Leading in the flow
Maathrudevo bhava, Pitrudevo bhava, Aacharyadevo bhava. It is our practice time and teacher’s time investment. 10,000+ hours to be a master. Learnt, Pullela Gopichand has put in 25,000+ hours coaching Saina.
Gurudev, Visvakavi Rabindranath Tagore is 160. A versatile genius. Rabindra Paintings. Rabindra Saahitya, Rabindra Sangeet (2230 Songs). Nobel to a small book ‘Gitanjali’. Santiniketan. Visvabharati. Sriniketan. Janaganamana, Amar Shonar Bangla. Gitanjali continues to guide many of us.
May 3 News: Melinda and Bill Gates are divorcing after 27 years of marriage. They will continue to work together on/in the Foundation, with an endowment worth USD 50 Billion. When Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie divorced, MacKenzie received 4% stake in Amazon, worth USD 36 Billion. Post-divorce, she donated USD 7.3 Billion and is going strong to donate more and more, faster and faster. Jeff also donated USD 10 Billion to Bezos Earth Fund.
Came across Tushar’s piece on IRMA. Kurien’s IRMA. IIMA could not do a separate course. Large HR division in NDDB could not satisfy. Ravi Mathai and Kamla Chowdhury joined Kurien to go towards IRMA. Sreekant Sambrani was roped in. SDC came in. Ford joined in for faculty development. Initially as a one-year program in 1980. Quickly, became a two-year program, by 1981. To produce young women and men who think big, dream big, and act big and make their alma mater proud. In the country’s development space in general and in agriculture and rural economy sub-space in particular. Others – AM Khusro, Hanumantha Rao, GVK Rao – joined in. Participants in the program would be odd-balls. Not sure objective tests can catch these people as participants in to the programme. To pursue larger-than-life goals. Organizing and empowering collectives and their leadership coupled with good professional management/leadership support. An institution, in the class of its own.
Elections end: Mamata, Stalin, Vijayan, Ranagaswami took charge and Himanta will take charge soon.
Ram Kidambi: Tirumala darshan can be a unique experience during these times. Peaceful, with only ‘onliners’ around.
CoVID wave 2 ensures that IPL is suspended for the season.
CoVID second wave is still peaking, with official cases/day in India at 400,000+. More than half of the world. Our numbers might be much higher than these. Many in hospitals. Beds, Ventilators, Oxygen, Medicines, Cremation Slots – all are in demand. Vaccines are on demand. All adults could seek vaccine, but supply is less. 20% availability till July against the potential demand, of 1.5 billion vaccine doses. India has budgeted for them, but not placed orders. Now, states are trying to go towards meeting this demand. While vaccine may not stop infection, the impact of infection could be less severe. On the other hand, state after state is going for lockdowns or lockdown like restrictions.
In this context, Supreme Court has set up a National Task Force to facilitate a response to CoVID in the present and in the future, based on scientific and specialized domain knowledge.
Vamsi, a CoVID Doctor-Warrior speaks: My day starts with writing death certificates, taking flatline ECGs, showing unrecordable pulse oximeters, stethoscope hearing no systole and diastole, declaring death to the attendants and packing bodies in CoVID packs. My day goes by finding Oxygen, CPAPs, BiPAPs, NIVs and beds in hospitals.
Prescribing medications and answering queries to anxious friends, friends of friends and acquaintances. Getting Rapid Antigen, RTPCR, CBNAT for innumerable people. Trying to get a jab slot for whoever calls me. My day ends by saying Om Shanti.
More than 100 calls a day. And yet, missing so many calls and not calling to whom I say I will call back. All this is not mechanical work, it needs right presence of mind, because the treatment is varying and requires to consider lot of things to be considered as we are unable to spend time with the patients. I am tired not because I cannot do this work. I am tired because I am unable to call back to those I love and care. I am tired because people are still not willing to get vaccinated. I am tired because I am unable to exactly tell the prognosis of the patient. Take care and hold on.
Slowly, most people have lost their ability to do deep work. The ability to focus on cognitively demanding tasks without distractions has come down drastically. This results in lower efficiency, higher timelines and inferior results. CoVID situation has reinforced this. 40%+ time goes on distractions. Can we do something about this?
As remote/hybrid work and co-work space is emerging as the norm, flexible work hours, part-timing, job-sharing, volunteering are possibilities; digital technology-adoption, adaptation to digital possibilities, and data-cyber security have to be focussed on; mental health focus and upskilling to new work culture/patterns is important.
In this new work pattern, we need to switch to getting up and walking for 10-15 minutes every 60-90 minutes. While walking – can we have water? Tea-coffee? Can we call? Can we use dictaphone or voice-texting? Can we listen to ‘audio’ books? Songs? News? Can we plan the schedules, presentations, notes?
