The Living Root Bridges of Meghalaya

Ingenious. Inspiring. Brilliant. And a superbly shot video too.

Take a look at this video. It is the story of how people in the rural areas of Meghalaya, in India, connect and interact with nature and build natural bridges made out of tree roots! Reminds one of the blockbuster movie, Avatar. The video shows how an old man shares his knowledge of how these bridges are built with his grand-daughter. Someone from the source network said - very beautifully - in response to this video, "The joy of sharing the knowledge is its own reward".

More Information:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035520/Meghalaya-villagers-create-living-bridges-training-roots-river.html

http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/

http://chrisgagne.com/541/the-root-bridges-of-meghalaya/

Zeroing in on Curbing Corruption

It's been a really long time since I spotted a paradoxical idea worth blogging about. This one comes to me after quite a long break. Source of Info: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/zero-rupee-note
Original Blog Post on it:  http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/05/zero-rupee-note-that.html

I think this definitely is a paradoxical idea at its best. Give them what they want. But make it so unique that they no longer want it. ;-)

Preserving India's Knowledge

Almost three years ago, I posted about my discovery of the Bangalore-based FRLHT – Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions - and remember vividly that I was quite excited about it at that time. Now, three years of evolution or rotting (depending on the way you look at it ;-)) later, I followed the Twitter profile of a person (Mani) who happened to retweet one of my tweets (this is a distraction, nevertheless, in case you are curious what my retweeted tweet was about and are lazy to click on the link, let me tell you. It was about a KM product company – Trampoline Systems, if you want the name as well - that is adopting a crowdfunding approach to finance its future) and found something there that rang a huge bell in my mind and brought back memories of my spotting the FRLHT office bus. When I glanced through Mani’s recent Twitter updates, I was lucky enough to spot one of his tweets about the existence of an organization called CIKS - Centre of Indian Knowledge Systems! One look at the organization’s home page and I was mighty impressed by their projects, vision and achievements. Not surprisingly, as I glanced through the Trustees page, I realized that the key person behind FRLHT is one of the members of CIKS as well. That bell in my mind was spot on! Ding Dong! :-)

CIKS seems to focus on preserving India’s agricultural knowledge amongst other things and speaks of some inspiring and admirable project areas to help India’s rural population through well-designed programs. Most of the projects revolve around organic farming methods but I guess the scope and potential for expanding this concept is immense! Not many weeks ago, I was having a conversation with two of my friends about the possibility of using KM in non-profit ventures and for social benefits and we’d touched upon areas like Education, Agriculture, Health-Care and Infrastructure. CIKS is a brilliant example of what can be done in the agricultural arena. More so because of the rich agricultural history that India has. Even though the focus at present seems to be only on preserving conventional agricultural knowledge, it would be quite easy to extend it to facilitate sharing of knowledge across farmers, providing them with the platforms and practices to network, collaborate and innovate! If proven to be a success here, I can’t think of any reason why it can’t be replicated in the Education and Health-Care sectors as well. Speaking of Education, I am reminded of India’s traditional and inspiring Gurukul system.

There is an urge to come back and look into this at length and expand on the ideas…..but what do you think?

Sweetness and Light

Well, even if I happen to be a bit infrequent with my blog posts at times, I am glad some people think this blog can serve the purpose of spreading sweetness and light! :-) Take a look at the message below. I received a mail from Hemanth requesting me to put this up for those interested in contributing. Meanwhile, I explored the Anand Charity website and was impressed by their projects and the people behind it! May their tribe increase and inspire!

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My name is Hemanth Sampath, a volunteer for a non-profit organization called Anand Charity (www.anandcharity.org). Anand Charity was founded by Indians representing stellar academic institutions such as IIT, Kellogg, Wharton, Johns Hopkins University and multi-national companies such as Qualcomm, Shell, and McKinsey & Company. Anand Charity was founded with the aim of identifying and providing need based financial support to organizations involved with health care, primary education and disaster management in India. We have six active projects in different parts of India. Some of our current projects include providing assistance to:

• A school that offers vocational training to mentally challenged students in Rajasthan
• A school in Uttar Pradesh for building a kitchen that serves 250 students
• A village in Andhra Pradesh for building a well to ease drinking water problems

We have been able to accomplish a lot in a short period of time since our founding. We would like to bring about further change. We are currently running a fundraiser (called “Change for $5”) to help us support more development projects in India. We believe that $5 can go a long way – it can buy textbooks for a student for one year or provide food and drinking water for a person affected by a disaster or buy a daily meal for children in a school.

We would like your kind help in spreading the word about Anand Charity and the fundraiser. Your blog is extremely well written and read. A mention about Anand Charity, its mission, its current projects or the fundraiser would immensely benefit us. It would allow us to reach out to and touch more underprivileged people. We would be very indebted to you for your help.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thank you for your time, consideration and support.

