort. Ashok was in a Rotary meet at Mt Abu when he got a call about the quake. He rushed back to find out that the entire newly built structure at the resort had collapased. Fortunately, the building was in its last stage of fittings – so it was unoccupied. No deaths. Unfortunately, the negotiations with the insurance company had got stuck the previous week for a paltry sum of Rs 25,000 on a 7 crore project. So Ashok was left with an un-insured collapsed building – and a bank loan of 5 crore.
Ashok called in his staff members immediately on his return. He informed them that those who wanted to leave, could do so – and all their dues would be cleared immediately. Those who wanted to remain, he would take care of them. How, he had no clue about. The next day, as Ashok, was mulling over what to do next at the broken down resort, a Sikh army officer cam visiting. He was part of a government team sent for rehabilitating the affected people. The first problem the team faced was finding a place for themselves. The officer had a simple request to make to Ashok. All he wanted was electricity and water. Ashok took 2 minutes to say Yes. He arranged for diesel from his petrol pumps – and started pumping out water from his tube-wells. Fortunately, the resort gensets were still in working condition – so electricity was available – and voila – the army had found its base in Gandhidham.
In lieu of the payment for the water and electricity, Ashok asked the army for a hundred tents. The army offered them free of cost – as they had been given the stock for helping out locals in any case. But Ashok refused the gift – and paid for them. 3 days after the quake, the resort was functioning out of the same tents – and with some furniture that could be salvaged from the debris of the building.
Ashok has been involved in social service from his younger days. He continues to be part of the Rashtriya Seva Sangh. The same week he had the Gujarat Pracharak visiting him to see if the RSS could help in relief measures. The meeting started at 9 pm and went on till 2 am. After that, the responsibility of supplying drinking water to the town of Gandhidham was entrusted to Ashok’s farm. Good job done, the Pracharak saw a quick rise in the organisation – and today is the Prime Minister of India!
Sampling of Auroville Workshop Participants
Simrat Singh
Is a horticulture office from Ludhiana, working in Sangrur. Not too many people knew that he is also a PhD from PAU, Ludhiana. His most interesting experience was his 20 days stay in a kibbutz in Israel. Simrat does some plantations on his home roof top. He wants to work to popularise organic farming in Punjab.
Preeti Rao
From Munger. Dad was in the armed forces. Has done her MBA. Worked for a couple of years. Is heavily into bio-enzymes. Her guru is a Chinese lady in Penang, who is working to cleanse Chinese river systems through the use of bio-enzymes. She has her home running on solar electricity. Does composting for her own home and the neighbourhood. Has a great roof top garden. She also sells her bio-enzymes under the Soil and Soul brand. (I would have been happier with Soul of Soil.) She uses zero plastic in her life, except for packaging of SoS enzymes. She does a lot of school workshops on sustainability. She lives with one dog, one son and one husband in Bengaluru.
Brian
Is a 76 Mech engineer from IIT Madras. Started off in Bakelite Hylam. Then branched off into a Escorts /Ford Tractor dealership for 3 districts of AP. The business did not prove too be remunerative enough for two partners, so he left after 4 years. Had got married then. Joined Greaves. Started off in Hyderabad, then moved to Kochi, to sell marine engines. In 86, caught the IT bug and moved to Bangalore. After a year of learning the tricks of the IT selling trade, he moved to TCS. Spent two decades there, before quitting to join Pegasus in 2006. Pegasus is a coaching and outbound training company.
Noor
Herbal queen. Also runs a composting unit in her rooftop garden. Used to be a lecturer earlier.
Rajeev Nair
E & Y Project manager, looking after Infra projects in global E & Y offices. Based out of Kochi. Does not have a TV at home. His home electricity bill is a grand Rs. 200 per month. His wife, Ambli, works as a free lance management consultant, after quitting the mainstream IT industry.
Manjul X Bajaj
IRMA batch of 84. Younger son in Grade 12. Elder one is working with a NGO in Rwanda. Stays near MG Road Metro Station in Gurgaon. Now into environment related education – hopefully energy focussed!
Sumithra
Architect. Interested in Bamboo construction. Based out of Dubai.
Akanksha
Dad is a CA. Did her schooling from Rishi Valley. Dad is a CA. She started off as a landscape architect. Now is a Yoga teacher.
Rashmi
Ex Sun Microsystems. Married to an IAF transport plane pilot. Home schooled her son, till he was in Grade 6. Now he goes to an alternative school. 100% vegan. Avid trekker and cyclist.
Bhavani
BSc (Math). Was her honorary father for 1 week!
Ravi Kaushik
Spent a decade in Silicon Valley before returning back to work with farmers. Is experimenting on his own in Belgaum. He has also adopted 2 marginal farmers from Akshay Kalpa.
Interesting alumni:
Sunil Sood – runs an eco store in Bangalore / Chennai – called ReStore.
Anil Kapoor – sponsors candidates every year to the program – www.anilkapur.org
Poonam Bir Kasturi – runs Daily Dump.
