Expose, regulate, rehabilitate or destroy the greed and addiction economy...

People have far greater “exposure” to lots of addictive junk thru’ television..which has over a past few decades seeped deeper to almost emerge as the popular culture. Lots of it has got enmeshed and consecrated as part of the accepted lifestyle and things to aspire for – fulfilling our need for achievement and social status.

On the face of it there may be nothing wrong with owning an even bigger car or an expansive house – whether an apartment or a villa; 100% diesel-based power back-ups; air-tight rooms with 24x7 air-conditioning; lavish vacations to far out destinations etc. etc.

Yet, as you dig deeper, you discover plenty of shady and murky stuff that lots of this shine and glitter tries to cover up – trillions of dollars in perverse and regressive subsidies that are pumped year after year to keep these aspirational lifestyles “within reach”. And the moment it seems to slip away - there is a quick bail out - even as a number of really important agenda on energy, climate and social justice are slipping behind.

The challenge, on one hand, is to supply useful stuff and to warn about the dangers of the additive junk – which online communities such as WorldChanging, TheOilDrum and Copperwiki as well as a large number of grassroot communities - are commendably doing.

At the same time, there is a pressing need to rehabilitate the delinquent adults many of whom are out in the open in alarming numbers - even writing the rules ,setting policies and presiding over the bail-out plans that responsible adults are forced to live up with.

Like all good things, democracy in its present form has become a burden and needs reforms and renewal. A couple of changes that I believe are urgently required are :

1. To allow every child - a vote through its natural or rightful guardian.

2. Political candidates must be screened and appraised on their competency for the job, based on systemic enquiry - to make obvious complex cause and effect relationships, transparency and effective communication. The scores must weight in good proportion with the popular vote for the final outcome.

Can we debate and mandate these changes, if it passes the debate, before it's "too late"?

Is their any alternative?

Agenda for Genuine Progress

Unlocking India's potential by rediscovering ancient insights

The current spate of events of terrorism and the attempt to throttle it, lead us to a challenging juncture in human history. We in a linear extrapolation of our popular behavior cannot accept that we have reached a blind alley in our quest to discover the ultimate reality of our existence. That the response to terrorism, for instance, has to be to dissolve its basis and not its overt manifestations. Technology and the market alone have no answers, this is a reality; deeper inroads into the human consciousness and the laws of nature hold the key to solving many of our problems.

In the words of Sri Rishi Kumar Mishra whose work on scientific interpretation of Vedas inspires this article: “A creative response to (such) challenges could open up an entirely new era, in which the search for knowledge and the pursuit of peace, harmony and happiness could be closely intertwined. A breakthrough would enable mankind to disentangle itself from the frustrating situation in which the more solutions are found to problems, the more it is confronted by new ones. We have reached this stalemate because the vast potential for discerning profound truths hidden in the forgotten labyrinth of history has remained untapped.”

Overawed by the intoxicating advances of modern science and spellbound by the efficiency spewing mechanism of the market, we have missed out on the exhilarating results of the incisive enquiries made earlier in our history and their practical applications. The efficiency brought by the market at present is confined to the industrial system and does not account for costs incurred in the overall natural system. Inquiries into the complex workings of nature and its cyclicality hold insights for better-informed business decisions and consumer choices leading to overall efficiency, much to the customer's delight.

Revisiting a golden era

To place and time the events in our context, these secrets -- which include enquiries into the mysteries of nature and the processes and forces that create, sustain and ultimately subsume us -- were unraveled and some of the eternal laws of nature discovered several thousand years ago by the great scientists of the Saraswati civilization. This civilization flourished in the catchment area of the gigantic river Saraswati, which dried up and disappeared underground following a prolonged spell of drought and natural calamities.

This society in the Saraswati basin enjoyed a rich culture. Great minds devoted themselves to the pursuit of knowledge. These seer-scientists -- rishis -- so called because they could see the reality of the workings of the cosmos, bequeathed to posterity an invaluable heritage of knowledge and insights, blending theory with carefully devised practices.” (Mishra, 2000)

Different from popular perception, the Vedas -- the body of this knowledge -- are no mere exertions in metaphysics, philosophy or spirituality that did not find place in the conventional scheme of commercial and consumer interests. Ironically, it has been even shunned, as a distraction to the 'worldly pursuit' of higher profit and personal income and in meeting our consumption needs.

In reality, this “corpus of knowledge include subjects like anatomy and medicine, architecture and town planning, meteorology and astronomy, language and linguistics, music and dance, statecraft and economy, social engineering and jurisprudence, psychology and physiology.”