If we want to be with all nature-centric livelihoods, can we not work with weavers, craftspersons? Apart from farming. Livestock. Value-addition.
175-year long experiment (still going) reveals that crop break gives higher yields, with minimised pests and diseases; nitrogen application is not very helpful. Carbon in soils doubles with not using chemical fertilizers o. Do we have to wait for such long years to draw conclusions?
We review ourselves. Looking back for the last five years and beyond. We need to go forward and quickly. No choice here. Window is small. First we need to achieve critical scale. How much is it? 1 Million farmers, 1 Million acres? 10% farmland? 10% farmers, 10% GPs? How do we work on various strands of work – Mobilization-Collectivization-Communitization; Food-Nutrition-Health-Immunity front-ending; Models-Peers-Learning Facilitation-Transformation; Tracking; Producer-Consumer Linkages; Digital-Learning-Value-chain Platforms; Information-analytics-communication; Research-Knowledge-Learning; Consumer Fora? How do we integrate? How do we scale-deep, impact, up and out?
Do not we need to intensify existing pathways and/or open more pathways? Educated young practitioners – EYPs, farmer-entrepreneurs – FEs, natural farming interns, fellows, associates of various hues – NFI, NFF, NFAs; Sapta Sutra SHGs-Federations – discussions, food, kitchen gardens, farming, inputs, funds and records; Accountability to SHG federations, local governments, Gram Sabha; SHG Federations as collectives, aggregators, service providers, and/or Farmer Producer Organizations, FPOs; NGOs, NGOs as innovators, Funds for NGOs; Saturating beginning with Tribal areas; Community Data, community-endorsed data, digital CRPs; Farmer-Cadre Connect centre(s), Call centres, participatory tracking-certification, independent assessments; learning-training architecture – in situ, classroom, videos, demonstrations, internalization, handholding, troubleshooting, Lead farmers-CRPs-Master Trainers, online-offline, self – NF action plan-farmbook/diary, fieldschools, handbooks; Change in curriculums, courses, books, NF Institutes, Academies, Universities; Literature, cultural forms; Input-local value-addition-output architecture, NF Amrit; Digital Platform(s); policy advocacy; scaling-deep, landscapes; scaling-up, scaling-out; research-architecture, partnerships, farmers as researchers, Global Centre for Agroecology Research and Learning; Changing the systems for scaling, internalization, sustainability, legacy.
All this meant change in the theory of change, may be 8-9 years in a location; may be complete transformation of the farm family into seed-to-seed non-chemical agroecology farmer is the minimum, and this may have to include 365 day cover, pre-monsoon, and multi-layered multiple crops; local consumption-FNH Immunity may trigger NF transformation in a big way; focus may have to be on landless tenants, marginal and small farmers, and universalization of kitchen gardens, NF food and NF saturation; seeds-inputs-mini-input shops, collective action et al may help; slowing down is fine, numbers may need to be revised downwards for gradual uptake in a location while more locations can be reached faster; may be reflection-analysis-planning-tracking based on Farming Situations is useful and the way forward, resulting in FS-based protocols, PoPs, Videos etc.; may be community (SHG) centric mobilisation-planning-information-tracking is not negotiable; more effective 1+20+40+80 model of improved training-trouble shooting-tracking architecture that included handbook, manual, farmer diary, NFAAP in text, e-form and v-forms; may be dedicated digital crp data architecture, strong data team, robust digital apps, databases and platform(s) help in building confidence at all levels; may be consumers pull up the scale; may be the policies, budgets, direct benefit transfers. May be the movements, explosions, pandemics, disasters, Elurus. May be the consenting leaders. Influencers.
In any case, we need to work with more and more partners, in more nuances, in more locations-themes and we need to hurry-up.
We need to hasten the world. With A4 sheet material (as Dr K insisted). A slide. A minute, 180 words. A 1-minute video-clip. A picture. A tweet. Can we articulate in short sentences? Do we have the art?
Can we be genuine? Genuine leaders? Can we simplify? Can we bring in simplicity? Can we show compassion? Can we carry teams together? Can we collaborate? Can we persist? Can we lead although we are not labelled as one? Can we lead ourselves? Can we reflect and keep planning ahead?
Can we find co-travellers on our ‘journey’ and connect? If we know our journey. Do we have the willpower? Do we practice willpower? Incrementally?
Yes, we can. If we keep flowing to explore, unlearn and learn. If we relate with life, traveling, intending traveling. We find co-travellers in our coexistence, flowing in N. For 7L.
Join us in the world of yoga of being in the flow of useful coexistence – jivayaanayoga for 7L.
G Muralidhar