Recorded herein are my impressions from the Jagriti Yatra, 2013

-Gaurav Ketkar

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jagriti yatra 2013 building India through enterprise

contents

introduction

food

people

how different cultures can create a wonderful experience

a typical day on the Yatra

immersion experience in Deoria

Role model visits

Devdutt Pattanaik Chief belief officer, Future Group

Popatrao Pawar Sarpanch of Hiware Bazar

Jyoti Mhapsekar rag pickers association

Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya a school with a difference

Sachin Desai school without walls

Vishnuteertha Agnihotri Educational Initiatives

Panel Discussion S. Bagchi, M. Chatrapaty, A. Sinha, S. Bansal, S. Ganeshan

Dr. Aravind Aravind Eye Care

Joe Madiath Gram Vikas The ideal village

Anshu Gupta Goonj Cloth as a tool for greater social change

Bunker Roy Barefoot College, Tilonia making grandmas into solar engineers!

Jagriti Yatra is an initiative of Jagriti Sewa Sansthan, a non-

governmental organization that promotes entrepreneurship. The first

Yatra was in 2008. In Hindi, Jagriti Yatra means a journey of

awakening and as the name suggests it is a journey of social

awakening. Jagriti Yatra is all about creating the next generation of

job-givers as opposed to job seekers and to that end, many of my

co-Yatris were such selections that they already had taken the leap

and had started some enterprise/NGO of their own.

A very big applicant pool (18,000 applications from around the

world) allows the JY team to introduce immense diversity in the Yatris

selected for the Yatra. In fact, my own group, Group-E had people

from as many as 10 different Indian states and one of them was from

France too! People from different parts of India offered a completely different perspective and displayed a very

different mindset or way of attacking a problem.

Jagriti Yatra takes you on a journey across India to meet 15 of Indias titans in the field of enterprise, primarily

people who have worked for social good. The Yatra experience is exciting and at the same time extremely

humbling. It is a chance to find out how much you do not know! For me it was a chance to live my dream of living

in a hostel-like environment at least for 15 days. I found out why they say that your hostel mates are your mates for

life.

You are bound to bond well if you have to put up with the same serpentine queue for the washroom early in the

morning. Your bond strengthens if you share a common love for classic old Hindi songs & then spend the second

night of the Yatra singing them with your cohort until the wee hours of the morning.After that special song in the

middle of the night,you end up having the real lifeline exercise if you know what I mean! (Note: A lifeline exercise

Group E (L-R): Top row - Jyotsna, Ankit, Nitya, Gaurav, Ramya (facilitator), Sri Harshit, Samrat, Puneet, Amar. Bottom row - Rutwik (facilitator), Ashvin, Mital, Emma Members of Group E not in this picture are: Sandeep, Parth, Sanvar Lal, Prabhakar, Prithvi & Barkha they were busy finding their personal peace in the land of the Mahatma

We want the youth to become job

givers rather than job seekers

Shashank Mani, Chairman Jagriti Sewa

Sansthan

is something that we did on the Yatra to get to know to each other better. This exercise involved the participant

narrating his/her life story and nudging the graph up or down corresponding to highs or lows in their lives) You

know you have really broken the ice when, I wonder

when they will give us hot water for a bath. Then we can

all take a bath! becomes, Ayee Ketkaar! Jaa Naha ke

AA! Tu hi hai jo baas maar raha hai! and you reply,Ja

chaal! Wo toh Dey-la hai jo 4 din se nahaya nahi! (At

this point, you have all decided upon silly nicknames for

everyone like Dey-la, Satellite or Amar Deep Jawan

Jyotan!)

The extent of ones own ignorance becomes evident on the Yatra. Some of the things that struck me are that there

are people who have done so many things already not just the role models but also the Yatris. Not all the things

are great or have had a social impact. Maybe some of those activities are even wicked! Nevertheless, they have

taught these individuals valuable lessons and made them so much wiser. I now realize how vast India really is in

fact, post-Yatra I have come to believe that there are two countries India and Bharat in the same place and there is

tremendous opportunity in both these places.

Suprabhat, Good morning Yatris, today we will It is with such an announcement over the public announcement

system on the train that 450+ participants or Yatris for the Jagriti Yatra were woken up every day. Patriotic or

otherwise inspirational songs were then played to inspire (read harass) us out of our sleeping bags! Sometimes

they also played the Yaaro Chalo geet on the speakers to wake us up. The lyrics of the song are:

YAARON CHALO

Kuchh badal raha, kuchh badlenge, [Some of the things are changing and some we will change]

Tab badlega, jab badlenge [They will change only when we will change]

Kuchh dekha hai, kuchh dekhenge, [Some of the things we have seen and some we will see]

Kuchh likkha hai, kuchh likh denge... [Some of the things are written, some we will write]

Yaaro Chalo badalne ki rut hai [Let us go friends; it is the season of change!]

Yaaro Chalo, sawarne ki rut hai [Let us go friends; it is the season of betterment!]

Hawa keh rahi tu theherna nahi [The winds are asking us not to stop]

Gagan keh raha tu pighalna nahi [The sky is asking us not to fall apart]

Zameen keh rahi mujhko chhuke to dekh [The earth is asking us to touch and feel it]

Arey ankhein mila, satya se darna nahi... [Look into the eyes, and don't fear the truth]

Yaaro Chalo...

Yatris, everyone will stay in their bogies

until the headcounts are done!

Vibha Joshi - The voice behind the PA system

I participated in the sixth edition of the Yatra. This Yatra had a

handful of participants from USA, UK, France, Italy, Nepal,

Russia & China too but for all the international Yatris that I

spoke to, bringing about change in India was not a priority.

They were here to get a feel of India under the nurturing

care of the Yatra team.

I have divided this document in two parts. One deals with my life on the train, the people I met there, the various

aspects of living 15 days on a special train and the other part is about the role models we met and their

philosophies and teachings in brief. This is so that the reader can skip through bits and pieces without losing

context. This write up is more a record of my impressions of the Yatra than a well-researched document & so

descriptions of the intellectual and the physical journey are freely intermixed.

Our train - the Yatra Express, was truly a wonderful train with 18 boogies. One of the things unique about the train

were the Bathing Bogies the JY (Jagriti Yatra) team had modified two bogies on the train such that we could take a

bath on the train itself! There was an aluminum tub kept between the two benches in that coach. Attached to this

tub was plumbing that took water away from the tubs and drained it outside the train. The Yatris for their baths

used huge tanks kept inside the coach filled with ice-cold water to fill buckets! Before the Yatra we were told that

hot water showers would be provided for taking baths little did we know that not only were there no showers,

but even the water wasnt heated. Well, not until the last day at least. This meant that I ended up taking a bath

every 3rd day and even those were quick! According to some Yatris, every self-respecting engineer should have, by

his/her final year mastered the art of living without bathing at all! The organizers had (in jest I hope) declared a

Balti Award for the group that maintained the cleanest compartments throughout the Yatra!