Best regards,
Hemanth
hemanth.sampath@anandcharity.org
Anand Charity - http://www.anandcharity.org

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Power Capsules

Visited the Ramakrishna Math in Ulsoor (Bangalore) for the new year last week. It was quite, not unexpectedly, crowded. Though I generally prefer sitting there in solitude and silence, it was a visit that I am thrilled about. Ask me why! :-) Primarily because I discovered a lot of new books at the Math's book-shop.

One of the books I picked up is called "Power Capsules" and comprises short and inspiring thoughts by Swami Vivekananda. Simply awesome stuff. Believe me. I am in total awe of Swami V all over again! There's an electrifying power in his words...enough to charge a billion people to start with. I can't imagine how powerful it may have been to hear him live! As I read the book, I couldn't help but wonder why we're not making it compulsory for school students to read his works. I think every school-going kid must be introduced to Swami V's thoughts and ideas. My mind jumps with joy at the very thought of what a wonderful influence and experience that will turn out to be for the kids. The sooner they get to know him, the better. I have no doubts that it will lead them on to a brave and constructive life. (Wonder if the Ramakrishna Mission schools make it compulsory for their students to read the Mission's literature. Would be a joy to observe the influence that it has on the kids studying there).


Sample this from the book "Power Capsules": "Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library"

"Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the cause of all our woes and it is fearlessness that brings heaven even in a moment"

"We need to have three things: the heart to feel, the brain to conceive, the hand to work. Make yourself a dynamo...If you are pure, if you are strong, you, one man, are equal to the whole world."

I think I'll share more in my subsequent posts......if this post doesn't motivate you to go around and look for books by one of the most charismatic and inspiring people I've ever come across.

Prosperity Index

The last time I got really involved and excited about deciphering and analyzing such a matrix was, I think, when I worked on some assignments in the Economics class. Thanks to MT for pointing to this intriguing report.

Believe me, this index can really challenge some of your beliefs if you're looking at it for the first time. Some of the discoveries as reflected in the Index reminds me of the proverbial battle between perception and reality (reality here means government-generated numbers and surveys which, of course, can also be challenged). I think it is fascinating to see the correlation between the last two parameters of the index - Religious Freedom vs Religious Belief. (I find the whole concept of including 'Social Supports' parameters in this index to be a very worthwhile idea.). What can possibly surprise you is the discovery that India does well on the 'Low Unemployment' column and does not do as well as we might have generally imagined on the 'Religious Belief' column.....what with India being considered the spiritual capital of the world. Australia tops the overall ranking. Singapore tops the Economic Competitiveness ranking (and, of course, the 'Commercializing Innovation' ranking). South Korea's high ranking on the 'Commercializing Innovation' column goes a long way to reiterate how the country has leaped into the limelight over the past decade or so. India does not do well in the 'Better Education' column! :-( And no surprises on discovering that European countries are great on the 'Comparative Liveability' parameters.

There's no end to the number of indirect discoveries and conclusions one can arrive at based on each of these columns and, of course, based on correlations between some of the columns. If you happen to make some interesting discoveries, please do leave your thoughts here.

PS: Can't help wondering about the direct and indirect implications of the countries' performance in the 'Better Education' and 'Community Life' columns, in the context of KM and Collaboration....! ;-)

A Beautiful Vision

I recently attended a conference on "Women 2.0" (revolving around Women in the Technology Industry) on the occasion of Woman's Day - March 8th. Missed a few sessions in the first part of the day but caught up with some sessions in the afternoon. Quite a few interesting topics like Entrepreneurship, Juggling Professional & Personal Life, Feminine Leadership, Skill Building for Women, and Innovation were on the agenda in the afternoon.

To be honest, I guess I was not fully engaged all the time as the presence of a friend forced me to indulge in some chatting and giggling as well. But what I want to share here is something on innovation (a topic that gets me enormously excited, all the time, every time).

The session on Innovation was a panel discussion involving 3 women with many patents to their credit, a HR head, and a facilitator from an Innovation Consulting firm. As I sat listening to them, the facilitator revived my interest in the Aravind Eye Hospital (I've heard and read about it many a time and also got to read a really huge case study/story on this a year or so ago). She spoke about how Dr. Venkataswamy (the key person behind Aravind Eye Hospital) got innovative and learned from an industry nowhere related to the medical field** and succeeded in making a difference to many poor people across the country. She also mentioned about the availability of a video of the story on YouTube, that I'd not heard about before. (In case you're interested, I found it to be here). The video is nicely done and worth your time.