Unlocking India's potential: A beginning

Furthering and widening these lines of thought and practice, blending them with our current preferences and choices; processed and managed by our software and knowledge management skills, should be the focus of our attention at a national level. This holds the key to unlocking India's potential to not only bail out of its current financial, social and political crisis but to drive genuine progress as a role model for modern civilization.

Interestingly, this creates a convergence with a parallel quest for a 'new' story that leading management thinkers in the west such as Peter Senge and a host of cognitive scientists and cultural historians are groping for as well, deemed as the sustainability story, that can be positively described as the story for genuine progress.

Work on innovation and change in organizations reveal how stories become a carrier of culture. In empirical studies a common approach has been to identify artifacts of a culture, such as the unique symbols, heroes, rites and rituals, myths and ceremonies, that are embedded in the stories that the organizations tell themselves, and then to explore, to a greater or a lesser extent, the deeper meanings of these artifacts (Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Trice & Beyer, 1984; Wuthnow & Witten, 1988, Hofstede, 1991; Martin, 1992).

According to cultural historian Thomas Berry, “We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it…sustained us for a long period of time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purposes and energized our actions. It consecrated our suffering and integrated our knowledge. We woke up in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children.”

“...sustainability (genuine progress) requires letting go of the story of the supremacy of humans in nature, the story that the natural world exists as mere 'resources' to serve human 'progress'. But most of us grew up with this story, and it is still shared by the vast majority of the modern society. It is not easy to let it go, especially when we are uncertain about what the new story will be.”

Elements of the new story are emerging: We are just beginning to explore (from a western viewpoint) what it means to be part of a universe that is alive… not just cosmos but cosmogenesis… Moreover, the new universe story “carries with it a psychic-spiritual dimension as well as a physical-materialistic dimension. Otherwise, human consciousness emerges out of nowhere… an addendum [with] no real place in the story of the universe.”

Such a story is essential if we are to make real changes in our practices -- in our production decisions and in consumption choices and their overall experience. Stories are a set of deep beliefs and assumptions that develop over time by our repeatedly telling them. New stories emerge as we gradually see and experience the world anew. As author Daniel Quinn says, these stories become the carriers of culture.

Our cultural roots in the Vedic stories -- suffused with such artifacts -- embedded in our way of living hold further promise for our genuine progress. It demands that we dig deeper in the goldmine of our practices and the rituals to comprehend the deeper beliefs, motivations and assumptions that underline these stories in our present context.

These beliefs need to be reinforced by their wider acceptance and pronouncements at the highest levels of leadership, intelligentsia and celebrities. Media coverage in print and in television with its wide reach, carrying endorsements and the practical significance of these stories can seed the stories in our imagination. Storyboards -- cinema, soaps and theater -- can take it further to wider sections of the masses with a telling effect.

Simultaneously, the new stories have to find prominent place in well-researched curriculums right at school. Research in management, social sciences and engineering on how these stories can impact consumption choices and patterns, and waste reduction with positive impact on corporate bottomlines, need firm government support before they are lapped up by corporates, who are at present smarting from the adverse impact of the earlier take-make-waste stories. The downward spiraling effect on their bottomline and in their market prices reflect the unsustainability of the earlier stories and the pressing need to develop a new one.

We are sitting on a goldmine of our cultural heritage. During this financial and economic crisis that is likely to percolate deeper into the socio-political arena without an end in sight, we should not make the mistakes that cave dwellers made as they froze to death on beds of coal. Coal was right under them, but they couldn't see it, mine it, or use it.

Reprint: First published in Sulekha on Nov 16 2001.

Finding A Higher Comfort Zone: Solutions for A Small Planet and A Big Family

We have individual responsibilities that we are needed to conduct - like for family, for the organisation that may be paying us, and for our self.

We also have collective responsibilities - as a family, as an extended family and friends network, as a neighborhood community, as a region, country and as a planet - with deep awareness that it's a razor thin balance that has existed only since past 10,000 years or so that sustains human life...( a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of the known existence of the universe or even planet earth).

A deeper awareness that we may be on the verge of destroying this delicate balance due to our ignorance - wilful or otherwise, addiction, greed and other vices that seem to have spread its tentacles far and wide..often in the disguise of "respectable" institutions and conventions.

NOW OR NEVER, more of us need to be fully aware..and illuminate the concentric circle of our relationships outwards and laterally through mass media...with this new awareness..and start acting on them.

Many people have unforetunately, come to believe that the problem is already being solved - people are getting aware and making "greener choices" at "individual" levels, they say, as an aside from their primary work.

How much of the problem does it solve ? - Not more than applying face cream to a festering wound according to most concerned experts:

"How can greenhouse gas emissions possibly be curtailed when such global population growth and high emissions rates in China (and India) are undoing whatever cuts the rest of the world makes?"