Water was another issue for some reason bogie number 6, the Mohammad Yunus (all the bogies were given

names of heroes like Joe Madiath, Mahatma Gandhi, Madam Curie etc.) had lost the capacity to hold water in any

of its taps. (Note: the any is significant and indicative!) We had to make the long trek to the next bogie or to the

next and so on to get access to water. I found that the washrooms for the twotier AC were significantly better than

the 3-tier sleeper class. A washbasin with soap and a mirror, hooks to hang your coat and a fan! After this, I would

prefer going to these more feature-rich washrooms even though they were nearly four bogies away from me. I

confess that I would take my brush, shaving kit etc inside and then hog the washroom for a long time! This had its

own consequences though. They served food in a particular sequence and often times I would be late for the first

round of breakfast or miss the morning coffee/tea completely!

Wait! Was there breakfast AND a separate morning tea/coffee? Well, let me tell you about the food and the

amount of food that JY gave and its frequency!

Thandethandepaanise

Ahhh! -The standard bath-song during a cold

bath for Indians since times immemorial

food

Early morning: Tea or coffee was served - sometimes, even when I was still in my sleeping bag!

Morning (Breakfast): Tea/coffee, gathi, bread jam/butter, poha/upma/idli-wada-sambar/some other strange

regional breakfast food everything was unlimited, dripping oily & delicious!

Noon (Lunch): Salad, fruit salad, 2 Veggies, roti/puri/bhakri/gakar+ghee/bhatura, some regional sweet/ fruit

custard, papad, pickle, chawal/khichdi+kadhi, dal etc.

Evening (Snacks): Dhoklas, alu-wadi, some other-wadi, some regional delicacies and tea/coffee.

Late evening: Soup. After day 4, we stopped asking the serving folks what kind of soup they were giving us

neither of us knew what to call those soups! After Patna, we were simply glad to have something warm to drink at

all!

Night (Dinner): Food was similar to dinner but the veggies were always different. Imagine the logistics that go

into preparing food for so many! The JY team is so caring that once we hit the north-belt of the country, i.e. after

Patna, after dinner we were given piping hot turmeric infused milk to keep our throats in good shape!

With so much food I had expected my weight to shoot up post Yatra unfortunately, no such thing

happened -,-

As a mark of gratitude for the tireless work done by these men, we contributed a certain amount during the Yatra

and then bought gifts for all of them towards the end.

Thanks to the Coca-Cola sponsorship, we had bottled drinking water throughout the Yatra. At some venues during

the Yatra, the Coca-Cola folks got generous and all Coca-Cola offerings like Coke, Sprite, Maaza, Fanta, Minute

Maid etc. were available to us free! Maybe they were doing their own customer validation but we got free cold

drinks! Wahoo!

Extremely well mannered and humble serving folks like this fellow above served us throughout the Yatra. Most men came from Rajasthan but some were Marathi, Bhojpuri & South Indian and all of them insisted on feeding us more fooood!

Chalo, SaaideSaaide. Ek

side Dena sir...fatafat! -Every serving staff member to us

people

On the very first day of the Yatra, all the Yatris gathered at the TISS convocation center at Mumbai. We registered

at the registration desk and were issued ID-cards. Our bogie no. /compartment no. and a group name were

written on this ID card.

We started mingling with people. Yatris who looked obvious foreigners never had to look for people to talk to on

400 people Yatra there were always more people who wanted to know about their country, their traditions etc.

There were also the typical people who just click pictures with these harried firangis getting uncomfortably close

to them in the process and then move away without a word, not even a thank you!

Meeting so many new faces all of a sudden was a very new learning experience in itself! By the end of the first

hour, I was already tired of explaining to people that my college VIT, was not Vellore or Punes VIT or either of

their branches. I was tired of saying the entire name Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Wadala repeatedly!

When somebody had heard about it, it was in the context of the coaching classes with the same name. I have

officially added Getting people to recognize my college as a reasons to the Why I want to become great &

famous one day list!

It was not all a walk in the garden though. Very quickly, I learnt that I

could never possibly get to talk to all the 600 people on the train in the

15 days that we had, so time was very precious. I had to get out of

conversations that did not interest me as fast as possible without being

rude a valuable skill to learn I am sure. What is more If I found a

person to be interesting, I had to,in turn be exciting enough to

him/herfor that conversation to continue. All this was a fascinating

learning process. I met doctors, social workers, consultants, architects,

film production students, art students, chartered accountants, TEDx

curators, sign language experts, sociology students, satellite researchers who worked for ISRO, medical researchers,

successful startup owners, farmers, coders & so many more people from so many backgrounds!

I was part of the Group E. Rutwik along with Ramya were the facilitators for my group. A group consisted of six+six

boys(Two cohorts) and six girls (Another cohort). Each group was composed after carefullyconsidering the

personalities/backgrounds of each Yatri. This system seemed to work well as I gelled great with my cohort and the

group also there were no major fights that usually seem to erupt sometime or the other with groups travel on a

long journey. Even Shashank Mani, the chairperson of the Jagriti Yatra, remarks in his book India A journey

through a healing civilization that despite there being people from many diverse backgrounds, there were no

troublemakers. He says that the concept of venturing out, sharing an adventure, thinking about the future

instinctively draws positive individuals to the journey. Those who were finally selected were optimistic in their

approach to life. Their conduct on the journey reflected this attitude.

What struck me was that I do a lot of unnecessary stereotyping when it comes to people. I seemed to have (even

now Im trying to get rid of that habit) a habit of judging whether I liked a person or not even before getting to

know him/her. The most ordinary looking person turned out to be someone who rescued his/her village from the

grips of alcoholism. Some guy, who always made an effort to look cool, actually was cool super cool even!

Maybe he ran a startup that let people pursue their dreams or maybe he researched on a device that would enable

instant detection of malaria! That plain looking kid is actually older than I am and risks his life, educating girls in

Naxal hit areas of Bihar for a living, strikes a chord somewhere. For 15 days, Never judge a book by its cover

became my motto. After the Yatra, Im trying to maintain that same outlook towards people.

Never judge a book by its cover

how different cultures can

create a wonderful experience

Sometimes interacting with someone from a completely different culture can create hilarious settings. When I say

completely different culture, I do not mean just the foreigners who were on the Yatra India is so vast that

differences in culture are noticeable for every community and for people from every state. I am sure that every

Yatri who reads this account will remember some incident that they witnessed; I have listed the few incidents that I

can remember.

ONE: sit down! Aap yaha beith jayie This is what any Indian kid would say to an elder woman respectfully if he/she wanted her to sit on some particular seat. On the Yatra, the organizing committee had recruited nearly 40

volunteers in a team called the Disha team. (Disha means direction) These volunteers were to make sure that the

Yatris found their way to the venue from the railway stations and back. They were also responsible to tell Yatris in

which bus they could sit for speedy transport to and from the venue.

One thing is very peculiar about people who attempt to speak in a language other than their native tongue.

Suppose there is a girl who speaks Marathi natively & wants to speak in English. What happens most of the times is

that she will speak what she wants first in her head, in Marathi and then just substitute the different words in

English. The result can be quite comic. The Wikitravel website has this to say about this phenomenon:

Most Indian languages lack a word for please, just like the Scandinavian languages. Instead, verbs have many

forms denoting levels of politeness and formality. As there is no such distinction in English, Indians may also seem

commanding to a westerner. You may hear phrases like come here which may sound commanding to

Anglophones from Western cultures, but this is not meant to be rude.