Two things about the story that strike me as fascinating and wonderful are that one can be inspired by something that is seemingly ridiculously irrelevant (the process of conducting surgical operations a la McDonald's business operations :-)) and Dr. Venkataswamy's thought at the end of the video - "Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful". Now, I am going to take the liberty of adding that "beautiful" here means something that touches people/society....something related to the welfare of people/world at large....something that one will feel proud of....something that makes life better, for many people!

** As I've reflected before on this blog, we should not underestimate the power of analogies in the area of innovation.

The Baghavad Gita

Just finished reading Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Baghavad Gita. Very nice read! To be honest, I've never ever found it so easy to read and understand a book on the Baghavad Gita before this one. (Whole lot of such unread/half-read books on my shelf). Stephen uses lovely language to pass on Krishna's message. Nothing less, nothing more. I really am so thrilled that I finally managed to read the full 'poem' and need not complain about not having read it despite the fact that it is considered one of the most valued spiritual writings on earth. The book has a nice supplementary chapter on the views of some great personalities on the Gita wherein Stephen brings out some of the inconsistencies in the Gita as well....questions that are bound to arise in many people's minds. The book's last chapter is an essay on the Gita by Mahatma Gandhi.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who's not been so 'successful' in digesting other - more complex - versions of the Gita.

Karma Capitalism

Karma Capitalism

Talks about Indian Management Gurus and how they are accelerating the adoption of ancient Indian wisdom in Business and Management.

Key words/phrases - Concentration, Consistency, Co-operation, Detached Involvement, Purpose before Self, Defocus on gains, Inner Peace over Materialistic Achievements, India - Fusion Society

Did you know?

Did you know that there was a foundation for revitalization of local health traditions (FRLHT) in Bangalore? Wow! It has Sam Pitroda, among others, on its Governing Council.

How did I get to know? Saw their office bus going past mine a few days ago and noticed the name of the foundation printed on the bus and actually gaped at it as I really did not imagine we had such interesting initiatives to preserve our good old knowledge of medicines! Would be interesting to know what else this foundation does apart from research on ancient Indian medicine theories. Their mission talks about medicinal theory, practice and yes - perhaps the most important – lasting social impact. But well the truth is that it is yet to impact a laywoman like me…! I hadn’t even heard about the existence of such a foundation till I saw their office bus but I am to be blamed for that. If not for my poor newspaper reading habits…

But on scanning some press releases linked to the FRLHT website, it appears that there was one initiative that tried to touch laymen - An effort to get some cities in TN to grow medicinal plants. BTW, many homes in South India do grow Neem and Tulsi both of which are well-known for their medicinal values.

FRLHT Mission

To demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Indian Medical Heritage by designing and implementing innovative programmes related to
A. exposition of the theory & practice of traditional systems of medicine,
B. conservation of the natural resources used by Indian systems of medicine
C. revitalisation of social processes for transmission of the heritage, on a size and scale that will have societal impact.

Laloo - CEO, Indian Railways (Largest Employer in the World)

Laloo and Indian Railways :O) :D

China Inc; India Inc - The Largest Organizations on Earth...

An article that I read a few days ago triggered off the following thoughts - It goes without saying that large companies have their inevitable set of problems and challenges that accompany complexity. But the best part about such companies is that cruising through these complexities would be easily offset by focusing on the employees and leveraging on their intellectual resources. In fact, that’s the only way to cross those chasms of complexity. That’s why, I believe, Knowledge Management is critical. Without proper KM strategies and practices/systems, the complexities can only get worse. What’s more, even if the complexities are overcome by hook or crook (read short-term tactics), absence of KM thinking will mean that the organization will lose out on various potential opportunities for expanding business and becoming more efficient.

It is interesting to think that the whole business of outsourcing is perhaps a KM story for China Inc and India Inc are simply putting their vast intellectual resources pool to use and leveraging on it, contributing to global efficiency and effectiveness in the process. One conclusion that can be directly drawn from this example is that KM would be especially essential for large organizations….

�We must get more money into education�

�We must get more money into education�

Wonderful ideas on improving the education system in India from Mr.Premji...