American journalist Robert Samuelson derides such tiny cuts as part of a feel-good political culture that is mostly about showing off, not curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and is made worse by politicians who pander to green constituents who want to feel good about themselves.
Grandiose goals are declared, he writes, but measures to achieve them are deferred or don't exist.
He adds that it's all just a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.

..."Take Australia, for example, where about 135 million incandescent light bulbs are in use. The Government wants to ban them by 2010 to cut the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 800,000 tonnes a year by 2012. If this sounds a lot, bear in mind that it represents a reduction of just 0.14 per cent. "

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10502373

Is it possible to develop far-reaching solutions that will help the environment and at the same time boost the economy?

That's the teaser...that got me interested 7 years back. 124-FuelSaver is a key trigger that paves the way forward to solve the hydra-headed problems facing the world - energy , food and water insecurity, diseases and wars, loss of social harmony etc..

As you discover how the 124-FuelSaver trigger works, you may get the a-ha feeling. Let us celebrate.

It could not have been possible without the support and good wishes of numerous individuals and organisations worldwide...Let us now put our resources and energies together to implement these solutions around the world.

IS IT THAT SIMPLE ?

The central problem is a frightening one, even for a braveheart, never-say-die guy like me. The reality of a world which is ruled by people who are either pathologically addicted to the old world or they lack the will-power to break the shackles of "sanctified" drug-peddling that they find themselves locked into.

An old world, where "helping the environment" is inevitably seen as "harming the economy" by the ruling and other powerful groups against growing evidence that if the environment is damaged, beyond repair and starts affecting our health, the economy will in any case collapse.

An old world where "mediocre minds offer violent opposition to great spirits" when the later shake them out of the stupor to douse the fires that may bring the house down. This includes the violence of sleep and inaction, when a small child is playing in other room and a pregnant mother taking rest on the bed, sure that the head of the family will take care.

The mediocre minds like this head of the family, feel disturbed just b'coz they are still sleeping, even after sensing that the house has caught fire.

Is this the third stage of their resistance, to paraphrase what Mahatma Gandhi said.

Will they next, see the light, like he believed they do?

Is this the darkest hour before the dawn?

Or will the old world addicts spoil the party..b'coz they don't like fresh air, deep blue sea, a starful of night sky, healthy children and mindful adults, great spirits...(their hate list is much longer)

That is a more sober thought...

I have some good advice from someone, who I deeply regard - Prof. Rishikesh Krishnan, Professor of Strategy and Business Policy at IIM Bangalore.

"Keep up the good work and don't get worried by naysayers", he says.

Reprint: First published in Sulekha on May 14 2008.

Why is the Inclusive Growth story floundering?

There has been tremendous spurt towards inclusive growth in India over the past few years both in terms of impact and scale of operations - micro finance, livelihoods, education , health, sanitation etc. - as well as in the number of entities engaged in each of the areas. Yet, our recent study of some of the leading entities raises some fundamental questions about the overall impact on inclusive growth year on year and offers deeper diagnosis into a complex problem.

It raises fundamental questions about our ability to recognize or to deal with the much larger process of “exclusion” – by which a vast majority of the people are systemically excluded - at all or at different times.

It points to the complex machinations of our individual and collective minds which makes most of us as perpetrators of exclusion against our own general intent of creating inclusive growth. Due to a variety of factors, our action may be at odds with the general intent.

The Specter of Systemic Exclusion

Instances abound in our daily lives of how our actions defy our larger general intent.

Why do we switch on the air-conditioner, even if the ambient temperature is in a "comfortable range" and keep it at a high difference to the ambient temperature? Even if our general intent may be to minimise use of grid power and to explore alternative ways of creating comfortable ambiance.

This could be done in variety of ways that would be in line with our general intent. We can just withstand the temptation to power on the AC and reach out to open the window or the door instead. Over time we have a variety of options such as:

a. We can train and gear up your body to feel comfortable in a larger range of temperatures.

b. We can use local materials and ambient greenery to create a localised heating or cooling effect, as required. Use of organic detergents and isolation of grey water flow can mitigate any water shortages. Advances in landscaping and wallscaping combined with use of renewables, energy conservation measures such as heat sinks can create a smart air-conditioning infrastructure.

c. We can use a ventilator near the top of the room to let out hot air in summers or insulate the walls for winter.

d. Yet, most of us fall prey to picking up the remote and adjusting the temperature in the moment. We thus procrastinate our larger intent to act in a different way.

Similar conflicts arise when we intend to kick our smoking habit. We may all the time intend to quit smoking and yet, give in to the temptation another time and procrastinate action on our larger intent.

In other instances, it may be about jumping into your car for another short trip, or to skip the carpool or metro trip for another car trip – even if our larger intent may be to reduce car trips by substituting for short trips may be different.