Russell Peters classic stand-up comedy act immediately comes to mind where he pokes fun at the funny way

Indians speak in USA and says, Russell come. Coommee...cooommmee*nods head*

One such hapless Disha team member caused some exasperation for one of the Yatris from UK when he said,

Hey! Hey you, you sit here! Hurry up! That Yatri was dumbstruck! Having travelled with Indians for almost 10 days

now, she quickly recovered and said in mock indignation, You sit there, you say? Why should I sit there?

TWO: may I come in? We were visiting the ideal village of Gram Vikas on our day in Odisha. The village was ideal because it had a school, tar roads, electricity, water wells, community space and most importantly

hurricane-proof homes all of this without any support from the government!

We all know how over excited we Indians can sometimes get. If we know there is something being offered free, we

shrug off all pretence of civility and the battle to be first in the queue (if there is any!) ensues. If a villager is seen

sporting traditional wear, we all become expert albeit uninvited photographers and start clicking pictures of that

poor chap as if he were a museum specimen. Admit it. We are all given to these tendencies.

One such incident, which happened here in Gram Vikas, was Indian Yatris entering the so-called hurricane-proof

homes and clicking pictures! Indians are notorious for nodding confusingly whether or not they agree to

something. This tendency seems to apply to all Indians & has seemingly no geographic boundaries and so when

Yatris asked if they could see the villagers houses, the villagers just smiled and made confusing nods. This was all

the permission that some of us needed and some Yatris even settled down in houses where people were doing

their work! Dadiji Mei aapka kaam karti hoo. Aap aaram karo.Cue another Yatri who clicks Namita doing

household work in Village, resulting in 100 likes and 25 comments on Facebook!

Even I consider this downright rude but it was Emma, our guest from France, who pointed it out & asked if this was

normal behavior in India Yes Emma, sadly it is!

THREE: this tree is so cool! Let me climb it! Do not consider, even for one moment, that only Indians do all the embarrassing things. (Whew! Right?) The irony is that we have a very self-depreciating way of

looking at such incidents. If a foreigner wears his/her footwear inside a temple, we shrug it off as a foreigners

ignorance. On the contrary, if it is a fellow Indian, we automatically expect him/her to have exceedingly high

standards, know about cultures of both India and the foreign country they are visiting. If they do not, then he/she is

just so Indian!

Well Heidi, who was on our Yatra, comes from France and when we went to Deoria, she decided to climb up on

the great 300-year-old banyan tree, which is a holy tree in the village of Barpar. This tree was sacred to the locals

and so there was a local villager grumbling about her climbing up on it. He even waved a stick to her from the

ground. Heidi, completely oblivious to his apparent discomfort, waved back!

FOUR: bottoms up! It was December 31 and we were in the Kankia School of Gram Vikas. I was sitting with Jean from France, Ian from Hong Kong and Nitya from Delhi and having a leisurely chat. We were all talking

about how we celebrated the 31st every year. This is where I found out about the drinking habits of the Chinese

and the French!

Jeans exact words were, We try to get away from our parents and get as much booze as possible! In France,

drinking wine at the dining table is just part of the etiquette. Children are apparently, introduced to wine at a

young age obviously with small doses! Drinking is not that big a deal & teetotalers are an exception rather than

the rule.

In China, said Ian, if you are invited to have dinner at somebodys home, your host serves you alcohol. Young or

old, you must drink, if you do not want to risk insulting your host. The Chinese drink some really strong spirits,

which are as much as 60 proof alcohols! What is more? According to Ian, your host decides how much you drink. If

he/she keeps topping up your glass, you have to guzzle it all down!

After this, Nitya and I sounded like paragons of virtue (If abstaining is considered one!) and me more than her! I

confessed that there was no drinking involved in my New Year celebrations. 31st of December is the birthday of

one of my closest friends and if we are not celebrating her birthday, we usually just go out for dinner somewhere

and then there is a sleepover at some friends place.

Nitya admitted that she did have drinks occasionally but she welcomes the New Year under the watchful eyes of

her parents in the society premises!

FIVE: dance with the dragon! One day on the Yatra, I had a wonderful opportunity to know more

about our neighbor country China. Rafael Chi Hao Wang joined the Yatra Bangalore onwards and everyone was

excited about meeting this Chinese guy with an interesting name. We had breakfast together that day and I

learned something about living in China. Chi Hao lives in Hong Kong so fortunately, he has access to both Google

and Facebook but people in other parts of China do not. He told me that there are other websites just like Google

& Facebook in China too! I found that in China, the undergraduate schools are flexible Chi himself was a nursing

student and in his second year switched over to math and psychology. Imagine doing something like that in India!

Just as every second student in India is aspiring to become a doctor or an engineer, every student in China is

aspiring to become a lawyer. Just like me, Chi was in the final year of his bachelors degree program. One more

thing that he told me was that in China students usually opted for internships in areas not directly related to their

study discipline! An engineering student would intern at a PR firm, a lawyer would intern at a think-tank & so on. I

felt this was a wonderful way to truly gauge your own likes/dislikes & abilities and weaknesses before venturing out

in the big bad world!

Chi told me that a strange problem in the part of China that he came from was that there were more girls being

born compared to boys. (Later I checked and found that in fact, the opposite was true for rest of China!) Although

he was no expert, he attributed this to the kind of food they eat. Apparently, under Chinas one child policy a

family can keep having babies as long as they are all girls. However, you stop once you have a boy. What a unique

way to promote the girl child!

I also found out that the average Chinese has immense interest in the Indian culture & especially the Buddhist

culture. In India, a child from a well-to-do family either becomes a doctor or an engineer according to Chi Hao,

becoming a lawyer was all the craze in China!

a typical day on the Yatra

On a typical day, we would wake up at 6 a.m., freshen up and have our breakfast. After breakfast, we usually de-

boarded to go towards our venue for the days role model visit. Volunteers at that place showed us around the

campus and told us about the working of that organization. After this, the role model would address the Yatris and

answer our questions. This question and answer session would continue until lunch.

In the afternoon session, we had either a panel discussion to attend or a few more role models who would address

us.

In the evenings, we returned to our beloved Jagriti Express. A set of 12 boys and 6 girls constituted a group. Every

day in the evenings, one particular group was supposed to give a presentation based on the events of the day. My

group (Group E) gave a presentation on the panel discussion by Sachin Bansal, Abhinav Sinha & Shivakumar

Ganeshan. With Sanvar Lals puppets, Ankits expert talk on Science and Technology and Ashivins fantastic acting,

our presentation was one of the best on the Yatra!

This was the end of the structured activities for the day. The Yatris were then free to socialize, discuss, debate, blog

or for the brave hearted souls take a bath even! The lights-out time was officially 11pm in the night but after the

first few days, nobody was bothered about the lights and discussions, debates, songs and games would continue

until the wee hours of the morning.

immersion experience in Deoria

Deoria is the HQ of Jagriti, which started in 2001 as a small NGO that is focused on skill based development. The

Deoria stop is designed to turn the Yatra on its head. Instead of looking at role models who have already created

institutions or enterprises, we visited an area that is just starting on its journey.