Sania, India

Sania mania – "Now, Tennis is Sania (in India)" says, my friend, Ashwini. True. Sania is 'everywhere'...not just on Indian tennis fans' minds and on the tennis court but also looking at us from out of billboards and talking to us from out of the Idiot box, asking us to trust a certain oil and petroleum major, a jeweller et al. Celebrity marketing in India is most certainly not going to take a break. As I sat thinking about the craze and madness, I saw the opportunities that are arising out of this case and before long, I was sort of proven right by a fact-based article on the same lines in a leading daily. There are opportunities amidst the madness….more people are, as I imagined, taking to tennis - which is good in my opinion. More people are choosing tennis as their career and life, more people are getting into the ‘business’ of tennis. At least in Hyderabad, where Sania comes from. What we need is, if there can be such a thing, a controlled mania (an oxymoron, I agree) once in a while….we need more leaders and trend setters in each area that is 'important' to us. For example, a charismatic person leading the initiative of ‘Save the tiger’ (Talwar, for example, is one passionate ‘tiger’ himself). The green revolution (Dr. Swaminathan) and operation flood (Dr. Kurien) are fitting examples. What needs to go with such phenomena is the media. Media can shape today’s youth by understanding the need of the hour and ‘blowing up’ the ‘right’ things in the ‘right’ manner. I think editors, columnist thought-leaders, journalists, television anchors, (and not to forget, authors) etc have a fantastic opportunity to shape the country’s youth. The responsibility that they carry on their shoulders is perhaps many times more than some people realize. They can slowly but surely make or break moulds and opinions and careers. The governing forces of the country need to get this clan of people on their side (or maybe vice versa :)) and collaborate with them.

India as an Innovator

The Q from Bala Pillai:

Why has India *not* produced a single quantum invention in the last 1000 years when before that, it together with China was responsible for nearly *every* quantum invention?

He goes on to add that though it might seem like we haven't created products, there is probably more scope for innovation in services...

This is an extremely lengthy thread. Not reproducing the whole thread for your own good ;).

My rather elaborate thoughts on the topic:

Extremely interesting conversation and thoughts here! I shall bounce the ball into both sides of the ground. I agree with you when you say that innovation need not necessarily be only in the product industry but can also be in the services industry. For that matter, innovation can be purely managerial and/or strategically oriented. I guess it is very easy for the world to see product innovations while the rest are invisible to the non-discerning eye. Also, innovation in the services industry does not necessarily mean that we have to invest money, while product innovation calls for a huge investment. In the same breath, it certainly is because of strategical innovation that India is at the hub of the outsourcing industry and earning all the dollars that it does today.

Just the other day, I was having a related conversation with a colleague of mine. He came across an article by a top manager in Wipro about India’s knowledge creating abilities. In the author’s words "While feeling good about our abilities, potential and dreams is fine, we must have our feet on the ground by knowing the reality. Despite our current position in IT, the reality is that we merely work on platforms, operating systems and languages developed outside India. Compared to our potential and huge population, we have hardly created innovations and intellectual properties. The issue is that for more than a century we have lived with a mindset of being “receivers of knowledge” and not “creators of knowledge”.

On reading which, I certainly felt that were we knowledge creators, we’d simply be creating more products! I think we have to face the fact that we are not the complete knowledge creators. Perhaps because of the fact that we don’t have a) Risk-taking attitude b) Tons of disposable financial resources. We are undoubtedly cost-focused. We want to earn money in the short-term rather than invest it in a long-term assignment. Even the stock-market pundits take calculated risks but with a short-term focus.

Yes, after the VC boom, there have been so many companies (that is definitely knowledge creation), but then, there again, we don’t want to go overboard and develop products. Services are of course knowledge based, but then abstract and more or less transaction/project based. Maybe there’s a third category called knowledge modifiers? India, today, may belong to this category. Between knowledge creation or innovation and plain low-end services.

Food for thought: The IT services in India today, per se, is a result of innovation in services. Isn’t that considered a quantum leap?

Swaminomics

See what Blogging and Blog-surfing has brought to me! :) A window to Swaminathan's articles!
I just love his articles esp. because of his no holds barred style of writing!

Students Blog

There's so much happening in the IT world. Computers, Internet, Computer Applications and Systems are changing the way the world lives and works. It would be extremely critical for the new generation to catch up with the latest. Well, I beg your pardon - they should ideally be racing against time and inventing newer things and designing the applications of the future. But how many schools are on to it? I read about a school called Pathways where each student has to mandatorily have a laptop. The school itself is Wi-Fi enabled and teachers can log into each of the students' laptops and 'watch' what they are doing! Now, that's wonderful! Ain't it? If all schools were to have such facilities, one doesn't have to worry about the future! But is there a time lag between what happens in the world of work and world of studies? Ideally, that ought not to be the case. Even if there are schools like Pathways, what about all the other schools? What percentage of the student population gets to go to such schools? What is needed here? Mediators who bridge the gap between the 2 worlds? Our nation has to look into it. The education ministry needs to apply thought! I'll have to google this and find out if anything's already happening! ...hmmm...

BTW, I started off by thinking what would happen if every student in school were to blog her/his thoughts everyday. Wouldn't that create a revolution in education? Food for thought! Schools need to experiment and innovate. They are responsible for so much - they are responsible for the nation's future!