Auroville Trailer, Apr 2018
Had been promising my friends a session on what I learnt at Auroville for a long time. Last Sunday managed to get down to collecting 15 of them and putting them in a classroom. I tried my best to imitate Prof RR. However there is a significant difference in getting a captive audience for a week – and a fickle one for 2 hours. So the aim was to be able to give them a glimpse of what happened (The Trailer, as the title says), and attract them for the main show which will be featuring Prof RR, Alan, Tineke and David. Most of the audience was my engineering classmates – out of which a majority are entrepreneurs.
As we waited for the audience to come in – we had a single question quiz based on energy. This one was picked up from Toine van Megen’s talk. If we look at energy used per 100 passenger km, we find that it is 80 units for a typical car, 32 for a bus and around 5 for a train. The question we got asked was why is the energy consumption so low for a train?
We started with music – I chose Dama Dam Mast Kalandhar – in honor of my Sindhi friend Anil Jhamtani, who is the admin of our college WhatsApp group. From this point on, I diverted from RR’s style manual. We split the class into groups of 4. (The math inclined reader would have noticed that 4*4 is not 16. Ahem! Yes, there was one group of 3.) We then went on to a discussion on defining sustainability. Interestingly, one of the entrepreneur-only groups looked at it more from an organizational than a planet perspective. Of how we can ensure organizational survival / growth. An interesting perspective indeed!
From here we moved on to the difference between an entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur. A lot of the participants thought that all entrepreneurs are doing some service to society: satisfying unmet needs, creating employment etc. One of the participants mentioned a very interesting contrast. For an entrepreneur his business is an outside-in business, which is to say that he would be looking at the world for opportunities – and trying to profit from them. A social entrepreneur, on the other hand, is an inside-out person. Which is to say that she is very driven about an issue – usually social – and makes it her mission to find a solution to that problem. Whether she profits from it or not hardly matters. We watched a short film on Jadav Molai Payang, the forest man of Assam, in order to drive home the drive point.
There was a beautiful example quoted which merged the two definitions of entrepreneur and social. One of the top officials of the Pune Municipal Corporation has his village about a couple of hours from Pune. Pepsi had recently put up a plant in the village. The official’s family owns about 10 acres of land in the village. As a result of the setting up of the bottling plant, the ground water levels started dipping. It became difficult to sustain agriculture. Quasi-legal resorts were tried. Also dharnas. But to no avail. As a last ditch compromise, the company was asked to at least help the village by giving them its effluent discharge. Filtration technology was sourced in order to make the water fit for irrigation. And the villagers realized an interesting thing. One of the waste materials of the effluent treatment plant was starch! To cut a long story short, the village today is a significant producer of starch in the district..
The second last topic was based on Ribhu’s waste talk. Used the analogy of prioritizing the tap versus the mop, when it comes to your house taps flooding your house. This session unfortunately was mostly a sermon, where I preached the importance of reducing over reusing or recycling.
We ended with Nero’s Guests. Could not play the entire film because of paucity of time. But played the first 15 minutes and the last 15. The group watch always works for this film. There was a long discussion that played out – which lasted through the dinner we had together after the program. It started by one of the participants mentioning that suicide rates of non-agriculturists do not merit so much discussion in media. But the group-think was that the real issue was not the suicide, but the circumstances that have made farming unviable. One of the thoughts was that we may end up following the US model, with only 2-5% of people staying in villages and farming. The rest would be urbanized. The question that is still unanswered, would cities have enough work for them.
Heard some interesting stories from friends over dinner. One friend, who is the spiritual sorts, goes to Uttarkashi twice a year, for a few weeks. He recounted a visit of Jan 1998. He prefers going in winters as there are no tourists – and he can meditate in solitude. He stays at an ashram over there. One morning, he started on a long walk, carrying a bottle of water, a packet of biscuits and some sprouts. After having walked for a few hours he had to stop his journey as it started snowing. Once it stopped snowing, our friend realized that the paths in the hills were no longer visible, coming under snow. He decided to stay the night there, hoping that the snow would melt the next day – and he could retrace his steps back. It turned out, that there was no Sun the next day. So he waited one more day, limiting his food rations to one biscuit. The water needs were met by putting some snow into the mouth and drinking. The days started to extend – and now the problem was that of energy. He was too weak to move. After a month of survival – on mostly water, the weather changed. One morning, he woke up to the sound of sheep. As the snow retreats, shepherds start their journey back onto the hills. Summoning all his energy, he climbed a rock close by – and shouted at the top of his feeble voice. He got noticed by the shepherd – and lives to tell the story. As with any story, there is a moral to this one as well. His seniors at the ashram gave him sound advice – next time walk along a river.
I had my own moral from this story. If this friend could survive a month without food, could I try surviving one day. I did. And happy to report to you that as I type this – I have been without food for 36 hours – and doing well, mind you. I am optimistic that one or two of my friends may end up visiting Auroville for the Sustainability workshop. But even if they don’t, they have at least started thinking of what they need to be doing for the planet. I will end with an interesting observation that a participant had. ‘A dirty car is the sign of a healthy planet.’ So next time you see an unwashed dirty car on Pune roads, you know water is being conserved in Pune and Auroville is at work…