Our purpose therefore was to visit a typical village and discuss with fledgling social economic enterprises with a

view to see how one would scale them up. The visit focused on a workshop called the Biz Gyan Tree. Since the

Yatra is about building India through enterprise, this exercise gives a little idea about setting up a business to Yatris.

While registering for the Yatra we were asked to select one vertical out of seven. The verticals were Agriculture,

Healthcare, Education, Tourism, Manufacturing, Energy and Water & Information Technology that are

the foundation of nation building. Additionally, few horizontals were defined. Horizontals are services

that cut through the verticals and are required for all the seven verticals. Financial services, Public private

partnerships were some of the horizontals.

Once you reached Deoria, we were put into groups according to the verticals that we had selected.

These groups were guided or mentored by someone who has done extensive work in that particular

field. We were asked to come up with at least 3 ideas that would address some problem that we felt

people in the villages must face. The groups were then supposed to go into the villages surrounding

Barpar a small village in Deoria & carry out the customer validation of the ideas. Only one of the 3

ideas would survive this validation stage and that idea would be presented by that group as its final

business plan for the BGT competition.

I had selected Information and Communication technology as my vertical and my group had come up with a Biz

plan called Madat (Madat is Hindi for Help). Our team emerged first in the BGT competition and this gave us a

direct entry in the finals of the BITE (Building India through Enterprise) competition organized by Google for

Entrepreneurs.

Our basic premise was that there are already enough government schemes out there, which if are utilized properly

will make the life of a backward person better. The only problem is that there is no link between the demand and

supply, so to speak, of these schemes. Madat aims to become the bridge that connects disgruntled people to the

government schemes that would improve the quality of their lives. We decided that initially the service would be

limited to a pay-per-call helpline. People could simply dial a common number and state their queries. For example

if a person wanted to buy a tractor, the conversation would go something like this:

Caller: I wish to buy a tractor for my 1 acre field.

Operator: Maam, let me tell you the options that you have. You may:

1. Buy the XXXXX brand tractor which is suitable a field of your size for Rs. XXXX

2. Avail the XXXX government scheme to get XXXXX benefits/subsidy.

3. Rent a tractor. Here is the local dealers contact detail - +91-98**** ****

4. Buy a second hand tractor from Mr. XXXX or Mrs. XYYY who live in your vicinity and have put up their

tractors for sale.

Caller: Thank you, I will avail the XXXX government service.

Operator: Thank you for Maam for calling Madat. Please stay on the line or call again if you need further

assistance.

This would cost the customer a few rupees but the value addition of the information just obtained by the lady who

wanted to buy a tractor is priceless!

For the customer validation, we were sent to a small village called Ejrahi. Ejrahi is a tiny village of about 40 homes.

Here we visited the individual houses and talked to the people. We tried to find out what their most pressing

problems were. What we found out astonished us! There were three schools in the neighborhood two were

private and one was Khichadi school. Locals call it the Khichadi School because of the governments mid-day meal

scheme. Students seemed to want to go there simply to get the free meal!

I had collaborated with Damini a Yatri from Kolkata for this task. A 12-year-old girl that Damini and I spoke to

could not read the poem printed on her tattered textbook. She happily recited the poems that she had learned by-

heart & was coached so well that even pretended to read them from the textbook. Next, we gave her a simple

math problem 67 + 22. The answer was 78 according to her the logic being that 7 came after 6 and 8 after 7!

She did have English as a subject but the teacher refused to teach them Kya karoge aap English seekh ke? A

doubt raised by the students was met with a prompt slap and, Sawaal hai toh ghar jake apni Maa se poocho

The telecom boom has really changed the face of India in ways that we cannot even imagine. A house that we

visited had five cell phones one for each member of the household! The daughter-in-law of that house Savita,

is banned from coming out of the house at all! If she comes out into the courtyard, the family puts up curtains so

that the rest of the world would not see her & put the house to shame. We carefully built up a rapport with her

mother in law and asked her why this was the case. She said that initially Savita used to study and then suddenly

one fine day developed some eye problem. The treatment would be expensive certainly not worth spending on

the daughter-in-law in a house that has three able men working and earning. Therefore, she became a shame for

the family and now is literally a prisoner! One thing that everyone in these small villages seemed to do was load up

the cells. This means getting the latest movies and songs copied on your mobile from the local shop for a small

fee. They even excitedly shared the rates with us Rs 20 for 2GB of data & Rs 40 for the latest movie! This is all the

entertainment that the poor girl ever gets! In hindsight, the story that the old woman told sounds absolutely

hogwash & I suspect that there was a much more sinister story behind all this I will never find out!

One of the reasons why we came up with Madat was that we found that many people did not have access to

services that were rightfully theirs. Maybe that womans problem was curable and the family just did not bother to

check, simply assuming that the treatment would be expensive. Maybe with Madat, people like Savita could find

something much more productive and entertaining to do other than to watch low-res copies of latest flicks on

cheap knock-off phones all day.

Access to healthcare is a major concern for the people of Ejrahi. If someone were to fall ill, in addition to the loss of

the daily wage earned by most of the residents, the person would stand to spend money for the following: There

was one vehicle in the village and you had to pay for the fuel costs to and from Gorakhpur. No healthcare services

in Ejrahi. The doctor would charge some consultation fee and prescribe some medicines & if the doctor asked the

patient to come back again, the poor chap would incur all these expenses all over again!

The immersion experience at Deoria was a real revelation. So many things that people living in cities take for

granted, simply do not exist in the villages of India! Making those things easily available to rural India is the most

important challenge that we have to face.

What now follows is a short description of each of the role models that we visited throughout the Yatra. Each of

them has a fascinating story to tell and I cannot even begin to capture the essences of their real story for that you

either must start out on your own or work closely with one of them.

ROLE MODELS

Adam - KSV

Sachin -

Flipkart

Anshu - Goonj

Joe - Gram Vikas

Bunker Roy -

Barefoot college

Shivakumar Exotel

Devdutt Chief

Belief Officer

Jyoti Stree

Mukti

Sachin School

without walls

Subroto

Mindtree

Abhinav EKO

pay

Popatrao Hiware

Bazar

Dr. Aravind Aravind

Eye Care

Shashank Jagriti

Yatra

Mumbai Dharwad

-Devdutt Pattanaik Keynote speaker -Sachin Desai School without walls

-Popatrao Pawar Hiware Bazar Village -Vishnuteertha Agnihotri Education Initiatives

-Jyoti Mhapsekar Stree Mukti Sanghatana -Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya

Banglore Madurai

-Subroto Bagchi Mindtree -Dr. Aravind - Aravind eye care

-Panel DiscussionFlipkart (Sachin Bansal),

Ekopay (Abhinav Sinha), Exotel (Shivakumar Ganeshan)

Brahmapur (Odissa) Delhi

-Joe Madiath Gram Vikas -Anshu Gupta Goonj

Tilonia (Rajasthan)

-Bunker Roy Barefoot College

Devdutt Pattanaik Chief Belief Officer, Future Group. Keynote speaker at the flag-off ceremony of the Jagriti Yatra 2013.