In national policy, exclusion is reflected in an off-budget 5% GDP subsidy to bail out petrol/diesel users but failure to address agricultural distress by providing loans at affordable interest rates or to create packages for large scale transformation for chemical-free farming using maximum of natural or non-toxic inputs, new skills, ingenuity and enterprise; or for similar gaps in our education/training and health/nutrition sector allocations.

At a global level, a 700 billion USD bail-out package , as proposed, for the Wall Street belies global preferences reflected in doing utmost to meet the MDGs, on which most countries are slipping and, India is doing particularly miserably.

The key findings of our study are:

* Our failure to check “systemic exclusion” painfully undercuts genuine and sincere efforts in inclusive growth that focuses on creating livelihood opportunities for tens of thousands of the poor - euphemistically called the “Bottom Of the Pyramid”.

o One, our vision of inclusive growth goes far beyond creating opportunities for the poor. It must delve deeper into what leads to deprivation and impoverishment and come face-to-face with the reality of “much larger” exclusion.

o Two, I think BOP is a weighted term that questions any notion of a “pyramid”, when the reality is that we all need to be “included” into a new vision. Even if we succeed in getting the “bottom” up, mimicking the consumption pattern of the “top”, we are all worse off, given the limits to critical resources.

* Isolated and fragmented efforts on “inclusive growth”, as a result, are inadequate to create net inclusive growth, in spite of great intentions and tremendous efforts, in many cases.

* In the worse case, they act as a safety valve, or as a way to ease the conscience, of “trying their best” or are “overblown” to be presented as evidence that inclusive growth is indeed happening and to counter growing weight of evidences to the contrary, often through unscrupulous means.

Trickle Down or Suck Up - Reality Bytes on Trajectories of Economic Growth

* For some, there is an underlying belief, however misplaced and proven incorrect over past several decades by empirical evidence that economic growth will “trickle down” to the rest. In reality, the present model of economic growth feeds addictive consumption and aggrandizement that is “sucked up”, leaving precious little to “trickle down” or even “sucking up” in the net in direct and indirect ways.

* This particularly marks a general failure to contain our consumption of energy, land and many other limited resources for housing, entertainment, food and transport “excluding” large sections of people from fulfilling even their basic needs or to reduce our pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that “excludes” millions of people through climate change induced natural calamities and diseases, indirectly.

* For many others, who have well understood that growth doesn’t “trickle down”; our diagnosis is that most of them have genuine conflicts in combating procrastination of their global preferences of “inclusive growth” and going along with “exclusion” for one more time. This is a serious challenge that we need to “systemically” address.

SIGN - Guiding Principles and Agenda

The key tenets for checking "systemic exclusion" in a new approach are:

1. To get aware of how “exclusion” is happening in reality and to be prepared to face up to its challenges.

2. Inclusive growth requires micro finance and market interventions, certainly. It simultaneously needs lots of work to evolve a powerful and compelling visioning and similarly for a systemic structure – policies, directives, overall regulatory framework - as per the findings of our study – to align local preferences to the new global preferences. Trying to change local preferences, too long, too far tends to drag and has diminishing returns, and is very frustrating otherwise.

3. Inclusive growth with Nature needs a deeper, shared understanding. Lots of efforts on inclusive growth are creating localized, short-term benefits that does not meet these criteria and is certainly not scalable even if they may hold on for some time.

* A key guiding principle for realizing the new vision is that we must work in synergy with Nature – both internal and external - and not against it. This is based on the assumption that working with Nature releases new energy in the system as well as prevents redundancies, waste and leakages.

Like nature, industrial design should be self-renewing; every product should not only be manufactured using nontoxic ingredients and green energy sources but also be capable of being broken down into its basic biological and technical elements so it can be reborn and reused at the end of its life span, whether in factories or compost heaps... It's a world in which no material is ever wasted."

- William McDonough, Leading Architect and Designer

* This creates WIN-WIN possibilities of a truly inclusive growth that can sustain our new aspirations of resource-smart, prosperous and culturally-rich lifestyles.

I propose the following agenda for SIGN in this direction:

• To create frameworks for policies, directives and overall systemic structure for existing and new institutions based on present competencies.

• To further develop competencies in various areas beginning with core areas of Agriculture, Livelihoods, Community Building, Energy & Transportation.

• To live by – individually and collectively - and to adapt to the emerging shared vision and guiding principles of Inclusive Growth with Nature.

• To provide architectures for eco-system innovations and/or policy advice and advocacy to government, industry, academic NGOs and multi-lateral agencies.

• To run public campaigns to create awareness and to mobilize opinion, support and action and to grow and adapt as a leading national institution in pursuit of our overall purpose of creating Inclusive Growth with Nature.

Regards,

CV