Into 2021
Covid. Strain 1, now strain 2. Lockdowns. Unemployment, underemployment. Increased poverty. Decreased savings. Near zero. More than 10% GDP has evaporated. Despite desperations, frustrations, lows, we, most of us, survived 2020. Some of us could not. Some of us have become extra-prosperous.
Vaccines – Pfizer, Covishield, Covaxine et al – are now available. More will come. Hope they tackle strain 2 and more too.
Rajnikanth’s no top political play, due to health, may be family pressure, has disappointed many.
Amaravati protests lasted already a year and still they persist. Will they blink?
Farmers’ protests, for repealing the farm laws, continue. When will the Government blink?
Transit to 21, with Hope, Faith, Promise and Love, along with more resilience and agility. Towards living in nature. Towards improved life, human health, soil health and planet health. Let smiles be more ‘pronounced’. But, no plastic smiles, please. Let us be cautious with no fear. Let us connect more intensely than ever, so that we drive away fears, and take control of our hearts, minds and lives. Let us see through facts and imaginations. Silence, meditation, listening in, observation and reflections help us in this. May be some intensely focused ‘exploratory’ travels along Himalayas and other hills, coasts, rivers. Let us make some of these into habits, daily habits, like food, sleep, no zero on any day. Let us explore the power of habit.
May be exploring: survival vs lavishness, excesses, wastage; whether we are complicit in the crimes of inequity in some sense; embracing simplicity, sharing, giving; giving naturally, without seeking credit; slowing down; rejecting wealth display.
May be exploring golden ratio, divine golden ratio, divyank, 1.6180314; perfect objects of nature; human life; depths of when does the ‘life’ start and how does it end.
Let us be clutter free – in thoughts, in words, in actions, in material. Let us have less, let us be more.
Our identity stems from the conscious possession of our experiences. The continuity of self is established by memory.
The integrity of our identity itself needs to be endorsed by our ‘collective’ but cultivated in our solitude. If we are clear that it is the intentions and capacities for choice define a person, what are our intentions and capacities, against this identity, self, person, mind and soul of ours?
Let us live with immunity-nutrition conscious diet. More fruits and vegetables in the year of fruits and vegetables. More eggs too.
Let us do, write and teach more; read, interact, learn, interpret for the first. Let me catch up with the missed out. Let 7R be a habit.
Let us work with Community Organizations, Collectives, Local Governments (GS, GP), Grassroots Civil Society. Let us have a team for building their vision, perspective, strat/action plans and tracking the progress on these plans.
We need more leaders with professional management-mentoring abilities, working for the poor-vulnerable-marginalized. We need more institutes for the same. We need more institutes these courses. IRMA, IRM-AP, DMI, XSRM, KSRM, NIRD are in this list. We give our two cents, if they want. Of course, IRMA will have the first right. Already, indication for IRMA Consulting has been made clearly. With more Alumni, and Fraternity. IRMA has to get back on this. Telangana and Hyderabad too have to respond. There is also a need to transcend Management to Leadership. Curriculums need to be tried, mentored. Leadership needs to be incorporated extensively. Leadership schools have to emerge. We need to work with more of them. Beginning with Disom School of Leadership.
Let us do servant-horizontal control management and leadership course. Let us get more leaders wedded to this. Wedded to useful coexistence. In and with N.
Let us plan for next 25 years. India 100. Plan to get a million for this India 100. Globe 2030/35/50.
For 80% of the people of India. For their food-nutrition-health security, immunity. For their literacy, education funnel. For their decent and dignified livelihoods and living. For their employment. For their collectives, enterprises, federal entities, forums, platforms, specialist institutions. For poor friendly infrastructure, policies, schemes, budget allocations/changes. Funds. Credit access. Interest subventions. Savings instruments. Equity. For rights, entitlements. Life, livelihood, employment, education, freedom, information, justice, access, opportunities. For shares between local, state and union levels in caring for them. For enablers. For fighting the bottlenecks, constraints. In primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. For incentives, penalties. For appreciating emerging technologies, possibilities, opportunities. Transparency, accountability, democracy and Justice forums, platforms.
Let us work Hybrid, shake off CoVID inertia and start going to office and work. More flexible, ergonomic work space. More robust communication infrastructure. A dedicated associate team. Robust travel infra. Field associations across. 100 field-days, 30% time in the field. 1000 connect hours, including connect/reconnect with the core 24/25. Generic, geographic and thematic; engaging individuals, institutions, enterprises, organizations, forums/platforms; 1000 hours high-end consulting, apart from 2000 hours for NF. Progress on Frameworks, Notes, Classes and Conversations.
Let us account and keep track of our time, energy and other resources. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly. The way we do with money.
Let us have a time-energy-resource accounting systems. Can we rework the scheduling of the day, week? Can we see sunrise more often, close the day by mid-night as far as possible, maintain fixed food timings, but not later than 2000 hrs?
Can we account 15 hours a day or 100 hours a week or 5500 hours a year of waking, non-maintenance?
We are in hybrid for long time to come. Let us invest wisely. For sitting up straight and tall, relaxing the shoulders, with elbows in the side, not rounding the back, skipping wooden stools for sitting, short midwork stretches, being in co-workspaces a quarter of time.
Let us have work-stay space, 5000-10000 sft., as much as open as possible, 2-3 hours away from City/Airport. Office, conferencing, training, library, communication hub, team stay, stay for visitors, trainees, field experiments etc. 4-5 field stations across. In varied locales. Amongst tribal, forests, coastal, islands, river banks, river islands, lakes, Himalayas and other mountains, desert, dryland, north-east, north-west, madhya bharath etc.