His title piqued everyones interest - Chief belief officer of the Future group. The very first thing that came to my

mind was Kishore Biyani (CEO of the Future group) was indeed a superstitious man if he employed the services of a

chief belief officer. I lost this notion as soon as Pattanaik started his address.

He started with the story of a beggar who is offered rice as an offering every day by a rice merchant. The beggar

eventually grows tired of eating just plain rice every day and one fine day throws the rice bowl on the rich

merchants face. Pattanaik explained that this happened because the merchant did not take the darshan of the

beggar. Darshan according to him is a seeing something in its entirety. The modern day version of darshan

involves closing your eyes and asking the deity for whatever you desire in doing this, we completely miss the

point! In fact darshan cannot be done with the eyes closed! You must learn to see that is the ultimate aim of

Darshan. He weaved a fascinating story about how humans are the only species capable of imagination.

(Manushya is Sanskrit for Human, which comes from Manas or imagination) How we are the only species that

can imagine the hunger that we may face or our future generations may face if we do not store food for our

future, and that is what drives us to achieve more to aspire!

It became clear why Pattanaik is an asset to the Future Group when

he explained what he understood from the word Yadnya (or

Yajna). According to him, a 17th century German scholar

mistranslated it as sacrifice. Pattanaik argued that Yadnya should

actually be translated as business where the Yajmaan is the

investor; the Swaaha! that he does is the Investment; the

Devata or God that he performs the Yajna for is the Market or

customer and the Tathastu or the blessing received is the return

on investment.

He declared that the practice of closing ones eyes when going to the temple for darshan was counter-intuitive. In

fact, darshan is seeing the thing in front of you more closely, trying to understand it, trying to gauge its subjective

truth. According to him, being a Yajmaan is the true sense is entrepreneurship. The reason that most people fail in

business is that they fail to do the Swahaa but want to be the Bhagwaan and issue Tathastus instead. What a

wonderful thought process!

Such a radical approach to Indian mythology and customs was greeted by thunderous applause by the 450 Yatris.

We, as Indians are determined to proclaim at every available opportunity how great and advanced our ancient

culture is. I believe that through interpretations of the Puranas like those made by Pattanaik, we can once again be

sure of the fabled ancient Indian wisdom.

Next, he explained the concept of the universal truth. I have always wondered about the truth that every spiritual

leader claims to know. He put it in such simple terms & made it so easy to grasp that I wondered what would

happen to the scores of Babas in India if Pattanaik decided to enter their field. He explained that according to the

Puranas, there is no objective truth, or even if there is, we are not in a position to comprehend the universal

objective truth (Gautama Buddha apparently, found out this universal objective truth and that was his

enlightenment.) Everyone has his or her own versions of truth called the subjective truth. Our relationships with the

world can flourish when we take the proper darshan of others and learn recognize/accept their subjective truths

and them in turn, accept your subjective truth.

It was a very interesting talk and set the tone for the rest of the Yatra.

Popatrao Pawar Sarpanch - Hiware Bazar Village

Popatrao, Shashank & Devdutt were all speakers at the 2013 TEDx Gateway. It is there that Shashank met Popatrao

and asked him to be a speaker for the Yatris on JY13. Hiware Bazar was a village in dire states before Popatrao

transformed it into a model village. Very little rainfall, rampant corruption, chronic alcoholism & unemployment,

people migrating to cities, poor sanitation etc were some of its problems. Anna Hazare is his inspiration in his drive

to transform his village and make it self-sufficient in all ways. The Amir Khan show Satyameva Jayate covered the

water management model practiced at Hiwarebazar.

Dressed in a simple kurta-pyjama and speaking a kaam-chalau version of English, Popatrao nonchalantly skipped

the slides that showed the scores of awards won by him and asked his helper to stop only on those slides that

contained pictures. He realized that the crowd in front of him was not composed of boring bureaucrats &

politicians who look for figures and appreciate awards but restless souls like himself who cared only for the actual

work that he has done and the impact that it has had.

Hiware Bazar (HB) participated & won the Adarsh Gram Yojna competition. Popatrao boasts that they say in his

village, Find a mosquito and well give you Rs. 100 the village is so clean now! The village has only oneMuslim

family but despite of that, the entire village pooled resources to construct a Masjid. There are no statues

whatsoever in the village and birthdays of local or national politicians are not celebrated they follow their ideals

and that is celebration enough according to the people of HB. Some strict measures like ban on sugarcane

plantation, ban on grazing, ban on tree cutting & ban on tube wells have led to the water level rising in the village

and earlier where the women of the village had to walk many miles for water, there are now 300 wells in the

village!

Ratan Tata once wanted to visit Hiware Bazar but could not as Mr. Pawar had to go away on some important work

to Malaysia. Such is his stature!

Jyoti Mhapsekar Stree Mukti Sangathan (SMS)

Jyoti Mhapsekar is a well-known social worker. Her play Mulgi zali ho is well known in Maharashtra. Her parents

were freedom fighters and that is what inspired her to do something for others especially oppressed women.

SMS now runs Asias largest teenager training program Jidnyasa.

She has always worked for the lower strata of the society and when she noticed the plight of the women rag

pickers, she decided to work for their upliftment. She realized that in order to help the rag pickers she had to first

understand the waste cycle what happens to a plastic bottle once we throw it away?The waste cycle of a plastic

bottle is its journey from the end user who throws it away after use, to its landing up in a landfill somewhere, to its

eventual recycling. She found that there are several stages in this waste cycle and despite the rag pickers

(primarily women) being the backbone of the recycling industry in India; men dominate the various profitable

stages in the cycle. The SMS addresses this problem by forming federations of these rag pickers who can then

control the entire waste chain. Much of SMSs work is available online on YouTube.

Coca-cola was a sponsor for the Yatra and provided us with bottled mineral water throughout the Yatra. When

Jyotiji learned that we would be given 1 ltr. bottles throughout the yatra she was quick to repramind the organizing

team for such a monumental wasteage & suggested an improvement for the next years yatra so that we would

generate less waste.

Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya a school with a difference

The Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya (KSV) provides a musical and academic education to two hundred children. In

addition, food, accommodation, health care and clothing are also provided, and everything is free. There are no

fees at all. More than a school, Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya is a living and working ideal, where the students can

blossom and realise their full potential. KSV is traditional and modern in its educational approach at all times.

Tradition is taught through the ancient disciplines of Indian Classical Music. The modern educational programme is

based on the educational syllabus in Karnataka State, and great emphasis is put on teaching English as the main

language of communication. Computer studies are also important to prepare the students to meet the demands of

todays rapidly evolving world.

Founded in November 2002, the school is located in a

quiet valley near the city of Dharwad in Karnataka

State, South India. Established on three acres of land a

short distance from Kalkeri Village, the school consists

of simple buildings made from traditional materials.

In this peaceful setting, the children enjoy the

tranquillity necessary for their academic studies, music

practice and many other cultural activities.

