Mr. Popat Rao has created a demonstration on Swaraj village. He is working with the community since 1986. Today, there are just 3 families below the poverty line in the village.
May 10, 2018
May 10, 2018
During Mission Samriddhi’s Summit 6 at Wardha, I met Shubha from Banwasi Sewa Ashram at Sonbhadra district, UP. They are working in that tribal area among 400 villages since 1967.
I learnt
- That for several years, there have been no legal cases from these villages being filed in the court. In case a few cases do reach the court, they are withdrawn and settled within the village.
- Since legal cases are a major ‘time, money and energy’ wasters of our society. Their response was very innocent and wise.
A. Most of the conflicts in the villages start from very small differences.
B. Villages need a few trustable, selfless people with the ability to listen.
C. Most of the time ‘the person who is wrong, knows it in his heart’ about his wrong. He can’t hide that wrong within his own set of people. What he needs is a ‘listening’.
D. Banwasi Sewa Ashram’s experience says that once the ‘Panch’ – respected group of villagers within or outside the village (different from elected representatives) listens to both sides, the conflict resolution becomes much simpler. Both parties can select their Panch who they believe will be fair like the arbitrator system.
To solve large cases in the legal system, shall we start a dialogue on building competency of conflict resolution at the source?
May 9, 2018
Why do children’s movies have so many fight scenes including those made by Disney?
What impact does such fight scenes have on a child’s psychology?
May 9, 2018
Austria, the headquarters of one of our key customers, Raffeisein Bank, has selected Sebastian Kurz as its Head of State.
He is just 31 years old.
At the age of 28, he became the youngest Foreign Minister.
As a 24-year old, he became the Minister of Integration.
May 9, 2018
Mission Samriddhi organised Samriddhi Yatra for Sarpanch and Upsarpanch from 15 gram panchayats of Wardha district in Maharashtra and 2 ideal villages of Ahmednagar district.
Hiware Bazar and Ralegaon are transformational villages which are
1. Perfectly clean
2. Complete self-sufficient water with proper wells and water harvesting.
3. All kids of the village supervise all streets of the village.
4. All women measure the water level of storage and control the water distribution for everyone.
5. Library with over 2500 books.
6. Large meeting halls for gram sabha where consensus decisions are taken for the village’s development.
Manju and a few other leaders from Mission Samriddhi took a bus with 40 people including 20 women leaders. They are going to be engaging with them in moderating their learnings. The idea is to drive change among the village leaders first.
May 10, 2017
I was watching the movie ‘Ramanujan’ – the person who knew infinity. I enjoyed the movie. It very well captured history.
One thing that touched me more than Ramanujan was his wife Janaki. She just waited and waited and after his early death at age of 32, she completed her life as a widow.
I was not sensitive to this aspect of gender inequality.
I visited the Brihadeeswarar Temple or the Tanjore Temple near Trichy. Normally, we go on a temple from temple visit but this temple was more of an architectural marvel. In my perspective, it can match the architectural creation of the Taj Mahal since it was created six hundred years before the Taj Mahal.
A few observations
- The largest Siva Temple with integrated Brahma and Vishnu structures. The lingam is a monolithic and 29 ft. tall.
- Fully constructed without any binding material like cement or its equivalent.
- 1000 year structure built by granite slabs, cut and interlocked to create this masterpiece.
- The nearest quarry of granite stones is over 80 kms. Thus, all granite was transported 1000 years back at that time with the available transportation technologies.
- The structure is vertically aligned i.e. the center of the Lingam is perfectly aligned to the center of the top stone, a perfect zero degree. The stone at the very top at 200 ft. weighs 80 tons.
- This structure was created in just 6 years in 1010 by Raja Raja Cholan.
- Tanjore is famous for its unique gold leaf paintings, music and dance and bronze sculptures.
May 9, 2017
In all living forms, science has discovered genes – which is the encoding of repeating itself.
Question – Is there something in all living forms that says, “I am different”?
My observation is that ‘I am different’ is not only a characteristic of humans but also in the lowest of the living form – plants.
- Each plant has different shapes of leaves. This differentiation is not required for producing food.
- A few plants grow vertically and other grow horizontally. This differentiation is not required for survival.
- Every flower produces a unique design of flower – from the shape of sepals, petals or arrangement of sepals or petals, even colour patterns are unique. This differentiation is not required for reproduction.
- The fruit produced by each plant is unique with different textures and tastes. This differentiation is not required for anything except the ‘nature of giving’.
All of the above 4 elements are not required for repetition or reproduction. Each plant or tree need not express so differently to reproduce themselves which is related to gene theory.
I want to know if there is anyone working on the Theory of being different.
May 9, 2017
Kishore Moghe is doing a brilliant job in energising self-empowered villages in Yavatmal district. He is closely associated with Mission Samriddhi.
A few observations on his work
- Building leadership skills at the village group level.
- Educating them on constitutional powers under the forest act.
- Forming design teams to understand the village’s resources using scientific methods like satellite pictures of the area (ISRO website), taking large visible printouts and mapping existing resources with potential.
- He engages gramsabhas in visioning exercises by conducting large workshops involving the youth as well all the gramsabha.
- He helps them prepare a detailed plan with actionable suggestions.
This is a very holistic development of our tribal villages.
May 9, 2017
Yesterday, I visited Varanasi for the inauguration of Utkarsh Small Finance Bank. We are their complete digital core banking technology partner.
Few observations about Varanasi and around
- One of the oldest cities with a somewhat recorded history from 1100 BC
- Birthplace of the Indian scriptures
- Birthplace of Jainism and Buddhism
- Very talented craftsmanship
- Very old architecture of large temples
- It’s on the bank of the Ganga river with lots of water and fertile land for agriculture giving 3 crops per year.
- Even in the modern era, Banaras Hindu University and Allahabad University are much earlier universities in the State, including IIT Kanpur nearby.
This translates into the
- Rich intellectual capacity of the city
- Rich culture of learning as a society
- Rich natural resources
This combination is the ultimate recipe for a highly developed city as well as the ‘world’s greatest tourism spot’ in line with Paris or Rome.
My question to this group is – what is holding back this city of Varanasi to flower and fruition?
The purpose of this curious question is not to blame anyone but to try and understand the
- Elements of social and economic development
- Elements of individual and social thinking
- Role of vision vs. contentment
ABOUT ME
Hello, my name is Arun Jain. I am a design thinker living in Chennai, India. This is my blog, where I post my thoughts, technology trends and tips about the fintech world and many more.