There are some travels committed. Some invitations. Some planned. Himalayan track, Nadee end-to-end journey-parikrama, mountains, landscapes, crafts, LPRD-PVM harsh realities, indigenous communities, extra-ordinary and exciting community, local government, civil society field sites, experiments. One-by-one, can they be completed and ticked?
Can we initiate payback quickly? Dedicated volunteers, counselling sessions, tests, books, tuitions, scholarships, adoptions. Can we commit and deliver appropriate 4-12 Sessions a year in each alma mater? Online, offline on and off, visits, courses et al. For the interested from anywhere, can we offer several LPRD-PVM Management-Leadership Classes? E-classes. Faculty slots, on and off, dedicated, unique. Introductory, Orientation, Foundation, Immersion, Induction, Internship, Apprenticeship, Fellowship. 2-4 hrs/2-4 days/2-4 weeks/2-4 months/2-4 quarters/2-4 years. Mentoring mentors, lifeworkers.
Can we find a cohort of co-leaders, lifeworkers? Generic, geographic, thematic. Beginning with 25 to become 100+.
Can we build pools of professionals, resource persons, facilitators; community professionals, leaders, animators, resource persons? Beginning with 100/100, to become million plus. Linked them to Coexistence and its partners. Linked them to their ‘aikya’ forums.
Can we build a fund for small entrepreneurs, fellowships, equity investments? Can we leverage? Can we support LPRD-PVM shops?
Can we be with PVM, 80% of India? Mostly self-employed, under employed, informally employed, casual labour. Farmers, weavers, craftspersons, tribal communities, nomadics, coastal communities, dalits, disabled, migrants, people with declining livelihoods, people with ‘less certain tomorrow’. With their collectives, groups, teams, enterprises, platforms. Can we identify 100+ field stations in LPRD-PVM domain and work with them? Variety of them. Various elements of living, livelihoods value-chains.
Idiosyncratically, collectively. Across the arrows, capitals, contexts, interventions, dimensions and continuums?
Can ‘livelihoods’ become ‘full’ portal from now? With daily-weekly-regular updates, posts, stories, case studies, writes, classic books, articles, videos, pictures, literature, documents, notes, classes, conversations with senior practitioners, mentors, leaders, young and new et al. Daily writes, 100 Classes, 100 Videos, 100 Conversations. Linked to 6-digit connections, across 2-digit media, including you tube channels. Can we get ready to be a ‘channel’ too?
Let us access Gita, Gitanjali, Soundaryalahari, Bhartrihari, Thirukkural, Kabir, Vemana et al, translate, interpret and make them accessible byte-by-byte, note-by-note. This year, let us also give notes for use a la NF Naranpur Express, Writeshop, Immersion, Induction etc. Let us try commissioning livelihoods-living-leading-learning handbooks, fieldbooks too.
We already have: Livelihoods Lens, Livelihoods on Ground, Livelihoods Stories. Other Notes being pursued include: Frameworks – 7L Livelihoods, Leadership, Mentoring, Learning, Living in Nature, Gender; Krishi; Enterprises, Organizations, Collectives, Collective Enterprises; Collective Action; Development Practice; Volunteers-Social Responsibility; Vulnerable-Vulnerabilities; Education; Health; Commons, EFM Zones; Mobilization-Participation-Inclusion-Communitization.
Let us see whether we can begin to share our ‘Notes-Flows-Inspirations-Conversations’.
Let us make a small number of visioning facilitators’ teams. Let us try and make visioning-realizing vision more a commonplace knowledge-tools-skills. Let us try and help in visioning LPRD-PVM entities, strategic planning and tracking the progress on the vision.
Let us work with education funnel seriously, may be in a small way. With teachers, schools, gurukulams, curriculum, pedagogy, teaching aids, books, videos, libraries, tuitions, counselling, tests, support talent search – mental ability, languages, mathematics, daily science, environment, civic life etc. Let us begin a National Talent Centre. Mathematics Learning Unit.
Let us also initiate work on Preventive, Community and Primary Health.
We go forward on Living in Nature slowly. This year, our work in Natural Farming has to transcend AP, India, to be global. More states, more countries. BPKP gets more funds, hopefully. AP has to reach all GPs. While consolidating its work with 500,000+ farmers, it has to reach million farms, with 200,000 lead farmers, 10,000 Community Resource Persons, 1000 Professionals. AP goes into natural integrated farming. Into landscapes in a small way. The NF Value-chains economy would exceed Rs.5000 Crore/year. The collectives start taking rooted. Platform(s) start becoming functional. Civil Society establishes its niche in this effort.
2021 should give 1-2 dedicated leadership hands. More funds from GoAP Budget. More neutral/positive inclination of status quoists. Leadership-management units to become 4 groups: CORE transformation, Models-resource GPs-Partnerships, HR-Learning, Data-Communications, Admin-Fin, Scaling-up; Global Centre for Agroecology Research, Knowledge and Learning, NF Digital Platforms; Value-chains (input-output) architecture, input-output NF digital platform; and Civil Society Support.
National Coalition for Natural Farming, NCNF, begins its journey as a national movement in a small way. Core secretariat comes in. Short-term and Long-term Governance gets ‘established’. More sutras unveiled, with mobilizing more ‘facilitators’ of farmers into NF as the fundamental sutra. More partners take more responsibilities. More examples, more models, more initiatives, more nuances. Towards 2 million peer facilitators, champions. Towards transformed ecosystem(s) in NF’s favour.
Of course, we progress further on Spiritual processes. We add plans for initiating processes to discover meaningful, useful portfolio of full potential, and work towards the same.
We give our time, energy, resources. We pool up. We think, say, do. We just keep doing our things, with as much integrity and love as possible. We flow. We keep flowing. Flowing local useful coexistence, in and one with N. For 7L.
Join us in the world of yoga of 2021 and beyond, in local useful coexistence – triveniyoga for 7L.
G Muralidhar