The above description that appears on the website of

the school fails to do justice to the place. How a 12-

year-old girl Tabassum, from a low-income Muslim

family can play the violin and the flute and can learn six different languages is something that must be seen to

believe. KSV is a unique school that makes 3 hours of music practice mandatory for junior students on a daily basis.

The students can choose a musical instrument of their choice. Volunteers from around the world come to teach

(and learn!) to KSV. That is the reason why girls like Tabassum learn to speak as many as six languages.

Tabassum gave me a tour around the entire campus. We went to their library where we saw a unique laptop-

charging cupboard. All the laptops (the school has 12 laptops) that needed to be charged could be plugged-in

and kept in that cupboard and a main switch started the charging. A German volunteer who was also an

electronics engineer made this for the school during his time there.

Many of the resident volunteers at KSV come from outside India. It was a bit of shock to see foreigners dressed in

standard Indian garb, eating food in the Indian way. What was even more surprising was that these volunteers had

left their inhibitions back in their own countries and after lunch they, just like everyone else, dunked their plate in a

bucket and cleaned it off with some coarse gravel specially kept for this same purpose no hand sanitizers or anti-

bacterial soap!

The school buildings were Spartan Adam, the current principal explained, The students would take away the

music and the academic education, not the buildings so we do not focus on the buildings.

Tabassum(above) from KSV can play the flute and the violin. She can speak 6 languages including English and French with

reasonable fluency!

Sachin Desai School without Walls (sws)

No one would guess what a rebel lurks behind that sincere face of Sachin Desai. Sachin is the founder of the

School without walls - a school run by the students, of the students and for the students. Everyone is a teacher at

school without walls and everyone is a student too!

Sachin told us a story about how he went about establishing this School without walls. He used to work for Baskin

& Robins but then the local Gujrathi shop out-competed B&R on all fronts and this turned him away from a desk

job for good. He later went to some remote town called Alirajpur; where he noticed that every year just before the

monsoon the villagers would go around throwing stones on each others houses and breaking the roof tiles of

every house in the village. On making further enquiries he found that the potters of the villages would not be able

to work 4 months during the monsoon so in order to give them enough business so that money would last

through the monsoon, everyone in that village installed new roof tiles just before monsoon, every year! This made

him realize that he wanted to do something for the social good.

SWS is not a school but a community where even you and I are welcome to learn their ways and stay with them.

Useful life skills are taught at SWS. Two mentally challenged boys from this school did wonders that they could not

have otherwise performed. One researched on why some particular 21 things must be used to worship Lord

Ganesh he found that all those 21 items have water purification properties. In particular, Red Hibiscus (said to be

Ganeshs favorite flower) helps in lowering blood pressure. He made syrup of this Red Hibiscus flower, marketed

and sold it at a Goa food festival.Such innovations and ideas are the main source of revenue of the School and the

fact that they raise almost 60% funds through such activities is validation of the work that they are doing there.

Sachins belief in his school and way of life is evident from the fact that his family practices what he preaches and

his daughter studies at the school without walls.

According to Sachin, syllabus must not be defined by some university and then religiously followed by the colleges.

He believes in education that is applicable in real life. On being asked how one can learn such skills in a city setting,

he advised us thus, Jabbhi apke ghar mei electrician, plumber, rang-kaam wala aye, tab uske haat mei chai thama

do aur khud wo kaam apne hatoon se karo. Par kyuki wo electrician/plumber uss field mei expert hai, uski salah

mano (Whenever you call electricians, plumbers or masons to your house for some work, let them just guide you

while you do the actual work.)

What a fresh look at education and life in general!

Vishnuteertha Agnihotri Educational Initiatives India Ltd.

Founded by a group of IIMA alumni, with ample personal experience of educational institutions, Educational

Initiatives (EI) is an effort to ensure every child learns with understanding.Established in 2001, Educational Initiatives

believes in making a difference in education through personalized learning and ensuring that students learn with

understanding.EI has over 15 years of expertise in education, with a deep understanding of child psychology and

efficient methods of teaching, based on detailed research and a formidable database of student learning through

ASSET. Their detailed research has proven that children today respond to rote-based questions relatively well,

however, they fail to answer unfamiliar or application based questions due to unclear core concepts.

They aim at addressing this fundamental problem with a competitive team of professionals from the industry and

strong trust based relationships with over 3,000 schools in India. Their team consists of professionals who have vast

experience in the field of school education. The team members have taught in leading schools, been members of

the state textbook committees, designed and taught courses at the school as well as teacher-training level.

They believe in learning through understanding, so that the education lasts the students for a lifetime as a tool to

help them in all their endeavours.

Through their other interactive tools like Mindspark (digital self-learning program), ASSET, Detailed Assessment,

CCE Certificate Course, Teacher Evaluation Program, Teacher Sheets and more, Educational Initiatives assists

thousands of teachers in improving their students achievements.

EI is also working with leading organizations like World Bank, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Google, Azim

Premji Foundation, Duke University, USA and is doing large-scale assessment projects with various State

Governments. In the last 12 years, EI has assessed over 2 million students, with more than 55,000 students

experiencing personalized learning through Mindspark in cities like Lansing and Michigan, USA.

Today, EI has worked with over 3000 schools with over 3.5 lac students taking the EIs International Benchmarking

Test ASSET every year and has a presence in UAE, Kuwait, Singapore and USA. EI, in association with Google, has

also conducted one of the largest studies to gauge the student learning levels in government schools in 21 states

of India. The Government of Bhutan has also collaborated with EI to conduct Student and Teachers Assessments

on annual basis.

Subroto Bagchi, Sachin Bansal, Shivkumar Ganeshan,

Abhinav Sinha, Madhura Chatrapaty

Subroto Bagchi is a bestseller author of the book Go Kiss the World and Chairman of Mindtree Ltd. Which he co-

founded in 1999. He shared his life story and told us how he came about to

found a very successful company.

Madhura Chatrapaty is an entrepreneur with a difference. She asked the

host to address her as an entrepreneur and not a woman entrepreneur. She

came up on stage and declared, Im just an entrepreneur. This is the only

thing that needs to be told. That I am also a woman, can be seen to a

smattering of applause from the Yatris. She shared with us her fascinating

story of going into the male dominated industry of powdered ingredients

(think ready to cook meals, tamarind powder etc.) Networking and learning

to never burn bridges with anyone is one of the most important thing that

an entrepreneur can learn according to Madhura. She came from an army family and accordingly showed a

disciplined, razor sharp mind & exuded the easy grace that one aquires with hobnobbing with the elite in such

circles.

Sachin Bansal co-founded Flipkart. Today Flipkart is Indias largest

online retailer.

Abhinav Sinha founded Ekopay so that every person with access to a

mobile phone could pay bills without standing in serpantine queues.

Shivkumar Ganeshan is the founder of Exotel a company that

specializes in providing a startup with virtual telephone lines. Ever

wondered how the IDEA or Airtel people can be simultaneously

reached by hundreds of people calling on the same number? Exotel

provides the solution. (Not specifically to IDEA or Airtel but this

illustrates the work that they do) There is no other Indian player in this niche field and Shivkus story of his struggle

and the awakening (lessons learnt) during this journey were extremely exciting and interesting to listen to.

