Leading is letting go
Let us be clear, we need language and mathematics. Skills and Tools. Articulation, logic. And lots of practice. Articulation Rest we get from these two. It is OK if we do not remember. Books can be accessed. Copied. Played with.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ‘elevates’ himself to be Executive Chair since this Q3, after 27 years, after 1.3 million people, after becoming ‘everything’ for the people, from just Books. Andy Jassy will be the new CEO. Earth Fund, Day 1 Fund, Blue Origin et al to get Jeff’s time and energy. This is like a third transition, as we say.
Farmers sit tight. Government appears to yield in bits and pieces, but want farmers to move back. After 60+ days, 150+ deaths, Several policemen injured, 10+ rounds of talks with Government,when farmers across India express solidarity with sitting-in farmers, a good number of Indians are with farmers, and care for them, when the ‘world’ expresses concern in their own ways, when government switches of internet services in the protest area for more than 72 days, when people strated visiting them, it may be difficult for farmers to go back without ‘the harvest’. More farmers are joining them. More farmers are joining in situ across the country. Some are walking. Some are fasting. Some are giving slogans. Some are messaging on social media.
True, ‘a few’ crossed the lakshman rekha. Is it an abberration, or engineering, or counter engineering? This can not be the reason for Government not going with farmers’ requests, going for black outs, for barricades, for FIRs, for arrests at large.
We need reforms, yes. Can be more comprehensive with wider consultations, to increase incomes of the farmers to decent levels, with reduced risk, and basic incomes, to increase the larger portion of the consumer rupee, to increase the farm prices/incomes commensurate with increases in other secondary, tertiary sectors and organized employment, to protect/improve farmers and consumers’ health, soil health and planet’s health, to guarantee a minimum wage linked incomes, to review and transcend Minimum Support Prices to Crops to Minimum Support Incomes to farms, owned/leased/shared, to incrased nutrition, nutrition diversity and biodiversity, to move to a regime of farmers collectivizing and fixing their own prices, et al.
If we can stall/repeal these laws and go for more comprehensive reforms, consulting the people for whose these reforms are a matter of life, deathlike life, suicides and deaths, then we are right. Till then, howmuchever we justify these reforms, and whatever the sound rationale, we are wrong.
Listen in as directly as possible, not through emissaries. Go to fields and see. Do our leaders, servant leaders, cannot make them wait so long.
On the Martyrs’ Day, Gandhi is in thoughts. He appeared lonely virtually too. Notwithstanding the statues, roads, temples.
A celebration. 11 Crore women are now in 1.02 Crore SHGs. We are vindicated. The momentum is still going up and ahead. SHG spirit is finding its way into local governments – SHG women (30000+) have become Sarpanches. SHGs federated. SHGs transcended Panchasutra into Livelihoods, Collective action, Social action. Savings and credit into augmenting livelihoods, living, lives. Rights, entitlements. CBOs have emerged as new civil society players. Pen and paper SHGs are going digital. SHGs transcended Management to Leadership, servant leadership. Our corporate, academic, civil society, bureaucratic and political leadership has to unlearn and learn. Quickly. Juggernaut is moving.
As we cross infected: 100 million globally, 10 million in India. vaccinations began. With warriors first.
Economic Survey 2020-21 was tabled in Parliament. It opened a debate on V-shaped and K-shaped recoveries. Are we K? Will we catch up with the lost loss in GDP? From -7.7% to 11%. Inflation is up. Agriculture is affected less vis-à-vis other sectors. Yet food subsidy bill went up significantly. Industry has slowed down. Services remained resilient. Software services persisted. National Infrastructure pipeline of Rs.111 lakh crore was launched. Except for CoVID, health indicators improved. Out of pocket health expenses are high. Public health spending increase to 2.5% of GDP will reduce this dramatically.
2021-22 Budget based on six pillars – wellbeing, capital and infrastructure, inclusion, human capital, innovation, and ‘Minimum Government Maximum Governance’ – introduced needs more analysis. Cursory observations include:
• No changes in personal tax slabs
• PM Atma Nirbhar Swasthya Bharat Yojana for primary, secondary, tertiary healthcare
• Mission Poshan 2.0 in 112 aspiration districts
• Jal Jeevan Mission Urban, Urban Swachh Bharat Mission
• Education: 100 Sainik Schools; 750 Ekalavya schools; 15,000 schools strengthened with NEP-basis
• Ladakh Central University
• Agriculture infrastructure and development cess, Rs.2.5/litre petrol, Rs.4/litre diesel
• Rs.16.5 lakh crore agri-credit target
• MSP to be 1.5 times cost of cultivation
• FDI limit increase to 74%
• Social security to be extended to gig and platform workers
• Rs.35000 Crore for vaccines
• Seven Textile Parks in 3 years
• Increased fiscal deficit (9.5% of GDP)
• Digital Census
• IPO to LIC
Letting go. Can we persist with this thought, word, action? It is possible. It is more than talking. More than meditation. More than willpower. More than ignoring. More than distraction. It is letting be. It is accepting, forgiving, and moving on. But we need to practice. To let go of regret and guilt; traumatic experience limiting us; investing in something that is not important to us; searching endlessly for being right. To let go of wasting energy, in mechanical, frustrating living. Can we come out to let go? Letting go? Can we let go of punctured fragility, abused sensitivity, and be full of ‘life’ always, as far as possible, feasible, desirable?
Yes, incrementally. Item by item. Bit by bit. Thought, Emotion, Words, Acts, Persons, Spaces so on. The timeline has to be natural timeline. Rhythms have to be natural. 9 months are required. Work on ourselves takes time. Design itself takes time.
Relationships take time to mature. Maturity takes time. Mastering takes time. Pacing kills it. Direction has to be right. Intuition is right. Intuitive gut is right. Let us hasten slowly. Patiently. Lovingly. Being creative inwardly, meditating, reflecting, analysing, synthesizing, integrating, leading ourselves towards our potential lives.
Let us let go. Let us be creative inwardly. In sync with nature’s ways, tunes, colours. Let us keep flowing, jumping, crossing, by-passing, breaking, tunnelling everything and anything that comes in the way creatively, lively, dynamically. For the flow of local useful coexistence, with N. For 7L.
Join us in the world of yoga of being creative inwardly for local useful coexistence – srijanayoga for 7L.
G Muralidhar