Instead of describing this session that we had at the Shephard auditorium in Whitefield, Banglore in detail, Im

going to let a picture do the talking. Rowan Watts, a British artist who travelled with us on the train documented

every talk, every role-model visit in her unique style of taking visual minutes. While the role models were giving

their talks, she would be busy drawing away on huge sheets of paper. It was really surprising to see a foreign artist

pick up the subtleties & nuances of the Indian English being spoken throughout the Yatra so beauitfully. Whats

more! Sometimes a role model would speak in Hindi this was no problem to Rowan who seemed to be just as

comfortable with Popatraos Hindi as she was with Subrotos polished English!

Start early and make 99% of your mistakes

as early as possible Abhinav Sinha, CEO &

Founder - Ekopay

You dont need to have all the answers!

Sachin Bansal, CEO & Co-founder

Flipkart

Dr. Aravind Aravind eye care, Madurai.

Our visit to Aravind Eye Care was delayed by almost 8 hours and so we were unable to see actual work done at the

facility. I had previously read about Aravind Eye Care in Rashmi Bansals book about entrepreneurship and from

that account, I assumed that it would be a nice & a clean place nothing could prepare me for what I actually saw.

The place was like a top-of-the-line super-specialty hospital! Aravind Eye Hospital was founded in 1976, by Dr. G.

Venkataswamy, a man known to most of us simply as Dr. V. In an eleven-bed hospital manned by four medical

officers, he saw the potential for what is today, one of the largest facilities in the world for eye care. Most of their

patients are treated free of cost and those that can pay (and are given appropriate comforts like private rooms etc.)

cross-subsidise the cost of treating the poor patients free of cost. The Aravind eye care video, Infinite Vision can

be found on YouTube and it summarizes the work done at Aravind Eye Care very nicely.

The hospital is not only about free treatment but has a great social impact as well. The nurses trained at Aravind

Eye care are amongst the most sought after nurses in the entire healthcare industry. However, the environment at

Aravind Eye Care is such that hardly anyone leaves Aravind eye care for any other hospital.The lenses that need to

be inserted in the patients eyes post a cataract surgery used to be imported from USA and used to cost a bomb.

This made cataract surgery inaccessible to all those who could not afford the lens. Aurolab an initiative by Aravind

Eye care centre solved this problem by indigenously developing those lenses in house at a fraction of the price.

One unique concept that Dr. Aravind used to explain a particular point during his presentation was the three circles

of life. According to him, this simple diagram could tell you a lot about the person whom this diagram represents.

The point he was trying to make was simple The circle of concern is always a large circle & contains all the things

that we are concerned. It is large for an average person because an average person is always concerned about

many things. The circle of influence is a little smaller in some way or the other, we can influence the outcome of

the things included in this circle and some of the things that we are concerned about (from the circle of concern)

are left out as they are out of our sphere of influence. The Circle of control is the third circle & is the smallest circle

and contains the things that we have an absolute control over. I feel that a satisfied person is one for whom all the

three circles overlap.

Over the years, hundreds of Doctors & thousands of nurses have trained at Aravind Eye Care centre. As the centre

has its doctors perform more surgeries in a year than in any other hospital on Earth, even doctors from faraway

Circle of concern

Circle of influence

Circle of

Control

places like John Hopkins University etc. come to train at Aravind Centre given the exposure and training that they

are sure to get. The Aravind eye care model is not restricted nor is its technique zealously guarded. In fact,the

people at this facility have trained up to 300 hospitals throughout India in the Aravind Eye Care way.

Aravind Eye care is certainly a role model for the healthcare industry and worth studying and more importantly

replicating throughout India.

Joe Madiath Gram Vikas

Literal translation of Gram Vikas is Development of the Village. The founding members came to Orissa as relief

volunteers but Joe Madiath could not go back to the world where he had come from. He left his work at the

Madras University to work in a small village called Mohuda in the Ganjam district of Odisha and founded Gram

Vikas. Gram Vikascurrently serves more than 3, 89,333 people in 1196 habitations of 25 districts in Odisha.

Our village is better than the town. We have 24*7 piped water supply to all families, without exception. Every

family has their own toilet and bathing room as well. When we seek marriage alliances, our daughters ask us

Would there be similar facilities there as well?Lalita Malik of Tamana village in Ganjam district excitedly shared this,

when asked what changes they see in their lives in the recent years.

As soon as Joe decided to dedicate his life to Gram Vikas, he set about identifying the main problem of the area.

He found that health was the main reason why the area was backward. Daily-wage workers could not afford to fall

ill for fear of going hungry that day. Students had to drop out of school if they fell ill once and the healthcare

charges proved prohibitive to the family. Often times, if the family could not afford the medical treatment, the

person went untreated and as a result, even died sometimes! Joe went to the root of the problem and further

identified the lack of pure drinking water as the main cause of so many diseases.

Joe was one of the few entrepreneurs who gave us an idea how difficult the work of a pioneer really is. He told us

that he approached the government and wanted to participate as a third party in the Rajiv Gandhi Water program.

The objectives of that program and Gram Vikas were pretty much the same. He was rudely turned away as the

government officials did not like being told how to do their own jobs. He persisted and was eventually, grudgingly

accepted by the government. Now the government subsidizes the hardware than Gram Vikas needs to put into

place to provide clean water and sanitation to a village or community.

Another unique problem faced by Joe was that of gaining the trust of his ultimate customers the villagers

themselves! Used to defecating in the open right from a young age, many people initially were scared of the

closed toilets constructed by the Gram Vikas team. Joes masterstroke was to install modified toilets in the schools

of the village; these toilets had colorful pictures inside for the kids. Once the kids started using these closed toilets,

the community gradually embraced them too and with that the issue of providing good health and sanitation too

was solved.

We also visited the Gram Vikas School Kankia Vidyalaya. This residential school focuses on honing those skills of

its students that will empower them for success no matter what they decide to do after school. Since most of the

students come from an agricultural background, the students are taught agriculture oriented tasks along with

regular academics.

Joe Madiath is originally from Kerala a state that is more developed than Orissa on many fronts. Joe told us that it

was because he was from outside Orissa that the people accepted him. The saying, No prophet is recognized in

his own country certainly seems to hold true for Joe!

Anshu Gupta Goonj

This was one of the most inspirational role model visits on the entire Yatra. Anshu, the firebrand activist that he is,

was highly charged up on seeing the Yatra. I would say that despite the chill of Delhi, he absolutely managed to set

the room on fire with his appealing oratory skills and the story of his fascinating work. Humans have three basic

needs food, clothing and shelter. Anshu Guptas Goonj is all about one of the most neglected of the three

clothing. It struck me when he explicitly laid out the statistics in front of us that most of us do not consider clothing

to be a major issue at all!

Anshu says that it is only during disasters like hurricanes and floods that we donate clothes and even this so

called donation is nothing but discarding the clothes that we no longer want. How many of us buy new clothes to

donate? The first thing that a disaster does to people is that it takes away their ability to safely store things so in

fact, every cloth other than that which is worn by these people is a burden to them! This was a real revelation!

Goonj believes that cold weather is as much a disaster as a cyclone or an earthquake is Anshu told us a tale

about a certain Hakim chacha (Chacha means uncle) and his Begum

(wife) whom he met in the streets of Delhi one day. Anshu stayed with

chacha for two weeks to learn about his lifestyle. Hakim chachas work

to pick up unclaimed dead bodies from the streets of Delhi, cover them

in government issued white sheets and then take this body cart to the

police. The story gets worse in a 3-4 km radius, Hakim chacha and his

wife found 12-15dead bodies daily during winter. The number dropped

to 4-5 during the summer. That is not the end of it the situation was

so bad that sometimes Hakims 12 years old daughter slept alongside

the dead bodies during the night. Her reason dead bodies provide

some warmth and do not move.

This moved Anshu to the core and he left his well-paying job to start Goonj. This organization uses cloth as a tool

for social change they never donate or sell clothes. The locals must perform some work that benefits their own

community and then Goonj gives them clothes as a reward. Anshu gave us an example of a village that he worked

with in the initial years this village did not have a bridge over its river so trade and commerce to and from the

village was restricted. This severely stunted the development of the village. Goonj identified this problem and its

volunteers constructed a makeshift bridge of 240 ft long and 6 ft wide from bamboo and wooden planks. This

bridge was sturdy enough for a bike to pass. Trade immediately picked up and the village started flourishing. The

villagers then came together to construct a bridge that was slightly better. The authorities were eventually shamed

into constructing a steel bridge across that river! Anshu said that Goonj uses any construction material bought by

the government without its permission, if it has been lying unused for a long time. He argued that the pipeline

whether laid down by the government or by Goonjs efforts, would carry the same water to the community.

Yatris quizzed him about the legalities of doing such things. He was unfazed and said that for any person, the logic

is always for not doing something. Doers just do it and do not look for a reason or justification if they believe in

their cause. Many times the government officials have already forgotten about the resources that Goonj uses and

sometimes the officials even applaud Goonjs efforts!

We never donate

we discard.

-Anshu Gupta, Goonj

Anshu had specially composed a poem for the Yatris. It goes as follows:

,

,

,

,

,

,

, ,

,

,

,

His passionate talk ended with a little slide show about his own life story and a strong message Dont kill your

passion by an Excel sheet Just start!

Bunker Roy Barefoot College, Tilonia

The Barefoot College at Tilonia welcomed us with garlands, dhol-tashe playing locals, and kids in two straight lines

with a welcomingNamaste to everyone who entered! This was the best welcome we had received so far on the

Yatra.

Sanvar Lal, a well-built man from rural India

seemed like an unlikely candidate for a singer

and a puppeteer. However, Sanvar Lal who

works at the Barefoot College was skilled at both

these art forms displayed his talent several times

on the Yatra. On reaching the campus, he

proudly gave us a personal tour.

For more than 40 years, Barefoot College has

been providing services and solutions to

problems such as Solar Electrification, Clean Water, Education, Livelihood Development, and Activism with the

objective of making the villages self sufficient. Their geographic focus is on the least developed countries (LDCs).

The motto of the college is, Train a grandmother and change the world! Are you

intrigued? The most surprising thing about Barefoot College is that it trains

grandmothersin becoming solar engineers so that they can make their own

villages self-sufficient in terms of energy requirements.

Why only older women you might ask? Bunker Roy, in his characteristic blunt style

told us that initially they used to train anyone who came for help. Eventually they

found out that (apparently) men are not very sincere they are not ready to listen

to the instructors at the college (The instructors are mainly women from Tilonia

itself) and even if they did learn, they did nothing for their communities. Young

women posed another problem that often times they would marry and move

away to some other village or a city this kept the village in its original,

underdeveloped state! Barefoot college then decided to train only elder women

from the villages. Their reasoning was that these elders were unlikely to leave the

village and that people in such communities tend to listen to the elder and the

educated.

Barefoot College welcomes Jagriti Yatra in their unique way!

Dont think that we

are doing social

work. We are doing

political work.

Anytime you are

changing mindsets

you are working in

politics. If I go into a

village and

everyone is happy

with what Im

doing, then Im

doing something

wrong.

Bunker Roy

We found an electronics workshop where resistor colour codes were prominently displayed on the walls. The

names of the colours were available in all the languages spoken by the current students of the college. They even

had a handbook with mainly pictures of the PCB and the before and after of how ever circuit component looked!

The handbook was as good as any found in my colleges laboratory!

Apart from solar engineering Barefoot College imparts education in sustainable water management, handloom

industry and other such sustainable technologies. The curriculum is so advanced that they are even taught to

construct a solar radiation cooker that uses mechanical ingenuity to follow the sun this means that the mirrors in

the solar cooker are always pointing towards the sun such an amazing technology!

Barefoot college recognizes the difference between education and literacy. Literacy is acquired from schools.

Education is something else entirely. People who surround us, the experiences that we have, and the mistakes we

commit are all our teachers. At the College, everyone is an education resource, the teacher as well as the student

and the literate as well as illiterate. Therefore, the Barefoot College is a radical departure from the traditional

concept of a college.

about the Yatra experience

What have my takeaways been from this Yatra? What have I learned that I already did

not know? Was the Yatra worth all the time that I spent on it? After all, vacation time

is precious for a Mumbai University engineering student!

The answer is that going on the Yatra has been one of my best decisions so far. I am

confident that when one day in the future, I will connect the dots, Ill find the Jagriti

Yatra playing a decisive role in shaping my success whatever it may be!

Where and when else in my lifetime am I going to get another such opportunity?

Meeting nearly 500 like-minded people from around the world, all of them carefully

vetted to have maximum diversity in the Yatri pool. All of us equally driven and

motivated, in whatever field we may be working in. Today, the Yatra has given me a

unique confidence. I can proudly say that because of the Yatra, I know at least one

person in every Indian state and at least one from three countries other than India. All

of these are Yatris, bound by that special bond.

Now I know what Gandhi meant when he said that the real India is in her villages. I

realized that living in Thane, where I come from, was like living in a cocoon. The kind of life in general that

someone from a big city lives is so far removed from the life that the rest of the Indians live, that we might as well

be living in a different country altogether! In this matter, the interaction with the rest of my cohort proved to be

invaluable! Amar came from Naxal-affected Bihar. He had all the gizmos and gadgets that someone like me would

have. But, the way he used that technology was different (to educate young girls in that Naxalite area!), the

national issues that concerned him were different, the kind of jokes that he found funny and so many other things

about him were so much different than, say, Puneet who came from Delhi or Samrat who came from Assam. All

such incidents served to remind me once again how diverse and varied Indias culture really is. Now, for every

adventure that I will undertake in the future, I will say to myself, I am a Yatri. I can do it. If I can stay in a train for 15

days amongst complete strangers, eating a variety of foods that I have never experienced before, listening to ideas

that expand your horizons, then there are very few things that I cannot do. Yaaro Chaloo!

The mind,

once

stretched by

a new idea,

never returns

to its original

dimensions.

Ralph Waldo

Emerson